CITY POINT, VA., July 19, 1864.

Major General H. W. HALLECK,

Chief of Staff:

The establishment of recruiting rendezvous at Fortress Monroe, besides being expensive, has called for two officers who cannot be spared from the field, and will not add a man to the service. Every negro that comes in is now taken into the service, the best specimens physically being enlisted in companies already organized, and the others are employed as laborers in some of the departments or sent north. I will add also that every expedition going out brings back all the negroes they can find.

U. S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,

No. 62. City Point, Va., July 19, 1864.

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III. All troops of the Nineteenth Army Corps arriving at this point will report to Major General B. F. Butler, commanding Department of Virginia and North Carolina, at Bermuda Hundred, for orders.

IV. Subject to the approval of the President, Major General W. F. Smith is hereby relieved from the command of the Eighteenth Army Corps and will proceed to New York City and await further orders. His personal staff will accompany him. The corps staff of the Eighteenth Army Corps will report to Brigadier General J. H. Martindale, temporarily commanding, for duty.

By command of Lieutenant-General Grant:

E. S. PARKER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, OFFICE OF PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL,
July 19, 1864.

Major-General HUMPHREYS,

Chief of Staff:

GENERAL: A deserter has just been forwarded from the headquarters of the Fifth Army Corps belonging t the Sixty-fourth Georgia Regiment, Wright's brigade, Anderson's division, A. P. Hill's corps. He left the trenches about 6 o'clock this a. m., at which time his brigade was in the same position they have been lying in for the past week. They are on the left of Hill's corps, and across the Jerusalem plank road. They on the left of Hill's corps, and across the Jerusalem plank road. They are to be relieved to-night by Finegan's brigade, which is now in reserve to the rear of Mahone's division. Informant thinks all of Hill's corps is still in our front, and none of it has moved, to his knowledge. Is little acquainted with the army of Northern Virginia, having been with it but a few weeks.

Very respectfully,

GEORGE H. SHARPE,

Colonel, &c.