opinion above, the following was also rendered by Colonel Holt, Judge-Advocate-General of the Army.

In the case of clerks of naval or military commanders:

Opinion.-I see no sufficient reason for treating the clerks of naval or military commanders as in the military service within the meaning of the enrolling act.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HEADQUARTERS SIXTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Numbers 318.
Memphis, Tenn., December 12, 1863.

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X. Brigadier General N. B. Buford, U. S. Volunteers, commanding District of Eastern Arkansas, Helena, Ark., is hereby authorized to raise companies from Union refugees, to be organized as infantry and mounted from captured horses and mules. So soon as a sufficient number of companies are mustered into the service of the United States a battalion or regimental organization will be authorized.

The recruiting examination and organization of the recruits will conform to Revised Regulations and the orders of the War Department. Rations will be issued to recruits. Ordnance and ordnance stores, clothing, camp and garrison equipage, and quartermaster's stores will be issued to companies as fast as filled to the maximum and mustered into the service of the United States.

Officers, enlisted men, or citizens proposed for positions in these companies will, before being mustered into the service of the United States, be ordered to appear before the military commission in session in Memphis, Tenn., of which Brigadier General W. R. Montgomery is president, for an examination as to their qualifications, mental, moral, and physical, and their fitness, in a military point of view, for commissions in the Army of the United States. If the report of the Board be favorable, persons so reported will be ordered to be mustered into service. Companies must be mustered into service in alphabetical order. All recruits raised may therefore be assigned to incomplete companies.

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By order of Major General S. A. Hurlbut:

T. H. HARRIS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, EXECUTIVE DEPT., Concord, December 12, 1863.

Colonel JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General, Washington, D. C.:

MY DEAR SIR: In answer to your telegram of yesterday you will allow me to say, in the first place, that I did send the telegram to which you refer to Secretary Stanton. I did so for the reason that I wanted to raise the men called for by the President's last proclamation without any draft. What I intended to convey by my dispatch was simply this, that in our First Congressional District there is and has been great cause of complaint with Captain Godfrey, provost-marshal, so much so that General Hinks desired me to ask the Department to detail a surgeon from the Army that he might establish