I have the honor to be, captain, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

WM. B. BARTON,

Colonel Forty-eighth New York Volunteers, Commanding Post.

[Inclosure.]

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DISTRICT OF GEORGIA,

Savannah, September 13, 1862.

Brigadier General J. M. BRANNAN, U. S. A.,

Commanding Department of the South:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of yesterday, and you will please accept my thanks for the information communicated therein.

I regret to have to say that the flag-of-truce boat violated the stipulation heretofore entered into in regard to communicating with our lines, viz, that the boat should pass up the South Channel of the river and stop at our lower picket on that side. I must beg that in future your attention may be directed to this point, as another departure from the understood arrangement might lead town leasant consequences. For much less cause-indeed, as I am constrained to believe, for no cause whatever-a flag of truce sent from our lines a month ago was fired into by Fort Pulaski, more than twenty shots being discharged at her, the boat bearing the flag pursued and fired into by an armed steamer filled with armed men, and the officers on board carried to Hilton Head in the character of spies; a flagrant indignity and gross outrage in the opinion of every officer here, and as, I have reason to know, is the opinion of some of your own officers also.

I have the honor to be, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. MERCER,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, Numbers 40.
Hilton Head, Port Royal, S. C., September 17, 1862.

I. Major General O. M. Mitchel, in obedience to orders from the Adjutant-General's Offie, hereby assumes command of the Department of the South.

II. The following-named officers are hereby announced as members of the staff of the major-general commanding the department; Major W. P. Prentice, assistant adjutant-general and chief of staff; Lieutenant B. Birch, F. A. Mitchel, and J. C. Williams, aides-de-camp; Lieutenant Israel R. Sealy acting assistant adjutant-general.

III. Captain E. W. Mitchel, assistant quartermaster, is temporarily assigned to duty, and is hereby announced as acting aide-de-camp on the staff of the major-general commanding the department.

O. M. MITCHEL,

Major-General, Commanding.