signed to some post duty in your department, if you have such a place at your disposal, if not, please have the Secretary of War order me to report to Major Ayer, who desires to have me for post duty. All my officers, satisfied that they are doing no valuable service under the present status of affairs, have expressed a desire to be relieved. I inclose Major Young's written application. Owing to the rapid movement of the army, and the constant use of all the wagon trains, of the troops, &c., we have been unable to get up such reports as you desired. In fact, I think it will be impossible to get at any accurate information about the number of horses that have been sent to this army. I send you a report* of the means of transportation in the army to 1st October. This is not exactly accurate: in Wheeler's corps we had to take the old report, they being absent from the army. It does not include the wagons or horses of the Reserve Artillery, now at Macon; the horses were turned over to Anderson to be recruited, and the wagons have been distributed by the chief quartermaster in the supply trains, about seventy in number, I think.

Trusting, colonel, to hear from you soon, I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

E. H. EWING,

Major and Inspector of Field Transportation.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF TENNESSEE,
October 18, 1864.

Major-General WHEELER,

Commanding Cavalry Corps:

GENERAL: General Hood directs that you will not send the cavalry to the Tennessee with the pontoon, as has been ordered yesterday.

Yours, respectfully,

A. P. MASON,

Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS FORRESTS'S CAVALRY,
Corinth, Miss., October 18, 1864.

Lieutenant General R. TAYLOR,

Commanding Department, Selma:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 10th ultimo,+ and to say that I fully concur with you in your views concerning the illegal and demoralizing traffic heretofore carried on along the lines of this department. Your instructions shall be carried out to the letter. Your fixed determination to put a stop to this cotton trade and unlawful Government trade meets my entire approbation and I will use every exertion to break up the same, and under no circumstances will passes be granted through the lines without submitting the same to you, and I make it as a suggestion that if you will stop the pass system entirely it would result beneficially to the country. For a distance of twenty miles north and south of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, from Corinth to Memphis, the people have lost everything they possessed in the way of subsistence, both by the enemy and our own raiding parties, and they are daily making applications to me for

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* Not found.

+ See Part II, p. 827.

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