declined the task, and we were compelled to rely on the doubtful expedient of sending you funds, taking the double change of remitting both by land and from the West India Islands by sea. Considerable amounts have been sent in this way, and, I trust, before this have been received. More recently it has been determined, under the suggestion of the President himself, that the Secretary of the Treasury should arrange, by restamping the old notes, or otherwise, to make issues in your department; and that instead of your disbursing officer being obliged to await the slow process of sending on estimates and receiving funds from here, that the various bureaus here should send you a statement of the proportion of their unexpended appropriations, properly applicable, on equitable calculations, to your department, and that your disbursing officer should raw warrants, to be countersigned by you, or, in case of your necessary absence, by such confidential adjutant as you might intrust with the duty, in your name, directly on the depositaries of the Treasury in your department, and be paid by them out of the reissued notes or other funds provided by the Secretary of the Treasury.

The amounts thus placed at the disposal of the disbursing officers of the respective branches of the service in your department will be here arranged with the Treasury by a requisition in lumps by each appropriate bureau.

The President, too, has inclined to favor your recommendation of the power to issue cotton bonds, or bonds with interest, payable in cash; but on this subject his instructions have been given more particularly to the Secretary of the Treasury, who will doubtless communicate fully with you on the subject.

It is perceive by the President that some embarrassments and inconveniences of a miliary administration would be obviated by the grant of power, as suggested to you, to name and promote officers; but, as shown by an indorsement from him on a former paper submitted, which indorsement has been sent you, he does not feel at liberty to delegate such executive discretion to any one, as it seems specially confided by the Constitution in himself alone. The difficult may, it seems to me, be in a great measure obviated by your power of recommending and assigning officers, and placing them temporarily in their commands until the sanction of the President can be officially had.

While the tendencies of His Excellency's opinions in regard to the number and rank of officers are, as you know, restrictive, yet his confidence in your judgment and his eminent justice will be seem in his disposition to recognize the claims and sanction the promotions of all judicious appointees. The great deficiency existing in your department of arms and munitions has naturally awakened a solicituted on your part which is fully shared by this department. From your references to the causes of this, it may be that you may have received from the uninformed complaints, which have been rifle in your department, the impression that there has heretofore been want of the due effort or liberality on the part of this department in providing arms and munitions for the trans-Mississippi States. A candid review of the efforts heretofore made by the department and the quantities actually sent, would hardly fail to satisfy your unprejudiced mind that there has even been the anxious desire as well as constant struggle, with the limited resources at command, to make liberal provision for the needs of those States. Should you think such review desirable, to correct erroneous impressions of neglect among the people of your department, I will cause it to be made from the Ordnance Bureau and sent to you. The need at present existing with which I have now mainly to do has been due, as you are aware,