that your health may be preserved, I have the honor to be, very truly and respectfully, your obedient servant,

A. J. HAMILTON,

Brigadier-General, and Military Governor of Texas.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,
New Orleans, December 19, 1863

Major General C. C. WASHBURN,

U. S. Vols., Commanding Troops on Bay of Matagorda, Tex.:

GENERAL: The steamer Clinton leaves to-morrow morning, taking a complete battery of 30-pounder Parrotts, well manned by First Indiana Heavy Artillery, and stores and supplies called for in your dispatches by Captain Stone.

The Fourth Division, Thirteenth Army Corps, is now en route for Pass Cavallo, with orders to report to you for duty. Other troops of infantry and artillery are now awaiting transportation to you, and will be rapidly forwarded.

I inclose to you a slip containing the message and proclamation of the President.*

Very respectfully, I am, general, your most obedient servant,

CHAS. P. STONE,

Brigadier-General, and Chief of Staff.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,

Numbers 317.
New Orleans, December 19, 1863.

* * * * *

XII. Lieutenant Colonel George W. Stipp, U. S. Army, having reported at these headquarters, in compliance with Paragraph II, of Special Orders, Numbers 440, from the War Department, Adjutant-General's Office, is announced as medical inspector of this department.

* * * * *

By command of Major-General Banks:

G. NORMAN LIEBER,

Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS,
Fort Jackson, December 20, 1863.

Brigadier General CHARLES P. STONE,

Chief of Staff, &c.:

GENERAL: Affairs at this post are in much the same condition as when I last had the honor of addressing you. No progress has been made in dealing with the mutineers. The orders which I have received for the assembling of a court-martial for the trial of Lieutenant-Colonel Benedict and of the mutineers are not in accordance with what I had been led to expect and hope from the telegram of the commanding general. That telegram spoke of a "military commission," and of immediate action.

The change from a "military commission," which should summarily dispose of this flagrant case, to a regularly constituted court-martial,

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*Omitted

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