HDQRS. ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, SIGNAL DEPARTMENT,
August 15, 1864.

Major-General HUMPHREYS,

Chief of Staff:

GENERAL: The following dispatch received from the plank road station:

Camps re-established north-northwest from station; but to what extent I can't tell, as the atmosphere in unfavorable for observation. All quiet.

FULTON.

He refers to the camps that disappeared the night after the Second Corps moved.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

B. F. FISHER,

Captain and Chief Signal Officer.

SPECIAL ORDERS, HDQRS. ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,

Numbers 74. City Point, August 15, 1864.

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II. A board of officers is hereby appointed to meet at City Point, on Tuesday, the 16th day of August, 1864, to investigate the cause and circumstances attending the explosion of ordnance stores at City Point, Va., on the 9th instant. Detail for the board: Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, aide-de-camp; Captain D. D. Wiley, commissary of subsistence; Captain H. B. Blood, assistant quartermaster.

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By command of Lieutenant-General Grant:

T. S. BOWERS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS SECOND CORPS,
August 15, 1864.

Lieutenant-General GRANT:

I sent in this morning about twenty prisoners taken by the cavalry, including eleven refugees. These refugees left Richmond on Saturday night. They say a large number of cavalry went north, and many other troops, but they do not know definitely what force. I have ordered them sent to City Point, where they can be questioned. A prisoner was captured this morning from the Thirteenth South Carolina, which makes the second man captured from McGowan's brigade, being of different regiments. This latter man says that four brigades of Wilcox's division are in front of General Foster's old position. I have no positive evidence of the fact. General Birney, with a part of General Mott's division, is feeling for the enemy's left, or a place where we can attack. If we find such a place I shall attack with heavy force in the hope of clearing them out.

WINF'D S. HANCOCK,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS SECOND ARMY CORPS,

August 15, 1864. (Received 1.30 p. m.)

Lieutenant-General GRANT:

General Birney's captures yesterday were four 8-inch sea-coast howitzers; three of them are entirely removed and the fourth partly