Unknown to C. B. Duffield, September 19, 1864

Capt. C. B. DUFFIELD, Assistant Adjutant-General, Bureau of Conscription:

CAPTAIN: The orders for the enrollment and assignment of free negroes have been carried out as effectually as could be done under the circumstances. Many deserted and otherwise evaded the officers. This class, like absconding men from the Army and those liable to conscription, required to be forced into service by an active and efficient guard. General Orders, No. 26, current series, has withdrawn all the assistance which could be relied on, and not one in twenty ”light-duty ” men can be made efficient as a guard. These remarks are made preliminary to a report which I desire to submit upon several communications referred to this office recently, but which will be returned with report and explanation for the information of the several military bureaus.

For the want of efficient and informed officers and the required number of clerks, reports and consolidated returns cannot be made as promptly as desired, and for that reason it will be some time before a complete return of the enrollment and assignment of free negroes is made; but the Bureau is assured that no time will be spared in forwarding promptly all the returns due from this office. Upon a general examination of the returns of the enrolling officers it is manifest that all the labor of this class which could well be has been withdrawn from the agricultural districts.

The Niter and Mining Bureau desires every one that can be found. Colonel Corley, chief quartermaster Army of Northern Virginia, calls for 500, and the Engineer Bureau makes a requisition for a large force on the line of the Richmond and Danville and the South Side Railroads. General Walker, commanding the defenses on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, also calls for assistance from this class. The officers of the Quartermaster’s Department collecting forage in the Valley have received assistance, but aredemanding more. Maj. J. G. Paxton, in charge of extensive operations for the Quartermaster’s Department at Lynchburg and in the Piedmont counties, is asking for aid. All the demands are pressing and of the most vital importance, and the number required by the officers making the requisitions for them approximates, if it does not exceed, the whole number of free negroes within the military lines of the prescribed ages. I have deemed it advisable to submit these facts, in order that the Bureau may beinformed of the impossibility of supplying the existing demands, and I would further respectfully suggest, if it meets the approbation of the superintendent, that the statements herein contained may be submitted to the War Department or the bureaus requiring the labor. I have already replied to General Walker and to the local quartermasters, but suppose the Engineer Bureau and the chief quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia are not informed.

Enrolling officers will be instructed to continue without any abatement of zeal or effort to forward every man of every class for duty, but I regret to say, for the want of responsible guards, I am apprehensive many will elude their vigilance.

Attention is respectfully invited to the inclosed copy of circular issued from this office September 7, requiring full and accurate returns from enrolling officers of the disposition made of this class of