As the four regular companies of engineer troops authorized by the late law of Congress are not yet organized, and when filled will prove totally insufficient for our purposes, I respectfully request authority to detail for this service such regiments of volunteers or such portions of regiments as may prove best adapted to the duty.

Although I have the full authority to detail them on that service, it would be well to have the special authority of the War Department as an additional security for their obtaining from Congress at its next session some increase of pay commensurate with the arduous and difficult nature of their duties.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

GEO. B. McCLELLAN,

Major-General, U. S. Army.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA,
Baltimore, Md., October 14, 1861.

Brigadier General HENRY H. LOCKWOOD,

Cambridge, Md.:

GENERAL: I send you the steamer Balloon, Captain Kirwin, which is placed at your disposal for the purpose of aiding you in breaking up the commercial intercourse with the Confederate States of which the Eastern Shore of Maryland furnishes the material. You have, as I suppose, ere this taken measures to seize all merchandise brought from Delaware to Salisbury by rail and destined to Virginia. With the aid of the Ballooon you may intercept much of that which finds its way down the Chesapeake by water, and I trust be able to confine this illicit traffic to very narrow limits. It is believed that the Balloon will also be of essential use in sending to different points the force necessary to disarm such companies of militia or such unauthorized military bodies as are training with intentions notoriously hostile to the Government. The duty is one of the greatest delicacy, and requires the utmost prudence and discretion. It is not doubted that numbers of individuals on the Eastern Shore of Maryland have been led into the support of disloyal measures by gross misrepresentations of the views and intentions of the Government. While the purpose you have in view should be steadily maintained and carried out with inflexible firmness, those who have been deceived and misled, instead of being confirmed in their prejudices and driven hopelessly off by harshness on our part, should, if possible, be reclaimed by kind treatment, and convinced of their error by correcting the misapprehensions under which they labor. If, in spite of all efforts to induce them to discontinue their acts of hostility to the Government, they persist in carrying on correspondence with the enemy and in giving him aid and comfort, they should be arrested and sent to Fort McHenry; but unless a case of extraordinary urgency should occur, I trust it may not be necessary to make an arrest without first consulting me. I have full authority from General McClellan to act in all cases.

You will bear in mind that we are on the eye of an election in Maryland of vital importance. The preservation of this State is indispensable to the safety of the capital. It is not doubted that all your measures will be so tempered with discretion as to give strength to the cause of the Union; but while all the just rights even of those who are disloyal should be respected, they should be made to feel that no act of open hostility to the Government will be tolerated for a moment.