HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF INDIAN TERRITORY,
Fort Washita, Ind. Ter., October 26, 1862.

(Received November 19, 1862.)

Lieutenant Colonel S. S. ANDERSON,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Trans-Mississippi Dept.:

COLONEL: On the 22nd instant I received, while on my way from Sherman, Tex., to this point to resume the command of this department, an order sent by you to me in the following words:

Major-General Holmes instructs me to say to you if you have detained any ammunition in Texas you will forward it at once to its destination, and then report in person to him at headquarters Trans-Mississippi Department.

I had not detained any ammunition in Texas. I had three months before sent General Hugh F. Young, of Sherman, Tex., to Houston, Austin, and San Antonio to procure ammunition with requisitions in blank, and also with authority to purchase, and to guarantee, if necessary, the payment of $10,000 i gold, for I was willing to make any sacrifice and incur any responsibility to procure ammunition for the troops in the Indian country, and I had the gold. After i had tendered my resignation, and when Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, by an order indorsed and approved by General Hindman, had sent out a company of armed men to arrest me, I received a letter from General Young, informing me that he had obtained on my requisitions a quantity of ammunition, and by purchase another quantity of powder, lead, and caps, for the price of which he had drawn a bill on Alexander & Allen at Sherman, with whom my moneys had been deposited. I was just starting to Little Rock to confront General Hindman, his military commission of officers appointed by himself, and his provost-marshals, with a company of armed men hunting me as a felon. I could not think of paying under such circumstances either out of my own moneys or out of moneys due the Indians under treaties for ammunition, when I could have no assurance of ever having the money replaced or even knowing what might become of it; therefore I sent General Young's letter to Colonel Cooper, that he might remit the money and obtain the ammunition. When I reached Warren, assistant quartermaster, there with money to pay the amount due for it, and that it would g on to him as soon as transportation could be had. As this was precisely what I wished I in no manner interfered, as Captain Welch well knows. That portion of the ammunition went across the river and on toward Fort Gibson. In a day or two General Young came to my camp, and I learned that Colonel Darnell had seized another portion at Dallas, obtained solely on my requisition, and that he refused to produce any order from General Holmes. Wishing only to have all the ammunition forwarded to its legitimate destination, i. e., to Colonel Cooper, then in the field and commanding this department, I sent by mail to Colonel Darnell a copy of the sixth paragraph of General Orders, Numbers 50, from the Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, and of so much of the Secretary of War's letter to me of july 14, 1862, as showed that the order was intended to prevent even the major-general commanding the Trans-Mississippi Department from diverting from their legitimate destination (the Department of Indian Territory) munitions of war and supplies procured by me for that department; copies of all I forwarded the same day to General Holmes and soon after to the Secretary of