Considering the importance of instant action in the organization of these forces as a check to the threatening attitude of the enemy on the north banks of the Ohio River, and to impart a greater feeling of security to the citizens of Tennessee, I have consented to exercite the discretionary power with which this Department is invested, and to relax the general rule exacting service for the war, and to receive the whole of these regiments for twelve months only, trusting to their patriotism to re-enlist if the exigencies of the war at the and of that time should demand it. But to prevent any misunderstanding hereafter, in the event that the general rule should be applied to Tennessee as elsewhere, I wish here to say it cannot have escaped Your Excellency that our enemies of the North, through their Executive at Washington, have made proclamation for enrollments for three years and enlistments for the war, thus indicating their determination for a prolonged contest, and a firm resolution to prepare fully for that result by the conversion of their forces from raw militia and volunteers into trained and disciplined regulars. To the effectiveness of these troops thus inured to the battlefield Your Excellency will perceive they will add ecconomy of administration through the movement. Their calculation is that often heretofore made and notably practiced by the Cromwellians against the Cavaliers.

It is supposed that at first our impetuosity and superior dexterity in the use of arms will cause the earlier victories to lean to our side, but that trained discipline and the solid phalanx will familly prove triumphant. Nor will it be denied that the heaviest relative expense of an army is demanded during the year of its enrollment and general equipment. Therefore, for us to disband each of our regiments at the end of twelve months' service would be to entail upon the Government the largest yearly expenditures and to keep our armies constituted of raw recruits, while the enemy were constantly din inishing their relative expenditures and advancing more in every element that constituted effectiveness. Under these circumstances it is plain we should conform our periods of service in the field, as we have been doing from the first, to those of the enemy, and thus at all times leave to our forces the advantage of their original superiority. I send herewith a circular copy of the general rule adopted. I have ordered the requisite number of muskets to arm four regiments to be sent to Your Excellency; but th the distinct understanding that they are not to be distributed to any other troops than those indicated, and not to them until they are duly organized and mustered into the Confederate service by a Confederate officer. This duty will be assigned to Lieutenant McCall, now at Nashville.

This rule is universal and cannot be relaxed under any circumstances. The Government must see to the husbanding of its resources as to arms, to their effective use, safe-keeping, and proper return, and Your Excellency will excuse the repetition that these troops must be organized into regiments and duly mustered into service before they receive their arms. Your Excellency will doubtless appreciate the reasons that have led me to suggest the ordinary country rifle for four of the regiments named. Our lines of operation have recently become widely extended, as Your Excellency is aware, and the demand for arms so great since the accession of the border States, adopting our flag, that considerations associated with controlling public interests and the success of the war in which we are engaged call for the practice by this Department of the wisest discretion in regard to the distribution of our military provisions in these respects, consisting chiefly of muskets. The necessity for this course on the part of the Department becomes still more apparent from the fact that our manufactures of arms are