Corps headquarters, one company cavalry.

Division headquarters, one company cavalry.

Brigade headquarters, 3 couriers to be furnished from the division company.

Corps quartermaster and commissary, 2 messengers each.

Division quartermaster and commissary, 2 messengers each.

Brigade quartermaster and commissary, 1 messenger each.

Regimental headquarters, 1 mounted orderly.

No others will be allowed, and all public horses and mules now in possession of forage officers, and all, whether public or private, in possession of quartermaster, commissary, ordnance sergeants and clerks, and other persons not allowed by this order, will be promptly turned in to the quartermaster's department.

Commanding officers will be responsible for the prompt execution of this order and all inspectors will report regularly on the subject, and every abuse must be followed by an impressment of the animal and charges against the offender.

By command of General Bragg:

GEORGE WM. BRENT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF TENNESSEE,

Numbers 292.
Missionary Ridge, November 10, 1863.

* * * * * * *

II. Cobb's battery will proceed without delay to Tyner's Station and report to Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis.

By command of General Bragg:

GEORGE WM. BRENT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

MERIDIAN, November 10, 1863.

Honorable J. A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: I have had the honor to receive your letter on the subject of abuses of the impressment law in this department.

Permit me to say most respectfully that I cannot admit that the censure which your letter contains is deserved by me, or that I am responsible, as you say I am, for the abuses to which you refer, because the new system for procuring military supplies which you adopted soon after my assignment to the immediate command of this department transfers all matters involving necessity to impress to officers over whom I have no control, but who act directly under the orders of the War Department or those of the heads of bureaus.

Believing that great oppression has been inflicted under cover of law and orders on this subject, I directed something more than a month ago that no impressment should be made by those under my command in this department without written authority from me, nor by those under Major-General Maury's command in the Department of the Gulf without written authority from him.

Most respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. E. JOHNSTON,

General.