may have been the emergency which required these restrictions, I presume it has now passed, and a condition of affairs exists which seems to urge the gathering in by all means all sorts of provisions, for the people as well as for the troops. It may be that unless we can remove and use the stores from the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana the enemy will. The population of Mobile is, I believe, steadily increasing, by the usual as well as by extraordinary processes, and the scarcity and high prices of subsistence increase in like manner. Flour now sells at $125 per barrel. Under existing circumstance I think every means should be used to induce and facilitate the removal of supplies from Mississippi. I have on hand a good supply of subsistence for my reduced garrison. I have not yet taken any means to draw large sto4es from the upper part of the department to this place, because I do not yet feel the imemdiate necessity for so doing, and because they may now be just where they ought to be on account of General Johnston's army, and I believe that whenever the attack upn Mobile may be made I shall have sufficient notice to be able to draw in what this grrison will require. When I offered to send a part of Clanton's command to General Johnston I meant in to be only for an emergency and for a few days. Since the army has taken up its new position, and Port Hudson has fallen, it becomes necessary for me to give increased protection to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Clanton's cavalry was charged with that duty. I have now only nine companies of cavalry left to me, and they cannot be spared from their present duty. they picket from Monticello to Biloxi and along the coast as far east as Pensacola. Ask the general, therefore, to have that cavalry sent back toward Shubuta or replaced by some other when he can do so with convenience.*

Very respectfully, yours,

DABNEY H. MAURY,

Major-General.

[26.]

OFFICE OF MISSISSIPPI CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY,

Statham's, July 18, 1863.

Brigadier General J. R. CHALMERS,

Grenada:

DEAR SIR: It may become a military necessity, in the defense of the distirct of country committed to your charge, to render useless to the enemy the several lines of railway, in whole or in part, within your department. The entire destruction of the equipments and machinery on the roads referred to will involve an individual loss of more than $5,000,000, and prove detrimental to Government interest and prosperity to an amount that cannot be computed by dollars. The loss here estimated is exclusive of any injury that may be done to the several roadways. The equipments and machinery on the several roads once destroyed cannot be replaced at any coast until after the rstoration of peace. In the mantime, should the Confederate army hereafter reoccupy the country that [it] may now find it necessary to abandon, and find all the railroad equipments utterly destroyed, the injury to the Confederate Government would be irreparable, and the loss to private interest would exceed computation. I therefore suggest if it would not be better to take the risk of a temporary use of these equipments by the enemy over roads they would not dare to operate

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*For probable reply to this and other communications, see Ewell to Maury, VOL. XXVI, Part II, p. 120.

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