not better supplied with arms or fortified by climate, and had not at its commencement a larger body of trained soldiers than that which only a few years since our cousins of Great Britain put down, though separated from their chief seat of power by two continents and half the ocean. This lies at our doors, assailable along a frontier by sea and land of 3,000 miles, everywhere under our control.

Great Britain looked not at the color of the recruit; she accepted the aid of every offered arm and was successful. Courage, resolution, and wisdom will accomplish in the West what they did in the East.

Our people are being slowly schooled to arms, and the war, thus far singularly free from the outrage which in other countries has attended civil commotions, begins at length, by its inevitable destruction of property and life, to bear upon the territory we occupy with a portion of the fearful weight necessary to crush rebellion.

The labor of the colored man support the rebel soldier, enables him to leave his plantation to meet our armies, builds his fortifications, cooks his food, and sometimes aids him on picket by rare skill with the rifle.

In all these modes it is available to assist our Army, and it is probable that there will be less outrage, less loss of life, be freeinif put under strict military control, than if left to learn slowly that war has removed the white men who have heretofore held them in check, and to yield at last to the temptation to insurrection and massacre.

Had the Government been prepared to meet promptly with the overwhelming force which the loyal States could have supplied, the first rebel armies, the rebellion might have been crushed without a long and desolating war, and without disturbance of the relations between the two races in the South.

That time is past. The destruction of the rebel armies and the gradual occupation of the country by fortifying and garrisoning its chief strategic and commercial points are the oo the war.

In this work the loyal inhabitants of the country, white or black, must be compelled to assist, and it is impossible to cast aside the millions of recruits who will offer themselves for the work, accustomed to the climate, inured to labor, acquainted with the country, and animated by the strong desire not merely for political but for personal liberty.

Respectfully submitted.

M. C. MEIGS,

Quartermaster-General.

List of papers accompanying the report of the Quartermaster- General.

Numbers 1. -Statement of horses, mules, wagons, ambulances, &c., purchased during the fiscal year 1862 and to September 30, 1862.

Numbers 2. - Issued from the manufacturing and purchasing depots, and by States during the fiscal year 1861-62, and amount on hand June 30, 1862.

Numbers 3. - Copy of letter from General Totten to Lieutenant- General Scott on the need of a fleet of gun-boats.

Numbers 4.- Copy of contract for gun-boats on the Western rivers.