HEADQUARTERS, Suffolk, Va., August 14, 1862.

Major General JOHN A. DIX, Commanding Fort Monroe.

SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of instructions of the 12th instant in which you forbid persons being arrested on suspicion, and state that two prisoners have died at Fort Wool, and express a desire to release all the prisoners I have sent for safe-keeping to Fort Wool on their parole.

It is very natural that these prisoners should make an effort to excite your sympathy. No man has been arrested on suspicion. There has always been good reasons for apprehending certain persons, and my officers have not been allowed to exercise any arbitrary acts beyond the performance of their duty and instructions received by me. There are always two sides to the picture. These chivalric gentleman find it quite hard to be confined themselves but do not hesitate to shoot negroes for bringing chickens and berries to sell to the "damned Yankees," as they call them. A free negro on the road with his little cart and horse was shot with a ball and buck load by Charles Sumner, and he is now moving about on crutches and I have been obliged to give his family bread and meat. Another negro has been in my hospital covered with shot in his body. Two negroes shot at or near Smithfield. Out of our in a boat, one dead, fell into the water and the other dying of his wounds, and the remaining two were sent to Richmond and sold. Whole families of negroes, free and slaves, are run across the Blackwater to Richmond to work in the fortifications against their will by these kind rebels who don't like to be restrained themselves. Only a few days since a respectable farmer had to abandon his land and property and came in to me with his wife, and I gave him a pass to go to the North. The man had been taken to Richmond on suspicion of disloyalty and imprisoned forty days and only set at liberty after taking the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government which he would not live under. Another respectable farmer they were going to hang on suspicion and escaped by no man coming forward to swear against him. I sent you the other day a man, a magistrate in North Carolina, who went to a Union poor man, and with pistol in hand said he would shoot him if he joined the Union home guard. Are we not curtail the liberty of such rebels? My own opinion is they will all be fortunate to escape retribution of taking up arms against our country. All the Union people I have seen in Virginia say we are to easy with these secessionists and that is my opinion.

As to the death of prisoners at Fort Wool the proportion is small compared with the death and hanging of our own prisoners and Union men at the South. If they do not get proper treatment there they should have it and a reform take place. I have in most instances ordered a military commission to examine and try such cases of arrests as are made. The proceedings of these boards are on record and I have always put on such boards officers of the soundest principles of honor and justice I have at command. I cannot examine such cases myself for want of time. I inclose you a list* of the persons brought before the military commissions, most of whom I presume you have at Fort Wool. A written statement of the circumstances has always been sent with the prisoners to your provost-marshal.

JOS. K. F. MANSFIELD,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.

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*Not found.

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