marching and yet are good soldiers for moderate labor. Great labor might thus be done and the brigade soon got ready. Recruiting is very slow. I also want some one appointed to pay the advance and bounty to my recruits. Who is to do it? I am greatly embarrassed from not being able to meet these difficulties. Please inform me immediately.

A. W. ELLET,

Brigadier-General.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., December 21, 1862.

Honorable E. M. STANTON:

It is rumored by telegraph that you are about to resign your position in the Cabinet. If you have formed such a determination I trust you will reconsider it at once. I believe that your duty to your country and the best interests of the nation require you to retain your position, and I earnestly hope you will do so.

O. P. MORTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Washington, December 21, 1862.

Brigadier General A. W. ELLET,

Saint Louis, Mo.:

The Secretary of War authorizes you to recruit from convalescents in hospital. General Curtis will muster out such as enlist in your brigade. An officer will be sent immediately to pay bounty, & c.

H. W. HALLECK,

General-in-Chief.

GENERAL ORDERS, WAR DEPT., ADJT. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 212.
Washington, December 23, 1862.

I. Hereafter the chiefs of the respective bureaus in the War Department will designate the officers to be assigned as adjutant-general, quartermaster, commissary of subsistence, and inspector-general for each army corps, in accordance with section 10 of the act approved July 17, 1862. These officers will, when once assigned, remain permanently attached to their respective corps without regard to the movement of corps commanders, unless otherwise assigned by the President.

II. The aides-de-camp authorized for corps commanders by the act quoted above will be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the recommendation of the corps commanders. They may accompany the general for whom they were appointed in his change of duties or station; but when he is assigned to a command inferior to an army corps, their appointments as aides-de-camp for a corps commander will be revoked, and they will fall back upon the commission previously held.

III. The assistant adjutants-general of divisions and brigades will hereafter remain permanently attached to the commands to which once assigned, and will not be considered as part of the personal staff of the general on whose recommendation they were appointed.

All assistant adjutants-general of volunteers now off duty, or not on their appropriate duty with some corps, division, or brigade of volunteers, will immediately report their names and address to this office that they may be assigned to duty.