HEADQUARTERS, &C.,
Tuscaloosa, July 12, 1864.

Major ELLIOTT, Assistant Adjutant-General:

MAJOR: Your communication inclosing dispatch from me to General Johnston is received. The dispatch was prepared under my instructions at the time and place it bears date. It was then given to Lieutenant Pillow, my aide-de-camp, and Lieutenant Underhill, aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Lee, to reduce to cipher. The most of the work was done by Lieutenant Underhill, he having, as he stated, the correct cipher. Coming as he did to me from the lieutenant-general as one of his staff, I had the greatest confidence in his prudence, and took it for granted that he had destroyed the original communication after reducing it to cipher. He neglected to do so, and must have put it in his pocket and kept it there until it was lost by him as he passed through Demopolis. No one else left my command soon enough after my return to have dropped it in Demopolis before it was picket up but him. Lieutenant Underhill worked by a different cipher from that explained to Lieutenant Pillow by Lieutenant Lee, aide-de-camp to the lieutenant-general, and had charge of the work of reducing the communication to cipher, and I had supposed he had destroyed it, as I directed. This incident will in the future cause special attention to be given to the destruction of such papers.

Respectfully,

GID. J. PILLOW,

Brigadier-General, &c.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 164.
Richmond, July 13, 1864.

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XV. Colonel G. C. Gibbs, Provisional Army, C. S., is assigned to the command of the post and Federal prison at Macon, Ga.

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By command of the Secretary of War:

SAML. W. MELTON,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

RICHMOND, VA., July 13, 1864.

General J. M. WITHERS, Montgomery, Ala.:

What is the prospect of sending reserves to General Maury, agreeably to my dispatch to you some days since, directing that all the reserve force you could collect be sent at once to General Maury, at Mobile?

S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General.

MOBILE, July 13, 1864.

General S. COOPER:

Increase of cavalry force reported at Pensacola July 4. Enemy moving all his troops from New Orleans. Embarking heavy guns on ocean steamers. No increase of fleet yet reported.

DABNEY H. MAURY,

Major-General.