The necessary supplies will be furnished by the respective departments upon requisitions approved by you.

I have the honor, &c.,

C. W. FOSTER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

(Copy to Lieutenant Colonel L. Sitgreaves, mustering and disturbing officers, Madison, Wis.)

[ABOUT AUGUST, 1863.]

Sketch of the campaign and review of the military situation, at the request of the Secretary of State, Honorable William H. Seward, by M. C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General, U. S. Army.

As the heats of advancing summer, following the accomplishment of great results, appear likely to bring a period of comparative inaction, it appears a fitting time for a general review of the military situation.

Twice during the year which has passed has the attempt been made by the rebels to transfer the seat of active military operations to the soil of free and loyal States.

After the battles of August, 1862, which resulted, not without some loss to the loyal forces, in the reunion of the corps of the Army of the Potomac in front of Washington, the rebel army for the first time crossed the Potomac, hoping for a rising of the people of Maryland.

The Army of the Potomac advanced to the encounter strengthened by fresh, though comparatively raw, troops, and by some detachments called in for the emergency. They met the rebel army at South Mountain and at Crampton's Gap, and finally concentrating in rear of Sharpsburg, the two armies fought a pitched battle on the banks of the Antietam and Potomac. The contest was very bloody and well sustained on both sides, for men of the same race directed the armies, whose rank and file were of the same blood and were nearly matched in numbers.

The result was decisive of the fate of the invasion. The rebel army, shattered, though not destroyed, abandoned its projects of offense and retired to the soil of Virginia. It gained few recruits and found little sympathy in Maryland, while its losses were large.

While these events transpired on the Potomac, the Western armies of the insurgents attempted to recover possession of Tennessee and to establish themselves in Kentucky. By a bold and skillful movement, turning the left flank of General Buell, they advanced from Chattanooga and Southeastern Tennessee upon Cincinnati and Louisville, calling upon their friends in the Border States to join them. They got few recruits. The outpouring of the formers of Ohio checked the demonstration upon Cincinnati, and their two columns concentrating at Per Buell, who, following Bragg, had outmarched their main army and succeeded in reaching Louisville in time to turn him eastward.

After the battle of Perryville, General Bragg returned through a barren country with much suffering and loss, crossed the Cumberland Mountains into East Tennessee, and thence, moving westward, took up a position at Murfreesborough, where he fortified himself and proceeded to reorganize and recruit his army.