HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA,
Register's House, near Teachey's Depot, February 24, 1865.

General HOKE:

The commanding general desires you to use the broken-down cavalry, or any other available detachments to establish guards on all the roads in rear of Rockfish Creek, and prevent stragglers and unauuthorized person from passing. The telegram office for your headquarters had better be where the Duplin road crosses the railway.

Respectfully, &c.,

ARCHER ANDERSON,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

GOLDSBOROUGH, February 24, 1865.

Colonel ANDERSON, Teachey's:

General Baker has no place to store my supplies, and says the place is not safe. The supplies can be brought from Raleigh in four hours. Shall I send Major Sloan to have ready supplies in Raleigh? General Baker says he has other stores to occupy his houses.

H. OLADOWSKI.

HEADQUARTERS C. S. ARMIES,
February 24, 1865.

His Excellency Z. B. VANCE,

Governor of North Carolina, Raleigh:

GOVERNOR: The state of despondency that now prevails among our people is producing a bad effect upon the troops. Desertions are becoming very frequent and there is good reason to believe that they are occasioned to a considerable extent by letters written to the soldiers by their friends at home. In the last two weeks several hundred have deserted from Hill's corps, and as the divisions from which the greatest number of desertions have taken place are composed chiefly of troops from North Carolina they furnish a corresponding proportion of deserters. I think some good can be accomplished by the efforts of influential citizens to change publis sentiment and cheer the spirits of the people. It has been discovered that despondent person represent to their friends in the army that our cause is hopelles, and that they had better provide for themselves. They state that the number of deserters is so large in the several counties that there is no danger to be apprehended from the home guards. The deserters generally take their arms with them. The greater number are from regiments from the wester part of the State. So far as the despondency of the people occasions this sad condition of affairs, I know of no other means of removing it than by the counsel and exhortation of prominent citizens. If they would explain to the people that the cause is not hopeless; that the situation of affairs, though critical, is critical to the enemy as well as ourselves; that he has drawn his troops from every other quarter to accomplagainst Richmond, and that his defeat now would result in leaving nearly our whole territory open to us; that this great result can be accomplished if all will work diligently and zealously; and that his successes are far less valuable in fact than in appearance, I think our sorely tried people would be induced to make one more effort to bear their sufferings a little longer, and regain some of the spirit that marked the first two years of the war. If they will, I feel confident that, with the blessing of God, what seems to be