SPECIAL ORDERS,
HEADQUARTERS FIRST DIVISION, Numbers 21.
Indianola, Tex., February 8, 1864.

Brigadier General Fitz Henry Warren having been assigned to the command of the First Division, Thirteenth Army Corps, Colonel David Shunk, Eighth Indiana Volunteers, will at once assume command of the First Brigade, Thirteenth Army Corps.

By command of Brigadier-General Warren:

B. WILSON,
Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS U. S. FORCES,

Matagorda Peninsula, Tex., February 8, 1864.

Brigadier General FITZ HENRY WARREN,

Commanding Post at Indianola:

I presume General Benton will have left Indianola before this reaches there, leaving you in command. I wish you to preserve great vigilance and use every precaution against surprise or attack; do not weaken your picket-line or reduce its distance from the post, and scout as much as safety and your disposable means will admit; make frequent reports in detail, and give me always your suggestions. General Benton will, of course, leave all the papers and records pertaining to the division and post. The habit officers of this command have indulged in of carrying off papers and records with them cannot be permitted. You will receive all the orders and communications and indorsements I have sent General Benton and be governed by them. I wish you to send down the ordnance officer of the division as soon as possible, to draw from the ordnance depot here all the guns, equipments, and ammunition sufficient to equip the division and to have at your post at least 100 rounds to the man.

Hasten forward the defenses as rapidly as possible to completion. The battery on the neck of these faces is explained in my correspondence with General Benton. The work laid out and partly completed by Mr. J. T. Baker, engineer, on the shell mound in rear of the hospital, is ridiculous in the extreme. It fronts the wrong way and is enfiladed from the probable approach of the enemy on the plain; the labor thus far is lost and even worse than lost-the site is nearly spoiled. I explained to General Benton yesterday the way in which this work may be remedied, and instructed him to explain it to you; there was no necessity at all for a bastion work there, and the battery to be inclosed merely wanted to cover four guns, and fire toward the plain and the neck, sweeping both approaches. A straight line fronting the bridge and a flank at nearly a right angle to it facing the neck would perfect the condition. The northern face of the battery near the wharf should be so lengthened as to cover the rear of it from a fire of a gun-boat which might take up a position near the old ruined dock farthest to the westward.

A court-martial for the trial of Colonel Glasgow, of the Twenty-third Iowa, will be ordered from these headquarters as soon as papers which General Benton was ordered to forward are received here.

I have the honor to remain, with respect, your obedient servant,

N. J. T. DANA,

Major-General.