SPECIAL ORDERS,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 6. Richmond, January 8, 1862.

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IV. The First Battalion Alabama Volunteers, Lieutenant-Colonel Loomis, and the Sixth Battalion Alabama Volunteers, Major McClellan, having organized themselves into a regiment, will be known as the Twenty-fifth Regiment Alabama Volunteers, Colonel J. Q. Loomis and Lieutenant Colonel W. B. McClellan.

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By command of the Secretary of War:

John WITHERS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

[6.]

EXECUTIVE HEADQUARTERS,

Nashville, Tenn., January 8, 1862.

Honorable J. P. BENJAMIN,

Secretary of War, Richmond, Va.:

SIR: I confess to some surprise in reading the favor of Captain Groner, acting assistant adjutant-general, addressed to myself, of date the 3rd instant, in which it is stated that orders had been issued through Brigadier-General Carroll to disband Colonel Gillespie's regiment, if not armed, accompanied with instructions not to commission officers of any twelve'months; organization unless it is armed at the time of mustered. I would seem that the Department is not acquainted with the state of affairs in Tennessee. I premise that the Governor of the State thoroughly understands that he is required to arm such troops and that he is endeavoring to do so, with promise of success, I take pleasure in adding. But the condition of affairs in Tennessee is as follows: Since September last General Johnston, in the discharge of his duties, has made repeated and urgent calls upon the Government for troops, but since the order of the Department (made, as I learn, in October last), accompanied with that request that they should be armed by the Governor, and in November last, to wit, the 19th, such was the urgency and importance of the defense of his line that the general called for every man in the State that could be armed. In answer to which, and to discharge his duty, the Governor made his call and took instant and withal hazardous steps to possess the State of the arms of the private citizens-inferior weapons, to be sure-but yet such was the only resource of the State, which fact General Johnston well understtod. Volunteer companies were ordered to rendezvous, and the arms of the State were ordered to different arsenals in order to be placed in shoting order preparatory to their delivery to the different regiments that might be organized. The account of guns received corresponds pretty well with the number of volunteers reported, but necessarily there must be some little delay in fixing of regiments; and to disband hem because at the instant of muster they may not happen to be armed is to place obstacles in the way of spedy organization and will prove most disatrous. A concise statemant, is that the Governor, intends, out of the means alluded to, to arms the twelve-months' volunteers of the State now called for by General Johnston. He believes that it can be done speedily, and is himself unwilling to incur the expense as well as attendant confusion and dessatisfaction that would follow the disbanding of troops. My information is that the ordinary rifle and shotgun in sufficient numbers are now at Knoxville, simply awaiting repair, not only to arm Colonel Gillespie's regiment but one or two others, and I was