HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,
New Orleans, March 14, 1864.

Major General W. B. FRANKLIN:

GENERAL: The major-general commanding approves your instructions to General Lee and your proposition to leave the Twenty-fifth Colored Regiment at Franklin. Will it not be well to send the forage on hand there to New Iberia?

CHAS. P. STONE,

Brigadier-General and Chief of Staff.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,
New Orleans, March 14, 1864.

Major General W. B. FRANKLIN,

Franklin:

GENERAL: A friend communicates the following:

When you get to Opelousas send for Judge Martel. He can tell you the names of reliable men who can control and make most valuable to you as scouts that large body of men known as jayhawkers-more than 1,000. I am sure they will join your command and will be a great service to you in getting information of any flank movements, &c.

I send the above for your use.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHAS. P. STONE,

Brigadier-General and Chief of Staff.

HEADQUARTERS THIRTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
Pass Cavallo, Tex., March 14, 1864.

Lieutenant Colonel RICHARD B. IRWIN,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Dept. of the Gulf:

COLONEL: Since my dispatch of the 11th instant, our forces lately at Indianola have all been transferred to this island and are now encamped near the front and in easy supporting distance of the line of works under construction across the island some 5 miles below Pass Cavallo. The transport grounded by the gale at Indianola on the night of the 9th instant has been set afloat and is now at Pass Cavallo.

Learning, as I have already communicated, that this island is accessible by ford some 30 miles below here, I would repeat and emphasize the request that the two squadrons of cavalry promised be immediately sent from New Orleans to this place. Mean time I will establish a line of courier between the upper and lower parts of the island; also signal communication if it should be found practicable and useful. As soon as I shall settled affairs here I will hasten to our other stations on the Texas coast and the Rio Grande, and report concerning what I may see and do. The scarcity and bad quality of fresh water on this coast makes it exigent, for the well-being of both man and beast, that condensers should be early sent to supply our wants in this respect.

Very respectfully, I am, colonel, your obedient servant,

JOHN A. McCLERNAND,

Major-General, Commanding.