and at the risk of others whose safety might be dependent on his movements, he is a very unsafe depository of military trust; and if he wants to do right, yet can't command his men to march after more than thirty days of experiment, he should yield place to somebody who can.

I make this explanation to you because I am aware I ought to send forward charge and specification now, but I have no desire to push Colonel Moore into any place from which he cannot recover, and I want to leave myself a little room to observe whether the arrest alone will not answer without a trial.

I am here, 33 miles above Louisa and about 60 miles from the Ohio River. Below me are several large towns: Louisa, 900 population; Catlettsburg, 1,000, at the mouth of the Sandy. Fourth miles below Catlettsburg is Ashland, 1,200 population; 20 miles below is Greenupsburg; at 7 miles below, on the Ohio side, is Ironton, with 4,500 population, and this is the terminus of a railroad running to the interior of Ohio. At 25 miles from Catlettsburg and directly back of Ashland is Grayson, the county site of Carter County, Kentucky, with a few hundred population. The whole rename is supported mainly belonging to Ohio men. The population is generally against the South. I have taken position here, and have arrested one man within 10 miles of Louisa, the only arrest I have sanctioned. I sent him to the post at Pound Gap, to be detained there until further orders. He ought to have been shot; he is a native of Tennessee, and I found him with an Enfiled rifle in hand, a Lincoln uniform on his back, orders in his pockets, and the proof was positive that he was in company when two Southern-rights men were killed by Lincoln bands, and when a store was robbed, and that he was here with Nelson's command, vaporing through these streets, conducting himself towards old, respectable, and defenseless females in the most brutal and insolent manner; in one instance making an old lady named Preston (the wife of a very respectable old man whom they bailed at $25,000) cook for a mess of Irish and Dutch soldiers for a whole week in her own house. I felt like having him shot, but thought imprisonment was probably the best course to take with him.

The President has released, unfortunately, at least three very bad men, whom Colonel Williams sent to Richmond before my arrival on this frontier. I have a battalion of those special-service men in Pound gap, and I will send my prisoners there until they have been reported at Richmond. My policy is conciliatory to the people, and i think is having a good effect, but when I arrest a man against whom the proof is plain and whose guilt is startling, I shall secure him so certainly that nothing but superior authority to mine can relieve him. I have with me here Twigg's and part of Williams' regiment, and Jeffress' battery of four pieces, and 30 mounted men; in all about 1,100 men. The mounted battalion, about 400 men, is at Licking Station, 16 miles from this place, covering the roads which lead in form the direction from Lexington and Paris. My scouts report about 1,200 men at Catlettsburg and 400 of Rosecrans' cavalry at Louisa. They have made no demonstration in this direction as yet. Ziegler's regiment is at Ceredo, 3 miles above Cattlesburg.

Knowing that Colonel Stuar has not left Abingdon, and that Moore had not crossed the Cumberland, I am somewhat embarrassed about putting anything into motion which is not strictly defensive. However, I sent forward a detachment of mounted men as far as West Liberty, in Morgan County, and covered the march of about 50 unarmed recruits to