those employed in the great depots in which the clothing, transportation, horses, forage, and other supplies are provided are no less essential to success, and involve no less labor and responsibility than those of the officers who accompany the troops on their marches and are charged with the care and transportation of all the material essential to their health and efficiency.

The Quartermaster's Department is charged with the duty of providing the means of transportation by land and water for all the troops and all the material of war. It furnishes the horses for artillery and cavalry and for the trains; supplies tents, camp and garrison equipage, forage, lumber, and all materials for camps; builds barracks, hospitals, wagons, ambulances; provides harness, except for artillery and cavalry horses; builds or charters ships and steamers, docks and wharves; constructs or repairs roads, bridges, and railroads; clothes the Army; and is charged generally with the payment of all expenses attending military operations which are not expressly assigned by law or regulation to some other department.

These duties have been efficiently performed during the fiscal year. With a great number of news and inexperienced officers, necessarily appointed, there have of course been errors, irregularities, and waste. But on the whole the Army has been well provided for, and its operations hency or failure on the part of the officers of this department to provide the means of movement.

The Army of the Unions has been slow to learn the inevitable necessities of success. It was long before, in its tenderness for the rights of property, it began to avail itself fully of the resources of the country in which it operated. The horse, hay, and grain of the rebellious States were spared by our troops, though freely at the service of the insurgents. The Government at enormous expense brought these materials of war, as available for its use and as essential to its success as ammunition and arms, from the extreme Northeastern and Northwestern States to the rich valley of the Shenandoah.

Thought be experience, in the later movements the armies have begun to live, to some extent, upon the country in which they move; thus, though not making was support war entirely, in some degree lightening the burden upon the Treasury, and diminishing the enormous consumption necessary to support the trains employed in transporting forage and provisions from the loyal States.

The introduction of the portable mills described in a former part of this report would still further reduce the expense and difficulty of supporting the Army in many districts.

The instructions of this department to its officers, under the President's order to the armies to make use of the products of the country in which they operate, are to give certificates of the kind and quantity of all such supplies taken for the use of the Army, payable at once, if known to be property of loyal men, and if not of loyal persons, then payable after the suppression of the rebellion on proof that the owner has not given aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States after the date of the receipt. All property thus taken the officers are instructed to take up upon their returns, and to account for as other property purchased and issued is accounted for.

Considering the extent of the operations carried on by the Army, on a fro miles, from Nor and Arkansas, and even to New Mexico and Arizona, with expeditions of from 10,000 to 20,000 men operating at points on a coast of 2,000 miles, from the Chesapeake to New Orleans, it is a matter of just pride that the troops of the Union have been well supplied at every point. for a short time