HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF EAST TENNESSEE,
Knoxville, August 1, 1862.

Brigadier General G. W. MORGAN,

Commanding U. S. Forces, Cumberland Gap.

GENERAL: It has been reported to me that by your orders peaceable citizens without your lines have been arrested on account of their political opinions and are now held as prisoners. Since assuming command in this department I have arrested but seven persons for political offenses, and of these six have been released. By my intercession many who before my taking charge of the department had been sent South and confined have been released. I have ever given to the citizens of East Tennessee protection to person and property regardless of their political tenets. Six hundred and sixty-four citizens escaping to Kentucky, most of them with arms in their hands and belonging to military organizations in open hostility to the Confederate States, have been taken prisoners. All of these have been released excepting seventy-six, who previously had voluntarily taken the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States Government and are now held as prisoners of war. This policy has been pursued with the earnest desire to allay the horrors of war and to conduct the campaign with as little severity as is consistent with the interests of my Government. It is therefore, general, with deep regret that I hear of your arresting peaceable citizens without your lines, thereby inaugurating a policy which must bring great additional suffering on the two contending people. I cannot but hope that this course has resulted from a misapprehension of my policy and a want of knowledge of my treatment of the Union element in East Tennessee. I have constantly had it in my power to arrest numbers of citizens disloyal to the Confederate States but have heretofore refrained from so doing for the reasons above stated, and hoping all the while that the clemency thus extended would be appreciated and responded to by the authorities of the United States. It is perhaps needless forme to state that if you arrest and confine citizens from without your lines whom the usages of war among civilized nations exempt from molestation I shall be compelled in retaliation to pursue a similar course toward the disloyal citizens of my department, and shall arrest and confine the prominent Union men in each community. I hope, however, that this explanation may correct any misapprehension on your part regarding my policy and thereby obviate the necessity of my pursuing a course which is to say the least a disagreeable duty. This communication will be delivered you by Mr. Kincaid, who hopes to be able to effect the release of his farther now held as a prisoner. Inclosed is a list* of political prisoners arrested by me since assuming command of this department.

E. KIRBY SMITH,

Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF,
New Orleans, August 1, 1862.

J. C. Dinnies, associate editor of the Commercial Bulletin, for having written and published a seditious article, is hereby ordered to be sent to Fort Jackson until further orders.

By order of Major-General Butler:

[R. S. DAVIS,]

Captain and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

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* Not found.

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