As their territory decreases they lose their manufactories of arms, and they will find it impossible to replace the heavy artillery and arms, of which they have recently lost such large quantities.

The situation may be summed up in a few quantities.

The National Government enjoys the highest credit, with abundant resources in money, in men, and in material. Its armies everywhere outnumber the rebel forces, who are all in retreat. Every rebel port is blockaded, besieged, or possessed by the national arms. The Confederacy is divided by the Mississippi, all whose fortresses are in our hands, and whose waters are patrolled by a hundred war steamers. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, all slave States, are entirely in our possession.

Four-fifths of Tennessee, one-half of Virginia, the coasts and sounds of North Carolina, one-half of Mississippi and Louisiana, one-fourth of Arkansas, part of Alabama, and the whole sea-coast of Georgia and South Carolina, with part of that of Florida, are held by our troops.

The only slave State in which we have not a firm foothold is Texas, and that has been left to itself because, while it has been practicable at any moment to secure it, it has not been though necessary to incur the expense of another detachment to occupy its shallow harbors.

The rebellion, with its slaves, is now crowded into the central and southern portion of Virginia, into North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, separated from Texas, whose able- bodied rebels are nearly all collected in these Gulf States, and which must fall with the rebel armies.

Already it is reported that the Government of Alabama and Georgia have issued proclamations forbidding the alarming immigration of blacks, driven into these territories to escape the advancing Union armies. North Carolina, discontented, having given 90,000 soldiers to the rebel armies, of whom they report 40,000 dead or wounded, begins to quarrel with Mr. Davis and threatens to exercise the right of secession carefully incorporated into the anarchical constitution of the rebel league.

M. C. MEIGS,

Quartermaster-General U. S. Army.

GENERAL ORDERS,
WAR. DEP., ADJT. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 258.
Washington, August 1, 1863.

All applications of quartermasters, commissaries, and paymasters for changes of stations, or to be exempted from the operation of orders of assignment to stations on the score of ill-health, will be hereafter taken as confessions of inability to perform official duty on account of physical incapacity, an equivalent to tenders of resignations. The officers concerned will, in ordinary course, be mustered out of service hereupon, as in case of accepted resignations.

By order of the Secretary of War:

E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

GENERAL ORDERS,
WAR DEPT., ADJT. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 259.
Washington, August 1, 1863.

Veterinary surgeons of cavalry, under the act of March 3, 1863, will be selected by the chief of the Cavalry Bureau upon the nomination