[Indorsement.]

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

August 29, 1862.

Respectfully submitted to the Secretary of War with the inclosed report from General Buell.

E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

[Sub-enclosures.]

TULLAHOMA, August 6, 1862.

Colonel J. B. FRY:

There was one slave for whom protection was claimed, I think by Captain, Slocum, division quartermaster, and another who brought in information and was put on duty, I believe, as a train hand. Neither of them were given up to my knowledge. These were all the cases of the kind that came to my knowledge. My instructions from General Buell strictly forbade my giving up slaves who had brought in intelligence and thus rendered themselves liable to punishment by their masters, and in no case, to my knowledge, were they so given up.

W. S. SMITH,

Brigadier-General.

HEADQUARTERS THIRD DIVISION,
Camp Taylor, August 7, 1862.

Colonel J. B. FRY, Chief of Staff:

SIR: In compliance with the order of the major-general commanding the Army of the Ohio of yesterday, requiring me to report touching the subject-matter of the letter of Major General O. M. Mitchel, of the 26th ultimo, to the Secretary of War, I have the honor to say that I know of no person, black or white, bond or free, who gave to General Mitchel valuable information with or without a promise of protection. All I know as to the subject-matter of General Mitchel's letter is this: A slave of Mr. Patton, who resides near Huntsville, Ala., was about to leave some days ago on the cars for Michigan with Captain Loomis, of the First Michigan Battery. My attention was attracted to the negro by the suit he had on of a new and handsome uniform of the artillery company, and I told Captain Loomis not to take him on the cars. Captain Loomis thereupon replied to me that General Mitchel had set the negro free, and had asserted positively that he should serve no man again. I replied to him that General Mitchel had no power to free slaves, and I should not at all regard any illegal act of the general in that or any other matters; that Patton was a conservative, loyal man, entitled to the protection of the Government, to which he acknowledged allegiance; that I utterly disputed the right and power of the general, as I did the justice, of the act, to transfer the hundreds of horses, mules, and other property of loyal as well as disloyal citizens that had been taken by officers and soldiers who were willing to make the seizure, and that loyal citizens were entitled to the protection of the Government in the possession and use of slaves as well as other property. Captain Loomis said the slave had given valuable information to General Mitchel, and in my presence he ordered the slave to return to camp and the slave did so. He is there still, as I understand, and was not returned to his master. This was what occurred on that occasion, and it is all I have heard of such information or protection as General Mitchel refers, to