CAMP GARLAND, INDIAN DISTRICT,

Near Laynesport, April 2, 1864.

Brigadier-General MARMADUKE,

Commanding, &c.:

GENERAL: I am making all preparations to start with my brigade to Washington in the morning (3rd instant), to co-operate with you. If you send couriers let them come the Washington and Paraclifta route, authorized to give me dispatches on the road wherever they may meet me.

Your humble servant,

R. M. GANO,

Commanding Brigade.

SHREVEPORT, LA., April 2, 1864.

Major General J. B. MAGRUDER,

Houston:

General Smith is informed that a part of General Green's command has been ordered to halt in Polk County, Tex., and await further orders. Do you know anything of it?

E. CUNNINGHAM,

Lieutenant and Aide-de-Camp.

HOUSTON, April 2, 1864.

General E. B. NICHOLS,

Austin, Tex.:

The enemy is moving on Shreveport from Arkansas and Alexandria; has marched from the latter place as Natchitoches, on Red River, estimated in all 50,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry. Shreveport will, I think be evacuated and Marshall destroyed. Our troops, on the march to Louisiana, catching the demoralization produced throughout the country, have deserted in companies and by battalions. The Governor's attempted organization of the State troops on the 15th February is a dead failure; out of 3,000 men due from the two neighboring brigade districts only 380 have assembled up to this period. Many companies have met, I am told, elected themselves teamsters and their captains wagon-masters to the Governor, and then dispersed. There are said to be from 3,000 to 5,000 men who have been detailed by the Government or his agents to haul cotton. The Federal provincial Governor, Hamilton, with Hancock, Peeples, and Baldwin to support him, could not possibly have done so much mischief in so short a time. Good men begin to be alarmed. General Barnes, a true patriot and man of good sense, is one of those just from Austin who is alarmed.

There will be a terrible state of things in the Northern Sub-district when Shreveport and Marshall fall-probably a separate State government; at least this is my information from prudent generals. Now, this downward course of things must be arrested at all hazards. If driven to the wall for troops, and the execution of the conscript law paralyzed, the exportation of cotton will have to be stopped-that is, by the Rio Grande. We will have to depend upon blockade-runners, all detailed men of all kinds, with their transportation, will have to be ordered to military service without delay,