OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., March 16, 1863.

Brigadier General JACOB AMMEN,

Commanding Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill.

GENERAL: You will receive instructions from General Wright to forward to City Point, Va., all enlisted prisoners of war in your charge. In addition to the duplicate rolls required to go with them by General Orders, Numbers 9, Department of the Ohio, please send a roll also to this office. If you have any guerrillas or other irregular organizations among the prisoners not officers make rolls of them distinct from the regular organizations. Any money that you may have in charge belonging to prisoners should be placed in the hands of the officer commanding the guard, with the names of those to whom it is due and the amount, to be delivered to them at City Point. Please give particular instructions to the commander of the guard in writing that he will suffer the prisoners to have no intercourse with persons by the way and that at all changes of cars he will arrange his guard so as to insure that none may escape. If the strength of the guard is not designated by the general it should not exceed one to eight persons, with a proper complement of officers and non-commissioned officers. Cooked provisions for the guard and prisoners should be provided to serve them to Baltimore. Should there be any prisoner remaining at the camp on the 1st of April next please send me full rolls of them, giving under the head of remarks all necessary information not coming under the several headings, as time of arrival, where from, &c. These rolls are required for a new set of books and I hope they will be carefully prepared and forwarded to this office at the time named.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry, Commissary-General of Prisoners.

(Same mutatis mutandis to commandants of other prison posts.)

FORT MONROE, March 17, 1863.

His Excellency A. LINCOLN:

The Virginia Legislature has transferred to the Confederate Government the whole subject of prisoners of war. Gold has risen at Richmond to $4. 50, so the papers state. A private statement makes it $6.

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, March 17, 1863.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.

SIR: In reply to your order for a report on the matter presented by the Honorable S. Colfax I have the honor very respectfully to refer to my report of the 12th instant on the same subject.

I would state in addition that by authority of the Secretary of War I have ordered the surplus rations-that is what remains after giving an ample supply for the use of the men-to be converted through the commissary department into a fund to be expended exclusively for the benefit of the command, an account of which fund is presented to me monthly.