HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
July 31, 1864-9.30 p.m.

Major-General BURNSIDE,

Commanding Ninth Corps:

Your dispatch explanatory of that in relation to the loss in your corps yesterday is received. The major-general commanding directs me to say that the order for withdrawal did not authorize or justify its being done in the manner in which, judging from your brief report, it appears to have been executed, and that the matter should be inquired into by a court. The major-general commanding notices that the time and manner of withdrawal was left to the brigade commanders on the spot. He desires to know why there was not a division commander present where several brigades were engaged, and by whom the direction of the withdrawal could have been conducted.

A. A. HUMPHREYS,

Major-General and Chief of Staff.

Commissioned officers and enlisted men of the Ninth Army Corps admitted (wounded) to the field hospitals of the Ninth Army Corps, from daybreak July 30 up to 8 a.m. July 31, 1864.

Field hospital. Officers. Men.

First Division. 23 184

Second Division. 20 284

Third Division. 24 308

Fourth Division (colored troops) 26 524

Total. 93 1,300

Respectfully submitted.

JOHN E. MacDONALD,

Surgeon, U. S. Volunteers, Medical Director Ninth Army Corps.

HEADQUARTERS SECOND DIVISION, NINTH ARMY CORPS,
[July 31, 1864]-12.30 a.m.

Lieutenant Colonel LEWIS RICHMOND,

Assistant Adjutant-General:

COLONEL: A staff officer of General Carr has just applied to me to relieve a portion of his division on the front line. I understood from General Burnside, I thought, that it was the intention to leave Carr's division on the line at present, and since I have received no orders to reoccupy it, or any portion of the line [that] was held by us heretofore. Some of my regiments are now on the line, having been driven back to it to-day. I do not know how I am to raise the other 800 or 900 men called for to relieve the rest of Carr's line. Please inform me by bearer if there are any orders about reoccupying our old lines, and what they are.

Your obedient servant,

ROBERT B. POTTER,

Brigadier-General.