WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington City, July 26, 1864.

Major General JOHN A. DIX,

Commanding Department of the East, New York:

GENERAL: Major Turner has referred to me a letter of Major Bolles of the 23rd instant, respecting nineteen prisoners held in Fort Lafayette, whose discharge has been recommended by the military commission of which Colonel Howe is president. These prisoners, it appears, are blockade-runners, committed by the authority of the Secretary of the Navy. I do not know how the misunderstanding arose which led to the opinion that they were held subject to the orders of this Department, but it is important that it should now be clearly understood that they are prisoners of the Navy Department alone, held under warrant of the Secretary of the Navy, and to be released under his authority alone. The War Department has nothing to do with them except to keep them as an act of courtesy to the Navy Department. They are accordingly not proper subjects of any inquiry by any military commission whose authority is delivered from the Secretary of War or from any officer of the Army. Any investigation into their officers, or the reason why they are held as prisoners, must be made by the Secretary of the Navy alone, and the Secretary of War has no orders to give respecting them, except that they are to be confined so long as the Secretary of the Navy shall require. Any inquiries respecting them made by friends or attorneys are to be referred to the Navy Department, by which also any charges should be borne of which these prisoners may be the occasion.

The list which has been furnished me contains the names of nineteen men only, but many other have been imprisoned in Fort Lafayette, by the same authorities, for the same reasons, whose names are not included in this list. Some of these very dangerous men, being skillful pilots, engineers, and sea captains engaged in the service of the Confederate States, and I trust that although they are not reported as still held in prison they have not through any inadvertence or misapprehension been set at liberty. Among the nineteen names, I find one only, G. W. Stoll, who has been turned over by the Navy Department to the War Department, to be treated either as a prisoners of war or unconditionally released as the Secretary of War may determine, but I believe also that others have been similarly turned over. Of course all such cases pass out of the category of into that of prisoners War Department, respecting whom orders may be sought from the Secretary of War.

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

C. A. DANA,

Assistant Secretary of War.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 175.
Richmond, July 26, 1864.

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XLVIII. Brigadier General John H. Winder, Provisional Army, C. S., is assigned to the command of the military prisons in the States of Georgia and Alabama, and Brigadier General W. M. Gadner, Provisional Army, C. S. to the command of the military prisoners in the other States east of the Mississippi River. In reference to all matters relating to prisons and