The substance of the plan was this. The _Elm City_, able to accommodate four hundred patients, was to remain at White House as a receiving hospital; the _Spaulding_ as a reserve transport in case of a battle; on the occurrence of a battle, the serious cases of sickness to be transferred to the _Spaulding_, and the _Elm City_ used as receiving hospital for surgical cases; the _Knickerbocker_ to remain as a surgical transport. If an engagement should occur at the close of the week, the _Spaulding_ would take to sea three or four hundred sick, freeing the shore hospitals to that extent, making about six hundred with what the _Webster_ would take; the _Webster_ to return and take two hundred more the next week; the _Knickerbocker_ to take two hundred and fifty every twenty-four hours to Fortress Monroe; thus relieving the shore hospitals to the extent of two thousand by the end of the next week, which would probably be all that was necessary. The _Webster_ and _Spaulding_, being low between decks, crowded with berths, and deficient in ventilation, were not suited to the reception of sick and wounded for any other purpose than that of immediate transportation. * * * * * (A.) To relieve myself of further responsibility in case of another change of plan, I wrote a memorandum of what we expected to be able to do, and got the Director to sign his approval of it. He told me yesterday that he meant to have those who were to take ship carefully selected, and that he did not believe there were half a dozen who ought to go from here. I however saw being put on board the usual proportion of sick-in-quarters men, and told him. He attributed it to disregard of his orders by volunteer surgeons, a difficulty for which he declared that there was no remedy short of an act of Congress. I found Dr. ——, his chief executive officer, and got him to go to the sick camp, from which the men were being brought, when he discovered, as he afterwards told me, that the surgeon in charge had heard a report that the Sanitary Commission intended to have a receiving-ship here, and on his own responsibility (assuming that the _Webster_ was to be used for this purpose) was sending men on board at random, and without reference to the gravity of their cases, his object being merely to get room. He also found that ambulances coming in from the advance had entered the train after it left the hospital, and the men thus brought to the shore were allowed to go on board with those brought from the hospital, as if assigned for sea transportation by the surgeon in charge. I begged him to go on board and send off such as he found of these interlopers, but he thought it impracticable; and finally, instead of the half-dozen proposed by the Medical Director yesterday, I found that he had passed two hundred and fifty on board. Meantime the tents before spoken of had been finally pitched on a large field near the White House. They were