with bayonets and all usual fixtures complete, subject to inspection and approval by a Government ordnance officer, was considered October 26, and the following letter addressed to George L. Schuyler, United States Government agent, at Paris, France, viz.* All of which is now very respectfully submitted to you.

THOMAS A. SCOTT,

Assistant Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

November 16, 1861.

To the CHIEF OF ORDNANCE:

SIR: Can you arrange to let the Governor of Wisconsin have 5,000 muskets with their accouterments and ammunition, as they are much in need of them. This may perhaps be done from the lots arriving in New York in the coming week.

Respectfully,

THOMAS A. SCOTT,

Assistant Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington, D. C., November 16, 1861.

Colonel D. H. VINTON,

Deputy Quartermaster-General, New York:

COLONEL: Your letter of the 14th in regard to estimates and requisitions is received.

It has been impossible for the Treasury to fill them all, for the reason that it does not contain the money, and to ask that all be sent at once, and to urge, as you suggest, to send a part, only aggravates the impatience of contractors, is to prevent the Treasury making any remittances.

The condition on which alone you purchased Skinner's cloth, and on which alone that and the English blankets could be obtained, was cash payment. I know that injustice is done to well-deserving contractors, who had the right to expect cash. I have asked for the remittance; I cannot make it, as I am not the banks, the capitalists, the people, nor the Secretary of the Treasury.

Many other injustices are the result of this war, and great as this is, it is one of the least; so long as there are found merchants, manufacturers, or capitalists who will take the risk of supplying this department with clothing or other indispensable stores for the defense of the country, we must continue to exert ourselves to obtain them.

I will make every proper exertion to remit money, but I cannot add to the cares and toils of the Secretary of the Treasury be personal solicitations for money, which he tells me has not been able to procure, and I must make this distinction in urging particular claims which every man or corporation or nation has to make in order to carry on operations indispensable to the life of a nation, costing, however, more than its daily income.

M. C. MEIGS,

Quartermaster-General.

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*See p. 598.

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