3. The soil is entirely unfit for a prison, being a stiff, sticky clay, and after a slight rain is over shoe-tops in mud, without a dry spot within the inclosure.

4. The prison is immediately within the town, and defenses could not be erected without destroying much property, and could not be defended when erected on account of the proximity to the buildings, which if fired would drive out the garrison. In the last outbreak one of three shots fired struck the principal hotel in the town.

5. Experience as proved that proximity to a town is extremely objectionable and injurious.

6. Wood is so distant that it is next to impossible to keep up a sufficient supply, and the expense is enormous. Thirty-nine wagons and teams are required, and then only a scant supply furnished to prison and guard. One hundred cords per day are required for troops and prison, which at $20 pe cord is $60,000 per month or $720,000 per year.

In a month the saving would probably cover the expense of purchase. On the land propose to be purchased the tops of the trees used for a stockade and the wood already on the ground would serve the post for more than a year.

A raid has reached within eighty miles of this place, and would, I am informed, have reached here but for the accidental escape of one of the prisoners captured.

I stated in my communication from Florence some reasons why I thought Florence unfit as a site for a prison. I will here repeat them. The site itself is entirely unfit for the purpose, as about one-fourth or more, probably one-third, is an impracticable morass, and cannot, without more labor and expense tan building a new stockade, be in any manner reclaimed, as it would require the whole of the soil on the dry parts for three or four feet to cover the morass of marsh, and when covered would not be fit for use.

The prison at Florence is only sixty miles from Georgetown, S. C., with a good ridge road, and only one river intervening, which is fordable in five or six places.

I see that spies have been captured, one having visited the prison at this place and the other the prison at Danville. From this we may fairly infer that Florence has not been neglected.

This would indicate a disposition on the part of the enemy to operate against the prisons.

Having said this much by way of objection to the present sites (most of which objections hold good in regard to Danville), I will take the liberty to suggest the remedy:

I proposed in my communication from Florence that I be permitted to purchase a tract of 900 acres at the fourteen-miles post from Columbia, S. C., on the railroad to Charlotte, N. C., for the purpose of erecting prisons. The purchase of that or some other tract instead of renting would save a large sum, as experience has shown at Andersonville. The place is, I think, as far removed from raids as any place I know, and such defensive work could be erected as would make it secure against any raid. This locality is situated in poor land, country thinly settled, and very few persons to be annoyed by the proximity of a prison. The prison at Andersonville, with a sufficient guard, could resist any raid that would be likely to be sent against it.

I would make this further suggestion: I think the property here (Salisbury) on which the prison is erected could be sold for at least $150,000. It cost originally $15,000 in bonds. This would pay the purchase money for another tract, complete the prison, and put up all necessary workshops to employ usefully to the Confederate States the