HEADQUARTERS THIRTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Milliken's Bend, April 1, 1863.

Major General U. S. GRANT,
Commanding Department of the Tennessee:

GENERAL: I have just returned from Richmond, [La.,] and find your order instructing me to furnish a daily detail of 2,000 men. Of course, the detail will be furnished, but I think it probable that you would not have ordered it with a fuller knowledge of my operations. I am forwarding the regiments of the NINTH DIVISION to Richmond as fast as they can be crossed over Roundaway Bayou in small crafts. By to-morrow evening I expect to have a floating bridge completed, which will hasten the passage of the troops to that place, and hope, by nightfall of the same day, to have pushed forward two regiments of infantry and a strong detachment of cavalry 4 miles on the road toward New Carthage, and next day, unless the road be found impracticable, to Bayou Vidal, within a mile or two of Carthage.

A cavalry reconnaissance, made to-day by a small cavalry party that swam their horses over the bayou at Richmond, found the road practicable about half the distance from that place to Carthage. The same party captured the enemy's mail and its carrier, going from Vicksburg, and discovered a detachment of 80 or 100 of the enemy. The prospect so far is quite encouraging, perhaps more so than that afforded by the Duckport enterprise, and I hope you will find it consistent with your general views to leave me to prosecute my present undertaking with all the resources at my disposal. I am now repairing the roads and bridges between here and Richmond, a distance of 12 miles, including a floating bridge of 200 feet in length, and will soon commence repairing the road from that place to Carthage, and constructing barges to ply between the same places, unless stopped by unknown obstacles.

I would be pleased to accompany you from this camp to Richmond. Thus you might judge for yourself.

Your obedient servant,

JOHN A. McClernand.

HEADQUARTERS SEVENTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Lake Providence, La., April 1, 1863.

Major-General GRANT, Comdg. Department of the Tennessee:

GENERAL: From information just received from a man by the name of Hawkins, a Northern man by birth, I learn the following:

Generals [S.] Price and [T. C.] Hindman were in Monroe one week ago last Sunday, Hindman on his way to Vicksburg to attend a court-martial for the trial of [M.] Lovell for the surrender of New Orleans, and Price on his way to Little Rock to organize his forces for the invasion of Missouri, determined to do it or perish in the attempt.

Rebels nearly starved out at Vicksburg and Port Hudson; only two weeks' supply on hand. Expectation pretty general that they will have to evacuate.

The Indianola was raised, guns taken off and sent to Alexandria, on Red River. Boat taken up the Big Black about a day before Admiral Farragut's arrival. Hull comparatively uninjured, upper works having been blown off by explosion. Ram Queen of the WEST up Red River with the Webb. A battery of two 11-inch guns at the junction of the Washita and Big Boeuf Rivers. General depression among the people. Governor Moore, of Louisiana, issued an order calling out all the mili-