officers of the Junior Reserve class upon attaining the age of eighteen. I only ask authority to retain such of these junior officers as prove especially efficient and valuable with the reserves. Probably not more than twenty of such officers would be thus retained in Virginia. Their experience and peculiar fitness give efficiency to whole battalions of reserves, and cannot be replaced. Their enlistment as privates in the Regular Army would be no appreciable addition to its strength.

I cannot close this communication without asking attention to the views I have often urged before in favor of changing the orders which hold the reserves to regular field service so as to appropriate them to the business of conscription and to local defense and special service. Composed as the reserves are of old men and boys (the one class with declining and enfeebled, the other with immature, physical powers), it is vain to expect they can endure the hardships of continuous field service, and experience shows that a short term of such service disorganizes them. The Senior Reserves are especially unfit for such service. They are generally important business men at home, having estates, families, and numerous dependents. They are the valuable producers of the country. their withdrawal from home seriously lessens production, defeats every arrangements for the proper supply of soldiers' families, dissatisfies their sons in the army, as well as all soldiers having unprovided families, and is the potent cause of much of the demoralization and desertion among the regular forces. They generally have the incis of age, cannot stand either drilling or marching, are always deeply discontented, and sometimes mutinous on account of the grievous sacrifices which a separation from their homes involves. They are, for all these causes, the least effective troops, and when tried at hard service in the field under our most experienced and judicious commanders, they melt away like frost-work under the sun. Of four battalions tried in the trenches before Richmond, four-fifths of the men disappeared in three months by reason of death, disease, and desertion. Moreover, the business of conscription cannot be properly done, the country can never be cleared of the banded deserters who now prowl over it, until the reserve forces are allowed to be used for the purpose.

Very respectfully, general, your obedient servant,

J. L. KEMPER,

Major-General.

[Indorsement.]

WAR DEPARTMENT,

March 22, 1865.

To Adjutant-General for consideration and remarks.

By command of the Secretary of War:

SAML. W. MELTON,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

[Inclosure.]

I. Men of the reserve class will not be allowed to enroll themselves in companies for local defense and special service unless found by the medical boards to be unfit for field service, and men of the reserve class, fit for field service and not specially detailed, who belong to such companies, will be forthwith transferred therefrom to the reserve forces. Paragraph III, General Orders, No. 33, series of 1864, is revoked.

II. Youths under eighteen years of age are forbidden to be received into companies in the regular service, unless assigned thereto by order of the generals of reserves.