CHAP.XIII.] CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-CONFEDERATE.

of this Government, and in relation to which your excellency has been most strangely misinformed.

You state that you are compelled again to buy a navy for protection, not receiving if from the Confederate States. If, as appears ot be implied, your excellency means to assert the navy received from your State has been diverted to other purposes, and your State thus deprived of naval defense, you will doubtless be pleased to learn how grossly you have been deceived. Not only ar the vessels received from your State retained for her defense, but large and costly additions are now being made to the full extent of the resources of your State in shipbuilding. New boats are contracted for, and all boats already existing that can be converted into war steamers have been ordered to be purchased.

You further state that you are denied powder, on the ground "that you have received more than any other State, without adverting to the fact that the powder has been made into cartridges and sent back to Virginia with every regiments."

Feeling much disturbed that any State should have such good ground of complaint, I was preparing for the delinquent officers the just rebuke which such conduct would merit, when I learned from them that since the fall of Fort Hatteras there had been sent to your State 2,200 rounds of field ammunition, which remained some time at Godsborough, as being in excess of your wants; that Captain Lawrence had been furnished with all the powder he required on application to the Ordnance Bureau; that there is now here at your disposal for public defense all the powder and fixed ammunition that can be necessary; and I have been unable to trace on the books of the Department any such ground or refusal as is suggested by you letter.

It is true that we have not been able to furnish your State all the cannon powder you desire, and in this respect you share the fate of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, all of which make the same complaint. But rest satisfied with the assurance that the Government is straining every nerve to increase its supply of that article; that it is establishing factories at numerous points, and supplying the material for the manufacture to private factories; that it is distributing its supply as fairly as it can between the points threatened with immediate attack, and will daily add to that supply as its means increase. Each of those States has established powder mills, as North Carolina has done, and I feel persuaded your excellency, on being apprised of these facts, will not continue to believe that your noble and patriotic State could possibly have been treated with designed injustice by the Confederate Government. The labors of this Department deprive its chief of the repose even of the Sundays, as your excellency will perceive by the date of this letter; and it is, therefore, impossible for me to learn to what fact your excellency alludes when you state that the Confederate commissaries are making requisitions for money on the State officers. I cannot conceive how such a thing can be possible, still less that your officers should pay such requisitions, and still less again that the remedy of the evil complained of should not have been found in your orders to your to your own officers to refuse honoring requisitions utterly illegal and unauthorized. I will, however, make the proper inquiries of the Commissary-General to-morrow, and trust to be able to give you a satisfactory reply.

In conclusion, may I not pray your excellency to rest assured, in spite of any apparent evidence to the contrary, that it is not only improbable, but impossible, that any officer in high position in this Government can