force has returned to upper East Tennessee. If so, it is of great importance that the Eighth and Fourteenth Regiments Virginia Cavalry should be left in this department and other troops sent here. Did you receive my telegram of yesterday?

SAM. JONES,

Major-General.

RICHMOND, October 12, 1863.

General SAM. JONES:

You can retain the two regiments of cavalry as requested in your dispatch. General Ransom was telegraphed yesterday to rejoin you without delay.

S. COOPER.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN VIRGINIA, Dublin, October 12, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel H. A. EDMUNDSON,
Commanding, &c.:

COLONEL: The major-general commanding directs me to express his pleasure at your recent successes near Cumberland Gap. He desires me to direct that you continue to press as close as possible in this direction, and, of course, if you can injure the trains of the enemy to do so.

Orders have been sent to Captain Martin, at Abingdon, to send such ammunition as you need, if he has it or can procure it.

Very respectfully,

W. B. MYERS,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

MISSION RIDGE, October 13, 1863.

General J. E. JOHNSTON,

Commanding, &c.:

MY DEAR JOE: Mr. D[avis] arrived on Friday, and goes to-day, it is said by his staff, on a visit to you.

He has decided to retain Bragg, though he must have been fully satisfied of his unpopularity and the decided opposition of the mass of the generals. I think Longstreet has done more injury to the general than all the others put together. You may understand how much influence with his troops a remark from a man of his standing would have to the effect that B. was not on the field and Lee would have been.

Pemberton consulted me about staying here in command of a corps. I told him that there was not a division in this army that would be willing to receive him; that I was sorry to be obliged to tell him so unpleasant a truth, but so it was. He told me B. wanted him to say. I told him that B. ought to understand the temper of his army better than I did, but that we did not always agree upon the point. He goes away, however.

I am in a strait. I think I ought to go, and at the same time I feel that if I left now, I would be looked upon as trying to add to