is the best location for the purpose, being on the line of the Columbia and Charlotte Railroad, with plenty of wood and water, and the inclosure can be put up with 100 hands in ten days after I arrive there. I respectfully submit the matter for your consideration; and as I am receiving small lots of prisoners and have no place to keep them but the open fields, I deem it my duty to inform you of it.

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

H. FORNO,

Colonel, Commanding.

[APRIL 3, 1865.--For Special Orders, Numbers 158, War Department, Adjutant-General's Office, directing Bvt. Brigadier General William Hoffman to proceed to City Point, Va., on business connected with prisoners of war, see Series I, Vol. XLVI, Part III, p. 513.]

SURGEON-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington City, D. C., April 3, 1865.

Brigadier General WILLIAM HOFFMAN,

Commissary-General of Prisoners:

SIR: In compliance with your verbal request I have the honor to inform you that this department was informed of the arrival, and its attention called to the condition, of our exchanged prisoners at Wilmington, N. C., by Medical Director Shippen, whose application for hospital transports for their conveyance North could not be granted without ruinous interference with existing arrangements for the transportation of sick and wounded of armies in the field. Colonel Cuyler, medical inspector, U. S. Army, having been sent to Hilton Head, S. C., on special duty, was immediately instructed to give his personal attention to the condition of these prisoners, supplying, as far as possible, their wants from the hospital stores sent forward for General Schofield's army. He reports from Morehead City March 27 that he has taken measures to send on quartermaster's transports from Wilmington to Fort Monroe about 900 exchanged prisoners, and adds:

I would order them to New York, but the men are without sufficient clothing and we have no means of making the transports sufficiently comfortable for so long a journey.

After visiting Wilmington, Colonel Cuyler reports:

I found on my arrival the hospitals crowded to the utmost and the patients by no means in a comfortable condition.

Upon two fine transports, bound for Fort Monroe, he placed 500 exchanged prisoners.

Medical officers and provisions were sent with them and we did all we could under the circumstances to make them comfortable while on board. They were very imperfectly clad, and we had no bedding for them, nor could any be obtained. No clothing could be procured from the quartermaster, nor could fresh meat be got for them. There is a great deal of typhoid fever in the town and hospitals.

On the 28th Colonel Cuyler reports:

There were 3,700 sick (exchanged prisoners) at Wilmington when I arrived there; 1,000 to 1,200 have already been shipped, and I hope in four or five days to have 700 or 800 more sent away.

By diverting a portion of the hospital supplies and medical officers intended for Generals Sherman's and Schofield's armies, this department