be ordered to grant you every facility and to carry into effect all your recommendations.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Richmond, Va., December 31, 1862.

Lieutenant General J. C. PEMBERTON, General Commanding, &c.

SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge your letter of the 14th instant which has just reached me through the Adjutant-General. Your determination to retain the U. S. prisoners under your control until General Clark and the fourteen other officers held by General Butler contrary to good faith and the obligation of the care for the exchange of prisoners between the United States and the Confederate Government are returned is fully approved. The pretense on which General Clark and the other officers are withheld is wholly unjustifiable and untenable. In the first place the evidence which is offered of the alleged ground of action, being the mutilated fragment of the supposed proceedings of a court-martial, is too imperfect and unsatisfactory to be the basis of such action, but giving full credence to it and viewing it as conclusive it would still only show the action of an officer of the State of Louisiana and of a court-martial held under his authority upon a man subject to the militia service of the State.

Now, the Government of the United States has explicitly refused to recognize the applicability of the cartel to officers or soldiers merely in State service and it is consequently precluded from avoiding the obligation of that cartel by reference to the action of such State officers, but the most conclusive reason against their pretense is that the exchange of General Clark and his companions in confinement seems to have been actually arranged and on our part carried out by the delivery of the Federal officers agreed on. A grosser breach of faith than the retention of those officers and the refusal to deliver these for whom they were returned cold not well be exhibited. You will therefore continue the course you have adopted until adequate redress is obtained.

With high consideration and esteem, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

HEADQUARTERS WESTERN SUB-DISTRICT OF TEXAS,
San Antonio, January 2, 1863.

Major A. G. DICKINSON,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Houston, Tex.

SIR: I have the honor to report that the U. S. prisoners of war under the escort of Captain F. V. D. Stucken's company of cavalry, Taylor's battalion, have taken up the line of march for Vicksburg via Shreveport, and would request that the necessary orders may be sent on to meet them.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. P. BEE,

Brigadier-General, Provisional Army.