prisoners as yet and will therefore be unable to send your orders for several days.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. T. HARTZ,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., June 8, 1863.

Mr. JOHN SHARP, Jr., Philadelphia Post-Office.

SIR: I am directed by the commissary-general of prisoners to inform you that your letter to His Excellency the President in relation to your son has been referred to Mr. Robert Ould, the rebel agent for exchange, and is returned with the following indorsement:

No prisoner captured at the first battle of Fredericksburg is in any of our prisons. If he was it is a libel to say that he is suffering from starvation.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. T. HARTZ,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

INDIANAPOLIS, June 8, 1863.

General M. C. MEIGS:

Attention is respectfully requested to telegram of 4th instant relative to enlargement to hospital accommodation for rebel prisoners at Camp Morton, Ind. Direction is urgent.

JAS. A. EKIN.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 8, 1863.

Colonel W. HOFFMAN,

Commissary-General of Prisoners, Washington, D. C.

COLONEL: In a printed circular of Colonel T. J. Haines, chief commissary of subsistence, Department of the Missouri, there is one from you dated Detroit, July, 1862, giving scale of rations to prisoners of war in which five pounds of green coffee or four of ground to the 100 rations is required to be issued. In the scale furnished to me from your office dated May 4, 1863, nine pounds of raw coffee is the amount required, and in the list given by Captain freedley to the commandant of the post at Camp Butler the quantity is seven pounds. Please inform me which is right. Since the receipt of the inclosed copy of act* of Congress I have refused to pay out of prisoners' savings extra pay to soldiers detailed to duty in attending on prisoners. The law makes no exceptions. Am I right? Please return act of Congress.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

N. W. EDWARDS,

Captain and Commissary of Subsistence.

[JUNE 8, 1863. -For the capture, trial, condemnation and execution as spies of William Orton Williams and Walter G. Peter, officers of the Confederate Army, at Franklin, Tenn., see Series I, Vol. XXIII, Part II, p. 397 et seq.

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*Not found.

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