enabled to recruit to the full number of men required by law, by recruits which they can get from within and near the enemy's lines. Lieutenant-Colonel Forrest will go directly from this place to your headquarters and will confer with you concerning the companies to be sent with him.

I am, general, very respectfully,

J. P. STRANGE,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

WEST POINT, MISS., March 6, 1865.

General J. R. CHALMERS:

I would recommend that you collect your command in vicinity of Pickensville, if you can procure forage. Have your command in readiness for a through inspection without delay, and notify me. Send a man to see that the road from Columbus to Selma by the direct stage road, and by the way of Tuscaloosa, is put in order. I think you will move in direction of Selma.

N. B. FORREST,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS FORREST'S CAVALRY CORPS,
West Point, March 6, 1865.

Brigadier General JAMES R. CHALMERS,

Commanding Division:

GENERAL: I am directed by the major-general commanding to say that he desires to send a small force up the lines. He has a dispatch from a reliable party that he met over 100 bales of cotton between Hernando and Panola en route to Memphis. He has ordered General Wright to relieve the post commandants at Panola and Senatobia and place reliable men thee who will stop it. Colonel Forrest succeed while up there in stopping this trade and arrested and returned to the army over 600 deserters, absentees, and conscripts. And he thinks if you can send Saunders' and Mitchell's old companies with Colonel Forrest that he can fill up those two companies, watch the enemy at Memphis, break up the cotton trade, and arrest a number of absentees, stragglers, and deserters, who continue to infest that region. You can count the two companies in any regiment if not already organized, and they can, as soon as filled up, be returned. He is determined to break up the cotton trade, and thinks that if he can do so, and at the same time add to the strength of those companies and to the army, as well as watch the enemy should they move from memphis, that it would be of more service and benefit than anything else the same number of men could do. He directs me further to say that he thinks he will have to keep Colonel McCulloch all the time.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHAS. W. ANDERSON,

Aide-de-Camp.

WEST POINT, MISS., March 6, 1865.

Brigadier General J. R. CHALMERS:

Prepare your command to move at once and be in readiness to move on twenty-four hours' notice.

N. B. FORREST,

Major-General.