tions in accordance with instructions of this date, upon the conclusion of which he will report promptly to this Bureau.

* * * * * * *

By command of the Secretary of War:

John WITHERS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

[32.]

DEPOSITORY OF CONFEDERATE STATES,

Now at Atlanta, Ga., April 13, 1864.

Honorable JEFFERSON DAVIS,

President Confederate States of America:

SIR: The importance of the subject of this letter will, I know, lead you to excuse me for bringing it to the attention of the Executive and his Cabinet. I was authorized by the honorable Secretary of the Treasury to repair form this place around to Jonesborough, Bristol, and other adjacent points in East Tennessee and there to give members of the Army and our citizens generally an opportunity to fund their Treasury issues. I executed the mission promptly and with great pleasure. All holders there were loud in expressions of thanks to Mr. Memminger for this act of considerate kindness to them on his part. My presence in East Tennessee gave me a good opportunity of realizing the real conidition of things in that ill-fated and unfortunate country. Its evacuation last August by GEneral Buckner was a miserable military blunder, which time cannot soon repair. Its abandonment on a more recent occasion, though perhaps less inexcusable under the circumstances, is accompanied with evils scarcely to be realized or exaggerated. As the army of Longstreet fell back toward Virginia those of our southern citizens who had the means of doing so fell back too, and many of them will be able to find shelter and subsistence elsewhere. But my heart bleds to have witnessed the condition of the families of our soldiers and our poorer people of true Southern proclivities. What will become of them? They are unpreotected and without supplies-a prey to the rapacity, the cruelty, and the revenges of the unrelenting and malicious Union men of that country, to say nothing of the hostilities of the Yankees. A citizen there told me that if it were not for the fish in Chucky River many of them must starve. In its retreat the army swept the country of all its supplies. With the recuperative energy that characterizes that Scotch-Irish population, many of our farmers had endeavored to repair the desolation made before the reoccupancy of the country by Longstreet, were rebuilding their fences, &c., and doing other spring work on their plantations preparatory to planting some corn.

Now, since our forces are withdrawn, the horses stolen, their fences burned the second and the third time, and no prospect of further protection from the pillaging enemy, the heart sickens at the contemplation of the spring and summer before them. No Egypt is at hand to which these virtuous, patriotic, and indigent people can repair to procure bread. They must not be left there to suffering and starvation. As the soldiery of Tennessee are standing like a bulwark of defense against the invasion of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, leaving their desolated homes and destitute families to the benignant care of the Government, will you listen to an appeal form one of their countrymen, an exile himself, and houseless and homeless, too, when, he suggests to