tions made over me while I was suspended under an unjust order-adds additional poignancy to other acts of injustice I have sustained.

I am the more induced to hesitate in taking final action from personal considerations affecting my family. My whole fortune, large as it was, has been swept away by the enemy. In evacuating my portion of Tennessee the enemy took away my negro property from that State also. The policy of my own Government induced it to burn all my cotton. In this way I am reduced to poverty, with a large and dependent family of grown-up and unmarried daughters on my hands. While I see no means of supporting my family in the future, I am, on the other hand, doubly important to them. In addition to this source of embarrassment my taxes for the present year were assessed on my whole estate, and amount to some $5,000. This sum I have no means of paying, and my lands will be sacrificed to pay this sum unless the Government make me advances on the cotton burned. The consideration of these matters does not properly belong to official communications, but yet are proper to be made known to the Government, as having their influence on the course I feel constrained to inform you I am about to take.

Protesting, as I solemnly do, against the injustice of this last order of the Government (explained above), and claiming a right that this my protest shall be filled on record in its archives, and having no command after a month's delay waiting for one, I now inform the Government that I shall proceed to my waiting for one, I now inform the Government that I shall proceed to my residence in Tennessee and there await the action and orders of the Government upon this communication. It is proper to state likewise that I never expect to take further part in this struggle unless upon a review of its own action in regard to myself it shall do me full justice. If satisfied no such action on its part will be taken, I shall, of course, promptly forward my resignation.

I transmit this by Major Cheatam, who will bring to me your reply.

With great respect, your obedient servant,

GID. J. PILLOW,

Brigadier-General, C. S. Army.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Va., October 21, 1862.

Brigadier General GIDEON J. PILLOW:

GENERAL: I have received and carefully considered your letter of the 10th instant, and am constrained to say that I find in it nothing in reference to the operations at Fort Donelson which you had not already communicated in conversation, except to statement, now for the first time made, that "the necessity for the surrender was caused by General Buckner's unsuccessful attack on the Wynn's Ferry road battery and his failure to hold his rifle pits."

Declining to enter into this new point of controversy between General Buckner and yourself, I find nothing in the letter to change my opinion of your conduct at Fort Donelson or to render it proper that the order of which you campaign should be rescinded. Neither do I find in the report of Colonel Gilmer any confirmation of your opinions. His supplemental report, if made, has not been laid before me. Should it satisfy me that I have done you injustice, I need not assure you, general, that it will give me great pleasure to repair it.

I have not received your application "to raise a new command of war volunteers or to take ten regiments of skeleton returned volunteers and fill them up"; but the conscript act would hinder you from raising a new