OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. [CHAP.XII.

RICHMOND, November 19, 1861.

General A. SIDNEY JOHNSTON, Nashville:

Your rifles will reach you in a day or two. I have also ordered for you 500 sabers, being all on board; also several thousand accouterments, and sufficient cartridges for the rifles.

J. P. BENJAMIN, Acting Secretary of War.

HEADQUARTERS WESTERN DEPARTMENT, Nashville, November 19, 1861.

His Excellency ISHAM G. HARRIS, Governor State of Tennessee, Nashville:

All my information goes to show that the danger is imminent of an invasion of the Confederate States through the northern line of Tennessee, by heavy columns of the enemy attempting to penetrate by the valley of the Mississippi; while other but little less formidable forces cover and threaten the capital by the line of the Cumberland.

I therefore call upon your excellency to assist me to repel and drive back these forces by the armed forces of the State, and beg you to this end to call forth every loyal soldier of the militia into whose lands arms can be placed, or to provide a volunteer force large enough to use all the arms that can be procured.

A volunteer force is more desirable if it can be raised as promptly as the militia, as more economical and producing less inconvenience to the citizen; but now time is of the first importance, that I may cover the homes of your citizens and save them from the sufferings always attending an invasion. The force you may thus raise in East Tennessee will not be removed from the district until their homes are secure from danger both from the foreign and domestic foe.

I have selected Nashville, Memphis, and Jackson as good points of rendezvous, and at these points staff officers will be prepared to furnish supplies.

Companies will be transported at the expense of the Confederate States from any point at which they are organized to the railroad, and your excellency's order for the movement will be authority to my officers to pass the same.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

A. S. JOHNSTON, General, C. S. Army.

(Copies of this letter sent to the governors of Alabama and Mississippi.)

NASHVILLE, November 19, 1861.

HonorableJ. P. BENJAMIN:

I have this day called for the whole force, militia or volunteers, of this State, that can be armed, to meet the advance of what I assume now to be the overwhelming force of the enemy through the Mississippi Valley and between that river and this point. In my opinion a like call should be made on Mississippi, but in deference to the exhausted condition of that State, referred to in one of your dispatches-I cannot