the Potomac. If indeed, mine be less than yours, it can only be so because the South, the West, and the East, presenting like cause for solicitude, have in the same manner demanded my care. Our correspondence must have assured you that I fully concur in your vies of the necessity for unity in command, and I hope, by a statement of the case, to convince you that there has been no purpose to divide your authority by transferring the troops specified in Order Numbers 260 [of 5th instant
from the center to the left of your department.

The active campaign in the Greenbrier region was considered as closed for the season. There is reason to believe that the enemy is moving a portion of his forces from that mountain region towards the valley of Virginia, and that he has sent troops and munitions from the east, by the way of the Potomac Canal, towards the same point. The failure to destroy his communications by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and by the Potomac Canal has left him in possession of great advantages for that operation.

General Jackson, for reasons know to you, was selected to command the Division of the Valley, but we had only the militia and one mounted regiment within the district assigned to him. The recent activity of the enemy, the capture of Romney, &c., required that he should have for prompt service a body of Confederate troops to co-operate with the militia of the district. You suggest that such force should be drawn from the army on the Greenbrier. This was originally considered and abandoned, because they could not probably reach him in time to anticipate the enemy's concentration, and also because General Jackson was a stranger to them, and time was wanting for the grown of that confidence between the commander and his troops the value of which need not be urged upon you. We could have sent to him from this place an equal number of regiments (being about double the numerical strength of those specified in the order referred to), but they were parts of a brigade now in the Army of the Potomac, or were Southern troops, or were ignorant of the country in which they were to serve, and all of them unknown to General Jackson. The troops sent were his old brigade; had served in the valley, and had acquired reputation which would give confidence to the people of that region, upon whom the general had to rely for his future success. Though the troops sent to you are, as you say, "raw," they have many able offices, and will, I doubt not, be found reliable in the hour of danger; their greater numbers will to you, I hope, more than compensate for the experience of those transferred; while in the valley the latter, by the moral effect their presence will produce, will more than compensate for the inferiority of their presence will produce, will more than compensate for their inferiority of their numbers. I have labored to increase of Army of the Potomac, and, so far from prossing a reduction of it, did not intend to rest content with an exchange of equivalents. In addition to the troops recently sent to you, I expected soon to send further re-enforcements by withdrawing a part of the army from the Greenbrier Mountains. I have looked hopefully forward to the time when our army could assume the offensive and select the time and place where battles were to be fought, so that ours should be alternations of activity and repose; theirs, the heavy task of constant watching.

When I last visited your headquarters my surprise was expressed at the little increase of your effective force above that of July 21 last, notwithstanding the heavy re-enforcements which had in the mean time been sent to you. Since that visit I have frequently heard of the improved health of the troops; of the return of many who had been absent sick, and some increase has been made by re-enforcement. You can then .