ose of ordinary municipal magistracy they seem utterly
incompetent. I have urged the organization of the county and of the
town, but to no effect. Every street that is mended, every bridge
that is repaired, or wharf that is put in order, must be done by the
army at the expense of the U. S. government. They will not elect
officers to look after the poor, but leave us to feed the starving
near our camps. They will establish no police, and by force of
public opinion keep suitors out of the courts ordered to be held by
Governor Peirpoint. Yet a U. S. Commissioner, without any warrant or
even pretended jurisdiction, will stop any vagrant negro, drive him
through the streets in person, and say that he does it as a U. S.
officer! Of course we simply look on and have had no controversy
with them, unless driven to it by direct efforts on their part to
interfere with our necessary regulations.

"The simple fact is that a few men of property who are avowed
Secessionists control the town and make its public sentiment. By
this means they practically control these officers also. Many of the
negroes employed at the salt-works, and under hire in other
capacities in the vicinity, are the slaves of rebels who are either
in the rebel army or fled with it from the valley. The great problem
upon which the Secessionists remaining here are exercising their
ingenuity is to find the means of using the U. S. Commissioner and
Marshal to secure to them the services of these persons without cost
or legitimate contract of hiring, for the present profit of these
gentlemen here, and the future advantage of their compatriots across
the lines.

"Colonel Smith and Mr. Slack say that they made the statement at the
express request of Major Darr of the Commanding General's staff. A
simple inquiry by the Major would have saved me the necessity of
writing this long letter."

It is due to General Rosecrans to say that although he had been
anything but an anti-slavery man before the war, he made no pressure
upon me to violate my own sense of right in these or similar cases,
and they ended with my reports of the facts and of my reasons for
the course I pursued. The side lights thrown upon the situation by
the letter last quoted will be more instructive than any analysis I
could now give, and the spice of flavor which my evident annoyance
gave it only helps to revive more perfectly the local color of the
time. In the case of Mr. Smith's "negro boy Mike," I ha