tenant or master, 6 men; lieutenant or master's mate, 4 men; sub-lieutenant or ensign, or midshipman, warrant officers, master or merchant vessels and captains of private armed vessels, 3 men; non-commissioned officers or lieutenants and mates of private armed vessels, mates of merchant vessels and all petty officers of ships of war, 2 men; private soldiers or seamen, 1 man.

HEADQUARTERS,
Alton, Ill., February 21, 1862.

Captain N. H. McLEAN,

Assistant Adjutant-General Department of the Mississippi:

CAPTAIN: I respectfully recommend that the officers on parole be sent to some other place. I have reason to believe that their presence here exercises a bad influence on the men. I have allowed them to visit the men's quarters occasionally as I cannot well refuse them permission to do so, and there are so many of them here (fifty or more) that some of them are within the prison limits all the time nearly during the day. I think if they could be removed to some other place it would be a great benefit to us.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S. BURBANK,

Lieutenant-Colonel Thirteenth Infantry, Commanding.

P. S. - Since writing the above I have determined not to allow any further visits of the officers to the men, having good reason to believe some of them have made an improper use of the privilege of doing so.

S. B.

PLANTERS' HOUSE, February 21, 1862.

Major-General HALLECK.

GENERAL: Permit me to add to the few words I spoke to you the other day in respect to Brigadier-General Price a word or two in writing, which you many place upon the files or not according to your own discretion. Having known both his father and himself intimately and well I have the most undoubting confidence that he will redeem to the letter all I thus assume to write in his name. He makes the point that if he is exchanged he must almost necessarily go back to the army and this he is really averse to doing. He argues (on the contrary) that if he is paroled on his honor and allowed to go home that his conceptions of honor would of course prevent him from disserving the Government of the United States in any imaginable degree (directly or even indirectly), and that he would feel at liberty to resign his commission (as he would do) almost directly.

So or Surgeon Cross who was present and a party to both our conversations-the one when they called on me before I came to your and the other when I subsequently called on them. As the homes of both these prisoners are within our lines and where I believe everything is in our power may their cases not be a little different from some others?

My own judgment is most decided and emphatic that if such a course be permissible in any case it will be even judicious (as well as magnanimous) to accord it in this case.