BRIDGEPORT, December 29, 1864

Captain FORD,

Acting Assistant Adjutant-General:

I have 150 men at work on the fortifications of this place. I am in want of an engineer officer to take charge of the works; can one be ordered?

A. O. MILLINGTON,

Colonel, Commanding Post.

HDQRS. FIRST Brigadier, FOURTH DIV., 23rd ARMY CORPS,
Cumberland Gap, December 29, 1864

Brigadier-General AMMEN,

Commanding Fourth Division, Twenty-third Army Corps:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of 21st instant. I have complied with the instructions therein contained, relative to prisoners, by sending to Knoxville under guard all those here. Some of them, Isaac Litera and Jesse F. McNeal, are notoriously bad characters, having been engaged in deliberate murders, not only of Union soldiers but of women; they certainly do not merit the treatment they are receiving, i.e., that of Confederate prisoners, but death. I had counted largely upon the effect their execution here would have produced; and effect, I feel sure, which would have been most happy. McNeal has always been a most desperate character, and many witnesses to his fiendish acts are now living at this place. Unfortunately the matter of killing them without making prisoners of them is next to impossible, as they have to be tracked to their holes before they can be seen at all. Had I been allowed to have shot them before the command it would have struck a terror to the hearts of such of their fraternity as still at large as would have compelled them to the pursuance of a different course. I am well satisfied, however, with the fact of having since my arrival at this post captured two and shot one of the Litterals, and of having captured a number of other men of whom the whole of this section of the country stands in awe. I send to-morrow, with the other prisoners, a man by name William Ball, who has, it seems, been before arrested and on various charges, but who has, through some means or other, been allowed to go at liberty. My reason for arresting him was that an escaped prisoner of ours, while standing near a fire up Virginia Valley, surrounded by Litteral's party, saw Mr. Ball ride up and state that one of our wagon trains was to leave the Gap next day, and advised them to be on the watch so as to capture it. This I got from the man himself who heard the conversation. Mr. Ball has, I think, some claim against the United States, now before the courts in Knoxville, for damages, which claim, if paid, will be so much money out of the pocket of the Government put into that of an arrant rebel. I trust he may be dealt with as the nature of his case merits.

Two men, Franklin Woodward and Cimuel M. Chappell, of Thirty-fourth Kentucky Infantry, who were tried by court-martial, were taken away by Colonel Dillard before their sentences were promulgated. They are sentenced as explained in General Orders, Nos. 27 and 28, November 29, and December 14, from headquarters District of East Tennessee. They are now with their regiments. Another man who I send, and by name John Stevens, Battery M, First Michigan Light Artillery is sentenced as explained in General Orders, Numbers 27, above referred to. I