patience the delays and vexations attending the settlement of their accounts, though it has not always been possible to make them acquainted with the reasons compelling the delay.

Costly as has been this service, no other mode of transportation could have collected and moved our forces in the same time, or at so little expense. Taking into consideration the cost of pay and provisions for troops so highly paid and fed as ours, the cost of marching a thousand men 100 miles will far exceed the $2,000 which is paid for their transportation by railroad, the movement by rail being made in a single day, while the march would occupy many.

MILITARY RAILWAYS.

As the armies have advanced into the insurgent States it has become necessary to take possession of and repair the railways abandoned by their owners and managers, and stripped of their equipments and partially destroyed by the rebels. Among the roads thus occupied in the East are parts of the Orange and Alexandria, of the Potomac and Aquia Creek, the Richmond and York River, the Norfolk and Petersburg, Seaboard and Roanoke, Harper's Ferry and Wincheseaufort to New Bme the Annapolis Branch Railroad, and a portion of the Washington and Baltimore Railroad.

In the West, parts of the Tennessee and Ohio, Memphis and Ohio, Memphis and Charleston, Central Alabama, Nashville and Chattanooga, Mississippi Central, and some others have been to a greater or less extent stocked, equipped, repaired, and run by the officers of the Quartermaster's Department.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Missouri railroads, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad have to a great extent made their own repairs, and have been paid for their services to the Government. The roads have been guarded as far as possible during their repair and use by the troops of the United States.

The losses incident to the reverses which have in some cases attended our operations have been great. The department has lost about 400 cars and 11 engines, destroyed, captured, or shipwrecked east of the Blue Ridge. A number of engines and cars have been captured from the rebels, but probably not som many as have been lost and destroyed.

The cost of these railroad repairs has been very great, but the cost of providing and maintaining wagon trains to enable the Army to dispense with them would have been much greater.

The work has been done generally under the direction of officers of the Quartermaster's Department, or with its funds by officers specially assigned to this service. Colonel D. C. McCallum, aide- de-camp, and Brigadier General H. Haupt, U. S. Volunteers, superintendents of military railroads in the East; Captain James B. McPherson, U. S. Engineers, now Major General James B. McPherson, U. S. Volunteers, in Western Tennessee, and Mr. J. B. Anderson, in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky, under the direction of Colonel Thomas Swords, assistant-quartermaster-general, have been specially engaged in this work, which has required great ability and energy to meet the urgent demands attending the movements of troops and their supplies.

Under the law of January 31, 1862, chapter xv, authorizing the President to take military possession of all the railroads, a general order was issued which technically assumed this military possession and rendered the railroads subject to direct military authority.