HEADQUARTERS NORTHERN DEPARTMENT,
Columbus, Ohio, September 20, 1864.

Honorable W. G. FARGO,

Mayor of Buffalo, N. Y.:

The major-general has information that the steamers Island Queen and Parsons were taken to Sandwich, Canada, robbed and scuttled.

S. H. LATHROP,

Lieutenant Colonel Asst. Insp. General, and Actg. Asst. Adjt. General

(Copy sent mayor of Cleveland and Colonel Sweet.)

HEADQUARTERS NORTHERN DEPARTMENT,
Columbus, Ohio, September 20, 1864.

Honorable W. G. FARGO,

Mayor of Buffalo, N. Y.:

Major-General Heintzelman, commanding the Northern Department, has information that rebels from Canada captured the steamers Parsons and Island Queen near Bass Island, a short distance from Sandusky, Monday afternoon, and have gone down or across the lake. They left the islands between 10 and 11 last night. The party numbered some thirty or forty, well armed with knives and revolvers. No other arms were noticed at Middle Bass Island; they may have gone for guns and ammunition. It is presumed that it was the intention of the privateers to capture boats of the Michigan and release prisoners on Johnson's Island. As they were foiled in this they may, with the two steamers, commence depredations on the lake commerce. The steamers had two day's fuel on board. Captain Carter, with the U. S. steamer Michigan, is in pursuit.

S. H. LATHROP,

Lieutenant Colonel, Asst. Insp. General, and Actg. Asst. Adjt. General

(Copy sent mayor of Cleveland and Colonel Sweet, Detroit.)

HEADQUARTERS FIFTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
East Point, Ga., September 20, 1864.

Captain L. M. DAYTON,

Aide-de-Camp:

(Through department headquarters.)

SIR: I hope that I may be permitted through you to call the attention of the major-general commanding military DIVISION to some facts connected with my command. On the 1st day of May, when I commenced the [movement] from Huntsville, the Fifteenth Corps numbered 16,225 effective. I left to guard the railroad from Huntsville to Stevenson 3,822 effective men, with the promise that they would at once be relieved by the command of General G. H. Thomas and ordered to report to me on the march. They were relieved, it is true, but by 100-days' men principally, and on their way my command at Kingston they were stopped, by order of the general commanding the military DIVISION, for the purpose of guarding the railroad, and were disposed from Resaca to Kenesaw Mountain, and since detachments have been sent to Tullahoma and other parts of Tennessee. This was somewhat surprising to me, inasmuch as by Special Field Orders, Numbers 64, from headquarters military DIVISION, General Thomas, of the Army of the