may desire to adhere to her from the rest of the State, and by a fair, just, and equitable division of the public property and the common liabilities. It has occurred to the undersigned as the best method of accomplishing this most desirable end that your body should take immediate action in the premises by giving a formal assent to the proposed separation, pursuant to the provisions of Section 3, Article 4, of the Constitution of the United States, and by convoking a convention representing the sovereign power of the people of the respective divisions of Tennessee, with plenary authority to so amend the constitution of the State as to carry into effect the change contemplated. With a view to such action, or to action leading to the same result, the undersigned ask permission to confer with your body, either in general session or through a committee appointed for this purpose, so as to consider and determine the details more satisfactorily than could otherwise be done.

Awaiting a response to this memorial, the undersigned beg to add assurances of every endeavor on their part not only to preserve the peaceful relations heretofore subsisting between the people in the two protions of the State, but to remove as far as possible all causes of disturbance in the future, so that each may be left free to follow its chosen path of prosperity and honor, unembarrassed by any collision with the other.

O. P. TEMPLE.

JOHN NETHERLAND.

JAS. P. McDOWELL.

[4.]

ENGINEER DEPARTMENT,

June 18, 1861.

Lieutenant-Colonel TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Headquarters, Washington:

COLONEL: I had the honor in a letter dated the 15th to request that Lieutenants Reese and McFarland might be sent from Fort Pickens to resume their duties at Forts Jefferson and Taylor, from which they had been withdrawn by Colonel Harvey Brown. At the time of that withdrawment there were some other occurrences at Fort Jefferson, touching the engineer service injuriously, to which it is my duty to ask the attention of the commanding general. In these Colonel Brown exercised a control over engineer property and engineer operations that he could only be entitled to exercise from special assignment by the highest authority, and he delegated besides a like powere to his subordinate, for, in virtue of such delegation, Major Arnold issued orders to the engineer officer in charge of the construction of Fort Jefferson, directing what particular work he should carry on at that fort; that he should make specified purchases; that he should make and submit for his approval plans for new defenses on the several keys of the harbor; that he should make purchases and hire laborers and mechanics for the new works, &c., thus ordering to be set aside instructions from this department and interfering with, arresting, and delaying operations of the utmost necessity for the early defensive condition and efficiency of that fort when the safety of the harbor, the fort, the garrison, and all things there, indeed, required that every available farthing should be applied to the fort proper according to those instructions, causing by these proceedings funds that had been granted by Congress for a specified object to be expended in the face of the most explicit interdict of law and to the delay and detriment of the specified object upon others, sustained by no authority but his own.