police in New York. The principles laid down in paragraphs I, General Orders, No. 72, and II of General Orders, No. 78, will guide you in reference to these stragglers turned over to you. The object is to get them back to their regiments as soon as possible. They should be organized in companies temporarily as fast as they arrive, and their names entered on rolls together with such information concerning their regiments, &c., as can be obtained. They should be forwarded to their regiments in parties of convenient numbers as often as you think it advisable to detach them. Of course few if any will have any descriptive list and many may deny they are soldiers; but the statements in regard to them given by the officers who deliver them up to you should be entered on the rolls. If sent to Washington they should report to General Wadsworth, or to Baltimore to General Wool. Each party forwarded should be under the charge of an officer, and he should have non-commissioned officers, or some non-commissioned officers taken from the men themselves, to assist him in keeping the men in the cars.

The Secretary desire you to report whenever you send on a detachment and state the number of men in it.

I am, sir, &c.,

E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS, Fort Monroe, Va., August 16, 1862.

Brigadier General J. K. F. MANSFIELD, Commanding, Suffolk.

GENERAL: I have received your letter of the 14th instant with a list of prisoners sent by you to Fort Wool and brief statement of the charges against them. This is the first specification of their offenses I have seen and I know that several citizens have been sent here without any memorandum of the cause for which they were imprisoned.

The crimes specified by you as having been committed by secessionists in general deserve any punishment we may think proper to inflict. But the first question is in every case of imprisonment whether the party has actually been guilty of any offense, and this is a question to be decided upon proper evidence. If the guilt is not clearly shown the accused should be released. There is nothing in your position or mine which can excuse either of us for depriving any man of his liberty without a full and impartial examination. My duties are at least as arduous as yours and I have never shrunk from the labor of a personal examination of every case of imprisonment for which I am responsible.

In regard to arrests in your command there was at least one and I think more for which there was not in mu judgement the slightest cause. I speak from a personal examination of them. The arrest were made without your order as I understood, but acquiesced in by you subsequently. The parties referred to were released nearly a month ago. Had I not looked into their cases they would no doubt have been in prison a this moment. When Judge Pierrepont and I examined the cases of the political prisoners in the various places of custody from Washington to Fort Warren we found persons arrested by military officers who had been overlooked and who had been lying in prison for months without any just cause. For this reason as well as on general principles of justice and humanity I must insist that every person arrested shall have a prompt examination, and if it is cons