[Indorsement.]

Major AYER:

There is conflict about this transportation. If you will let Major Beecher send every telegram affecting this business everything can be satisfactorily arranged.

Respectfully,

E. J. H.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE,

No. 13. Richmond, Va., January 17, 1865.

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XXIX. The nine companies composing the organization known as Inge's Twelfth Mississippi Battalion Cavalry, with Company C of the Fifty-sixth Alabama Regiment, a Mississippi company, which is hereby transferred, will constitute the Tenth Regiment Mississippi Cavalry.

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By order of the Secretary of War:

JNO. WITHERS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

RICHMOND, VA., January 17, 1865.

General R. TAYLOR,

Meridian, Miss.:

Yours of 15th received. I would be most happy to confer with you in person, but do not see how you can be spared to come here, and I cannot now go to you. To hold Thomas in check I proposed that you should have, in addition to your present force, the cavalry of Hood's army and Polk's old corps. To this I hoped you would be able to add many reserves and militia, and did not see how more force could be given, unless troops are sent from the Trans-Mississippi, the call oft which has been reiterated.

JEFF'N DAVIS.

TUPELO, MISS., January 17, 1865-8 p.m.

Lieutenant General R. TAYLOR,

Meridian, Miss.:

General Hood having applied to be relieved, the Secretary of War orders me to place you in command of this army. You will retain, also, command of your present department. Operator at Meridian will deliver this dispatch to General Taylor to-morrow morning on the cars from Mobile.

G. T. BEAUREGARD.

TUPELO, MISS., January 18, 1865.

Colonel GEORGE WILLIAM BRENT,

Chief of Staff, Montgomery, Ala.:

Order rapid reconnaissance and field maps or sketches made forthwith of country embraced within lines from Corinth to Meridian, thence