I have already communicated your last letter to the Government of the King, from whom I await further instructions, which, meeting with favorable dispositions on the part of the Government of the United States, will enable us, I trust, to terminate this deplorable affair in such a manner as we both had hoped we should at our first interview upon this subject.

I have the honor, sir, to renew to you the assurances of my high consideration.

ROEST VAN LIMBURG.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington City, September 10, 1862.

Messrs. HEWITT, COOPER & Co.,

New York:

GENTLEMEN: This Department deems it highly important to procure a supply of gun-barrel iron of American manufacture, possessing the essential qualities of sufficient tenacity, evenness of texture, easy welding, and proper hardness and density, in as high a degree as the Marshall iron, now imported from England, and hitherto used exclusively at the National Armory. Your state that you have ascertained that you can produce at your manufactory in New Jersey an adequate supply of barrel iron which possesses the before-named essential requisites, and wanting only the ornamental qualities of freedom form specks and high silvery luster which characterize the Marshall iron, and you offer to manufacture and sell to the United States 2,000 tons of such iron of the standard shape and size now in use at the National Armory, at 8 cents a pound, delivered in New York. I hereby request you to make 2,000 tons of iron of the quality before mentioned, and deliver the same as fast as the public service may require, it being understood that you are not to receive pay for any iron not fully equal to the standard of quality before described, nor for any excess of waste or of defective iron beyond the proportion which has resulted in working the Marshal iron. It is further understood that if you shall succeed in producing any portion of the 2,000 tons of iron with the essential qualities before named, and in additional as free from specks and as high and silvery luster, and capable of as shall receive the same price as paid for the Marshall iron. The object of this Department in giving this order is to hold out to you as a known responsible party with great experience, enterprise, science, and means, an adequate inducement to undertake the production, if possible, of a domestic supply in sufficient quantity of a quality of iron indispensable to the public service, so as to render this county independent of the supply from abroad, which at any moment might be interrupted.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington City, September 10, 1862.

Major A. B. DYER,

Superintendent of Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass.:

SIR: On learning that Mr. Hewitt was about going to Europe to procure an additional supply of gun-barrel iron of the Marshall