Embracing documents received too late for insertion in proper sequence.

UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.] WASHINGTON, May 18, 1862.

Rev. HEMAN DYER:

MY DEAR FRIEND: Yours of the 16th is welcomed as an evidence of the continued regard of one whose esteem I have always been anxious to possess. I have been very well aware of the calumnies busily circulated against me in New York and elsewhere respecting my relations to General McClellan, but am compelled, form public considerations, to withhold the proofs that would stamp the falsehood of the accusations and the base motives of the accusers, who belong to two classes:

1st. Plunderes, who have been driven from the Department, where they were gorging millions.

2d. Scheming politicians, whose designs are endangered by an earnest, resolute, uncompromising prosecution of this war, as a war against rebels and traitors.

A brief statement of facts - an official record - which I can make to you confidentially, will be sufficient to satisfy yourself that your confidence in me had not been misplaced.

1. When I entered the Cabinet I was, and for months had been, the sincere and devoted fine of General McClellan, and to support him, and, so far as I might, aid and assist him in bringing the war to a close, was a chief inducement for me to sacrifice my personal happiness to a sense of public duty. I had studied him earnestly, with an anxious desire to discover the military and patriotic virtue that might save the country; and if in any degree disappointed, I hoped on, and waited for time to develop. I went into the Cabinet about the 20th of January. On the 27th, the President made his War Order, Numbers 1, requiring the Army of the Potomac to move. It is not necessary, or perhaps proper, to state al the causes that led to that order, but it is enough to know that the Government was on the verge of bankruptcy, and, at the rate of expenditure, the armies must move or the Government perish. The 22nd of February was the day fixed for movement, and when if arrived there was no more sign of movement on the Potomac than there had I had held with General McClellan, to impress him with the absolute necessity of active operations, or that the Government would fail because of foreign intervention and enormous debt.

Between the 22nd of February and the 8th of March, the President had again interfered, and a movement on Winchester and to clear the blockade of the Potomac was promised, commenced, and abandoned.

The circumstances cannot at present be revealed.

On the 6th of March, the President again interfered, ordered the Army