any aid that may be required by them in the discharge of their official duties.

By order of the Secretary of War:

E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

May 31, 1865.

Major General JOHN A. DIX,

Commanding Department of the East:

The Secretary of War directs that all volunteer organizations of white troops of your command (except the Veteran Reserve Corps) whose terms of service expire prior to October 1 next be immediately mustered out of service.

The organizations to be discharged will be ordered to report to the rendezvous in their respective States at or nearest which mustered in, there to be mustered out under the direction of the chief mustering officer of the State.

Should your command be reduced prejudicially to the service by this order, you are authorized to suspend it in whole or in part, promptly notifying and stating reasons to the Adjutant-General of the Army, with a view to receiving further instructions. Please acknowledge this.

THOMAS M. VINCENT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

(Same to Major General Joseph Hooker, commanding Northern Department, Cincinnati, Ohio.)

CHATTANOOGA, June 1, 1865.

A. ANDERSON,

Chief Superintendent and Engineer

Military Railroads of the United States:

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of operations of the Construction Corps, U. S. Military Railroads, Division of the Mississippi, from the date I was placed in charge, February 10, to June 1, 1865. Upon the completion of the work assigned me by Colonel W. W. Wright, chief engineer, previous to his departure for Savannah, the rebuilding of the bridges on the Nashville, Decatur and Stevenson line, destroyed by Hood in his retreat from Nashville, amounting in the aggregate to 6,000 feet (linear), I reported to you at Nashville. On the 17th of February received orders from General McCallum to send forward a division of the Construction Corps to Baltimore. I selected the Third Division, composed of Speers" and Bones" subdivisions of carpenters and workmen, comprising about 400 men, who, in charge of William McDonald, assistant engineer, left Nashville on February 25, with orders to proceed to Baltimore, and upon arrival there reporting to General McCallum at Washington, D. C. This division I recalled from the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, where they had been sent a few days before, General Thomas deciding not to prosecute the work any further at that time. Upon the withdrawal of this division I organized the Seventh Division of trackmen, detaching a part of the Fourth Division of carpenters as a bridge force. The Second Division having been transferred to North Carolina some time previous, and the Fifth and Sixth Divisions employed