[Inclosure Numbers 2.]

CHARLESTON, January 7, 1865.

Major-General WHEELER:

General Hardee desires you to inform General Sherman that, owing to the difficulty in transportation, he would be gratified by General Sherman delivering the citizens in Charleston Harbor.

H. W. FEILDEN,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

[JANUARY 8, 1865. -For Special Orders, Numbers 6, Military Division of the Mississippi (Sherman's), announcing congratulatory letters from President Lincoln and General Grant, for services rendered during the campaign resulting in the capture of Savannah and the defeat of Hood's army in Tennessee, &c., see Vol. XLIV, p. 16.]

HDQRS. DEPARTMENT AND ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE,
Savannah, Ga., January 8, 1865.

Honorable e. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

DEAR SIR: Major-General Osterhaus, who has been commanding the Fifteenth Army Corps for the last three months during the temporary absence of General Logan, feeling a delicacy about displacing any one of the admirable division commanders of the corps, has concluded to take a leave of absence, now that General Logan has returned, and to apply for assignment elsewhere at the expiration of the leave. I wish to commend to you again Major-General Osterhaus for a brave, energetic, and faithful soldier. He has been of essential service to me during the last two campaigns, where he added new luster to a reputation already national. If you could assign him to a field of labor suited to his taste and talents, I feel sure that he would honor the Government and perform his trust with assiduity.

With high esteem, I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

O. O. HOWARD,

Major-General.

PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

DEPARTMENT AND ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE,

Savannah, January 8, 1865.

Statement of Joseph Houston, second lieutenant, Company F, Ninety-fifth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and Seth Wheaton, second lieutenant, Fifty-ninth Regiment U. S. Infantry (colored), [who]

came into the lines the 7th instant:

We escaped from Columbia, S. C., about the 1st instant, struck the Savannah River eleven miles below Augusta, and came down in a dugout. Passed two camps of deserters from Wheeler's command of about 100 men each; heard of another camp of 300 men; were informed by a free negro pilot, who furnished us a chart of the river, that about 3,000 men had crossed the river on their way home; after crossing most of them threw away their horses. Other negroes