Confederate States of America
WAR DEPARTMENT,
Richmond, January 15th 1864
Sir:
You are hereby informed that the President has appointed you Lieutenant Colonel. Adjutant Generals Department In the Provisional Army in the service of the Confederate States: to rank as such from the twenty first day of December one thousand eight hundred and sixty three. Should the Senate at their next session, advise and consent thereto, you will be commissioned accordingly.
Immediately on receipt hereof, please to communicate to this Department, through the Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office, your acceptance or non=acceptance of said appointment; and with your letter of acceptance, return to the Adjutant and Inspector General the OATH, herewith enclosed, properly filled up, SUBSCRIBED and ATTESTED, reporting at the same time your AGE, RESIDENCE when appointed, and the state in which you were BORN.
Should you accept, you will report for duty to Genl. Robt E. Lee
James A. Seddon
Secretary of War
Lieut. Col Walter H. Taylor
Asst. Adj’t Genl
P.A.CS.[1]
Source: The Archives of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, Papers of the Lee Family, Box 8, M2009.314, Jessie Ball duPont Library, Stratford Hall
Transcribed by Colin Woodward, 2015 October 14
[1] Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS). The PACS was the organization in which most of the men who fought on the Confederate side served. The PACS consisted of volunteers and conscripts, and men in the PACS had a better chance at promotion than they would have in the regular army. In contrast, the regular army of the Confederacy, the Army of the Confederate States of America (ACSA), was to consist of 15,015 men. The ACSA, however, only ever existed on paper.
