leaving at Zollicoffer only an ordinary bridge guard and take Leyden's battery on with you. I understand it is 3 miles below Zollicoffer. It is more probable I that the bridge over the Watauga will be threatened than that at Zollicoffer.

G. M. SORREL,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN VIRGINIA,
Dublin, January 29, 1864.

General S. COOPER,

Adjt. and Inspector General, C. S. Army, Richmond, Va.:

GENERAL: I think it important that there should be an officer in the immediate command of that part of Virginia embraced in the Department of East Tennessee and designated as the District of Southwestern Virginia.

Brigadier-General Preston having been relieved from command of that district, I ordered Brigadier General W. E. Jones, whose brigade was in that section of country, to assume command, reporting direct to me.

Paragraph XXVII, Special Orders, Numbers 19, of the 23rd instant, from your office, announces Lieutenant-General Longstreet as the commander of the Department of East Tennessee but does not seem to embrace Southwester Virginia, and the Secretary of War told me that he did not regard that district as under General Longstreet's command. Your order attaching that district to my command not having been revoked, I have thought it incumbent on me to continue to exercise control there.

Brigadier-General Jones informs me by letter received this morning that General Longstreet had ordered his brigade into East Tennessee.

I have thought it proper to inform you of the order I gave Brigadier-General Jones in order that, if not approved, it may be at once canceled, and to ask whether I am to continue to exercise control over the District of Southwestern Virginia.

May I ask of you an early answer.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

SAM. JONES,

Major-General.

NEAR DANDRIDGE,

January 30, 1864.

General S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector-General, Richmond:

I have received the following in a letter from General Martin:

Nearly a hundred men, part of the First Alabama, the remnant of a North Alabama battalion, consolidated with the First Alabama, left, officers and all, for home night of the 27th. The course pursued by General Wheeler is gradually destroying my command. He has withheld my wagons and supplies, kept back officers and men, and put them in a camp to rest, and news of this has come here. I respectfully submit that all of my command now absent should be ordered here at once, as cavalry is needed in this department, or I should be ordered back to save to the service the men I have.

Please have this matter remedied promptly.

J. LONGSTREET.