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,

------

, 1862.

General PRICE:

Please direct your brigade commanders to hold their troops well in hand, to keep up the line, and to sleep on their arms. You can send some of the cavalry to the rear with canteens for water and to water horses. If we straggle off we may yet lose all.

EARL VAN DORN.

HEADQUARTERS, October 5, 1862-night.

General STERLING PRICE:

GENERAL: The Army of the West will march to-morrow, right in front; batteries with their brigades. General Lovell's division will march in rear.

By order of General Van Dorn:

M. M. KIMMEL,
Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

P. S.-The troops will be in readiness to move as soon as the train is closed up.

HEADQUARTERS, October 6, 1862-midnight.

(Received at 4 a.m.)

General PRICE:

General Van Dorn directs that you move immediately with your whole command and encamp 4 miles south of Ripley, on the Oxford road. Allow no one to stop in Ripley. Leave a guard at Ripley to prevent stragglers from stopping in town. All of your wagons will take Oxford road. General Lovell moves on the Pocahontas road.

By order of General Van Dorn:

M. M. KIMMEL,
Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HDQRS. DISTRICT OF THE MISSISSIPPI,

Jackson, Miss., October 6, 1862.

General S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General, Richmond, Va.:

GENERAL: I have the honor to forward, for the information of the War Department, a communication from Brigadier General M. L. Smith respecting the defenses at Vicksburg, under his immediate command, a subject which I recommend to special consideration. There is reason to believe, however, that Curtis' army has been withdrawn, in part at least, from Helena, reputed to have gone northward, though some plundering expeditions have landed in Mississippi opposite to Helena, penetrating as far as Swan Lake, and at Gaines' Landing, on the Arkansas side, below. The withdrawal of the Federal forces, it is believed, is temporary, and that, in conjunction with the gunboat fleet still remaining, and which it is represented will soon strengthened by the addition

46 R R-VOL XVII, PT II