Lieutenant Logan Tompkins, Twenty-first Missouri Infantry Volunteers, aide-de-camp.

Maj. W. D. Green, assistant adjutant-general.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ewing, assistant inspector-general.

Lieutenant Colonel J. Condit Smith, chief quartermaster.

Captain E. M. Joel, assistant quartermaster and inspecting quartermaster.

Lieutenant Colonel C. A. Morton, chief commissary.

Surg. Charles McMillan, U. S. Volunteers, medical director.

Surg. E. O. F. Roler, Fifty-fifth Illinois Infantry Volunteers, acting medical inspector.

Maj. Samuel E. Barrett, First Illinois Light Artillery, chief of artillery and ordnance.

Captain L. E. York, Thirteenth U. S. Infantry, commissary of musters.

By order of Maj. General Frank P. Blair, jr.:

W. D. GREEN,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

CHATTANOOGA, November 2, 1863.

Maj. Gen. J. B. McPHERSON, Vicksburg, Miss.:

While the general believes that the forces collected at Canton to resist you were much less than reported, still he approves of your action in returning to Vicksburg, for he says it will not do to hazard a defeat of the Vicksburg forces. He has ordered forward Tuttle's division to join General Sherman, but if the enemy are really and in earnest assembling an army to operate against Vicksburg, desires me to say you are authorized, if you deem it necessary, to retain Tuttle, at least until you can communicate with Sherman.

The repairing of the levees on the Mississippi by the military authorities he deems unadvisable, and therefore disapproves of it. In fact, the propriety of permitting them to be repaired at all, even by citizens or those who desire to lease them, he regards as exceedingly questionable, for certainly the flooding of the country will, during the winter and spring, tend greatly to the security of navigation.

He is pleased to know that you are pushing the work on the fortifications, and desires you to put to work on them every available man you have, and push them with all possible haste to completion, so that with three divisions of your corps and the colored troops of General Hawkins you can hold Vicksburg and Natchez against any possible combination of forces the enemy can make.

The Natchez fortifications ought now to be finished. If Tuttle's division can be spared without too much endangering Vicksburg's safety, you will send it forward via Tennessee River. The general desires to know if two full regiments and the colored troops would be sufficient garrison for Natchez, and if so, he will try and have sent you two such regiments from the north, and thereby enable you to relieve Crocker and bring him to Vicksburg, for when a forward movement is to be made from here he wishes to have you in such a condition as to move with a respectable force in point of numbers [as he knows they will be in point of fighting material] east from