CIRCULAR.] HDQRS. 1ST BRIG., ARMY OF EASTERN KENTUCKY,

May 14, 1862.

The militia within the boundary of your command will be placed with all practicable dispatch in readiness to march to the field of active service at a moment's notice.

You will cause the officers in your regiments and battalions immediately to enroll the names of all white male persons between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who may be within the boundary of their respective commands, and to report the same to your adjutant-general at your headquarters. Whenever there shall appear a less number fit for duty in the boundary of a captain's command, the colonel or other officer commanding the regiment or battalion will attach the persons within such captain's boundary to the other companies of the regiment, so as to make each company number as nearly as possible 100 rank and file.

Company commanders will institute immediately an examination into the number of fire-arms of any description within their respective boundaries, whether the same belong to persons subject to military duty or otherwise. Persons who are not on the muster roll who have such arms will be requested to yield them for public use by the militia. If they refuse, the inspecting officer will return the name and residence of such person to the colonel, as also the character of arms so retained. A similar examination and return will be made as to ammunition on hand within the boundary of each company in your brigade.

It is highly desirable these investigations shall be commenced and concluded as rapidly as possible-say within one week after the reception of this order.

Commissaries of regiments will ascertain and report to your assistant commissary-general the state of provisions and breadstuffs within their regimental boundary; also the principal places at which the same may be found and the most convenient place for the concentration thereof within the same boundary. In this report the surplus, after deducting six months' provision for the family, need only be estimated. The estimate will embrace corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, flour, meal, hard bread, beef (salt, jerked, dry, cured, fresh, and on foot), bacon, pork, also soap, salt, vinegar, lard, and tallow.

Regimental quartermasters will estimate and report the number of horses over four years of age and of mules three years old and over within their command; also the number of wagons; also the amount of forage, including hay and grasses of every sort, wheat, oat, and rye straw; also the amount of iron, and of leather, tanned and untanned. Each officer, acting only within a regimental boundary, may diminish the amount of his labor by subdividing it among intelligent company officers within their company boundaries. These returns are important in ascertaining the resources of the country itself to maintain its militia while defending it.

In many places within the State, and especially within the boundary of your command, men have congregated who are not "sons of Virginia," and who may not appropriately fall within the meaning of the Governonr's proclamation of the 10th instant. Such men cannot be permitted to take shelter behind the gallant spirits who will now take the field of active service in defense of their country.

It is just because such men would not help to defend the land they inhabited that the burden of war now falls upon this section of Virginia. The time for the service of such men has at last arrived, and they must march into camp, for it is a shame that good and true men shall be