OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. [CHAP.XII.

and thus enable our troops to make a simultaneous march through Kentucky,and expel every Yankee this side of the Ohio to their own North. I beg you not to think that any of us are afraid of being really invaded. Johnson and his late adherents in Tennessee intend and predict it, but the secessionist and our loyal people do not allow such an event to take place, and some of us concur in the opinion that the policy I have mentioned will make it impossible.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. G. M. RAMSEY.

MEMPHIS, November 4, 1861.

General A. SIDNEY JOHNSTON, Bowling Green, Ky.:

DEAR SIR: I arrived at home last night. I find the foundries at Nashville are prepared to work on a large scale, but have engagements for some time ahead; but in case of emergency I have no doubt you can get the guns they are making for the Government. I can get six guns a week cut and bored at Huntsville, from 6-pounder to 24-pounder howitzers. I can have completed here about twelve guns a week after the order is received and patterns made. The Parrott gun seems a failure; cast and wrought iron will not do combined. We are making a Dahlgren cast-iron 6-pounder gun that can be rifled, that will do, weighing about 900 pounds. Colonel Hunt tells me he has fifteen field guns here, 6-pounders, on carriages, not appropriated. He also has copper and tin to cast about fifty more, and is having them turned out about one per day. Would you prefer them rifled or not? How many brass 12-pounder howitzers would you like in proportion to 6-pounder smooth and rifled guns? Colonel Carroll tells me he is ordered to East Tennessee; is waiting for his guns to be repaired; says he can have it done at the rate of 100 per day. He says he will move 900 men this week. I think you had better write him to go, without waiting to have anything done to his guns except ordinary repairs. Colonel Reynolds has a regiment at Iuka, 100 miles east of here; no guns. General Walker has a brigade at Huntsville and no guns. M. Walker is sick; his regiment has but few guns, about 100; expects more think week. A Texas regiment is here, I learn, without guns. I have not seen them. Colonel Looney's regiment he expects guns this week.

I have great fears for Zollicoffer's safety if he does not get help soon.

Could you not get the War Department to give us some submarine batteries on the river above here? I have my doubts about stopping these iron gunboats, but I am sure we could blow them out of water with proper batteries. They would cost but little; the scarcity of powder is the only trouble. Fort Pillow and Columbus I fear, from what Captain Lynch said to me a few days ago, is deficient in quality as well as quantity of powder. Morgan, of Nashville, assured me when I was there that their mills were now making 2,800 pounds per day. We have mad requisitions on them for 35,000 pounds for our forts above, but get no response. I have been running around all day to find out what I could, and write now in great haste to go by train in a few minutes. Let me know how many and what kind of guns you want, and I will try and get them made as rapidly as possible. Say whether you want carriages or not.

Yours, truly,

SAM. TATE.