PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington, D. C., June 11, 1863.

Captain GEORGE EYSTER,

Provost-Marshal Sixteenth Dist. of Pa., Chambersburg, Pa.:

Yours of 8th instant received. I hope you have required Mr. Ickes to proceed with the enrollment. He should not be permitted to resign uncles you think he is too much intimidated to execute the duty. If it was necessary, both he and the enrolling officer for Saint Clair should have been supported by troops from Carlisle.

Do not allow your officers to be obstructed or driven off. Hire special guards (citizens) if necessary. If these are not strong enough, employ military force, and when you use this do it with effect.

Abuse from women and the like is to be expected and is not generally serious. If, however, they should assault or seriously obstruct the enrolling officers, they must be arrested.

JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General.

CHAMBERSBURG, June 11, 1863.

Colonel JAMES B. FRY:

Your dispatch received. Bedford County continues disturbed. An enroller shot yesterday. Assailant not know. Very little open resistance. Demonstrations confined to this assassination and act of incendiarism intended to intimidate. An exhibition of force could do little besides quiet public apprehension. I have permitted resignations only because I believed officers effectually intimidated. I shall direct the employment of special citizen guards.

GEORGE EYSTER,

Provost-Marshal Sixteenth District.

WASHINGTON CITY, June 11, 1863.

His Excellency EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

DEAR SIR: You have been so kind to grant me exemption from draft for the members of the Benediction order (November 28, 1862), for which I always will be grateful to you.

The new conscription law makes it doubtful whether that grant holds good yet, trough I believed it would because it came from the highest authority in the Union and was given in general terms. But as the reasons from which I petitioned in November for exemption are as strong now as they have been at that time, and, indeed, in several regards more forcible, it is my duty again to represent my situation and to beg for relief. The new law presses harder on the Catholic clergy in general than on the clergymen of other denominations, because the Catholic clergymen are not married, and the other ones very generally are married.

But the law presses heavier yet on the religious orders, and particularly on the Benediction order, so that many Catholics consider it as a measure in a special manner hostile to the religious orders. Howsoever that may be, I myself do not blame the Government for