troops adjacent to your district in the Department of Kansas and Arkansas. Give and secure from them full co-operation in all plans for the common weal. Let me hear from you often and fully.

W. S. ROSECRANS,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, Saint Louis, Mo., February 26, 1864.

Brigadier General J. B. SANBORN:

GENERAL: I am much gratified with your report and thank you for the vigorous and well-timed movements by which you have broken up the enemy's bands, and wish you to give my compliments to General Holland and Lieutenant John E. Phelps for the vigor they have displayed in these movements. Write me how you carry your supplies on these expeditions. Would not a well-organized packmule train be of great use in those rough countries? Give me also an exact description of your mode of foraging on the country; what orders are given about taking, and what evidence of indebtedness or payment is given to owners or claimants of what is thus taken.

Would it not be practicable to have grain, &c., brought to important points on our lines and routes of operations with the assurance that compensation for the same would be made in cash? Inform me also if where our scouting parties go out they are directed as much as possible to avoid the main traveled roads, and give your utmost attention, impressing on all officers and men the necessity, of adopting this plan, which will fill the hearts of those bandits who now look from the surrounding hill-tops on our columns passing on the regular roads with terror. It seems to me that by using the pack train, which gives no indication of your strength, and which can go by obscure and unfrequented routes, you will add much to the power and vigor of operations against the kind of the enemy you have to combat. Please take up these inquiries and suggestions and let me have your views on them.

W. S. ROSECRANS,
Major-General.

WASHINGTON, February 27, 1864.

Major General N. P. BANKS,

New Orleans, La.:

GENERAL: Your dispatch of the 19th instant, in regard to the arrival of re-enforcements, is received, and your remarks in regard to cavalry horses have been copied and transmitted to the Quartermaster-General. Much anxiety is felt here lest your operations may be delayed till the season for a winter campaign is entirely over. Every effort has been made to send you troops. A part of a New York cavalry regiment has embarked with their horses at this place, and the remainder will follow as soon as transports arrive. The Fourteenth New Hampshire Regiment will leave New York about the 12th of March, if transportation should be ready. The passage of the draft bill has greatly stimulated recruiting.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,

General-in-Chief.