HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA,
January 11, 1864.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS:

Mr. PRESIDENT: I inclose a dispatch* received from General Early. I recommend that an intelligent scout be sent to Yorktown to verify the report of the landing of provisions, &c., and that a constant watch be kept in that quarter. There may be some foundation for the report, or it may have originated in General Butler's proposition for volunteers to liberate the prisoners in Richmond. I have recommended that these prisoners be all sent fair into the interior. I have two brigades of cavalry in Carolina, under General Hampton, who will be in position to strike such an expedition in flank, and can send two brigades of infantry within reach of Richmond if there is any truth in the report.

I am, with great respect, your obedient servant,

R. E. LEE,

General.

HEADQUARTERS VALLEY DISTRICT,
January 11, 1864.

General R. E. LEE:

GENERAL: During the time that I have been in the valley I have had ample opportunity of judging of the efficiency and usefulness of the many irregular bodies of troops which occupy this country and known as partisans, &c., and am prompted by no other feeling than a desire to serve my country to inform you that they are a nuisance and an evil to the service. Without discipline, order, or organization, they roam broadcast over the country, a band of thieves, stealing, pillaging, plundering, and doing every manner of mischief and crime. They are a terror to the citizens and an injury to the cause. They never fight; can't be made to fight. Their leaders are generally brave, but few of the men are good soldiers, and have engaged in this business for the sake of gain. The effect upon the service is bad, and I think, if possible, it should be corrected. It is bad because:

First. It keeps men out of the service whose bayonet or saber should be counted on the field of battle when the life or death of our country is the issue.

Second. They cause great dissatisfaction in the ranks from the fact that these irregular troops are allowed so much latitude, so many privileges. They sleep in houses and turn out in the cold only when it is announced by their chief that they are to go upon a plundering expedition.

Third. It renders other troops dissatisfied; hence encourages desertion.

It is almost impossible for one to manage the different companies of my brigade that are from Loundon, Fauquier, Fairtax, &c., the region occupied by Mosby. They see these men living at their ease and enjoying the comforts of home, allowed to possess all that they capture, and their duties mere pastime pleasures compared with their own arduous ones; and it is a natural consequence in the nature of man that he should become dissatisfied under these circumstances. Patriotism fails in a long and tedious war like this to

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* Not found.

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