with your command for our immediate front, coming this way. You can then transact such business as you may desire at this place. Colonel Campbell has been directed to relieve your company at Columbus and order it to its regiment.

WM. D. WHIPPLE,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

ATHENS, ALA.,

March 6, 1864.

Brigadier General J. A. RAWLINS,

Chief of Staff:

The Tennessee is rising rapidly. A regiment of mounted infantry went to Florence to-day to come up with boats. I think by to-morrow or next day boats can get over the shoals. Troops are passing through Montgomery daily going to Atlanta.

G. M. DODGE,

Brigadier-General.

HEADQUARTERS CAVALRY CORPS,
Mount Sterling, Ky., March 6, 1864.

Brigadier General E. E. POTTER,

Chief of Staff, Knoxville, Tenn.:

SIR: The telegram of General Schofield is just received and answered in general terms.

In my answer I promised to go more into details, by mail, in order that the major-general commanding may be enabled to foreman approximate idea of the dilapidated condition of Colonel Wolford's as well as of the other division (still in Tennessee). I would respectfully call his attention to the "inspector's" report of Captain Gourraud, made at my request, and which I presume is on file in your officer. It will be there seen that the arms are in a sad condition and of every possible caliber, the equipments are incomplete and worn out, curry-combs and brushes a novelty, &c.; the demoralization and want of discipline complete.

This was the condition of the cavalry when I took command of it, on the 14th December, 1863. After I took command of it (and before, so far as I know) it was continually on the march and fighting, more or less, almost every day, and subsisting off the country until I left for Kentucky. These circumstances and the march to this place, the general commanding will readily perceive, were not calculated to increase their discipline or general moral tone. Now that they are here, it is necessary to reorganize them, make through inspections, make our requisitions for almost every item required by a cavalry soldier, draw horses, drill, and, more than all, discipline them. This will require time, and the general may depend upon my entire energy being devoted toward my recommendation that the other division be sent in, if possible, so that when the time shall arrive for cavalry to operate according to its legitimate purposes (which I do not think it had been doing for some time) it may start out with some reasonable hopes of accomplishing such expectations as may be entertained of it. As it is, the spring will find us with a portion, and a large portion too, of our cavalry altogether worn out and worthless.

Lest my telegram may miscarry, I will repeat that I believe it