the duties upon which you have recently been engaged, visiting Memphis and any other point at which you may have unfinished business. Until an officer has been designated to take charge of the office in this city, you will also receive and take charge of any business in relation to the Division of West Mississippi that may be sent to that office.

He desire that you will immediately call upon the inspectors in the Departments of Arkansas and the Gulf, and at the posts on the Mississippi River, embraced in the operation of War Department Special Orders, Numbers 171, of the 7th instant, for such reports as may be necessary to exhibit the present actual condition of the troops in this command. In order to gain time these calls will be made direct, but duplicates of your instructions will be sent to the commander on whose staff the inspector is serving. The special objects to which your attention will be directed are the organization equipment, and efficiency of the cavalry and artillery forces, the state and efficiency of the departments of supply, and the transport service on land and water. Special inspections of such branches of the service as may appear to require it will be made by officers selected for that purpose.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN F. S. GRAY,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DETACH. SIXTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Numbers 43.
Vicksburg, Miss., May 30, 1864.

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IV. Brigadier General J. A. Mower is hereby relieved from the command of the Third Division, Sixteenth Army Corps.

Colonel David Moore, Twenty-first Missouri Volunteer Infantry, senior officer of the division, will at once assume command of the Third Division Sixteenth Army Corps. All reports, returns and official papers pertaining to the Third Division, Sixteenth Army Corps, will hereafter be transmitted direct to these headquarters. In making this change the general commanding desires to express his high appreciation of the military ability of Brigadier General J. A. Mower, and of the manner in which he has executed the trust confined to him, and tenders to him his earnest and heartfelt thanks for his ready co-operation during the late expedition on Red River.

By order of Brigadier General A. J. Smith:

J. HOUGH,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. MIL. DIV. OF WEST MISSISSIPPI. Numbers 28.
Vicksburg, Miss., May 30, 1864

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2. To facilitate the movement of artillery and cavalry, barges will be fitted up for the transportation of the horse batteries and of cavalry regiments to be towed by the transports carrying troops of those arms. Whenever it is practicable to avoid it the troops will not be separated from their guns and horses, and the arrangements for embarking and disembarking will be made as perfect as possible.