Bragg's chief commissary, and received two days' rations. When we arrived in Sweet Water, four days afterward, our troops had been two days without meat, and no provision whatever had been made for their supplies. The country within our lines was completely exhausted of beef cattle, and the few hogs collected by Major-Gillespie, commissary of Stevenson's division, had been ordered to the rear. Of 90,000 pounds flour at Charleston, 40,000 pounds had been sent back to Chickamauga. I applied to General Longstreet, and obtained an order upon Major Gillespie for the hogs and flour in his control. But for this order the army must have suffered intensely. Under the order I obtained from three to four days' rations of fresh pork, and an order on Charleston for two days' rations of flour.

The flour from Charleston, a distance of 14 miles by railroad, could not be got to Sweet Water for forty-eight hours. At Sweet Water the engineer refused to remove it farther. Our troops were then near Loudon, and out of flour rations, except such as could be collected from wheat haulted to the mills, for which purpose no supply train had yet been furnished. In order to get the flour to the troops I had to take forcible possession of the road and run the engine with an officer detailed from one of the Tennessee regiments.

A few days later a supply train of 35 wagons reached me. It should have consisted of at least 70. We commenced hauling wheat and used every possible exertion to ration the troops, but as they were then moving on the enemy toward Knoxville it was impossible to collect supplies and keep the trains up with the troops.

In consequence of these difficulties the army was two or three days without flour rations, and some portions of it more than double that length of time. With every energy in the power of this department the troops were a day or two in front of Knoxville before they could be regularly rationed, and it was only a day or two before we moved from Knoxville that as much as three days' rations could be accumulated. The department, on our arrival at Sweet Water, was utterly unprovided for, and its condition as bad as it could be in a country not utterly exhausted.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. J. MOSES,

Major, and Chief Commissary.

Lieutenant Colonel G. MOXLEY SORREL,

Assistant Adjutant-General, &c.

No. 62.

Report of Colonel E. Porter Alexander, C. S. Army, Chief of Artillery.

WASHINGTON, GA., January 15, 1864.

COLONEL: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of the artillery of General Longstreet's corps in the recent campaign against Knoxville:

It consisted of my own and Leyden's battalion, the former numbering twenty-three and the latter twelve guns. Leyden's battalion was very deficient in horses, and the three 20-pounder Parrott rifles of my battalion were furnished with but about 75 rounds of ammunition