February 23, authority you to call upon me for aid in case of emergency, the Department of Key West has been broken up and placed under command of Major-General Hunter, commanding Department of the South, extending to PEnsacola. I have already (on yesterday) sent one regiment ot Brigadier-General Arnold, commanding Western District, Department of the South, on his request that his position was dangerous and expecting an attack. I therefore do not feel justified or authorized to send any more troops for my command, and particularly out of the department, without adhered form Major-General Hunter. The rations asked for will be sent you as far as it can be done consistently with my duty as commander of this district.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. M. BRANNAN,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

[Inclosure H.]

Confederate Army Orders.

[Telegraph form Richmond, Va., to General Lovell, May 2, 1862.]

The following dispatch was sent to you on the 25th ultimo.

A. T. BELDSONE,

Assistant Secretary of War.

It has been detachment to burn all cotton and tobacco, whether foreign or our own, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy.

You will therefore destroy it all if necessary to prevent them from getting it.

G. W. RANDOLPH,

Secretary of War.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT No. 1. C. S. A., No. 17.
Camp Moore, La., May 3, 1862.

The enemy, by an overwhelming naval force, having succeeded in passing the defenses and gaining possession of the city of New Orleans, are jubilant in the bast that the struggle which a gallant people are making from a bondage to which death would be preferable is rapidly closely in disgrace humiliation to the South. They claim that, the great valley of the West being opened, the remotest commercial interest of the civilized world will have cause to side with the in the iron-handed controversy which they are now waging upon us, for the reason that cotton will now flow from every tributary of the Mississippi to seek a market under their protection in the posts of Europe; for without that staple they know full well that a brief period will put an end to their attempt to conquer the South . It is with the people to decide this question for themselves. If you are resolved the e free; if you are worthy of the heroic blood that has come down to you thorough hallowed generations; if you have fixed your undimmed eye upon the brightness that speaks out before you and your children, and are determined to shake away forever and ever all political association with the vandal horde that now gather like a pestilence about your fair country, now, now, my fellow-citizens, is the time to strike! One sparkling, living tough of fire in manly action for one hour upon each cotton plantation, and the eternal seal of Southern independence is fired and fixed in the great heart of the world.

It needs no argument to show that with the destruction of negro property the cotton and sugar lands of the South would be worthless,