[Indorsement.]

DECEMBER 13, 1864.

Commissioner OULD:

For consideration and remark or conference. This seem but little equitable.

J. A. SEDDON.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. C. S. MILITARY PRISONS,

EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, Numbers 2.
Columbia, S. C., December 5, 1864.

I. In obedience to General Orders, Numbers 84, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Richmond, Va., November 21, 1864, the undersigned assumes command of C. S. military prisons east of the Mississippi River.

II. Until further orders headquarters will be at Augusta, Ga., to which point all communications will be addressed to Captain W. S. Winder, assistant adjutant-general.

III. Commanders of prisoners will forward immediately complete rolls of all prisoners, stating company, regiment, and State, and will forward half-monthly returns on 1st and 15th of each month.

JNO H. WINDER,

Brigadier-General.

HEADQUARTERS POST, Florence, S. C., December 5, 1864.

Major GARNETT ANDREWS,
Assistant Adjutant-General, Richmond, Va.:

MAJOR: The communication of Sabina Dismukes*, indorsed by you, together with an editorial clipped from the Sumter Watchman, came to hand this day. The indorsements on the communication entitle it to an answer, and in reply would say that I was placed in command of this prison on the 20th of September, 1864, a short time after the prisoners had reached this post, and up to this time I have yet to learn that there is or has been anything like starvation among them. At the time that communication was written the prisoners were receiving precisely the same rations as our own troops that guarded them, but since then by an order from the Commissary-General the meat ration has been stopped and a sirup issued in its stead. The prisoners are now and have been for two months within a stockade, and hospitals sufficient to shelter 1,000 men have been erected, and facilities have been afforded the well ones to shelter themselves, which have done. That there is sickness and suffering among them on one will pretend to deny, for you must be fully aware that a military prison is not a place where comforts and luxuries are to be found, and is by no means a bed of roses, and no place for a woman to visit who is in any way disposed to indulge in a display of mawkish philanthropy.

This prison has been visited by all the inspecting officers of General Hardee's staff, by your now inspector, Captain Rutherford, and more recently by Doctor Spence, of Richmond, surgeon, Provisional Army, C. S., who has had a large experience in prisons and prisoners, and all have expressed themselves highly gratified at the arrangement and discipline of the prison.

In reference to the editorial, I will only say that the only fact which it contains is "that the prisoners were in an open field", the stockade