[special orders, no. 1.]
Savannah, Ga., January 12, 1865.The Secretary of War having directed the Quartermaster-General to assume the charge of the captured cotton in this city and provide for its proper care and preservation, and to detail a competent quartermaster for the special duty of seeing to its being turned over and receipted for by the agents of the Treasury Department, Lieutenant-Colonel H. C. Ransom is hereby detailed for this duty. Brevet Brigadier-General L. C. Easton will place Lieutenant-Colonel Ransom in charge of all the cotton in his possession. Lieutenant-Colonel Ransom will immediately make a careful inspection of the stores containing the captured cotton, and will make requisition for guards sufficient to prevent all danger of unauthorized persons entering the storehouses or meddling with the cotton. No person not in the employment of the United States will be permitted to enter into or to loiter about the neighborhood of the buildings. He will afford every facility for the operations of the Treasury agent, Simeon Draper, collector of the port of New York, who is charged by the Treasury Department with the care and disposition of this captured property. He will employ competent clerks to attend to the weighing of each bale, who will keep an accurate register of the number and weight of each bale, and will take duplicate receipts in detail from the special agent of the Treasury Department before allowing any of it to leave the harbor. He will forward one copy of these receipts to the Quartermaster-General's office in Washington by the first mail after their execution. The other copy and the books and all papers containing the records of this business he will himself carry in person to Washington, and will deliver them to the Quartermaster-General. For the cotton already stored on board vessels, he will take receipts in detail from the special agent, based upon the accounts and invoices of this property prepared by Captain George B. Cadwallader, heretofore in charge of this duty. In default of such receipts he will order the vessels to proceed to New York, invoicing the cotton to Brevet Brigadier-General Van Vliet, Chief Quartermaster, forwarding with the bills of lading an official copy of this order. General Van Vliet will transfer the cotton in this case to the special agent of the Treasury in New York, upon receiving such receipts as are herein prescribed. Lieutenant-Colonel Ransom will collect and register all the information offered to him of claims to the former ownership of this cotton. He will take this information with him to Washington, but will give copies or extracts from it to no one in Savannah but the Quartermaster-General.
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Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co. 1875.
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