[Inclosure Numbers 2.]

HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE RAPPAHANNOCK,
Fredericksburg, Va., May 22, 1862.

Brigadier General J. R. ANDERSON,

Commanding near Massaponax, Va.

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknolwedge the receipt this morning of your letter of yesterday's date inclosing a letter concerning Generals Buckner and Tilghman. I have no knowledge wheatever of the treatment shownthese gentlemen and am unable to state anything concerning them. The letter you have inclosed will be immediately transmitted to Washington whence only authentic information on the point in question can come. As soon as I receive any it will be immediately communicated to you.

I have the honor to be, general, &c.,

IRVIN McDOWELL,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS, &C., Mercer County, Va., May 21, 1862.

Brigadier-General COX, Commanding, &c.

SIR: A person claiming to be a chaplain from the Thirty-fourth Ohio came yesterday to one of my posts bearing a flag of truce yet exhibiting no authority for his approach but the paper which I inclose* for your perusal.

I will not do you such injustice as to suppose you could have been privy to and approving of an indignity to your adversary covered by a flag of truce. Such indignity is, however, offered when an officer approaches without any authority other than is expresed in the inclosed, for it bears the features of an order to your inferior yet not properly authenticated as actof yours and comes without any communication to me by whom alone it can be considered. I am not disposed to believe that you would suspect me of leaving my wounded adversary unattended to on a field where he was abandoned to my mercy, and therefore a mission to a chaplain "to look after the condition of the wounded' seems curious, especially so when it is intructed to him "to make arrangements for their removal. " I visited your wounded myself, made my own surgeons attend in connection with yours, and gave the same attention to them as if they had been of my side instead of yours.

Seventy-one of them are badly wounded and cannot now be moved. I directed your surgen and assistant to inform me as soon as they could be safely moved. I am not indisposed to let them be removed whenever it can be done and to exchange them for men now on parole in Virginia. I will send all the prisoners back to your lines upon the same terms, except Captain Evans, whom I desire to exchange for Captain Connor, of the Fifth Kentucky, who was taken off from Prestonburg while on a sick bed, delirious with fever, as a prisoner of war. Captain C. is at Columbus, Ohio, or on parole. I wish you would confer with the proper authority on your side to make this exchange.

When you think proper to send a flag of truce to my lines hereafter I hope I shall find no occasion to renew my suggestion that it will be best to observe the formalities and courtesies due to such presentations between forces in public war.

I have omitted to observe that when your surgeon and assistant surgeon have discharged their professional duties to your wounded they are at liberty to return to your camp.

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*Not found.

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