Colonel Cram has a similar dispatch for Major-General McClellan, which is in accordance with his telegram.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN E. WOOL,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA,
Fort Monroe, Va., February 23, 1862.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

DEAR SIR: Colonel Cram my senior aide-de-camp, will present you with a dispatch and a most excellent map, by which he will explain in detail my plans for taking Norfolk, Yorktown, and Richmond.

There has been no time in the last three months until recently that Richmond could not have been taken with 50,000 men, and even with a less force. At all events 50,000 men menacing Richmond would not have failed to have relieved Washington. Fifty thousand men menacing the enemy in the rear and 150,000 advancing in front, the rebel army would have been destroyed.

In conclusion, I would commend to your special attention Colonel T. J,. Cram. I am in want of another brigadier-general, having but one who is at Newport News. Colonel Cram would make as efficient a brigadier-general an any other in service.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN E. WOOL,

Major-General.

P. S.-A steamer has this moment arrived, bringing 372 returned prisoners from the South, of whom 345 are non-commissioned officers, privates, sailors, and citizens; also 10 negroes and 17 commissioned officers, 7 of whom were held as hostages, ranking as follows, viz: Colonel Lee, Cogswell, and Wood; Major Revere; Captains Bowman, Rockwood, and Keffer, all of whom go forward this evening by boat to Baltimore.

NAVY DEPARTMENT, March 6, 1862-4.10 p. m.

Commodore PAULDING, Commanding Navy-Yard, New York:

Let the Monitor come direct to Washington, anchoring below Alexandria.

GIDEON WELLES,

Secretary Navy.

[Indorsement.]

I never received the above telegram.

JOHN L. WORDEN,

Rear Admiral, U. S. N.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Washington City, D. C., March 7, 1862.

Major General JOHN E. WOOL, Commanding Fortress Monroe:

SIR: Your request to be furnished with two gunboats has been referred to the Secretary of the Navy, who informs me that-

Flag-Officer Goldsborough has withdrawn the class of vessels desired by Major

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