HEADQUARTERS TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT,
Shreveport, August 25, 1864.

Major-General MAXEY,

Commanding, &c.:

GENERAL: The general commanding is too unwell to attend to much business. He will however write to you fully as soon as he is able. In the meantime he directs me to say that he fully approves the movement proposed by Brigadier General Stand Watie. It is advisable that it takes place before the 1st of October, as General Price leaves immediately for a campaign into Missouri, and the two expeditions should march so as to be in their field of operations about the same time. General Price will start with about 10,000 men. The movement will be supported by an advance of the available force of the department. Good's battalion and Duff's regiment will be ordered to report to you.

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

W. R. BOGGS,

Brigadier-General and Chief of Staff.

HEADQUARTERS TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT,
Shreveport, August 25, 1864.

His Excellency P. MURRAH,

Governor, &c., Austin, Tex.:

GOVERNOR: In my letter of the 4th ultimo, addressed to you from near Hempstead, Tex., I used the following language:

The regulations by the President of exportations by sea were received and published in this department. The regulations for overland commerce have not been received in this department, and I have no information of their provisions; they have been, no doubt, transmitted to me, but failed to arrive, and have not been contained in any newspaper which has reached this side of the river, so far as I have heard. I have expected anxiously and written repeatedly to have them forwarded.

* * * * * *

The law of Congress being by its own terms operative to prohibit all exportations except by a State or the Confederate government on their own account, and the regulations of the President being necessary to confer the right on individuals to make exportations in accordance with the terms thereof, in the absence of those regulations I have deemed it my duty to enforce the operative provisions of the law.

Whenever the President's regulations are known, whatever further rights of exportation they confer, if any, will of course be at once recognized and secured.

The regulations of the President were not received at these headquarters until some time in July, and I did not know what they were until the latter part of that month, after my arrival here from Alexandria. Acquainted as i am with the wants and condition of the department, and being charged with its defense, knowing that our necessities are pressing and that our communication with our remote capital is difficult, and becoming more uncertain, looking to the true interests of the department and the wants of the army, and believing that these were not thoroughly understood at Richmond, and acting under general instructions from the President and Secretary of War, I determined to make no change in the orders previously issued from these headquarters on the subject of cotton, because of the complex and impracticable regulations adopted at Richmond, which I will illustrate by giving a single instance. A person desiring to export cotton is required by these regulations, before he loads his wagons, to come to the commander of the department or his officer to obtain his approval for exportation; then to go to the Rio Grande to a collector of customs and give bond, &c., to get a permit;