SMYTHE, Collector to Hugh McCulloch, January 30, 1867

Mr. Smythe, Collector, to Mr. McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury.

[14] Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 29th instant, inclosing a communication of J. R. Savage, esq., to the Secretary of War, giving information of an alleged fitting *out of a privateer at New York.

I have the honor to report to the Department that “the eyes of the revenue,” by which name one of your honorable predecessors once designated the customs officials of this district, have neither slept nor slumbered over the movements of the alleged privateer in question, but that her proceedings have been known and watched from the beginning; and every preventive precaution taken to frustrate her designs. As soon as any overt act shall have been committed in her behalf, it will be promptly met by decisive action on my part, and a report of all the facts in the case made to the Department.

I am, very respectfully, &c.,