open quarrel with his wife's kindred and their associates. I have the names of at least twenty-five leading men in Wise County who are false to us. While I was there I could hear of gatherings of Union men, &c., all boteking the trouble we are to have should the forces of the enemy come into this part of the country. I tell you now these people (at least from here to the Cumberland Range) don't mean to fight, and there is but one way of bringing them into it. We must proclaim martial law over the whole country north of the railroad-give power to your military commanders to call out the militia, and to let those commanders compel the young and able-bodied either to come into camp or to go over practically to the enemy; in other words, to make them fight or fly the country. If I had that power to-day I believe I could bring into camp 3,000 men in about five counties in this section who will not otherwise join at all. All you want is a little coercion now. If you wait this thing will flower into rebellion and hostility when fertilized by the warm breat of our adversary. I know my remedy is searching and severe, but my conviction is, it is the only safe course to apply the knife at once and without hesitation, and therefore, as your friend and the friend of the cause in which we are both engaged, I advise it without any reservation.

Remember that France in her grandest military era drew her conscripts from the body of the people by force. We have gone in so far that that bold hand in necessary now, and must be used where the popular will flags. The other party has tried compulsion in Kentucky with eminent seccess. The way they did it was to arrest a fellow, condemn him after a trial before a drumhead commission, sentence him to transportation to the prison at Columbus, Ohio, and give him a release from the sentence on condition of his volunteering and going at once into the ranks. Hundreds-thousands of ignorant and obscure men were picked up by them in the State just by this process, and when once passed through the forms of enslistment they were afraid to desert, or they acquired a fondness for the camp were sent away form home so far they did not know their way back, I don't believe you will ever make good soldier of men right at home; they must be sent away to pass through the necessary discipline to make them effective. Should I pass again into Kentucky I want you to give me a military carte blanclie, for nothing else will do there but a clean sweep. I tried the other plan, and it was wonderful to see how ignorant, how apethetic, how utterly unconscious of the despotism which guarded their moral nature those people were in all the country I passed. They were not Union men; they have no opinions at all. They don't know anything, but they were stout, active, and athletic. Sometimes they would join a company and would desert before they had marched twenty miles. I declare I believe 2,000 men, first and last, have sworn into Williams' regiment, and now I very much doubt if he could parade 600. His commissioned officers have repeatedly deserted with their men, and I have had to allow him to strike their names from the rolls and to put others into their places. I know this is irreguar, but as the colonel has in this way supplied the places with men better fitted to govern them than those ejected I have not thus far controlled him, because I see the necessity of some absolutism in order to get the regiment into any shape. I have had an awful time since we parted, I assure you, and nothing but the deep devotion I feel to the cause could induce me to prolong the effort one moment. I write to you treely, because I want you to understand my views of the condition of affairs. I have, as you are advised, felt disappointed and chagrined at the course of things in