IV. The Ninth Battalion Georgia Artillery, Major A. Leyden, commanding, will proceed to Richmond for duty in the heavy batteries around the city. The major commanding will report for orders to Lieutenant-General Ewell.

* * * * * *

By command of the Secretary of War:

JNumbers WITHERS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,

Richmond, Va., October 5, 1864.

General ROBERT E. LEE:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge your letter of the 4th instant. It causes grave anxiety, and has received full consideration. I appreciate the full import of your inquiries and the consequences that may result from the failure to recruit your army. i have been employing, and, under the warning of your letter, shall, if possible, with zeal and energy strain the powers and means of the Department to accomplish an efficient recruitment. I inclose copies of the various orders* which have been issued with this view, and I shall endeavor to have them promptly and vigorously executed. It has been my conviction, pressed more than once on Congress, that all white men capable of bearing arms in the Confederacy, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, should be placed in the active army for the field, except the few experts absolutely necessary for the arsenals and workshops ministering directly to the supplies and means of transport for the army, and those should be detailed, not exempted.

By the present orders you will see that, excepting only the exempts, who by law are unfortunately placed beyond my reach, I aim to reach and secure the immediate service of all such. General Kemper, now zealously employed in executing these orders, is sanguine that in two week's time he will be able to make a very sensible addition to your forces from these classes. In addition, all the reserves are called into active service, and, so far as not necessary to guard prisoners and posts of necessary defense, may contribute to swell your forces. You will see, too, that appropriate orders had been issued to enroll and employ all free negroes between eighteen and fifty, and likewise to obtain, by hiring in preference, but if not by impressment, for employment with the armies, some 14,000 slaves, which were estimated as the fair quota of the States east of Mississippi. There has never been reluctance on my part to execute the law of Congress for the employment of slaves to the number of 20,000; but after the publication of the general orders on the subject I waited for the call from commanders of the numbers required. I have now given urgent instructions to the commandants of reserves to press the collection and forwarding of these slaves. From these measures altogether I trust an adequate force may be obtained to relieve the gravity of the present situation and avert apprehended consequences.

The attention of the Quartermaster-General has been called earnestly to the failing supplies of horses, and he has promised personally to see you and explain more satisfactorily than I can well do in a letter his means of meeting your necessities and the prospects before us for the

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*Not found as inclosure.

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