Summary:
Union General Benjamin F. Kelley forwards a March, 1864, Union dispatch to Chief of Staff Cullum. The dispatch reports that 14 armed Confederate deserters from the Staunton area entered Union lines. The deserters had planned to fight their way out of the Confederacy from their place of refuge, Mount Solon, Augusta County.

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Brig. Gen. G. W. CULLUM, Chief of Staff:

CUMBERLAND, MD.,

March 2, 1864.
(Received 2.46 p. m.)

The following dispatch from Col. Mulligan is transmitted for information of the Gen.-in-Chief:

NEW CREEK, W. VA., March 2, 1864.
Capt. T. MELVIN:
Fourteen deserters and conscripts, armed, have come in from the neighborhood of Staunton. They report that on the 20th of last month 110 deserters and conscripts left Mount Solon, in Augusta County, armed, and resolved to fight their way through to our lines.
J. A. MULLIGAN,
Col.

B. F. KELLEY,
Brig.-Gen.

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Bibliographic Information : Letter Reproduced from The War of The Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 33, Serial No. 60, Pages 632, Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC, 1997.