Samuel Cooper to J. A. Seddon, August 14, 1864

Hon. J. A. SEDDON, Secretary : IT have called out the militia; will get 4,000 or 5,000. I ask for 5,000 stand of arms, with accouterments and ammunition. Call was made by order of Legislature at urgent request of Major-General out your order, although promised by General Maury. Fatal consequences may follow failure. The Confederate forces here cannot save Mississippi or Alabama. General Forrest reports enemy 25,000 in Lafayette County. You know our resources. CHAS. CLARK, Governor of Mississippt. GENERAL cane ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL’S OFFICE, No. 65. Richmond, Va., August 15, 1864. I. It having been represented to the War Department that there are numbers of foreigners entrapped by artifice and fraud into the military and naval service of the United States who would gladly withdraw from further participation in the inhuman warfare waged against a people who have never given them a pretext for hostility, and that there are many inhabitants of the United States now retained in that service against their will who are averse to aiding in the unjust war now being prosecuted against the Confederate States; and it being also known that these men are prevented from abandoning such compulsory service by the difficulty they experience in escaping therefrom, it is ordered that all such persons coming within the lines of the Confederate armies shall be received, protected, and supplied with means of subsistence until such of them as desire it can be forwarded to the most convenient points on the border, when all facilities will be afforded them to return to their homes. By order:

S. COOPER,