[Third indorsement.]

APRIL 25, 1864.

The movement of Thomas' legion, now in Brigadier-General Jackson's brigade, Buckner's department, was delayed to admit of an inspection. The report has just come in. The legion, composed of one regiment and one battalion, has a battery of artillery associated with it, and is called a brigade, under Brigadier General A. E. Jackson. It reports 360 men for duty, but could show but 180 on parade - all in miserable order. I propose to order the infantry to Western North Carolina, relieving General Jackson.

BRAXTON BRAGG,

General.

[Fourth indorsement.]

Returned to Secretary of War.

J. D.

[Inclosure.]

HDQRS. FIRST BRIGADE, NORTH CAROLINA HOME GUARDS, Mars Hill College, Madison County, N. C., April 12, 1864.

Governor Z. B. VANCE:

A dispatch reached me last night that a band of tories, said to be headed by Montreval Ray, numbering about seventy-five men, came into Burnsville, Yancey County, on Sunday night last, the 10th instant, surprised the guard, broke open the magazine and took all the arms and ammunition; broke open Brayly's store and carried off the contents; attacked Captain Lyons, the local enrolling officer, in his room, shot him in the arm slightly, but accidentally he made his escape. They carried off all the guns they could carry; the balance they broke. They took, I suppose, about 100 State guns. No one else wounded. They also took off the bacon brought in by my commissary - about 500 pounds. On the day before about fifty women assembled together, of said county, and marched in a body to a store-house near David Proffitt's and pressed about sixty bushels of Government wheat and carried it off. I very much regret the loss of the arms. On Monday previous to the ordnance officer to either remove the guns and ammunition or see that a sufficient guard was placed there to protect them. It seems that neither was done. I also urged on the citizens to lay to a helping hand in this hour of danger, but all done no good. The county is gone up. It has got to be impossible to get any man our there unless he is dragged out, with but very few exceptions. There was but a small guard there, and the citizens all ran on the first approach of the tories. I have 100 men at this place to guard against Kirk, of Laurel, and cannot reduce the force, and to call out any more home guards at this time is only certain destruction to the country eventually. In fact, it seems to me that there is a determination of the people in the country generally to do no more service in the cause.

Swarms of men liable to conscription are gone to the tories or to the Yankees - some men that you would have no idea of - while many others are fleeing east of the Blue Ridge for refuge. Johns. McElory and all the cavalry J. W. Anderson and many others, are gone to Burke for refuge. This discourages those who are left behind, and on the back of that conscription [is] now going on, and a very tyrannical course pursued by the officers charged with the business, and men conscribed