RICHMOND, VA., November 4*, 1862.

A. M. CLAYTON,

JOHN W. C. WATSON,

W. D. MASON,

Holly Springs, Miss:

General Johnston is still unable to go on duty. Lieutenant-General Pemberton is assigned to command, and will, I am sure, do all that is practicable.

JEFFERSON DAIVS.

[17.]

ABINGDON, VA., November 5, 1862 [1863].

Honorable GEORGE W. RANDOLPH,

Secretary of War:

Your directions to me to take my troops and co-operate with General Echols should he call on me, "leaving him to command his own force, and you (I) command yours (mine)," occurs to me as very singular under the circumstances, and I write to ask you very respectfully if it is the rule on which the Department practices ordinarily, or whether it is an exceptional ruling to preserve to Geneal Echols a command which would not be his under the operation of our relative rank. I shall feel strange to enter upon a field where my junior has command of three brigades, while I only command one; and it occurs to me that should we differ as to what ought to be done in an engagement or preparatory thereto some serious embrassement might occur involving very grave responsibility. I am the more particular in calling your attention to the peculiarity of this order, as the exact reverse, while I was in Kentucky, deprived me of the command for which I had hoped, and which I was led to suppose would be mine.+

Trusting you will review you decision on this point and come to a different conclusion, thus saving me from embrrassement, I remain, &c.,

H. MARSHALL,

[20.] Brigadier-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT, Numbers 2,
Knoxville, November 7, 1862.

General S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General, Richmond:

SIR: The order from the Secretary of War to reorganize the Eleventh and Twenty-first Regiments Louisiana Volunteers presents may difficulties to my mind which seem almost insuperable-some of them not susceptible of solution without further instructions. Scattered as the men now are through the different regiments from that State, it will require time, trouble, expense, and a withdrawal of them from active service at a most important juncture in our operations. But grant the men assembled, how is the reorganization to take place? The officers have been regularly an leggaly discharged from the service. There is no legal powe that I know of by which they can ve reappointed even if they could be reasembled, which I consider impracticable. How, then, are officers to be made? The law, as now understood for men in service under the conscript act, allows only of the election of second lieutenants, all vacancies above that being filled by promotion. To go

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* Incorrectly printed, as of date October 13, in VOL. XVII, Part II, p. 727.

+ This in reply to Randolph, VOL. XX, Part II, p. 388.