CHAP.XII.] CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. - CONFEDERATE.

You can have them returned quietly, so as to avoid any unnecessary excitement about the matter.

Trusting and believing that you will at once comply with this request, I am, very respectfully, yours,

THO. B. MONROE, Jr., Secretary of State.

MEMPHIS, July 20,1861.

HonorableL.P. WALKER, Secretary of War:

SIR: On receipt of my instructions on the subject of the transfer of the Tennessee troops I opened a correspondence with Governor Harris, asking when he would be ready to make the transfer. He informed me he must have some further correspondence with the President before he was prepared to act. Since them I have heard he will be in the city on Monday next for the purpose of consummating the transfer.

In regard to the positions of the officers of Tennessee Army now commanidng, I beg leave to suggest that I think better use could be made of General Pillow as a major-general than as a brigadier, and I think the interests of the service would be greatly promoted by the appointment of General Cheatham to the office of brigadier-general.

In regard to the staff, I beg leave to say that I have examined carefully the organization of the medical department and the manner in which it was constituted. It is agreed on all hands as the best arranged and appointed part of their army. The selections have been made with great care by a medical board, composed of the most eminent surgeons in the State, after examination, and a large number of applicants rejected. Those who have been appointed have been taken from different parts of the State, many of them the family physicians of the men composing the regiments. I respectfully submit whether it would be practicable for the Department to do better than appoint them as they stand. All the regiments are provided with a surgeon and an assistant surgeon. Besides these, the State appointed a surgeon-general and two medical directors, all of whom are eminent surgeons, and might be appointed as medical directors to accompany and provide for the different parts of the Tennessee Army. I desire particularly that Dr. Joe C. Newman, one of these three, be appointed medical director and purveyor of my department. He is a gentleman of large experience, of maturity of years and character, and well fitted for the duties of such an office. A young man has reported himself as a surgeon of the army to me-a Dr. Potts-who is quite too young to be intrusted with such a grave responsibility.

As to the other staff appointments of that army, the quartermasters and commissaries, I have reason to believe they might be in many cases much improved. If it should be desired by the Department, I could aid it in ascertaining who might be retained with advantage and who dropped.

We need at once an officer to act as post quartermaster at this place. As it will be the place from which supplies must be distributed not only to my own command, but that of General Hardee also, it is of the first importance that the person in that office should be a business man of the highest personal and commercial character. Such a man I have taken pains to find, and now recommend to you. It is Mr. D.A. Shepherd. He is well situated in business, and seeks no office. I have