HEADQUARTERS FIFTH ARMY CORPS, October 3, 1862.

General R. E. LEE,
Commanding Army of Northern Virginia.

GENERAL: Major-General McClellan instructs me to inform you that your communication of the 2nd instant relating to the vehicles provided under special understanding with General White at Harper's Ferry was received by him on horseback at a distance from writing conveniences; that he will inquire into the circumstances and see that the stipulations are complied with at the earliest moment.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

F. J. PORTER,

Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS, Camp Douglas, Chicago, October 3, 1862.

Brigadier General L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General, Washington.

GENERAL: I inclose herewith the following-named papers: * First, the parole list of the Sixtieth Ohio Volunteers; second, the parole list of the First Indiana Battery; third, consolidated report of paroled men sent from Annapolis; fourth, consolidated reports of paroled men sent from Annapolis and who arrived at Camp Douglas; fifth, papers relative to Lieutenant Le Brun, a deserter; sixth, recommendation of C. E. Conkey for hospital steward. The parole reports of the Sixtieth Regiment and First Battery complete the list of the men paroled at Harper's Ferry and who arrived at Annapolis. There we two regiments (Eighty-seventh Ohio and Twelfth New York), three-months' volunteers, who never reported at Annapolis and consequently their parole lists have not been furnished through me. You will see the enormous loss of men during their transit from Annapolis to Camp Douglas. Had these men been under my command for any length of time I should be mortified at the result, although some allowance is to be made for the condition, &c., of these mortified, impoverished, disorganized men; and allow me here, general, to enter my protest against the way these railroad companies manage the transport of troops, which is a disgrace to them and an imposition on the Government and renders it impossible for a commandant of troops to be responsible for his men. If the railroad companies will put a barrel of water in each car and keep it supplies, and will make coarse but decent arrangements, as they do in emigrant trains, for the men to get drink and answer the calls of nature in the cars, which is never done, officers could be responsible for their men. Now the instant the train stops the men rush our for these necessary purposes, as they claim, and any man wishing to desert "gets left" and the conductor assists the deserter by refusing to stop the train as he must "make his schedule. "

Another matter: The railroad companies fill a freight train with horses or cattle and run it at as good speed as they run on troop trains, from Chicago to Baltimore, and charge $168, and they fill the same train with forty soldiers, putting temporarily some rough, unplanned planks for the men to sit on, and transport it on the same road and at the same speed, and charge for it $632. 80. Although I have for the last thirty years been employed in the management of railroads and at this moment have investments in them, and I am bound to say that the price paid for the service rendered is the most outrageous I have ever known. Let these railroad gentlemen attempt to put emigrants whom

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*Not found.

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