would find rich and willing customers. In the East you must confront rivals in productions and trade, and the tax-gatherer in all the forms of partial legislation. You are blindly following abolitionism to this end, whilst they are nicely calculating the gain of obtaining your trade on terms that would improvish your country. You say your are fightin for the free navigation of the Mississippi. It is yours, freely, and has always been, without strrking a blow. You say you are fighting to maintain the Union. That Union is a thing of the past. A union of censent was the only union ever worth a drop of blood. When force came to be subsisted for censent, the casket was broken and the constitutional jewel of your patriotic adoration was forever gone.

I come, then, to you with the olive branch of peace, and offer it to your accentance in the name of the memories of the past and the ties of the present and future. With you remains the responsibility and the opinion of continuing a creul and wasting war, which can only end, after still greater sacrifices, in such treaty of peace as we now offer, or of preserving the blessings of peace by the simple abandonment of the design of subjugating a people over whom no right of dominion has been conferred on you by Gold or man.

BRAXTON BRAGG,

[16.] General, C. S. Army.

HEADQUARTERS,
Ten Miles North of Bardstown, September 26, 1862-12 m.

Colonl GARNER,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Army of the Mississippi:

COLONEL: Your dispatch of this date has been received. I will move a force at daylight in the morning beyond Sears' Mill to asertain the truth of the report of the enemy being in Shepherdsville, which force will occupy the Shepherdsville road. I find that I have now in camp seven companies of Colonel Murray' regiment, about 200 "Texas Rangers," and about forty of the Second Georgia. The balance of the bridage is all on outpost duty. Major Whaley, of the Second Georgia, stationed at New Haven, though ordered to report, has not yet arrived. Please send him forward.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

John A. WHARTON,

[16.] Colonel, Commanding Brigade.

HEADQUARTERS FIRST DIVISION, ARMY OF Kentucky,
Lancaster, September 28, 1862.

Colonel GEORGE G. GARNER,

Assistant Adjtant-General, Department Numbers 2, Bradstown:

COLONEL: In obedience to orders of the 25th instant, from Major General E. Kirby Smith, to proceed as rapidly as the condition of my command would admit to place myself in communiction with and obey the instructions of General Bragg, I have the honor to report that I shall be to day, with the infantry and artillery and part of my cavalry, in the vicinity of Danville, where, agreeably to your instructions of 26th instant, I shall await further orders. I have reason to believe that a sufficient force is in rear of General Morgan to prevent his return should he be cut off in front by the force of infantry and cavalry