COURTLAND, June 4, 1863.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS:

SIR: This district continues to be the theater of the most wanton and violent raids of our fiendish enemy, who disregards all Christian and civilized usages in his manner of conducting this war. Our women and children are forced from their dwellings, and the torch appolied to their houses; our grain and provisions, which were very abundant, are nearly all destroyed, thus leaving the citizens homeless and destitute. Guns and pistols have been presented against our women, and their jewels, their money, and their clothing (in some instances) demanded. We feel truly thankful that, as yet, no greater outrage has been pepetrated, though we are in constant dread lest this awful clamity shall be inflicted by and enemy fearing neither God nor reached by the entreaties and supplications of helpless females. Their egraded officers designate their different commands as "destroying angels," "prowling brigades," &c., thus inciting the darkest and most brutal passions of their men. Already have they penetrated a distance of some fifty miles through this rich and highly cultivated valley, leaving the country a wilderness behind them. During their last raid they destroyed with fire six of our largest and most valuable cotton and woolen factories. They now threaten a speedy return to destroy the remainder of our factories, together with our crop of wheat, which is unusually abundant and now being harvested. How can we arrest these dreadful raids and avert these awful calamities for the future? I know full well the great and overwhelmingn cares, anxieties, and difficulties with which Your Excellency is ever surrounded, taxing your utmost strength and energies; hence I have long refrained from annoying Your Excellency with these distressing complaints, hoping that we could find relief elsewhere. Under this impression I have written Generath his accustomed promptness and patriotism, has liberally afforded us such protection as he could grant without endeangering his command at Shelbyville. Yet this is totally inadequate to meet the pressing emergency. We must have, if possible, an infantry force to support Colonel Roddey's cavalry; andto this end we are now endeavoring to arm our citizens who are over forty and under forty-five years of age, many of whom are willing to turn out, and who have also been ordered out by our Governor to resist future invasions. I have recently addressed a letter to the War Department, entreating the Secretary to furnish our citizens with arms and ammunition, as we are nearly destitute of both, having given our arms to the volunteers at the commencement of hostilities. As for ammunition, we literally have none. I must confess that I have but little confidence in this manner of calling out the men. Your Excellency is no doubt acquainted with the fact of the failure of a similar policy in Mississippi, the Federal Colonel Grierson having made a successful raid the entire length of the State, thus confirming the sagacity and wisdom of Your Excellency, as I have always understood that you yielded a reluctant assent to this policy.

Permit me, in view of this failure in Mississippi, most respectfully to suggest to Your Excellency the propriety of ordering all the citizens of North Alabama fit for military duty, b etween the ages of forty and forty-five, to be immediately conscripted for the purpose of home defense. We have 5,000 able-bodied men who could thus be called out, and with such a force we could even erect fortifications at the lower end of this valley (the topography of the country being finely adapted