they number now 330. The rebel medical director permitted me to have 64 attendants from the prisoners, necessary for carrying on the hospital, and their commissary issued provisions on my requisition. So all went well until Saturday, the 31st, except that I had no money to furnish milk, eggs, &c. On that day their provost-marshal sent an officer to have all the men in the hospital paroled. Nearly all the patients and attendants signed the paper, a copy of which, with the names appended, is annexed. The rebels then evacuated the place, leaving no provision for the hospital and taking the guards from the building.

On Monday a small party of guerrillas made us all prisoners again, and kept us in close confinement.

The number now in hospital as patients, according to the register, is 246. The number died, 9.

The surgeons are, J. J. Johnson, surgeon Twenty-seventh Indiana Volunteers, Banks' division; Francis Leland, Second Massachusetts Volunteers, Banks' division; T. E. Mitchell, First Maryland Volunteers, Banks' division, and Philip Adolphus, assistant surgeon, U. S. Army, in charge of Company F, Fourth Artillery, U. S. Army; Lincoln R. Stone, assistant surgeon, Second Massachusetts, Banks' division; Josiah F. Day, assistant surgeon, Tenth Maine, Banks' division; Evelyn L. Bissell, assistant surgeon, Fifth Connecticut, Banks' division, who kindly lent me every assistance in their power, they, like myself, being prisoners.

Respectfully, yours,

J. BURD PEALE,

Brigade Surgeon, in Charge of Hospital.

HEADQUARTERS,
Winchester, Va., June 5, 1862.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: I beg leave respectfully to submit for your consideration the following statements:

The subjoined list of troops, marked A,* shows the names and the number of the troops which I found at Harper's Ferry, and which includes those now under my immediate command and those left to garrison that place. Those left behind I regard sufficient to garrison and to do the most essential duties of the post.

I would further state that these troops now at Winchester, although individually good men and of good will, are mere recruits, without the first rudimentary knowledge of drill or military discipline, and very poorly provided for in most respects. I can therefore only regard them as a kind of reserve, to follow for the moment the movements of troops in advance and to be prepared in the mean time for more earnest duties.

These considerations, together with the fact that these troops do not even form a division, but only two-thirds of one, would furnish the opportunity to realize the proposition I submitted to you in Washington, only making Winchester rather than Washington a military district and a place of rendezvous for the organization of a corps d'armee of an army of reserve.

I also beg leave to refer you to the letter I wrote you from Saint

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* Not found.

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