to dig the Illinois and Michigan Ship Canal, and the Niagara Ship Canal, and establish a lasting bond of union and defense about our northern frontier in a few months' time. Only tools and powder would be needed in addition to the labor of these 50,000 idle men. Bonaparte built the canal Saint Quentin with Russian prisoners of war. Napoleon the Austrian prisoners of his Italian campaign the Algeria, and hired them out to colonists. The subject is worth treatment in the public prints. It has not been ordered, I suppose, because the public mind has not yet been instructed and knows nothing of the laws or usages of war, but supposes that as a Christian nation awe are bound to support these Southern gentlemen in idleness, well fed, till we kill them with gout or inanition. I do not wish to appear in print. I invite your attention to a subject of public importance. Let us have the value of this $50,000 a day. There is now no prospect of change, I believe.

M. C. MEIGS,

Quartermaster-General.

HEADQUARTERS EIGHTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA,

Fort Monroe, January 30, 1864.

Honorable ROBERT OULD, Confederate Commissioner for Exchange:

SIR: Will your authorities make a special exchange of Lieutenant John M. Holloway, Company L, Seventy-first Regiment Indiana Volunteers (Sixth Cavalry), taken near Knoxville, for any lieutenant of life rank which we hold?

If so, send down Holloway and name your man and he shall be returned.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJ. F. BUTLER,

Major-General and Commissioner for Exchange.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 30, 1864.

Honorable G. V. FOX, Assistant Secretary of the Navy:

SIR: In answer to your inquiry by note of the 28th instant, touching a published declaration of exchange purporting to have been made by General Butler, extending to certain prisoners paroled prior to the 20th instant, I have the honor to state, by direction of the Secretary of War, that General Butler has made no report to the War Department on the subject, and the Secretary of War, having no knowledge of the grounds upon which such a declaration could have been made, ordered, upon the receipt of unofficial intelligence on the subject, that the supposed order, if issued, should be suspended. No such order is therefore operative.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

E. A. HITCHCOCK,

Major General of Vols., Commissioner for Exchange of Prisoners.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., January 30, 1864.

Brigadier General G. MARSTON,

Commanding Depot Prisoners of War, Point Lookout, Md.:

GENERAL: It is represented that Captain F. A. Bond, a prisoner of war at Point Lookout, is suffering much from his wounds, and I have