189 tered in again at the end of their first term of service, nothing being said in the letter in regard to the time or place of muster- ing these companies. I supposed of course you expected they would be mustered by the officer whom you had designated to muster under your previous call for six companies for twelve months, and that you intended this request of the 9th of Oct to supersede your previous request of the 20th August, this suppo- sition was strengthened by the fact, that you say in the same letter, you are instructed by the direction of the Secretary of War, that no power exists for calling forth the Militia, for a time as long as that proposed in your letter to me calling for six com- panies to be mustered into service for a year unless sooner dis- charged. Imagine my surprise then, when on the 29th of October I received by express from Corpus Christi, a copy of Special Orders No 124, dated Oct 24 which state that, "In pursuance of instruc- tions from the War Department dated the 9th of Oct, the muster- ing into service of the volunteers referred to first, in special orders No 105, of the 2nd of September, is postponed indefi- nitely." On the following morning, the 30th of Oct. I called upon Col Waite who had been appointed the mustering officer under Special Orders No 105, and who had just arrived in town, showed him your request of the 9th of Oct. and inquired if he had orders to muster the companies called for by it. He replied that he had not, That the orders under which he came here to muster, had been postponed indefinitely by Special Orders No 124 received by him since his arrival here, and that he knew nothing of your request of the 9th of Oct until I showed it to him. You will readily perceive that his reply made my situation an embarrasing one, the volunteers that I had called out under your request of the 20th of August for twelve months had begun to arrive here on the 28th of Oct, and by the 1st of Nov, five ful! companies had assembled here, and I had information that the sixth company would probably be here in the course of a week. I was in possession of your request of the 9th of Oct ask- ing for this number of companies. I knew by late information from the frontier that they were needed for its protection. Your request also stated that they were needed for that purpose. Yet I had no directions from you in regard to how these companies were to be mustered. I felt certain that your request of the 9th of Oct could not have been known at Corpus Christi, when the Special Orders No. 124 of the 24th of Oct were issued, because that request only reached this place on the 25th of Oct, and it
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