the Department with a promptness, efficiency, and cheerfulness which do honor to the patriotism of their managers.

Upon the railroads within the sphere of active hostilities the warcrushing severit- as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and the Missouri railroads - have with great energy repaired their bridges, restored their tracks, and replaced their rolling-stock at their own expense. Others, abandoned by their disloyal owners and managers, have been taken possession of, and repaired, stocked, and managed by the Quartermaster's Department. These works have involved great expenditures; but they were indispensable to the supply of the Army, and less costly than the preparation, if that had been possible, of any other sufficient means of transportation.

The Quartermaster's Department constructed during the fiscal year a fleet of iron-clad gun-boats and of steam rams, which was officered and manned by the Navy Department and the War Department conjointly, and which has proved most efficient as an aid in the military operations which restored to the Government the control over the greater part of the Western rivers. Under the law of 16th of July last the gun-boat fleet has been entirely transferred to the Navy Department. The fleet of steam rams still remains in charge of this Department.

Your attention is invited to the increase of the force in the Engineer, Ordnance, and Quartermaster's Departments, proposed by a bill which passed the House of Representatives on the 9th of July last, and which is among the unfinished business of the last session. It is believed that if it becomes a law the efficiency and usefulness of these several important departments of the Army will be increased. The necessity of providing more room for the records and examining officers of the Quartermaster's Bureau, by the extension of Winder's Building, is also respectfully suggested to your attention.

The Commissary of Subsistence reports that the armies throughout our extensive territory have been supplied with good and wholesome subsistence - generally by advertisement for bids in the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Baltimore, Saint Louis, and San Francisco. Fresh beef has generally been supplied to our armies in the field on the hoof, and in larger proportion of the ration to marching columns, to lessen, as far as possible, the quantity of transportation required. The troops on the coast of the Carolinas and at the Gulf posts, including New Orleans, have received their fresh beef by shipment from New York. It is hoped that during the coming year it may be procured from Texas.

In addition to the troops, subsistence has been furnished to all political prisoners and prisoners of war, to a large number of contrabands, and to the suffering Union inhabitants found in the march of our armies in the Confederate States. In a late report of the General-in-Chief to this Department it is said that no armies of the world are so well supplied as the armies of the United States.

The Ordnance Bureau, as appears from the report of its chief,* has displayed a vigor and activity unsurpassed by any other Department. Notwithstanding the extraordinary demand occasioned by the new levies and enormous loss of arms by the casualties of war, and in some instances by the misconduct of officers and men, this Bureau has supplied every call, and has been able to arm over 400,000 new

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* See p. 849.

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