are gallant officers, and were in command of good batteries, and both, if ordered, wuld have taken up the line of lmarch frompositions where neither was rendering efficeint service, but wer being maintained at great expense. I requested you by tgelegraph, dated 5th of July, ultimo, to order Dunham's battery, if needed, to Richmond. On the 8th ultimo I received the following reply: "Thank you for thde offier of Dunahm's battery, but you will need men in Florida." Within a few days afgerward the Fifth and Eighth Infantry Regiment s were ordered fromteh State to report at Ricjhmond, the latter regiment without its officers being yet commissioned and wituout the colonel ever having had the opportunity of spending an hour on duty with his regiment. These regiments wered suddenly and unexpectedly ordered from the State wityhout a moment's time to bid farewell to families or arrange for their support. The greater portion of them and volunteered under promises made by their regiments. It is difficult for freemen, however patriotic and brave, who have had no experience in service, to appreciate promptly the necessity of military rigor. Moreover, mahy gentlemen who had been officers int the cavalry regiments have recently returned, assigning as a reason that they had resigned and left the service because that, in defiance of the act of Congress reorganizing twelve-b months' troops, and your decision as made known to General Finegan, they had been denied and prevented from the privilege of electing tier field officers.

The result is that wityout an election, and threfore wityout proper legal authority, Colonel William G. M. Davis is in command of the regiment, and claiming to rank by seniority Colonel Finley, of the Sixth Regiment, Colonel M. L S. Perry, of the Seventh Regiment, and Colonel Dilworth, of the Third Regiment, which is considered unjust to these officers and their regiments, as well as to the First Florida Cavalry Regiment.

Your attention is respectfully invited tothe consideration of these facts, not in the spirit of complint, but in justice to intelligent freemen, who in a common cause have cheerfully made every sacrifice demanded and know no reason why any portion of the citizens of Florida should be denied the equality of right in election secured by the constitution an laws of the Confederate States and of this State. The population of Florida consists of those over thirty- five years of age (who have not volunteered int the Confederate service), women and children, and a large slave population, and scattered in settlements fromone extreme of the State to the other. We cannot suppose that our enemis are foolish enough to steal and support, arm and drill large numbers of slaves wityhout the diabolical purpose of using them in waging war against us. Their acts of Congress authorize such wargare, and their President ana generals avow the purpose. Whenever it shall be ascertained stisfactorily by slaves that the blacks are in active warfare for tier liberation, sustained by bodies of white men, is their not much reason to apprehend that insurrections and massacres will occur where they have a great excess of population over the white population, as is now particularly the case in Florida! Large numbers have fired from their owners int his State to the enemy for protection, and are daily escaping to them, and no aggfressive move has been made by the enemy in particular localities except by the guidance of slaves which had escaped to them. There is not within my knowledge a portion of the State free of skulking traitors, the

22 R R- VOL LII, PT II