matters are more quiet you will withdraw all troops along the line and go to Nashville, in order to re-enforce that place or the troops employed on the road from there to Bowling Green. I give you these instructions in anticipation of an interruption of the line at a time when it might be highly important for you to act, but if possible you should refer the matter to General Rousseau, who will have command on all the lines.

D. C. BUELL.

HEADQUARTERS, Huntsville, August 20, 1862.

General NEGLEY, Columbia:

Send the Seventeenth Kentucky to Nashville by rail as soon as practicable.

JAMES B. FRY.

HEADQUARTERS, Huntsville, August 20, 1862.

General NELSON, Nashville:

I think not, though I should be glad to make it n excuse for keeping you, if I did not think your services of the very greatest importance at this moment in Kentucky.

Can you form any idea of the force that holds the road on the other side?

What has become of Johnson?

D. C. BUELL.

HEADQUARTERS, Huntsville, August 20, 1862.

General NELSON, Nashville:

Horses can better be procured in Kentucky than here. You must take Konkle's. Take the Ninth Indiana, if the city is not threatened and Starkweather's men not arrived. This regiment must return to protect the railroad as ordered. Get a force on that duty as early as possible; it is of more than vital importance.

D. C. BUELL.

HEADQUARTERS, Huntsville, August 20, 1862.

Major OLDS, Bridgeport:

Strengthen your position and defend it. What else would you do?

D. C. BUELL.

HEADQUARTERS, Huntsville, August 20, [1862].

Major SIDELL, Nashville:

No provisions of any kind must leave Nashville except for the army. Order Colonel Miller and provost-marshal accordingly, and see that the order is strictly observed.

JAMES B. FRY,
Chief of Staff.