HDQRS. HARDEE'S CORPS, ARMY OF TENNESSEE,
Near Wartrace, Tenn., April 28, 1863.

Brigadier-General MACKALL,

Chief of Staff:

GENERAL: I am in receipt of your letter of this date, in which you state that a brigade has been ordered to re-enforce Brigadier-General Martin; that it is designed to move speedily to the protection of the roads and bridges in our rear and to force a junction with van Dorn should he be threatened, and you ask my opinion where it should be placed to accomplish these objects. I cannot answer your letter definitely without further information respecting the country on my left, which I will endeavor to obtain to-morrow. In the meantime it might be ordered to Hoover's Gap, from which point it can be moved to whatever place you may decide to send it. I made a further examination of Hoover's Gap to-day, and shall move up Helm's brigade to Jacobs' Store as soon as I can throw a bridge over the little stream in front of that place. Helm is now too far from the gap, which by a rapid and vigorous effort could be seized by the enemy before he could get to it. I desire you will send me some Federal money for secret service. I engaged several men for that service to-day.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. J. HARDEE,

Lieutenant-General.

[23.]

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,

Richmond, Va., April 29, 1863.

Lieutenant-General PEMBERTON,

Commanding Department of Mississippi [and East Louisiana]:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 6th instant relative to illicit trade in your department and the difficulty of suppressing it under the instructions previously given has been received. You affirm that the rules for the suppression of the trade should be clear and distinct, and that the military authorities must execute them with firmness and vigor, or the whole subject must be turned over to the civil tribunals. The Department in its instructions to you went to the utmost latitude of its authority in reference to t he disposal of the property suspected to be contraband. This Department has no authority to authorize the confiscation of property in the hands of a citizen upon the assertion or suspicion that it came from the ahnds of the enemy; nor can it delegate to the military authorities the power to seize and convert property of that kind to the Government use without allowing a copensation; nor does it desire to posses or to communicate any such authority. The civil triubnals are better fitted for the investigation of the facts concerning such trade, and are better acquainted any such authority. The civil tribunals are beter fitted for the investigation of the facts concerning such trade, and are better acquainted with the mode and measure of punishment that any delinquency on the part of the citizen properly entails. The Department has received reports from North Mississippi of the conduct of bands of partisan ranger sin reference to this trade that resembles more the conduct of Bedouin Arabs than of American citizens or soldiers. There is no objection whatever (if the Department was authorized to object) to the free andunobstructed exercise of the jurisdiction of civil tribunals in reference to this whole subject. The object of the Department was to confine the action of the military authorities within their proper limit. They are authroized to appropriate such portions of property taken from a citizen