Hazle Green on the 9th. Captured 25 prisoners and a number of horses and arms. The captain has returned to Irvine, and I have directed the commanding officer at Richmond to place him temporarily in command of the forces at Irvine, or to furnish a field officer commandant, should any question of rank arise between Moore and the officers of the Fourteenth Kentucky. I do not believe that Cluke has been re-enforced by anybody, and I want you to make the most advantageous use of your command in arresting rebels, armed and unarmed, within as large a circuit as you can with propriety control. You are authorized to employ mounted citizen scouts to aid you in carrying out his order. You must at the same time use your discretion as to how much of your force you can with safety detach for this duty.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Q. A. GILLMORE.

P. S.-Extracts from Special Orders, Numbers 36, of this date are herewith inclosed.* You will see that the object is to get six full companies together as promptly as possible (to go to Eastern Kentucky). The balance will be sent you at once. Lose no time in carrying this order into effect. Have you any means of getting your horses under cover?

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO,
Cincinnati, March 11, 1863.

Colonel L. B. PARSONS, Acting Quartermaster, Cincinnati, Ohio:

COLONEL: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 10th instant, received to-night, inclosing copies of two telegrams and a letter from Major-General Grant, requesting you to procure and send to him as speedily as practicable a supply of steamboat transportation for 20,000 men, a part of the steamers to be of the smaller class of boats.

I have received, within a few days, a request from Major-General Rosecrans to aid him in the matter of his supplies, by sending him ten million rations within the next three weeks, and I have already instructed the quartermaster's department here to take all the boats on the river for this transportation. Unless boats are returned here speedily from the Cumberland River, it will be impossible to fully carry out General Rosecrans' wishes, and, therefore, still move impossible to do so if a portion of the boats are sent to General Grant. It is possible, however, that when General Rosecrans learns the wants of the army at Vicksburg, he may be able to extend the time within which the subsistence may be furnished, or to diminish the quantity, and I have, therefore, telegraphed him upon the subject. I will notify you of his answer.

I desire to say, as stated to you in conversation to-day, that there can be no objection to your taking some of the smaller boats here and elsewhere on the river, if you will speedily replace them by larger boats of an aggregate equivalent capacity for freight.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. G. WRIGHT.

FRANKLIN, March 12, 1863.

Major-General ROSECRANS:

I have fallen back to this place from Rutherford Creek. Our cavalry penetrated to within 1 mile of Columbia. My best information is

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*Not found.

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