I have never had on hand, and certainly no means of obtaining them. The only articles in the list which I can assist you with are some 8-inch spikes and 3/4-inch iron, and that to a limited extent.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

D. N. INGRAHAM,

Flag-Officer, Commanding Station.

Captain FRANCIS D. LEE, Charleston, S. C.

Having thus failed to obtain the material essential to the prosecutions of the work from a source which I was induced to believe from the communication from the Navy Department to General Beauregard was undoubted, I would respectfully refer you, general, to my note dated November 4, 1862, asking the authority of the War or Navy Departments to procure from the Atlanta or Etowah Works such iron or other material as may be necessary to the work.

If such authority can be obtained I am assured that the work will be accomplished.

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

FRANCIS D. LEE,

Captain, Engineers.

HDQRS. DEPT. OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA, Charleston, S. C., November 8, 1862.

FRANCIS W. PICKENS,
Governor of the State of South Carolina, Columbia, S. C.:

GOVERNOR: Your letter of the 5th instant was received after I had given the orders for Cash's regiment to report to General Walker, who, being nearest to the enemy, will require one of the best colonels with him, but I will endeavor to leave him in the Georgetown district.

With regard to the labor furnished for the defenses of the city the planters have done nobly, but they must not stop three-quarters of the way. Should Charleston full for want of proper works they will be the largest sufferers in the end. Your idea of organizing negro laborers with the troops is one I had already recommended to the Government long ago. I think that one company of 100 negroes as pioneers per two regiments of 1,000 men each would be a good proportion of laborers, and would leave the troops to attend to their legitimate duties of drill and guard, so that each brigade of the four regiments would have 200 negro pioneers or laborers. Our Southern soldiers object most strenuously to work with spades and shovels; they will do it in very pressing emergencies, but on ordinary occasions do more grumbling than work; they prefer decidedly to fight. I find so much difficulty in procuring mechanics and materials here for the construction of Captain Lee's marine torpedo ram that I will have to stop its constructions. Charleston, in its exhausted condition, cannot furnish all the labor and material required for the building of three rams at once. One or two of these must be stopped to enable the others to be completed; otherwise all three will still be unfinished when the enemy will make his appearance here. I am free to confess that I believe our ordinary gunboats will effect but little against the enemy's new gigantic monitors, provided they can get here in safety. We must attack them under water, where they are the most vulnerable, if we wish to destroy the, and the torpedo ram is the only probable way of accomplishing that desirable end. Moreover, one of these can be finished in at least half the time required for an ordinary sized gunboat ram.

With regard to your supposition that the enemy will not make a