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the supplies are now entirely inadequate to the real destitution, and actual want of food

I cannot consistently ask you to supply the entire deficiency:  were I to do so, and you grant the request it would be a draft upon the liberality of the Govt apparently unreasonable.  Yet we cant very well circumscribe the bounds of starving necessity for bread on which to maintain life

Without entering into the causes which have produced this frightful, and hart rending amount of destitution, hunger, and in some cases of starvation in Alabama, I have no hesitancy in saying there are not less than, One Hundred thousand, widows, orphans, old men and women, and men disabled by the late war, who are today, real objects of charity, suffering for food

In the exercise of Your wise discretion it is for You; My Dear Genl. to determine whether or not the supplies of provisions now furnished by the Govt. shall be increased, without which I am persuaded there must be much suffering.  If you cant consistently do more; an increase of 5,000 rations per day will do incalculably good.  

I have the honour to be 
Yours Very Truly
R M Patton
Gov. of Alabama