The commanding generals, who have power to act on proceedings of courts-martial in such cases, are authorized in special cases to restore to duty deserters under sentence, when in their judgment the service will be thereby benefited.
Copies of all orders issued under the foregoing instructions will be immediately forwarded to the Adjutant-General and to the Judge- Advocate General.
By order of the Secretary of War: B. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General
FEMALE SPY
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 26, 1864
MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort. Monroe, Va.:
I cannot remember at whose request it was that I gave the pass to Mrs. Bulky. Of course detain her, if the evidence of her being a spy is strong against her.
A. LINCOLN.
TO W. JAYNE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 26, 1864.
HON. W. JAYNE.
DEAR SIR--I dislike to make changes in office so long as they can be avoided. It multiplies my embarrassments immensely. I dislike two appointments when one will do. Send me the name of some man not the present marshal, and I will nominate him to be Provost-Marshal for Dakota.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
TO E. H. EAST.
WASHINGTON, February 27, 1864.
HON. E. H: EAST, Secretary of State, Nashville, Tennessee
Your telegram of the twenty-sixth instant asking for a copy of my despatch to Warren Jordan, Esq., at Nashville Press office, has just been referred to me by Governor Johnson. In my reply to Mr. Jordan, which was brief and hurried, I intended to say that in the county and State elections of Tennessee, the oath prescribed in the proclamation of Governor Johnson on the twenty-sixth of January, 1864, ordering an election in Tennessee on the first Saturday in March next, is entirely satisfactory to me as a test of loyalty of all persons proposing or offering to vote in said elections; and coming from him would better be observed and followed. There is no conflict between the oath of amnesty in my proclamation of eighth December, 1863, and that prescribed by Governor Johnson in his proclamation of the twenty-sixth ultimo.
No person who has taken the oath of amnesty of eighth December, 1863, and obtained a pardon thereby, and who intends to observe the same in good faith, should have any objection to taking that prescribed by Governor Johnson as a test of loyalty.
I have seen and examined Governor Johnson's proclamation, and am entirely satisfied with his plan, which is to restore the State government and place it under the control of citizens truly loyal to the Government of the United States.
A. LINCOLN.
Please send above to Governor Johnson. A. L.
TO SECRETARY STANTON.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 27, 1864
HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.
SIR:--You ask some instructions from me in relation to the Report of Special Commission constituted by an order of the War Department, dated December 5, 1863, "to revise the enrolment and quotas of the City and State of New York, and report whether there be any, and what, errors or irregularities therein, and what corrections, if any, should be made."
In the correspondence between the Governor of New York and myself last summer, I understood him to complain that the enrolments in several of the districts of that State had been neither accurately nor honestly made; and in view of this, I, for the draft then immediately ensuing, ordered an arbitrary reduction of the quotas in several of the districts wherein they seemed too large, and said: "After this drawing, these four districts, and also the seventeenth and twenty-ninth, shall be carefully re-enrolled, and, if you please, agents of yours may witness every step of the process." In a subsequent letter I believe some additional districts were put into the list of those to be re-enrolled. My idea was to do the work over according to the law, in presence of the complaining party, and thereby to correct anything which might be found amiss. The commission, whose work I am considering, seem to have proceeded upon a totally different idea.