was justifiable in seizing it. He certainly complied with all the forms prescribed by the impressment act and the War Department, and in this, as in all other matters which came under my observation connected with him, has shown himself a most valuable and faithful officer. Analogous to this were other unfounded complaints, which I do not deem it necessary to burden this report with, regarding one as sufficient for illustration. The proofs, however, are overwhelming that the people of this district have for months and years undergone exactions and oppressions at once illegal, vexatious, and unjust. The patience with which they have borne these outrages, still cherishing a feeling of oyalty to the Government and evincing a desire to sustain it, must command respect and admiration. Explicit directions from the War Department nunder the various impressment acts, while recognizing the validity of impressments when made under authority of orders from a military commander, all require that supplies for the Quartermaster's Department shall be impressed through the agency of a quartermaster, and subsistence through the agency of a commissary, whose certificates would be vouchers and secure payment to the claimants upon presentation to the proper disbursing officer.

The military officers, however, apparently imagined themselves invested with plenary powers. Supplies of forage and subsistence were impressed by officers of all grades, and even by privates, and a certificate given signed by them, not as quartermasters or commissaries, but as colonels, majros, camptains, lieutenants, and sergenats of certain commands. These certificates cannot be paid by a disbursing officer. They would not be vouchers which would pass his accounts at Richmond, and yet it may be safely stated that neneteen in every twenty evidences of impressment in the hands of citizens of this country are of this nature. To illustrate eg leave to call the attention of Your Excellency to the following case: In September or October, 1863, by order of General Johnston, through Colonel Logan, some 300 head of cattle were impressed for his army. Captain Mayberry and Lieutenant McLean, of the Ninth Battalion Tennessee Cavalry, made the impressments and signed the certificates. They were both officers of the line, not commissaries. No return of the names of the parties from whom the cattle were taken was made. Major Moore, the chief commissary of General Johnston, has left the county, and these impressments, being irregular, cannot be paid. The exhibit marked Numbers 23* will more fully and in detail illustrate this calss of cases. Again, on the occasion of the fall of Port Hudson, Colonel Logan ordered the impressment of transportation to haul hospital stores to Brandon, Miss. From all I can Learn it was impossible to obtain the services of a quartermaster. The assistnat surgeon in charge of the stores proceeded to impress wagons and teams, leaving with the owners hundreds of certificates, of which this is a copy:

BRANDON, MISS., November 11, 1863.

This is to certify that I have impressed, by order of Colonel Logan, one four-mule team, belonging to R. Bates, to haul hospital stores from Liberty, Miss., to this place. Said team was used by me nine days and was three days returning home, making in all twelve days' absence from home.

A. L. EAST,

Assistant Surgeon, Provisional Army, C. S.

Colonel Logan, having no bonded quartermaster, had assigned Lieutenant Vaught, a line officer, to that duty. Whether his vouchers would

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* Omitted.

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