OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., September 8, 1864.

Lieutenant Colonel S. EASTMAN,

Commanding Depot Prisoners of War, Elmira, N. Y.:

COLONEL: Your letter of the 28th ultimo, recommending additional mess-rooms, &c., is received. If the prisoners can take their meals in the mess- rooms as they now stand by taking three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, no additions-indeed, if they can get through their breakfast by 11 a. m. and their dinner by 6 p. m., nothing more is necessary. You are authorized to put such hospital wards as may be indispensably necessary, to be built in the cheapest manner. They will not plastered, but will be made as close as practicable by battening the joints of the weather-boarding. Barracks for the guard, or additional ones for the prisoners, will not be put up at present. Sibley tents can be estimated for in October.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, September 8, 1864.

Major General E. R. S. CANBY,

Commanding Military Division of West Mississippi, New Orleans:

GENERAL: By authority of the War Department I have the honor to inform you that three are reduced to privates 584 rebel prisoners at Northern stations who were captured in Arkansas by General Steele's forces and whose exchange seems to have been contemplated under the second article of the cartel entered into at Red River Landing, La., July 28, 1864. But the recent orders of Lieutenant-General Grant prohibiting further exchanges must be made to apply to the proposed exchange, unless by so doing there would be in some way a breach of the cartel, and the prisoners referred to will not be forwarded unless you are under obligations to deliver them for exchange.

The orders of the lieutenant-general referred to clearly prohibit the exchange provided for in the third article of the cartel, and prisoners referred to will not be returned to the Department of the Gulf.

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

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners.

OFFICE ASSISTANT AGENT FOR EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS,

Fort Monroe, Va., September 8, 1864.

Honorable ROBERT OULD, Agent for Exchange, Richmond, Va.:

SIR: I am authorized to inform you of the acceptance by the Federal authorities of your proposition for the release-

of all prisoners of war on each side from confinement (close) or irons, as the case may be, and either placed in the condition of other prisoners or sent to their respective homes for their equivalents.

Orders have issued for carrying into effect this arrangement on our part.

I am also instructed to say that after inquiry we learn of but three prisoners on our side in the condition presumed by the proposition,