the Confederate authorities to order at once the purchase or the impressment in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia of a supply of corn, the establishment immediately of a store-house or houses on our lines, and the authorized invitation to loyal destitute families to come there and be fed at least till harvest. "Fas est ab hoste doceri." The execrable enemy are before us in this labor of love and humanity. Maynard has been sent to Memphis, Brownlow to Nashville, Netherland to Louisville, others (Nelson, I believe) to Cincinnati, and Everett to Boston to solicit benefactions for the oppressed Union people of East Tennessee. And can it be possible that even greater efforts than these should not be inaugurated and carried into speedy consummation for such a class of our people as the families of our loyal East Tennessee soldiers and citizens? The President will excuse me for repeating what I have heretofore often said to him, that there is not in this wide Confederacy a single spot where genuine loyalty to your Government, self-sacrifice and self-denial, an elevated patriotism, or a holier chivalry exist to the same extent and to a higher intensity. There is no such people-none truer to their friends, their principles, or our cause. None have suffered more for their devotion to their country, its rights, or its honor. None have such malignant and implacable enemies amongst their own wicked and revengeful neighbors. And the Government, if it cannot give us further protection at home, can at least give bread to the families whose natural protectors and guardians are fighting for the defense of other communities not more patriotic or more worthy of its care. may I suggest that Spring Place, Ga., and Zollicoffer, or Bristol, Tenn., should be points at which these supplies should be deposited? The agent for the procurement and distribution of this corn should be selected with great care and caution. The unhallowed greed of gain has become a passion so general and all-absorbing that some will seek it for the purpose of speculating on the very charities of the Government by placing it in the hands of the unworthy or the disloyal. I cannot at this time suggest the names of the most suitable. Let them be not tinctured with the slightest suspicion of Unionism or the stain of peculation or money-making. I am done. I do not speak in my own name. Were it otherwise proper or necessary every Tennessee refugee in Georgia would sign this. To call a meeting of my co-regees to memorialize you would be to expose to the enemy the nakedness of the land.

I therefore sign it alone, and am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. G. M. RAMSEY.

[First indorsement.]

Respectfully referred by direction of the President to the honorable Secretary of War for perusal, &c.

BURTON N. HARRISON,

Private Secretary.

[Second indorsement.]

APRIL 27, 1864.

Whatever sympathy is felt for the evils depicted, the powers of this Department do not enable us to administer relief in the manner suggested.

J. A. S.,

Secretary.

[32.]