they will be liberally paid our quartermasters and commissaries. Horses and mules are becoming almost as essential in this side of the Mississippi to the maintenance of our armies as provisions.

Your victories have caused the liveliest relief and rejoicing thought the Confederacy, and have riveted you, your gallant generals, and heroic soldiered in the gratitude and affection of the people. I congratulate you and them most heartily on the glorious results, and trust that the invaders have been effectively punished and chased from the soil of the Trans-Mississippi Department. The scattered remains of their Trans-Mississippi army have, however, only been collected to be hurled, with the already superior forces of the enemy, on our gallant armies on this side. We are having a fearful struggle here, and if you could either make a powerful diversion or throw some of your veteran force, of oven recruits, to our deployed Western organizations on this side, it would be of great service and determine the wavering balance decisively in our favor. I suggest, rather than direct, such movements, because you can best judge your means. You can fully appreciate our necessities and the immense issues that depend on our success. With like decisive victories that have crowned your campaign we might probably at last have peace and independence. With earnest wishes for your health and prosperity, most truly, yours,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT, Numbers 45. Shreveport, La., June 15, 1864.

I. The requirements of the army making it necessary that the present supply of artillery horses and other field transportation be carefully husbanded, and a more perfect system of supply adopted Major C. D. Hill, inspector of field transportation, is hereby charged with this duty.

II. Under his orders all inspections, purchases, impressments, and issues of field transportation (including artillery horses) will be made and recruiting, fabricating, an repairing done throughout the department; and all other officers are prohibited from purchasing or disposing of this description of property, except such as may be specially authorized to purchase by the commanding general of an army, whose field of operations in such cases shall be confined to the limits of the army and the country immediately in the advance; and under no circumstances will such officer be allowed to purchase within any district of country to which a regularly appointed purchasing officer has been assigned.

III. Officers charged with inspection of field transportation are authorized to make inspections anywhere within the limits if their assignment, and to condemn and order to be turned in to the nearest post quartermaster all artillery horses and other transportation found unserviceable, to be so disposed of as the chief inspector of the district may direct.

IV. Chief quartermasters of armies or quartermasters at posts, other than those in the field, will make their estimates on the chief inspectors of the district for such field transportation as they may