tanks as seem necessary for the respective guards. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining transportation the Third Brigade has received only a portion of its intrenching tools.

I big leave to call attention of the major-general commanding to the anomalous position of Colonel Coburn and his command. Colonel Coburn is in command of a brigade of Steedman's division, Granger's corps, I believe. His brigade consists of Thirty-third Indiana [scattered in seven different posts], Eighty-fifth Indiana at Duck River, Nineteenth Michigan at McMinnville, and a regiment [not known to me] at Murfreesborough.* The scattered companies of the Thirty-third Indiana are of little service, excepting the company at Tracy City, and one at the trestle below this. They are at points held by detachments of my division, and with their different notions of duty, and a most unaccountable prejudice, do not cheerfully co-operate with us.

Colonel Coburn, as a brigade commander in a different corps, I fancy, thinks his rights somewhat intrenched upon, and his officers and men, generally, sympathize in the feeling. If his brigade, or two or three regiments, could be concentrated on either flank of this division and take adjacent posts, the service of guarding the road would be much better performed. He might relieve two or three regiments of this division, which could take the posts he now occupies. As it now stands part of Coburn's brigade is within the limits of my command and part outside. It is a sort of military imperium in imperio, which works badly.

I am, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

A. S. WILLIAMS,

Brigadier-General, Commanding Division.

HEADQUARTERS ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CORPS, Lookout Valley, Tennessee, November 3, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel C. GODDARD,
Assistant Adjutant-General, Army of the Cumberland:

I have the honor to report that the 200 cavalry I sent out in the direction of Trenton yesterday have returned, after having gone nearly to that point, and report that they were forced to come back by a rebel cavalry force which they took to be one brigade. They saw no troops of other arms. While absent they ran on to a picket and captured 7 of their number. I have given the colonel directions to encamp his men within my lines and send out, until further orders, a squadron to picket the approaches to the Bridgeport road, between the Wauhatchie and Whiteside's. This will render that road safe for trains and couriers. I desire to have the attention of the commander of the department called to the expediency of having a brigade of infantry, under a good commander, with one battery, established at Trenton, or vicinity, as this will afford a point-d'appui for our cavalry force, however small, to operate on. They can draw their supplies from Bridgeport or Shellmound.

Very respectfully, &c.,

JOSEPH HOOKER,

Major-General, Commanding.

---------------

*It was the Twenty-second Wisconsin.

---------------