Every letter that I receive, every step that I take among the friends and relatives of the troops, furnish abundant evidence of the truthfulness of what I state. Still I have no active command. Why is it? I am informed that I enjoy the unshaken confidence ot His Excellency the President and of the Secretary of War, and yet I am laid on the shelf, nay, more, I am not only deprived of the command I have earned with my saber, but whenever a vacancy is to be filled in the list of major-generals in the regular army my juniors are placed in nomination for promotion over my head, when I have encountered more fire and gained more successes in the estimation of the soldiers of the army than any ten of them; and this will be the verdict of the people when placed in possession of all the facts.

Of my campaigns in the West last fall and the present year but little is know, except by those actually present, for the reason that a studied effort has been made by Generals Grant ad Sherman to keep me in the background. I understand that I incurred the displeasure of the lieutenant-general in my assault of Lookout Mountain, and although it was made with strict conformity to his orders, that I cannot have his forgiveness. It was too successful; I carried away the honors, when he intended that I should be a spectator to Sherman's operations. In the campaign of this summer under Sherman it was the fortune of the Twentieth Corps, which I commanded, to do the heavy work, and it was accomplished in a manner that extorted the applause of all the armies. They became so partial to me that Sherman offered me a professional and personal indignity, which he knew would drive me from the army, and it was permitted to be done by the President of the United States. When McPherson fell, Sherman took Howard, my junior, an officer who cannot make himself felt on the field of battle, and assigned him to the command of that army, when the rumor that I was to have it was received with expressions of great joy from one one end of the line to the other. The dissatisfaction of the troops at this continues to this day.

On going to the West with the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps, I had to encounter the prejudice, which expressed itself at all times and on all occasions, of a fancied superiority of Western troops over those from the East, but that disappeared at the first encounter I had with the enemy, and in the following campaign, this summer, my corps became in the minds of all the grandest corps of the war. It fought its way to the very hearts of our companions, notwithstanding an insult was offered, to have countenanced which for one moment would have made me lose caste with all soldiers, and, what is more, I would have lost caste with myself. For the private part of the indignity, it would have given me the greatest satisfaction to have broken my saber over the head of Sherman; for the professional part, I could but make application to be removed from that army. Every one understood the cause, and every one appreciated and approved of my withdrawal. During that entire campaign, Schofield, an officer unknown to the war, was in command of the Army of the Ohio, and McPherson, another of my juniors, exercised the command of the Army of the Tennessee. Such was my feeling of degradation, or humiliation, that I saw no day on that campaign that I would not have withdrawn from the service in disgust, could I have done so with justice to myself and the cause in which I was engaged. I could die, but I could not commit suicide. On coming East a new command was just about to be sent up the Potomac River, and it was given to Sheridan, a new man; but it was thought better to experiment with him, than give it to one who has won and sustained