service as may be convenient and deemed expedient by them. Departmental or army commanders may, at their discretion, detail volunteers, whether officers or men, for special enterprises or temporary service. In lieu of pay or other compensation they will receive such percentage of the value of the property of the enemy destroyed by them as may be awarded by an officer or officers selected by this Department and charged with such duty, in no case to exceed 50 per cent. of such value. They elect to serve for pay to be deducted as herein provided.

J. A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

[32.]

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,

Richmond, Va., March 15, 1864.

Lieutenant General L. POLK,

Commanding, &c.:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 29th of February* was received a few days since by the hands of the officer intrusted with its delivery, but my engagements were at the time so pressing I was unable to reply before his return. I regret to be unable to accord with you in the views you entertain and the changes you propose in the control of the commissary arrangements of your department. You are scarcely aware, perhaps, of the many embarrassments and difficulties which existed before the present system was adopted in collecting supplies for the general commissariat, and their equitable distribution among the various armies of the respective departmens. So long a sthe control rested with the commander of each department over the operations of the quartermaster's and commissary bureau within his military commands there always was, as there naturally would be, a decided predominance given to the supply and privision by each commander of his special command. Not until stores deemed ample for each, not only for present but all possible contingencies, were supplied to his own department was there either aid or oftentimes even permission given to the officers of the bureau to obtain and remove supplies for other armies. It not unfrequently happened, indeed, that commanders of adjoining departments insteadzealously operating against each other to prevent any resources from being withdrawn from their respective departments. This course of action, while always injurious, could yet be borne so long as the resources of each department sufficed in the main for the needs of its special command, but when, as more recently has become the case, it is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the armies in some of the departments that supplies should be largely drawn from others, it becomes absolutely necessary to correct the evil and adopt a more general system.

With this view thue plan now in operation was devised. Under [it] the officers of the Commissary and Quartermaster's Bureau, acting independently, or required to collect and accumulate stores of supplies from all portions of the Confederacy and to hold them in convenient depots within the various departments, subject to equitable distribution, and prepared to meet requisitions from the armies in the field. My conviction of the necessity of the system is strong, and carried out efficiently and equitably it ought to receive more general satisfaction than has heretofore been attained. There may be irregularities or imperfections in the working, which it is desirable should be disclosed and corrected, but the system is right in itself and may, I feel assured, be made

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*See VOL. XXXII, Part II, p. 814.

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