officers or agents. It is not intended to interfere with your powers as executive of the State.

I will wait for further communication from you.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

RICHMOND, May 12, 1862.

General JOHN H. FORNEY,

Mobile, Ala.:

Your dispatch of yesterday received. In the contingency referred to, burn all the cotton of foreign subjects except in cases where exemption has been granted by our Government. Where the consul applies for exemption on cotton the property of foreign government, immediately advised this office by telegraph for action here.

S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT NO.1, Camp Moore, May 12, 1862.

General G. T. BEAUREGARD,
Corinth:

DEAR GENERAL: I received your dispatch asking for my regiments here, which I declined sending. In my judgment the most energetic steps should be taken to confine the enemy to New Orleans, where he must suffer more from sickness than in the country adjoining. Besides, it would have a very bad moral effect up[on the State to abandon it entirely, and might operate to prevent the burning of the cotton, which act will show the world that we are in earnest, and put an effectual stopper on the promises of the Federals "to end out the cotton in thirty days." If it is destroyed, it certainly cannot be delivered in Europe, even though they should hold every seaport in the Confederacy. The troops in New Orleans are already suffering much from sickness, and they will, beyond a question, endeavor to occupy Batton Rouge, the lake shore, or this railroad. To prevent this, I propose to have a considerable number of partisan rangers, with 5,000 or 6,000 men well armed and provided, in some central position, who can prevent their troops from leaving New Orleans except in very large force.

I was raising and arming five regiments here under the last call of the President, and by the aid of Governor Moore was getting along very well, when I learned that 800 guns, for which I had an order from the governor, were seized and carried to Corinth, thus depriving me of the means of arming a fine regiment. I must protest against this method of procedure. Everything intended for the defense of New Orleans for the past six months has been stopped and seized in every direction until it was left literally defenseless.

If the enemy occupies Baton Rouge I shall attempt to dispossess him, but cannot do it without guns.

I beg you will do me the favor to say to persons who ask where General Lovell and his army were when New Orleans fell, that all the troops that I had organized and prepared were sent to Corinth in March, and took a prominent part in the battle of Shiloh, leaving me with the heterogeneous militia of the city, armed mostly with shot-guns, against 9 and 11 inch Dahlgrens. Not that 20,000 well-armed infantry would