1863, the Indians being very troublesome on the Upper Missouri and Mississippi, it was decided by the Government to send thither the largest Indian expedition ever fitted out. The expedition consisted of about 5,000 men, with several thousand tons of stores, under the immediate command of Generals Sully and Sibley, General Pope commanding the department, and were required to be transported nearly 1,000 miles up the Mississippi and its tributaries, or from 1,500 to 2,200 miles up the Missouri and Yellowstone, which, considering the difficulties of navigation and the wildernes through wihich the expedition had to pass, was performed with great success. In the following year several thousand tons of supplies and a large number of troops were sent to the same destination. Thus it will be seen that while the Government was in a life and death struggle with millions of rebels at the South, it was at the same time carrying on the most vigorous and extensive Indian war in which it had ever been engaged, at a distance of thousands of miles to the northwest, along the tributaries of the Mississippi and amid the wilderness of the Upper Missouri, the supplies and transportation for which were furnished from Sait Louis. In June, 1863, General Burnside, then in Central Kentucky, being ordered with his army, consisting of 10,000 men, including artillery, to re-enforce General Grant before Vicksburg, was transported rapidly by rail through a part of Kentucky and Ohio and across Indiana and Illinois to Cairo, where I had provided transports uon which his army embarked as it arrived, and within four days reached its point of destination, over 1,000 miles from the point of departure. Afte the fall of Vicksburg the same army corps, with about 6,000 New England troops whose term of service had wxpired, were returned to Cairo upon transports sent for that purpose and proceeded East by rail, while at the same time our transportation faciliteis were largely taxed in the movement of about 30,000 men of General Grant'a army, who were proceeding to and from their homes on furlough. In the autumn of 1863 the army of General Hooker, consisting of the Twelfth and Thirteenth [Eleventh] Army Corps, of about 22,000 men, was moved from Washington through Maryland and Virginia by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, thence through Ohio and Indiana to Louisville, Ky., thence to Nashville and Chattanooga, a distance of 1,200 miles, to re-enforce the army of General Grant at that place. The particulars of this movement I cannot give, as I was not connected therewith, though it was conducted with great rapidity and success.

In January, 1864, the command of General A. J. Smith, ocnsisting of 7,000 troops, being embarked upon seventeen transports, at Columbus, Ky., proceeded south 600 miles to Vicksburg, where it joined the celebrated expedition to Meridian, Miss., under the command of General Sherman, an don its return, being increased to 10,000 men, was again embarked on eighteen transports, and proceeded down the Mississippi and up Red River to Fort De Russy, after capturing which the command re-embarked and proceeded to Alexandria, where it was soon after joined by the army of General Banks. Other boats were also sent up from New Orleans for the expedition of General Banks into the Red River country, for an account of both which last movements I would respectfully refer to the annual report of Captain Welch to the Quartermaster-General, of date December 31, 1864, and also to the memorandum recently furnished me by Captain Welch, copies of which are herewith transmitted. In the fall of 1864, during Price's last march into Missouri, the army of General Mower, consisting of 7,000 cavalry