cription, and the Governors of
Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee unite in the request; also Generals
Johnston and Bragg. Gen. Pillow already has Mississippi, Tennessee,
Alabama, etc.--a much larger jurisdiction than the bureau here. Col.
Preston, of course, protests against all this, and I believe the
Secretary sympathizes with him.

Prof. G. M. Richardson, of the Georgia Military Institute, sends some
interesting statistics. That State has furnished the army 80,000,
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. Still, the average
number of men in each county between sixteen and eighteen and forty-five
and sixty is 462, and there are 132 counties: total, 60,984. He deducts
30 per cent, for the infirm, etc. (18,689), leaving 42,689 men able to
bear arms still at home. Thus, after putting some 500,000 in the field
(if we could put them there), there would yet remain a reserve for home
defense against raids, etc. in the Confederate States, of not less than
250,000 men.

Gen. Winder sent to the Secretary of War to-day for authority to appoint
a clerk to attend exclusively to the mails to and from the United
States--under Gen. Winder's sole direction.

Major Quantrel, a Missouri guerrilla chief, has dashed into Lawrence,
Kansas, and burnt the city--killing and wounding 180. He had Gen. Jim
Lane, but he escaped.

Gen. Floyd is dead; some attribute his decease to ill treatment by the
government.

I saw Mr. Hunter yesterday, bronzed, but bright. He is a little thinner,
which improves his appearance.

Gen. Lee is in town--looking well. When he returns, I think the fall
campaign will open briskly.

A dispatch received to-day says that on Tuesday evening another assault
on Battery Wagner was in progress--but as yet we have no result.

Lieut. Wood captured a third gun-boat in the Rappahannock, having eight
guns.

The prisoners here selected to die, in retaliation for Burnside's
execution of our officers taken while recruiting in Kentucky, will not
be executed.

Nor will the officers taken on Morris Island, serving with the negroes,
suffer death in accordance with the act of Congress and the President's
proclamation. The Secretary referred the matter to the President for
instruction, and the President invited the advice of the Secretary. The
Secretary advised that they be held indefinitely, without being brought
to trial, and in this the President acquiesces.

AUGUST 28TH.--Another letter, from Gen. Whiting, calls