SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. SECOND Brigadier, SECOND DIV., SIXTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Numbers 11.
Montgomery, Ala., June 23, 1865.

Officers and soldiers of the Second Brigade, the day of our separation has at length arrived. In anticipation of orders to proceed to my home in Iowa by Special Orders, Numbers 92, current series, Sixteenth Army Corps headquarters, I am relieved from duty with you and ordered to report to General Canby. After an association with many of you for nearly three long years, in camp and field, under those peculiarly trying circumastance which so generally bind heart to heart in friendship and in sympathy, a separation comes not without sadness. My brave officers and men, I shall never cease to remember how patiently you have endured all the hardships, privations, and exposes of the soldier on active duty, how heroically you have fought the enemy of our country upon many stubbornly contested fields, how uniformly you have fought to conquer. Such battle-fields as Prairie Grove, Little Rock, Fort de Russy, Pleasant Hill, Yellow Bayou, Tupelo, Oldtown Creek, Nashville, and Blakely, fought and bravely fought, won and nobly won, will ever be monuments in history which shall tell to your children's children of your undaunted courage, your prowess in arms, your devotion to your country's cause. You have helped to bear the old flag on, on, until its proud folds once more kiss every breeze from the Lakes to the Gulf. Now, at last, no enemy is in arms, and the brings beams of peace have broken through the dark clouds of war. You will follow me, soon, to your happy friends and homes, to pursue again your former civil avocations. Be as good citizens as yo have been soldiers. You will defend your country no longer by the bullet, but by the ballot. Stand by her cause always. But, alas! I cannot even bid good-bye to all of my brigade, for not a few of our comrades have paid the highest tribute of the patriot to his country. Let us fail not to cherish their memories as brothers, extend to their friends a soldier's sympathy, and drop for them a soldier's tear. Officers and soldiers, may Heaven's blessings rest upon you all. Farewell.

JAMES I. GILBERT,
Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. SECOND Brigadier, SECOND DIV., SIXTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Numbers 12.
Montgomery, Ala., June 23, 1865.

In view of Special Orders, Numbers 92, extract 4, headquarters Sixteenth Army Corps, June 23, 1865, relieving the general commanding from command of this brigade, Lieutenant Colonel J. Merriam, One hundred and seventeenth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, being the senior officer, is hereby ordered to assume command of the Second Brigade, Second Division, Sixteenth Army Corps.

By order of Brigadier General James I. Gilbert:

JAS. D. COBINE,

Lieutenant and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.