of your earnest appeal for cavalry, and asking him if he could spare any. Your request was for a regiment of cavalry to be sent to you from Georgia. My dispatch of 18th May pointed out to you the delay which a compliance would involve, and suggested that cavalry could be drawn from 'another part of your department," as had been previously indicated.

[XXXIII.] In no manner, by no act, by no language either of myself or of the Secretary of War, has your authority to draw troops from one portion of your department to another been withdrawn, restricted, or modified.

[XXXIV.] now that Vicksburg has disastrously fallen, this subject would present no pressing demand form attention, and its examination would have been postponed to a future period had not your dispatch of the 5th instant, with its persistent repetition of statements which I had informed you were erroneous, and without adducing a single fact to sustain them, induced me to terminate the matter at once by a review of all the facts. The original mistakes in your telegram of 12th June would gladly have been overlooked as accidental if acknowledged when pointed out. The perseverance with which they have been insisted on has not permitted me to pass them by as mere oversights, or, by refraining from an answer, to seem to admit the justice of the statements.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

JACKSON, MISS., July 15, 1863.

President DAVIS:

The enemy will not attack, but has intrenched; is evidently making a siege which we cannot resist. It would be madness to attack him. In the beginning it might have been done, but I thought then that want of water would compel him to attack us. It is reported by some of its officers who were here yesterday and by some gentlemen of Brandon that the Vicksburg garrison is diminishing rapidly. Incessant but slight cannonading kept up. Our loss in killed and wounded about 350. The remainder of the army under Grant at Vicksburg is beyond doubt on its way to this place.

J. E. Johnston.

JACKSON, MISS., July 16, 1863.

His Excellency President DAVIS:

The enemy being strongly re-enforced, and able when he pleases to cut us off, I shall abandon this place, which it is impossible for us to hold.

J. E. Johnston.

JACKSON, MISS. K, July 16, 1863.

Hist Excellency President DAVIS:

Your dispatch of yesterday* received. Lieutenant General Pemberton has been instructed to send an officer to Richmond with lists of

paroled prisoners. Reports indicate that few of them will re-enter the service very soon, as they are rapidly dispersing. Little firing yesterday; none this morning. I sent a body of cavalry to the enemy's rear afternoon of 14th, but have not heard from it.

J. E. Johnston.

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*Dated Richmond, July 14, 1863. See p. 202.

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