| Ala. & Fla Rl Rd Co of Ala |
| Montgomery April 7th 1863 |
| |
| Maj Genl Buckner |
| Commanding Department of the Gulf |
| Mobile Ala. |
| |
| Sir, |
| I have just received from Genl Canby an
order issued under your instructions requiring the restoration of the
Engines and Cars of the Ala & Fla Rl Rd of Fla, turned over to
this Company last November, and without any feeling of hesitancy to
comply with your instructions I venture to call your attention to the
following considerations. |
| In the first place to the condition of
things under which the outfit of that Company was divided between our
Road and the Mobile & Gt. Nor {Mobile &
Great Northern}, which so far as this Road is concerned will be
found detailed in my letter to the Commanding General in the early
part of November, to which refer later. The facts then stated show
that the inability of this Company to serve the Government as promptly
and efficiently as they desired and as the public good demanded was
the result of an insufficient outfit, which we have in vain endeavored
to increase either by purchase from other Companies or by their
manufacture ourselves, owing to the impossibility of procuring in the
Confederacy the necessary materials out of which to construct
cars. |
| Secondly, that the Ala & Fla Rl Rd Co
of Fla had a large surplus of Engines and Cars in consequence of their
track being taken up, which we could neither buy nor rent on ??ing
terms. In pursuance then of an policy which good sense and patriotism
alike dictated and which so far as I know the universal custom of the
Government sanctions, the Military Authorities directed the
distribution of this surplus of outfit between the two road engaged in
Government Transportation between Montgomery & Mobile, leaving to
disinterested parties the pricing of the Engines and Cars if the owner
should decide to sell and securing them proper compensation for their
use if they preferred not to dispose of them. |
| Under this arrangement and without the
least detriment to the owners of the property (for they had no earthly
use for it) we have been enabled to do a vast amount of transportation
for the Government, which also would have been obliged to take the
more tedious and expensive route by the River to Mobile. The same
reasons which caused the transfer of this outfit from a party which
had no need of it to other to whom it was made necessary by the public
exigencies still suggests (though not with the same force, we
were then engaged in transporting a portion of Genl Braggs Army) the
continuance of the arrangement. For when it is remembered that under
existing schedules the Government Transportation is done in one half
the time required by the boats between Montgomery and Mobile and at
greatly reduced Cost to the Government, it will not be deemed a matter
of small moment by the guardians of the public interest that ??? in
??? should be kept up to something like the wants of the Government {end
of archived document} |