interference with this exercise of authority. On Friday afternoon, the 11th, he issued orders that seven companies of the troops at the camp should hold themselves in readiness to march to Kentucky, and had the gone but 180 effective men would have been left. As it is all but about 480 have gone.

I had an interview with his authorities (as he was absent thirty miles from town when he issued the order) and represented the inadequacy of the guard which under the first order would remain, and the order was changed leaving the present number. I deemed it unnecessary to telegraph to you the fact without being able to explain the whole matter. Under a recent order Camp Chase is made the place of rendezvous for all furloughed and paroled or disabled soldiers in the State. About these he gives to the commanding officer such orders as he pleases. The hospital is swarmed with them and about 100 lie about the various quarters of the camp, most of them doing no duty. The hospital originally arranged for the close accommodation of fifty patients has in it treble that number. This has been the case for forty days or more. Hence the surgeon has so much labor to perform that he dos not visit the prisoners but once a week but leaves them to the stewards and to inefficient rebel amateur practitioners who have a parole of the camp as before stated for the purpose. The first article of the regulations submitted by me to the commanding officer by your orders holds him responsible for the discipline and security of the prisoners. Yet the Governor takes away from him ad libitum the means-for that security. The regulations by you require that the commanding officer shall maintain discipline and order in his command. The Governor orders as he thinks proper the troops, furloughed men or others assembled or assembling. The commanding officer of the camp is uncertain and in constant doubt as to whom he should go for instructions, which together with his ignorance of his duties quite overpowers him. I have carefully instructed him that for the present he will consider the character and number of the troops sent to Camp Chase or placed or to be placed there as in the hands of the Governor; that he will immediately report to you, however, whenever he may not have a sufficient guard, that you may take such steps as may be deemed best. I have informed him that the discipline and police of the whole camp is under his (the commanding officer) special direction regulated by you as having general charge of that matter, and that everything relating to it and to estimates for building, the sutler, &c., must be referred to you. But even here it is difficult to see that if this is a camp of instruction and so far under the Governor's control how the orders for the instruction or discipline of troops can be considered by the Governor or by the commanding officer as not superior to your orders to the commanding officer. At least this is the construction both by the Governor and commanding officer, which I am satisfied exists in the minds of both and in the minds of all surrounding them.

I do not, colonel, refer to this in a questionable a discussive manner, but with the view of pointing out to you the difficulty which much embarrassed me for awhile but which I have avoided by carefully evading any contact with it, and have always submitted all instructions given by me as well as all of your instructions to me to the Governor for his inspection. Thus far he has opposed nothing but that part of your regulations relating to visitors and paroles to which I have already referred. He considered your reg to the establishing of a fund among the soldiers as impracticable for the reason that the troops were continually changing. I will endeavor to