[Indorsement.]

HEADQUARTERS POST, Richmond, November 18, 1864.

Respectfully returned to the Honorable Secretary of War.

In North Carolina there is but this single military prison. In Virginia there are three. In South Carolina three (two of them very large, one at Florence containing over 11,000 inmates). In Georgia three (all large), and in Alabama (like Georgia, not in my jurisdiction as commandant of prisons) I know of at least one large establishment of the kind. It is utterly out of the question to consider this petition. I have no other place of confinement for these prisoners, as other prisons are more crowded than this. Salisbury must bear the same inconvenience which is imposed on many other towns less able to endure it.

W. M. GARDNER,
Brigadier-General.

[Inclosure.]

Honorable JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War Confederate States of America:

The undersigned, mayor and commissioner of the town of Salisbury, State of North Carolina, would respectfully represent that there are now in the C. S. prison in this place nearly 10,000 Yankee prisoners; that in the C. S. prison in this place nearly one, wanting in every facility for the secure confinement and proper subsistence of a large number of prisoners.

In the first place, the prison grounds are too small and the prisoners have to be crowded to an extent prejudicial to their comfort and health, causing dissatisfaction and insubordination, and increasing the probabilities of concerted movements for their enlargement.

In the second place, the supply of water is wholly insufficient.

In the third place, a sufficient amount of wood cannot be obtained for the consumption of the prison during the winter months. Since the arrival of the prisoners the wagons and teams of the country have been impressed for the purpose of hauling wood to the prison. This has already been productive of much inconvenience and loss to the farmers in gathering their corn crops and in sowing their wheat, and if it has to be continued much longer will be ruinous to their interests. Besides, this means of transportation for wood cannot be relied on in the advanced part of the winter when wagoning becomes impracticable in consequence of bad roads, and is no other means of procuring wood except from the Western North Carolina Railroad, which is an uncertain and precarious mode.

In the fourth place, there cannot be, under the existing system of impressment, a sufficient amount of flour, meal, and meat drawn from this region of country to subsist the prisoners. The commissary at this point has been making the most active and strenuous efforts to meet the demands upon him in the matter of subsistence for the prisoners, but as yet has not been able to more than meet the current exigencies, and cannot accumulate supplies. The wheat crop of the present year in this and surrounding counties did not reach more than one third of an average corp, out of which, after seeding, there will be but a small surplus. The corn crop now being gathered will not amount to more than one-half of an average yield. This being the case the prisoners cannot be sustained here unless provisions are imported from other portions of the Confederate where the season during the present year has been more propitious.