Under reiterated orders from the War Department the forces in this department have been depleted to the degree in question, and it only remains now to make such disposition of the troops left as may best conceal our weakness and enable us to make the stoutest defense practicable, if unto warmly assailed, that we can.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

THOMAS JORDAN,

Chief of Staff.

CHARLESTON, S. C., May 15, 1863.

Question 1. As to the propriety of concentrating artillery, &c.

Answer. The true plan for the defense of a river from the passage of steamers, &c., is, when practicable, to obstruct its navigation with rafts, piles, torpedoes, &c., at the most favorable point for such obstructions, then to defend the latter by a concentration of the greatest number of and heaviest guns at oney's command, separating them, however, from each other by traverses when necessary to protect them from enfilade fires. Such was the system proposed by General Barnard and Totten, Major Delafield, &c., when they planned Forts Jackson and Saint Phillip and the batteries contiguous to those works.

Detached batteries are very good when properly located and supported; otherwise they are apt to be overpowered successively by a naval attack or to be taken in rear by a land force. It is evident that since the enemy's steamers and gunboats passed the concentrated fires of Forts Jackson, Saint Philip, &c., without much injury, they would have done so even more easily if our guns had been scattered over 75 miles from those works to New Orleans. Moreover, the river being very high and the country between those two points being low, it could easily have been submerged by cutting the levees at night near any batteries which might have been constructed along the river, thereby cutting off their garrisons from succor or retreat. I will remark that Forts Jackson and Saint Philip were placed that low down the river to protect from the enemy's depredations as much of the country liable to cultivation as practicable, and also to increase the obstacles to a regular siege, resulting from the lowness of their sites, which does not admit of the constructions of bayous and parallels, especially when the river is high.

Question. Numbers 2. The battle having been fought at the forts, the fleet having passed, &c.

Answer. The forts commanding the river having been passed, New Orleans necessarily laid at the mercy of the enemy's heavy guns afloat, which, owing to the high stage of the river, commanded the banks on both sides to the swamps skirting the river at a distance varying from a half to one mile, an army of 50,000 men or more could not then have saved the city from destruction. Whether the later was desirable at the time, before New Orleans had experienced Butler's iron rule, could only have been determined by the State or confederate authorities, who should have been determined by the State or Confederate authorities, who should have considered whether the destruction of so large a city would have done more injury to the enemy than to ourselves. it is evident that to him Baton Rouge is a better strategic point than New Orleans, and the destruction of the latter would have relieved him of the necessity of keeping a garrison of 5,000 or 6,000 men there to guard it. This act would have ben a mere empty bravado, a wanton destruction of an immense amount of private and public property, which would have shaken at that time the Confederacy to its very foundation and thrown upon its Government a helpless population of about 150,000 non-combatants (men, women, and children) to feed and provide for, when al-