or temporarily in command? I ask for instructions from the Department. Measures should be immediately taken for the defense of the Cumberland Mountains by the departments commander.

E. KIRBY SMITH,

Major-General.

RICHMOND, VA., October 26, 1862.

Lieutenant General E. KIRBY SMITH, Knoxville, Tenn.:

You are the second on the list of lieutenant-generals, and of course command by virtue of your rank; but until the plan of the fall campaign in Tennessee is determined General Jones will remain in the department. Such measures as you deem necessary may be immediately taken for the defense of Cumberland Gap. Show this dispatch to General Jones.

G. W. RANDOLPH,

Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,

Richmond, Va., October 27, 1862.

Major General SAMUEL JONES,

Commanding, Knoxville, Tenn.:

GENERAL: Your memorandum, referring the letter of G. W. Lee provost-marshal and commanding post at Atlanta, Ga., of the 6th instant, in which he requests instructions to relieve his doubts and perform his duties under orders declaring the existence of martial law and suspending the writ of habeas corpus in that vicinity, has been received.

The proclamation of martial law in a locality implies that the district is the seat of war of that it has or may soon fall within the lines of military operations or communication. It implies that a more vigorous police has become necessary to preserve the efficiency of the army and to maintain its discipline, to secure n all its fullness its energy and vigor for use against the enemy, or it may imply that such an emergency has arisen as to require an extraordinary application of the resources of the population for their defense.

The system of measures and administration which is introduced in such extraordinary and transitory exigencies, involving the public safety, is perhaps ineptly called martial law, for the measures and administration vary according to circumstances, and are occasional and transient in their operation as to time and limited as to locality, seldom proceeding from the supreme power of the State or affecting the constitution of the body politic, not often necessarily impending municipal administration.

A city, the capital of a State or nation, the depositary of its go government and archives, the site of its workshop, arsenals, hospitals, magazines, and munitions, with an insufficient army for its defense, and a wavering population beleaguered by a powerful a bitter enemy, who would make its goods a booty and its houses a desolation, surely must be subject must be subject to conditions as to government and police dissimilar from that of a city sheltered against danger form any quarter.

These regulations not existing, but called for by such extraordinary circumstances, find their authority in this Confederacy in the commission of the Executive to use the military force of the nation to repel