Confederate Government, they should be required to take the oath inclosed, marked A.* It is especially desirable that the courts should hold their sessions as usual, so that justice may be administrated without adding to the law's delay.

3. If the people return to their allegiance to the United States, they should make such temporary provision for their own government, not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, as they may think best. For the time being it seems to me that it would be well for them to act with Western Virginia, and hold elections by proclamation of the governor, as you suggest. Before taking any action on the subject myself, I should like to know the views of their discreet men, and see what is done in the meetings about to be held. I think it very important on their own account that they should be represented in the next Congress, and I have very little doubt that a member duly elected will be received if they act in concurrence with Western Virginia. As preliminary to this, it seems to me very desirable, if not necessary, that they should send a member to the legislature of Western Virginia.

I intended to have stated, in connection with what I have said in regard to the officers you have secured, that I suppose them to belong to a volunteer force raised in the two counties, although you call them officers of the Confederate Army. My information was different, but if I am mistaken in this particular, you will hold them till I can obtain the direction of the Government as to the disposition to be made of them.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General.

[Inclosure B.]

I,

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, do give my parole of honor that I will do no act in hostility to the Government of the United States; that I will not go beyond the limits of the county of

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without permission of the commanding officer of the United States forces in said county; that I will report myself in person to the said commanding officer once in seven days; that I will surrender myself to him whenever required to do so, and that in the mean time I will hold no correspondence or conversation with any person on political subjects, and have no communication, direct or indirect, with the States in insurrection against the United States, or with any person within the said insurrectionary States.

Numbers 2. Reports of Major General John A. Dix, U. S. Army.

HEADQUARTERS,
Baltimore, Md., November 8, 1861.

GENERAL: I informed you by telegraph that I had sent Colonel H. E. Paine's Fourth Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, with Nims' light battery and Captain Richard's company of cavalry, to Worcester County, Maryland, adjoining Accomac, Virginia, about 20 miles below Salisbury. I heard from them the second day after they left. They landed on Tuesday morning and marched through Princess Anne, the county town of Somerset, into Worcester the same day. General Lockwood is here, and I am arranging the details of the expedition with him. There are

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*Omitted as unimportant.

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