SUFFOLK, VA., April 30, 1863.

Major-General DIX:

Have had a party at Lake Drummond to-day. They went up the Jericho Canal and then moved up the Washington until they met the rebel pickets. Everything is looking well.

JOHN J. PECK,

Major-General.

FORT MONROE, April 30, 1863.

Major-General KEYES,

Commanding, Yorktown:

Has my letter gone to General Wise? Do you think it would be advisable for us to let the Confederate take charge of the insane asylum? They would be sending in and going out for supplies and it seems to me it would be a means of communication with the rebels. Douglass can come back as steward, if you think proper, under our superintendence.

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS FOURTH CORPS,
Yorktown, April 30, 1863.

Major-General DIX,

Commanding Department of Virginia, Fort Monroe:

Your letter to Governor Wise was sent from Williamsburg yesterday at 5 p. m.

Our picket line now embraces that town. The case of the insane asylum is a difficult matter in our hands or with the Confederates. If they have it, it would afford a standing pretext for visits from their emissaries, which evil must be balanced by our troubles with the institution. I would like to have you decide the question. Douglass I regard as a pretty bad rebel.

E. D. KEYES,

Major-General.

UNITED STATES FLAG-SHIP MINNESOTA,

Off Newport News, April 30, 1863.

Major General JOHN A. DIX, U. S. A.,

Commanding Seventh Army Corps, Fortress Monroe, Va.:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 25th is received. Whilst I have, by assuming authority, promptly complied with your requisitions for material of war for quartermasters' vessels, the reference of all your requisitions, especially those for general outfits for such vessels, to the Department was strictly obligatory upon me. Among these articles which, had I approved your requisition, I would have been obliged to have had purchased in Baltimore for you were sixty hammocks, which now cost &5.75 each. The officer who brought your requisitions in answer to my questions why the quartermaster did not make these purchases replied because they would not be allowed in his accounts. Could I properly do for that Department what it could not properly do for itself? The necessities of the war have obliged the Navy to use Fortress Monroe as a temporary depot. This has afforded the Army the opportunity

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