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I am greatly interested to know how many new troops of all sorts you have raised in Tennessee. Please inform me.
A. LINCOLN
[1] ALS, RPB. Burnside replied on October 22: ``Your dispatch received. We have already over three thousand in the three year service & half armed. About twenty five hundred home guards many more recruits could have been had for the three years' service but for the want of clothing & camp equipage. We have not means of bringing those things with us & since our arrival we have not been able to accumulate them by transportation from Kentucky. Our command is now & have been ever since our arrival on half rations of everything except fresh beef. We have no rations of beans rice pickles &c in fact no small stores but sugar coffee & salt, but the command is remarkably happy cheerful & willing . . . . the country thus far has supplied an abundance of forage. We are suffering considerably for want of shoes & clothing & horse shoes. I have told Gen Halleck fully as to our position. A road has been surveyed from Clinton to the mouth of Big South Fork on the Cumberland from which point are transported supplies. After the Cumberland River becomes navigable . . . we will commence work on it. . . . I have already made arrangements to build the RR. bridge at that place. . . .'' (DLC-RTL).