the men are going home with their arms. The last circumstance, I notice, gives to the returning no-combatant rebels no little anxiety. Some of these rebel soldiers who live convenient to our posts come in and surrender, but many do to and will doubtless require looking up, or at least a public notification to come in. The people and soldiers are now much dissatisfied with General Fagan for not availing himself of the opportunity I gave him about the middle of April to surrender the Confederate forces of this State. Had that proposition been accepted, all the Confederate soldiers of this State would how have been at home cultivating their lands, and now they see it. Fagan himself has gone to Shreveport for the present, and E. Kirby Smith to Houston, Tex. The prevailing impression is that Smith will go to Mexico and take with him those who feel that it is unsafe for them to return to their homes, or whose pride will not permit them to live under such a tyrannical Government as that of the United States. I have directed the issue of seed corn to the returning rebel soldiers, and have generally permitted them to retain their horses for farming purposes, as they are not valuable for Government service, and these men have absolutely nothing with which to commence life except the experience that they have gained during the rebellion, and from which there is much reason to believe they will derive a wholesome political lesson. The plan of the repentant or rather returning rebel leaders is quite transparent. They want the present State government of Arkansas to be not recognized by the President and a convention to be called in which all the inhabitants of the State, loyal and rebel, shall participate on equal footing. I have no hesitation in giving it as my deliberate conviction that such a course would result in placing this State in the hands of many of the very same men who controlled if before the rebellion. The loyal people of this State are deficient in self-reliance. They are timid and discouraged, and require for a time strong aid from the United States. Thee is no law in this State which prevents the returning rebels from voting and from a full participation in the political re-establishment of the State, and I beg respectfully but earnestly to invite the attention of the President to this important fact, and unless the terms of pardon exclude these men, at least for a time, from participation in public affairs, the State of Arkansas will in ninety days be politically where she was in 1860.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. J. REYNOLDS,

Major-General.

[Inclosure A.]

EXECUTIVE OFFICE,

Washington, Ark., May 22, 1865.

Mr. A. H. GARLAND,

Washington, Ark.:

SIR: The Confederate forces being withdraw from Arkansas, and the small bodies of troops remaining being virtually disbanded or only retained for preserving the security of persons and property, I feel called upon to request your services, and accordingly empower you to proceed to Little Rock with full authority and discretion to confer with the civil and military authorities in power there with a view to devising and agreeing upon terms best calculated to insure the restoration of peace and good order in society and the due administration of the laws, and to induce all citizens of the State to return to their homes and resume peaceful avocations. I adopt this course under