George W. Clark for the service of this department and General McCulloch's force in Arkansas the quartermaster of this command received $30,000. Of all the money remitted to Major N. B. Pearce, the commissary of this command received $80,000, $25,000 of which was sent by me on the 21st of February, $50,000 some ten days before, when it was known that I was on the way from Little Rock to Fort Smith, and $5,000 early in January. From October to January my commissary had succeeded in borrowing $1,000 from Commissary Pemberton, at Fort Smith. Major Clark paid also a considerable amount for us in certified accounts.

It is said (I do not vouch for the truth of it) that Major Clark purchased 6,000 mules at Fort Smith and elsewhere. He sent my brigade quartermaster 577 mules, 35 horses, and 90 wagons; it almost universally happening that the mules were in such miserable plight as to be fit for service nowhere else. The difficulty was that General McCulloch considered him and Major Pearce as belonging to his command and subject to his orders, and so he ordered to himself everything, including money, that they received. I think Major Clark sent most of what he did send my command in the teeth of General McCulloch's orders, and, as it were, by stealth.

As to Major Pearce, he received at one time, in December, $350,000 for the service in the "Indian Department and Arkansas." General McCulloch told him that he must pay his outstanding debts with the money, and that if he would not do it without an order he would order him to do it. He did it without; sent my brigade commissary $5,000, and with $345,000 paid the debts of General McCulloch's command.

When I was at Fort Smith in February I placed in Major Pearce's hands $3,000, part of $25,000 received by me from the Ordnance Bureau to purchase arms with, which he was to use in buying guns for my command. He did so expend all but a hundred or so dollars, and turned over the guns to Major Clark, who issued them to volunteers going singly and in squads to join Generals McCulloch and Price.

In order to feed the troops the Commissary-General made contracts at Richmond with one George E. White, formerly a partner, I believe of Senator Oldham, of Texas, in which two persons in Fort Smith, and I suspect some in Richmond, had an interest. White was to have the monopoly of furnishing fresh beef to my troops-those in Arkansas, and I believe those in some other States. He was to furnish mine at 6 1/2 cents, a pound net on foot, delivering 100 at a time, on thirty days, notice. He was also to furnish a large quantity of bacon at 15 cents at Fayetteville and Fort Smith.

I told the Commissary-General, in his office in December that the contract was an immense swindle; that I could buy plenty of beef in the Indian country at 3 1/2 cents, and did not want anybody to buy it for me except my own commissary; that as long as beeves kept fat on the grass his contractor would furnish them of course and put the profits in his pocket; but when they got poor and had to be fed he would stop, and the supply would fail just when I would need it most because then there would be no profit, and I told him that not a pound of bacon would be delivered under the contract. But I never saw any man adhere to anything as the Commissary-General did to those contracts. He would let my commissary have no money, because he had placed $350,000, not consent that my commissary should purchase any beef at all,even to cure and smoke, except of Mr. White. The contractor went on for ar while, delivering at Fort Gibson 100 head at a time. These were wanted