Many applications of a like nature are daily received from classes of prisoners from those who have been pressed into the rebel ranks against their will, as well as from those who are merely willing to promise not again to take up arms against the Government until regularly exchanged, but it has been found necessary, for reasons which need not here be detailed, to meet these applications with a steady refusal. In the meantime the Department has been and still is making every effort to effect a general exchange of prisoners of war, when Captain Handy will of course be released.

However willing the Secretary might be under other circumstances to grant the request of Mr. Young, indorsed as it is by you, he feels it necessary to say that he cannot make this application an exception to the rule, which is daily enforced.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

C. P. WOLCOTT,

Assistant Secretary of War.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Columbus, July 10, 1862

Colonel W. HOFFMAN, Detroit, Mich.

DEAR SIR: Your letter by Captain Lazelle is before me. There are so many matters of moment for consideration connected with Camp Chase prison that I regret your inability to visit the camp. As you cannot, however, allow me to present a few of the most prominent to you:

1. A new and more permanent prison is required. With the present prison we are compelled to maintain a guard at least three times as large as would be necessary with a proper structure.

2. The location of the prison should be changed. Prison discipline and camp instruction cannot be maintained together. I have therefore to recommend that you erect a new prison, located on a bluff about half-way between this city and Camp Chase and that you raise a special corps for guard duty. The term of the present guard, three-months' men expires on the 10th day of September next.

3. Authority should be given to some one on the spot here to grant discharges and paroles. We have in the prison insane, idiotic and maimed prisoners who should at once be discharged. Command humanity requires the occasional parole of prisoners dying by slow degrees from confinement. There are may confined in the prison, political as well as military prisoners, whose cases should at once be investigated and discharged.

4. When the pressing call for troops for the protection of Washington reached me I at once ordered the Sixty-first Regiment, then on guard duty at Camp Chase, to the field and employed a temporary guard from this city until my call for three-months' men could be responded to. The expense of this temporary guard is between $500 and $600, which I beg you to see promptly paid. To secure accurate and reliable records of the prison I authorized the commandant to employ a clerk at the rate of $60 per moth, and to aid myself in the examination of prisoner's correspondence I have employed a clerk who works three hours a day at the rate of $30 per month, both of which accounts I beg to have allowed and paid.

In view of these suggestions I have requested Captain Lazelle not to take any definite action until after he shall have seen you. You may rely upon my best endeavors to aid you in the prompt and efficient discharge of your arduous duties.

Very respectfully, yours,

DAVID TOD.