marshal at Wheeling under direction of the commissary-general has control of all prisoners of war and political prisoners at posts in Western Virginia lying within the late Mountain Department, including the district commanded by Generals Kelley and Cox. He furnishes consolidated rolls of such prisoners to the commissary-general and under instructions received from him direct sends the prisoners from time to time to the general depot. The Secretary of War desires you to afford the provost-marshal such assistance as he may require in the execution of his duties. There is also a provost-marshal-general at Louisville for Kentucky. From that point prisoners are sent to the nearest prison stations in Ohio or Illinois. The commissary-general of prisoners has been ordered to charge his headquarters to this city.

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

L. THOMAS,

Adjutant-General.

Same mutatis mutandis to General Curtis, Saint Louis, Mo.)

ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington, D. C., October 10, 1862.

Brigadier General J. T. BOYLE, Louisville, Ky.:

Send all the parole rebel prisoners to Cairo. The provost-marshal at Louisville receives orders direct from Colonel Hoffman about prisoners of war. From Cairo they will be sent to Vicksburg.

L. THOMAS,

Adjutant-General.

RICHMOND, KY., October 10, 1862.

Major-General WRIGHT, Commanding Department of the Ohio:

In obedience to your orders I left Cincinnati on the 11th of September with a train of forty ambulances for the purpose of transporting our wounded soldier from Richmond, Ky., to hospital accommodations within our own lines. An order previously obtained from the rebel General [E.] Kirby Smith gave permission for our train to pass the Confederate lines but required us to go and come by the Maysville pike. The scarcity of boats between Maysville and Cincinnati and the low stage of water was a source of some detention. I made three trips with the train to Richmond and brought away 390 patients, mostly wounded, leaving only ten cases who could not bear transportation. These, with the means for their subsistence hospital-stores and nurses, were instructed to the care of Dr. A. B. Lyman, a highly respectable and loyal physician of the place. Most of the wounded transported from Richmond to Cincinnati were immediately forwarded to their homes in compliance with orders from your headquarters. All of them were paroled by the Confederate authorities except twenty-seven. The failure to parole these was due to a misunderstanding between one of our surgeons and the provost-marshal at Richmond. I inclose a list* of their names, which was furnished me by the commandant of the post, who desires me to forward it to you with his request that said soldiers be treated as paroled prisoners. As the request is just I commend it to your favorable consideration. In our passage to and from Richmond we met with no serious interruptions. The Confederate officers treated

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* Not found.

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