deem proper. The Quartermaster-General will answer requisitions for what you may need.

EDWIN M. STANTON.

HEADQUARTERS MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT, Mount Jackson, June 14, 1862.

I suggest for the consideration of the President that the condition of affairs here imperatively requires that some position be immediately made strong enough to be maintained. As it now stands, a largely superior force can be directed against any one of our small corps in twenty-four hours. It would then be too late to concentrate, and they could not support each other. This position should by all means be maintained. If you design to maintain it, re-enforcements should be sent here without an hour's delay. The enemy's pickets are 10 miles this side of Harrisonburg. Is Sigel under my command? Pray oblige me with an immediate answer.

J. C. FREMONT,
Major-General.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

WASHINGTON, June 14, 1862.

Major General JOHN C. FREMONT,

Mount Jackson:

General Sigel is under command of Major-General Banks. Major-General Banks will co-operate with you, but he is commander of a separate corps, and does not come under your command.

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

HEADQUARTERS MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT, Mount Jackson, June 15, 1862.

I respectfully remind the President that when assigned to this command I was informed that I should have a corps of 35,000 men. I now ask from the President the fulfillment of this understanding, and ask it only because, under the conditions of the war here, I should be able to render good and immediate service. Such a force would enable me to take Staunton, hold the railroad there, go down through Lexington, seize the railroad between Lynchburg and Newbern, and hold it for General Banks' troops, or destroy it, according to circumstances. Whether from Richmond or elsewhere, forces of the enemy are certainly coming into this region, which the great wheat crop makes a granary for him, and which he will not abandon without a struggle. Casualties have reduced my force to such numbers in many of the regiments as 176, 250, 300, and so on. This makes me very weak, and the small corps scattered about the country, not being within supporting distance of each other, as the topography of the country will show, are exposed to sudden attack by greatly superior force of an enemy, to whom intimate knowledge of country and universal friendship of inhabitants give the advantages of rapidity and secrecy of movements.