While in your letters you profess an anxiety and desire to facilitate the movement of the troops, you now persist in the assignment of this officer, in spite of "serious difficulty" which you believe will arise thereby, and thus add embarrassment in the matter, and direct me when I shall reach the new department, which is independent of your control and jurisdiction, to relieve him and order him to Richmond. Obviously, the only effect of your instructions will be to place General Forney in command of the troops at the moment when the difficulty of which you speak would embarrass the important movement, whose success and dispatch you profess to be desirous of advancing, and thus you would get rid of an officer whose services you do not need or desire in your own department. While you have the right to assign commanders to troops serving within your military jurisdiction, you certainly have none to direct disposition of officers in a command separate from and independent of your own. As soon as the troops reach the bank of the Mississippi River I shall order General Forney to report to your headquarters, as I do not require him to cross with the division.

In one of your former letters to me you speak of the influence of Major-General Walker with his old division, he having been in command of it for nearly two years. In view of this fact, and of his being in command of the District of West Louisiana, controlling its military resources and familiar with the dispositions and operations which may have taken place recently within the district, the dispatch, secrecy, and efficiency of the movement of crossing the troops would surely have been promoted by charging him therewith and permitting me to proceed in the first instance to the Cis-Mississippi, where in command of my department I could have matured all the arrangements necessary to be made on that side, and with Major-General Walker in command of his old division the embarrassments and difficulties referred to in your letter of the 12th instant would not have arisen.

Inclosed I forward you copy of dispatch in cipher from Captain T. Butler, of General Bragg's staff, dated Clinton, La., August 9. I shall start at once for my command, and after visiting the troops on this side and inspecting the arrangements for crossing them proceed to the department to which I have been assigned and make the needful dispositions there.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. TAYLOR,

Lieutenant-General.

[Inclosure.]

CLINTON, LA., August 9, 1864.

General Bragg directs that you come across and assume your new command as soon as practicable.

THOMAS BUTLER,

Captain, &c.

[Inclosure Numbers 21.]

HEADQUARTERS TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT,
Shreveport, August 5, 1864.

Lieutenant General R. TAYLOR:

GENERAL: By a letter of the 13th instant From General Walker, commanding the district of West Louisiana, I learn that you contemplate leaving the troops here under your command and crossing the Mississippi. This I positively forbid. Your presence with those troops now on the eve of crossing is of the greatest importance to the success of the movement. Should you have received instructions from higher author-