receipts, and as there is no possible doubt of the missing articles having been stolen or wasted on the road, you must hold them responsible for the difference in your original invoice and my receipt. It is time that this wastage on this railroad should be stopped, and you now have all the evidence you want. Mr. Pickett, one of my agents, will be in Albany in a day or two and pay the $650 which you were kind enough to advance for me. Have written to Mr. Powers in regard to lumber train. The Yankees will commence arriving at this post on Sunday next. Please forward all the provisions you can.

Respectfully, &c.,

R. B. WINDER,

Captain and Assistant Quartermaster.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Washington, February 20, 1864. (Sent 11 a. m. 21st.)

Major General B. F. BUTLER,

Commanding Dept. of Virginia and N. Carolina, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Have you any information that any officers of the U. S. Navy now held by the rebels as prisoners of war are kept in irons and close confinement?

By order of the Secretary of War:

ED. R. S. CANBY,

Brigadier-General and Assistant Adjutant-General.

[FEBRUARY 20, 1864. - For to Pickett, relative to the execution of certain prisoners belonging to the Second North Carolina Regiment (Union), see Series I, Vol. XXXIII, p. 868.]

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

Fortress Monroe, Va., February 20, 1864.

Colonel HOFFMAN, Commissary-General of Prisoners:

COLONEL: Your letter of the 15th instant in regard to furnishing boxes of eatables and clothing to prisoners is received. In the course of the negotiations for the supplying of comforts to our prisoners this state of facts has obtained.

First. That the rebel authorities received all provisions from whatever source sent to the prisoners. Then, because of accusations of the late commissioner of exchange, General Meredith, published in the newspapers, that these provisions were embezzled for sustenance for General Lee's army, they refused to receive any boxes either from our Government or from State governments. Then, because the Sanitary Commission and various benevolent individuals indulged their patriotism by labeling their boxes, "To our starving soldiers in Richmond," "To our brave defenders in Libby Prison," the rebel authorities refused to receive all boxes sent to our prisoners. At my intercession, however, Mr. Ould, the Confederate commissioner, agreed to receive boxes from private sources, i. e., from the friends and families of our prisoners. But after the 500 prisoners were exchanged from Point Lookout and reported that by your order boxes of provisions and clothing