before it is. You will, therefore, be notified in time to be prepared to meet all proper applications for military aid. If you need more force, it will be furnished from here when the actual necessity arises.

I am, general, respectfully, your obedient servant,

JNO. POPE,

Major-General, Commanding.

SAINT LOUIS, MO., July 26, 1863.

Major-General HALLECK, General-in-Chief:

Major-General Grant informs me he will send one division to Helena, to go after General Price. I presume it has already left Vicksburg. I infer from orders given by the Secretary of the Navy to the fleet captain at Cairo that the operations from Helena are to be under my direction, but you are aware the troops in Eastern Arkansas are not now under my command. I respectfully request information on this subject.

J. M. SCHOFIELD,

Major-General.

PRIVATE.] HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF THE FRONTIER,

In the Field, Fort Blunt, C. N., July 26, 1863.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

DEAR SIR: Inclosed I send you copy of a letter from General J. M. Schofield to General Halleck, Commander-in-Chief, charging "abuses and irregularities," and demanding my removal from command, which I do not propose to let pass unnoticed.*

The "abuses and irregularities" to which he refers he fails to point out, but among them I suppose may be enumerated the following: That last, fall, after he (Schofield) had failed in his campaign in the Southwest, and, hauling up in Saint Louis, announcing that "the Army of the Frontier had fulfilled its mission and gone into winter quarters," before a gun had ever been fired, and leaving me without orders, I advanced against an enemy greatly superior in numbers, fought four successful battles in the space of sixty days, completely destroyed a formidable rebel army, and took possession of the country they had previously occupied. This wa "irregularity" Numbers 1. Again, I suppose that it was "irregular" that after I had appealed in vain for troops to strengthen the weak and beleaguered garrison at this place that had been long maintaining their position by the most superhuman efforts against a superior force of the enemy, who had been massing in their front to attack and destroy them, and then invade Kansas and Missouri, and finding that the danger was imminent, I mounted a mule, and, with only three of my staff, without baggage or transportation, rode to this place (180 miles) in five days, through an enemy's country, in order to save the command here or die in the attempt. It was still more "irregular" that, after arriving here, and finding the Arkansas River swollen, I should construct boats, cross my force over the river in the face of the enemy's outposts, who were guarding the crossings, from behind rifle-pits, march 25 miles south of the river in one night, and, with less than 3,000 men (mostly Indians and negroes), attack 6,000 of the enemy in their own chosen position, resulting in a complete defeat of the rebels, with a loss

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*See Schofield's indorsement on Easton's letter of June 18, p. 326. and his letter to Townsend of July 15, p. 319.

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