Endorsed:
Respectfully referred to Secretary of War in connection with my report of the 9th. Many instances have occurred during the year and reports made on them, now on record. Only recently, stores were burnt at Charlotte, because not removed; between here and Wilmington recently there have been great delays in moving supplies, and the stores now at Charlotte are liable to loss for want of transportation.
(No. 14.)
Bureau of Subsistence,
Colonel L. B. Northrup, C. G. S.:
Sir—In response to, your query as to the contracts made in this bureau for supplies from abroad, I have to state, generally, what I have elaborated recently at some length in written testimony to a joint committee of both houses of Congress, that all the contracts that I have made have failed for various reasons. At this time I understand that the Bureau has no power, under a recent order, to make contracts for supplies payable in cotton in the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana.
Very respectfully,
(Signed)Frank G. Ruffin,
Foreign Supplies.
Richmond, Va., February 9, 1865.
General John C. Breckinridge, Secretary of War:
General—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your circular of the 7th instant, asking for "a succinct and clear statement of the means and resources on hand for carrying on the business of my bureau, and what impediments exist, and what is necessary for success."
Under the orders of the War Department, I have been charged with the purchase, repairing, compressing and shipment of cotton for the Government, the proceeds of said shipment passing into the Treasury, and subject to requisition of the several bureaux and departments of the Government, with the purchase and receipt of foreign supplies to be paid for in cotton, and, incidentally, with most of the foreign correspondence of the War Department.
The cotton on hand, and that which may be purchased with $15,000,000, estimated and asked for through the Secretary of War, together with the usual transfers through the Treasury Department,
