Treasury, the absence of legal sanction or power to enforce impressments by bureau officers, the temper of the people, and legal proceedings on the subject, supplies were being consumed much faster than collected. What is now being gathered by officers of this bureau must be distributed in proportion to general necessities in relation to the facilities of armies in different localities for self support, under the authority by law vested in the general commanding.

L. B. NORTHROP,

Commissary-General.

HEADQUARTERS CAVALRY CORPS,
Cheves' House, December 23, 1864.

Major-General McLAWS,

Commanding Division, &c.:

GENERAL: General Anderson has just returned from flag of truce to Savannah. He saw a number of officers, and from all he could learn he is of the opinion that Sherman will not rest long in Savannah, but advance into South Carolina very soon. He was told that the city would be garrisoned by Foster, who arrived in the city yesterday.

Respectfully, General, your obedient servant,

J. WHEELER,

Major-General.

The State of South Carolina, at a General Assembly, begun and holden at Columbia on the fourth Monday of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and thence continued by divers adjournments to the twenty-third of December, in the same year.

AN ACT to repeal all acts and parts of acts heretofore passed by the Legislature of this State on the subject of furnishing slave labor on the coast and fortifications within this State, and otherwise to provide for furnishing such labor.

SECTION I. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, now met and sitting in General Assembly, and by the authority of the same, That, in order to furnish the necessary slave labor to work on the coast of this State and the fortifications within the limits of the same, there shall be organized a force consisting of male slaves between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, liable under existing laws to road duty, no exceeding in number at any one time of one-tenth part of said slaves, to serve for the term of twelve months from the date of their impressments, subject however to the right of their respective owners at the expiration of every three months of the said term of service to substitute other slaves so liable to road duty in their place, and who by such substitution shall constitute a portion or the whole of said force, as the case may be, from the respective dates of such substition; this force shall be raised by general impressment throughout the whole State whenever His Excellency the Governor may order or direct such agent of the State as he may appoint to make such impressment under the provisions of this act. But if the impressment of a less number than one-tenth would produce should be found to be sufficient, then the impressment shall be made on the State at large according to one uniform rule of equality, to be prescribed in the order of the Governor directing such impressment to be made by the