[Inclosure.]

[HARRISBURG,] April 18 [19], 1861-8.15 p. m.

COMMANDING OFFICER NEW YORK ARSENAL,

Governor's Island, N. Y.:

Send 10,000 sets of equipments for rifled muskets, 200,000 rounds of rifle-musket ammunition, and 100,000 rounds of buck and ball cartridges at once to the Governor of Pennsylvania, at Harrisburg. Telegraph when coming.

By command of General Scott:

F. J. PORTER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

(Same to commanding officer Frankford Arsenal, Philadelphia.)

APRIL 18 [19], 1861-8.15 p. m.

SUPERINTENDENT SPRINGFIELD ARMORY,

Springfield, Mass.:

Send at once to the Governor of Pennsylvania 10,000 rifled muskets, and inform me what is coming.

By order of the Secretary of War:

F. J. PORTER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

FRANKFORD ARSENAL, PA., April 19, 1861.

Major F. J. PORTER,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Harrisburg, Pa.:

SIR: There must be some error in relation to the orders on this arsenal for muskets, accounterments, and ammunition for Governor, to send to the Governor 1,000 rifled muskets altered, with 40,000 cartridges and 1,000 sets of accounterments. This is the only order I had received when your telegram of to-day reached me.* I immediately telegraphed to the colonel of ordnance that I would the muskets and ammunition, but had not the accounterments. He replied directing me to press the issue of the accounterments, and to get them by contract, doubling the number. I immediately gave orders for the manufacture in Philadelphia of accounterments will all possible dispatch, with directions to let me know when every thousand should be ready. After supplying the 1,000 rifled muskets and 40,000 cartridges ordered for Governor Curtin, to which I will add 300 sets of accounterments (all I have), there will remain at this arsenal 2,535 rifled muskets and 4,900 smooth-bore, all of the old caliber, (69-inch,) and 45,000 ball cartridges. The rifled muskets are without long-ranger sights, and I will have to put those sights on 256 of the 1,000 for the Governor to make them uniform with and as serviceable as the rest of the 1,000. This work I put in hand this morning, and am pressing it as fast as my means will permit.

While writting I have a telegram from the Ordnance Office ordering the issue to General Patterson, in Philadelphia, of 5,000 muskets with accountements and all the ammunition I can. I shall send the smoothbore, and the issue will leave me 2,525 altered rifled muskets only on hand and no ammunition. My supply of the latter I shall replenish with all possible dispatch. Excuse this detail, which is necessary to

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* See second, ante.

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