Confederate States of America, War Department
| Richmond, Va., February 24, 1863 |
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| Capt. J. M. Robinson |
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| Captain, |
| You are instructed to proceed to
England on the special duty of selecting, purchasing, and forwarding
certain supplies deemed essential by the Engineer Bureau for the
engineer service. You have been furnished by that Bureau with a
schedule exhibiting the nature and quantities of the articles
needed, and in purchasing and arranging for the payment of them. You
are desired to consult and be guided by the advice of Maj. Caleb
Huse, who has been for some time in England acting as the agent,
first of the Ordnance Bureau, and more recently of the Department
generally in its purchases and payments. You are likewise expected
and desired while abroad to perform other duties less directly
connected with the services of this Department, suffering under the
exigencies of the times for many articles essential to their
efficiency. Several of the leading railroad companies of the
Confederacy have combined in an effort to procure the needed
supplies by purchase and importation from Europe. Their success is
scarcely less important to this Department than to the public and
themselves, and consequently I have consented to afford them such
reasonable facilities in effecting their object as the Department
can conveniently command. They repose great confidence in the
experience, knowledge, and judgment which your past connection with
railroad operations and your professional acquirements will afford,
and believe that you can most efficiently, as an agent for them,
manage the selection, purchase, and shipment of the supplies they
require. With your own concurrence, you are therefore authorized and
desired while in Europe to act as such agent, and to render to these
companies all the assistance in your power in the accomplishment of
their enterprise. You will in such capacity receive full
instructions from them as to the articles needed and their proposed
mode of effecting their purchases, payments, and shipments. You will
be provided with funds and such other aids as in their power to
render, and in these respects you will be responsible to them, and
be careful not to engage the responsibility of this Department for their
transactions. Should any additional facilities appear to you as
within the power of the Department to render these railroad
companies you will report them, and take the instructions of the
Department before engaging to afford them. You will employ such
dispatch as may be consistent with the full accomplishment of both
the objects of your mission, and then return to your valuable
services in the field, from which you have been reluctantly spared
and without application on your part. |
| Very respectfully, yours |
| James A. Seddon |
| Secretary of War |
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