Today in History:

17 Series III Volume IV- Serial 125 - Union Letters, Orders, Reports

Page 17 UNION AUTHORITIES.

I also desires that authority be given me to appoint the officers, most of which I should select from the old regiments now in the service.

My advance is opposite Decatur and at points on the river easily reached from the Alabama mountains, from which these men seek our lines. We have to feed them, and it is no more than right that they should enter the service. Most of them are anxious to do so, but prefer to go into an organization of their own.

An early response to this would be of great benefit to the service.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

G. M. DODGE,

Brigadier-General.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington City, January 9, 1864.

Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.:

SIR: The Secretary of War instructs me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th instant, inclosing a copy of a dispatch, No. 136, from the U. S.consul at Quebec, suggesting the expediency of vigilance upon our northern frontiers to prevent raids by desperate individuals in the interest of the rebels, and to inform you that copies of the same have been furnished to the General-in-Chief and Major-General Dix.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

ED. R. S. CANBY,

Brigadier-General and Assistant Adjutant-General.

WAR DEPT., PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL'S OFFICE, Washington, D. C., January 9, 1864.

General FULLER,

Adjutant-General of Illinois, Springfield:

Your dispatch of 8th received.* All matters relating to quotas in case of draft will be considered in time. In the meanwhile can"t you restore and keep up the enthusiasm for volunteering so as to keep Illinois more in advance of all calls than any other State?

I fear your speech in Chicago will check recruiting in other parts of the State, unless you can stir the people up again.

JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., January 9, 1864.

Colonel J. B. FRY:

Your dispatch of to-day is received. A semi-official dispatch from Washington the day I made my speech in Chicago that the draft would be postponed until the 1st of February had a bad effect upon recruiting. It was this and not my speech, and it was not until the effect of the dispatch was overcome that recruiting revived, and he who reports to you the contrary is either ignorant or malicious. I

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*Omitted; see substance of two dispatches embodied in letter of Fuller to Fry, January 10, p.18.

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2 R R-SERIES III, VOL IV


Page 17 UNION AUTHORITIES.