tion. I informed General Nelson of this last night, with the sources of information. Also warned by operator at Lebanon Junction, Ky., not to send dispatches to Cumberland Gap because enemy had cut wire at Mount Vernon, and were advancing in two bodies northerly from Somerset and London, latter under Bledsoe, force not known, toward Stanford and Lexington. People flying before them.

Respectfully,

W. H. SIDELL,

Major, Fifteenth U. S. Infantry, Actg. Asst. Adjt. General

NASHVILLE, August 18, 1862-12 midnight.

Colonel J. B. FRY:

One of your scouts, taken prisoner as a spy and sentenced to death about a month since and now escaped, overheard while prisoner in camp at McMinnville council between Morgan, Forrest, Starnes, and some other general. After much exultation over Murfreesborough fight their plan was arranged to war on General Buell's means of supplies incessantly and but little at a time; destroy a bridge and suffer it [to be] repaired, then destroy another, and so continuously at various points. They admitted to scant resources of Confederate army, and expected thus to necessitate such movements of Buell as would enable them to move in search of supplies for themselves. The informant, now one of Bingham's agents, was of Seventh Pennsylvania, not at Murfreesborough in the fight, but sent out as scout shortly after. He is an English Crimean soldier, and regarded by Bingham as trustworthy.

W. H. SIDELL,

Major, Fifteenth Infantry, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

NASHVILLE, August 18, 1862.

General BUELL, Huntsville:

GENERAL: I had the honor to receive your telegram last night. I will proceed to execute the instructions therein to the best of my ability.

Permit me to recommend to you that a visit on your part to this place of three days' duration only as being very necessary. There is no control here at all. Two regiments (the Twenty-seventh Kentucky and Ninth Indiana, which arrived last night) are now, at twenty minutes past 8 o'clock, seeking some one to report to, and trying to get teams to haul their baggage from the depot to camp. I am sure, from my experience when serving in your immediate presence, that your staff here do not do their duty with the promptness that would be pleasing to you. My answer was unnecessarily detained at Murfreesborough when en route for McMinnville by their dilatory proceedings. My ordnance officer was detained three hours in the ante-chamber of Major Sidell; my inspector-general two hours, and my adjutant-general failed to see him altogether, though they had gone up from Murfreesborough for that purpose.

The baggage of the division was detained at the depot and no effort of mine could procure its transportation, and in reply to my order to Captain Bingham to have it forwarded he sends me the copy of a letter from Major Sidell, said to have been written by your order, to the effect that Captain Bingham was not under my orders. At my request Gen-