AIRDRIE, December 20, 1872.

BENN PITMAN, Esq. Cincinnati, Ohio:

SIR: I have looked over the record which you have prepared from the original notes and manuscripts to replace the lost record of the "Buell Commission," as it is called.

My examination of the oral evidence had been extremely cursory; indeed I have only endeavored to ascertain the general completeness of the work without pretending to verify its verbal accuracy. For that your professional standing is the best security.

In examining your abstract of documentary evidence I find that it contains a number of official dispatches which were not actually filed for the defenses, and which give the subject the appearance of being burdened with details; they have no other effect, however, than perhaps to detract somewhat from the dignity of the defense, and I deem it unnecessary on that account to suggest an alteration that could not be made with much exactness, and which would involve a good deal of time and trouble and mar the work you have executed with so much care.

The discrepancy grew out of the circumstance of your copying from records which, when the investigation was in progress, I marked as bearing more or less on the questions put forward by the Commission, but which I sifted very much when they came to be presented.

I find also that some of the documents which I presented do not appear in the new record. This has arisen from the fact that copies of the originals were not retained or cannot now be found. I send you a list of these, as far as I have been able to discover, and I suggest that you specify them separately at the end of the new index. They are not of great importance to the subject, though of course I regarded them at the time as having some significance in an inquiry which was so general and the object of which was so indefinite.

Your abstract of documents handed in for the side of the prosecution appears to be complete. There is missing, however, a map which may be regarded as belonging to both sides, and of which there is no copy extant. I suggest that you file instead an official historical map which was compiled with great care under the supervision of General George H. Thomas and published by the Engineer Bureau at Washington, to show the operations of the Army of the Cumberland (originally the Army of the Ohio), under its several commanders from the beginning to the end of the war. I send you a copy of that map, which I have amended only so far as to add in a general way the lines of operation of the rebel army in the invasion of Kentucky in the fall of 1862, and also to show distinctly, by merely a change in the coloring, the operations of the army under my command.*

In the original arrangement of the documentary evidence the documents were placed in their appropriate relation to each other and to the questions upon which they had a bearing. The records from which you have had to copy are not arranged in that way, I observe that you have copied in the order in which you found them. Indeed, you could not well do otherwise. The inconvenience of this defect will in a measure be modified by your arrangement of the index, which affords the ready means at least of following up questions involved in any particular chain of correspondence. That result will be facilitated by numbering all of the documents in one continuous series in the order in which they appear in the new record.#

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*Map to appear in Atlas.

#This plan was not adopted by the reporter and the compiler had disregarded the arbitrary numbering of the documents substituted for those lost. See note on p. 690.

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