respective officers believe they would promptly report and cheerfully obey any order for they speedy reassemblage. Our organization of the local reserve forces, under General Kemper's General Orders, No. 21, was incomplete, and the Roanoke Battalion has more men at home than are present. In a few days its numbers can be much increased. The Botetourt Battalion is composed chiefly of the detailed hands of iron furnaces and are greatly needed either necessary work.

Respectfully submitted.

G. W. HANSBROUGH,

Lieutenant Colonel Comdg. Roanoke Battalion Local Reserve Forces.

HEADQUARTERS, 7C.,
Dublin, October 10, 1864.

Major J. STODDARD JOHNSTON,

Assistant Adjutant-General, &c.:

MAJOR: Representations continue to be made of the large collections of deserters and disloyal men in Floyd and Montgomery Counties and in some other counties in this region, and of the depredations and outrages committed by them, and I am satisfied that the most vigorous measures will have to be adopted or id the country of them and return the absentees to their respective commands. id propose at once to give public notice to them and appeal to them to come in and give themselves up as the only chance for clemency, but at the same time to press them and hunt them out and endeavor to drive them from the country or exterminate them, so that tat the same time I will have the ageists or persuasion and force both at work. The evil is very rapidly increasing and large numbered of deserters are weekly coming into the country from the armies of Generals Lee and Early, and no time is to be lost in the matter. In order to accomplish anything decisive I must have an active, energetic officer, with a good force of active and determined men, for these men are well armed and determined. I would suggest to General Breckinridge to permit me to have, for a short time at least, eighter Wither's battalion or the two Thurmonds, with their companies, nearly all of whom are now mounted. I will at same time select some of the most active of the reserves and endeavor to do something effective toward ridding the country of these people. I inclose to you a letter received a day or two ago from a highly respectable gentleman of Montgomery County, Doctor Otery, by Major Cloyd, upon this subject. I had published some two weeks ago an order fixing a day upon which certain persons would be allowed to pass through our lines to the lines of the enemy, intending to permit all non-producers not liable to military duty, many of whom were the fathers and mothers and families of deserters and of disloyal people who had gone to the enemy, and who it was desirable should go out of the country, to go out. By come oversight, whilst I was absent in the other end of the department, these orders were not circulated, and therefore the exodus cannot take place at the time then indicated. With the permission of General Breckinridge I will insert another day in the printed order, about the 31st instant, and circulate it, and I will also compel a good many disloyal families to remove at same time. I send you a copy of the order, and will await the general's instructions. I send you a telegram* this morning

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*Not found.

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