awaiting trial. Sixty have been arrested in Searcy County and 47 in Izard. The citizens have permitted them to volunteer. A portion sent to McCulloch, others to Colonel Borland, commanding at Pocahontas. The authorities of Arkansas are asked to approve this course. We decline, unless sanctioned by yourself or the President. If sent to the army at all, our opinion is they should go south.

H. M. RECTOR,

Governor and President.

RICHMOND, VA., December 3, 1861.

Honorable W. P. HARRIS,

Confederate States Congress:

MY DEAR SIR: Language was said by Talleyrand to be useful for the concealment of one's thoughts; but in our day it fails to communicate any thought. If it had been otherwise, the complaint in relation to General Price of which you speak could not have been made. The Commissioners of Missouri were informed that when that State offered troops they would be organized according to our military laws and generals would be appointed for brigades and division. Until then I have no power to appoint generals for those troops. The same statement, substantially, was made to the members of Congress from Missouri who called on me yesterday. They were also informed that, from conversation with informed persons and from correspondence now on file in the War Department, I was convinced that it was needful to the public interest that a general should be sent to the Arkansas and Missouri Division who had not been connected with any of the troops on that line of operations; and to the statement that the Missouri troops would not fully enlist under any one except General Price, I asked if they required their general to be put in command of the troops of Arkansas, of Texas, and of other Southern States. To bring these different forces into harmonious co-operation is a necessity. I have sought to effect it by selecting General Heth to command them in combination. If it is designed, by calling Heth a West Point Cadet, merely to object to his education in the science of war, it may pass for what it is worth; but if it be intended to assert that he is without experience, his years of active and distinguished service on the frontier of Missouri and the territory west of it will, to those who examine before they censure, be a sufficient answer. The Federal forces are not hereafter, as heretofore, to be commanded by path-finders and holiday soldiers, but by men of military education and experience in war. The concept is therefore to be on a scale of very different proportions than that of the partisan warfare witnessed during the past summer and fall. I have long since learned to bear hasty censure, in the hope that justice, if tardy, is sure; and in any event to find consolation in the assurance that all my ends have been my country's.

With high respect,

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

LITTLE ROCK, December 4, 1861.

Honorable J. P. BENJAMIN, Secretary of War:

Your dispatch of November 30 has been received. It is impossible to explain by telegraph.* I ask leave to go to Richmond at once for

*See Series I, Vol. III, p. 743.