patrols to prevent such irregularities, and the troops nearest the property of any citizens who may suffer loss will be held responsible for it, and the brigade commanders will cause the amount of damage to be stopped on the first pay-rolls of his troops, whenever the offender or offenders cannot be discovered.

IV. The articles of war, under the direction of brigadier-generals commanding brigades, will be read to all the troops of this army at 9 o'clock a.m. on the 19th instant, and it is hoped that all officers will be made to feel the responsibility of their positions, and that they will properly appreciate their duties and faithfully discharge them.

By order of General Van Dorn:

M. M. KIMMEL,

Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

CLARKSVILLE, TENN., October 17, 1862.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS, Richmond:

DEAR SIR: Permit me to make known to you the Rev. Mr. Taylor and his young friend Mr. William Hume, both among the most respectable of our citizens. They have been commissioned to deliver you a memorial adopted at a town meeting to-day, asking the protection of the Confederate Government against marauders from the Northwest, who are daily committing the most gross outrages upon our citizens, briefly set forth in the memorial, and will be more fully explained by the Rev. Mr. Taylor, who is conversant with the facts, and who is a gentleman of undoubted integrity and possesses the entire confidence of this community and a thorough knowledge of the operations of our armies in this section, embracing the valleys of the Cumberland and Tennessee River, which can and will furnish an immense quantity of provisions for the Confederate armies if they can be made secure from the depredations of these jayhawkers from Iowa and Northern Illinois. I am confident there are not less than 50,000 or 60,000 barrels of flour in the mills in this immediate neighborhood, and immense crops of corn ready for gathering. Two or three regiments of these thieves and robbers are stationed at Forts Henry, on the Tennessee, and Donelson, on the Cumberland, who are daily visiting and destroying everything that comes in their way and seem likely to lay waste the whole section. Our immediate neighborhood has furnished three regiments for the Confederate service-the Fourteenth, Forty-ninth, and Fiftieth-who have taken most of the arms in the country and left us entirely without the means of defense. Unless some protection can be afforded before the winter freshest in our rivers take place most of the citizens will be compelled to abandon their homes and seek protection in other sections not within the reach of their gunboats.

There is but little difference among our citizens, indeed I may say none, upon the great questions now in contest between the North and the South, and therefore the Federals more willingly harass and oppress us than in other sections less united.

I have the honor to be, most respectfully, your friend and servant,

C. JOHNSON.

[Inclosure.]

CLARKSVILLE, TENN., October 17, 1862.

At a meeting of some of the citizens of Clarksville, held this day for the purpose of apprising the War Department of the Confederate States