WAR DEPARTMENT,

September 14, 1861.

Governor ANDREW, Boston:

Start this evening for Washington all the regiments in shape for movement. Give them arms and forward at once.

SIMON CAMERON,

Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

September 14, 1861.

Governor BLAIR,

Jackson, Mich.:

Start to-day for Washington the First and Colonel Stockton's regiments. Use such authority as may be necessary to fill these regiments from any men now mustered into service. Secure transportation and forward immediately. Answer what we may expect from Michigan.

SIMON CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE OFFICER,

Saint Paul, Minn., September 14, 1861.

Honorable SIMON CAMERON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: I inclose the official communication of Colonel Van Cleve, announcing that the Second Regiment of Minnesota Volunteers is fully organized above the minimum complement of men, and holds itself ready to march at the order of the Government. Preliminary to its going forward, however, it will be necessary to relieve its six companies which now garrison the Indian frontier forts of Ridgely, Abercrombie, and Ripley, and to concentrate the regiment at its headquarters in Fort Snelling. For the mode and manner of relieving the forts, raising an additional third regiment, and enabling the Government to avail itself of the services of the Second Regiment, I refer to my letter of August 30, which is still unanswered in any of its somewhat important details. In case that letter should be responded to and favorably, and if it is desired that we should raise a third regiment it will be imperative that measures be taken directly by the United States to furnish it with the necessary clothing and equipments, and this in consequence of both State and national credit being exhausted in this quarter through the refusal or neglect of the authorities at Washington having control in the premises to pay for either equipping or furnishing the First or Second Regiments of Minnesota Volunteers, though such payment was directly promised by the War Department before either regiment was attempted to be raised. It is in consequence of this failure to pay that the Second Regiment is yet without a portion of its proper equipment-such as officers' tents, hospital tent, &c.; and if, in this hour of its necessity, the Government should be deprived of the services in the field of the Minnesota Second, as fine a regiment in its material as our First (its colonel a graduate of West Point, and its lieutenant-colonel and major both officers in the Mexican war), and also of the Minnesota Third Regiment, which could yet be raised, it will not be the fault of the State government, which in the beginning explained its financial inability, from old debts and embarrassments, to advance money for he equipment of its troops for the U. S. service, and which thereupon obtained from the Department of War

33 R R-SERIES III, VOL I