He will then repair to Atlanta and ascertain what surgeons and chaplains are held by the Confederate States as prisoners of war, and will proceed with them to Huntsville, Ala., or to some other practicable point within the lines of the enemy, under a flag of truce, and deliver them to the Federal authorities under parole, taking a receipt for the same. He will cause complete rolls of all the prisoners to be made out at Selma, Tuscaloosa and Atlanta who are or have been detained at said places, and if discharged or sent from thence to set forth by what authority and to what points.

Captain Graham will report to these headquartered his action in the premises.

The quartermaster will furnish transportation.

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

GEORGE WM. BRENT,

Acting Chief of Staff.

NOTE. -Should Surgeon Carey, Forty-eighth Ohio Volunteers, be found among the prisoners you will deliver him in exchange for Surg. L. H. Hall, First Mississippi Regiment, taken at Donelson by the U. S. forces.

MURFREESBOROUGH, N. C., June 17, 1862.

Honorable G. W. RANDOLPH, Secretary of War.

DEAR SIR: Having recently heard that a general system for an exchange of prisoners had been or soon would be adopted I beg to call to your attention the fact that three of the Hatteras prisoners still remain under parole. All the others have been released of the number captured last August at Hatteras. the three persons referred to are Major H. A. Gilliam, of Plymouth; Lieutenant Biggs, son of Judge Biggs, of Williamston, and Dr. William E. Pool, of this place, all of whom were attached to the Seventh ([afterwards] Seventeenth) Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers. You will recollect the case of Major Gilliam, whose release I asked in a personal interview during the late sitting of Congress. A few weeks since he was rearrested at Plymouth by a Federal force sent from one of their boats in the Roanoke and carried off on a charge, as I hear, of having violated his parole by his influence and conversation in supporting our cause and encouraging the volunteer spirit. He has, however, been since discharged, as I suppose, by Stanly. He has been very anxious to re-enter the many weeks. I am very desirous that he should be restored to full liberty. The case of Lieutenant Biggs presents claims quite as strong. Doctor Pool would have long since been exchanged but for the fact that a physician by profession he acted as surgeon (assistant) to the regiment and was so treated in the capitulation but had never been commissioned by the Confederate Government nor by this State as such. During your predecessor's term I showed him an ordinance or resolution passed by our convention in which he is called assistant surgeon and payment of his salary as such for a part of his service directed to be made. This I regarded, emanating as it does from the depositary of the sovereignty of the State, as equivalent to the issuing of a commission. So Mr. Benjamin seemed also to regard it. This act of our convention in a small printed pamphlet I left with him. Another copy can be obtained if desired. He is very desirous of a release that he may enter the public service again. I beg to ask that