EXHIBIT F.

HDQRS. OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., Feb.8, 1863.

Major-General WRIGHT,
Cincinnati, Ohio:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 4th instant [following] is just received. In this and your former letter you fully exonerate Brig. Gen. G. W. Morgan from all blame in abandoning Cumberland Gap. No further investigation will therefore be made. It however is to be regretted that you did not make a full and formal investigation at the time it was ordered. This was due to General Morgan as well as to yourself and to the Government.

All of your reports, as well as those received from General Morgan, almost to the day of his abandoning his post, represented his force as able to hold it against any number of troops which the enemy could bring against him. He was almost boastful in his confidence of his being able to do this. On these assurances the Government believed that the post would be held by us, and serve as a serious obstacle to the retreat of General Bragg's army. Great disappointment was therefore felt at learning that so important a point had been abandoned at a most critical moment in the campaign.

It appears now from your letters and from General Morgan's report that he was forced to abandon Cumberland Gap for want of supplies. It is true that he had stated in his dispatches that his supplies were limited and that he was collecting all he could from the surrounding country, but he did not intimate that were so short as to compel him to abandon his post. On the contrary, in your dispatch to me of September the 18th you report that in his dispatch of September 11 he says he has supplies for from seventy to eighty days and feels secure. It now appears from his report that he had actually abandoned his post for want of supplies before the above dispatch was received here.

There is but one way of accounting for this discrepancy between the dispatches and the report-that the former were purposely made incorrect in order to deceive the enemy, if intercepted, in regard to General Morgan's real condition. They certainly deceived our Government. Had his true condition been known it is possible that measures could have been taken in time to relieve him. Seventy or eighty days' supplies on hand on the 11th day of September would have served him till near the end of December, before which time he was very certain to be relieved by you or by the army of General Buell.

The facts as now presented justified General Morgan's retreat, but the facts as understood by the War Department at the time, derived from his dispatches, furnished no possible justification for his abandoning Cumberland Gap in the middle of September. If the opinion of the Department was unjust toward General Morgan it was due entirely to incorrect information derived from his dispatches.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,

General-in-Chief.

EXHIBIT G.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO, Cincinnati, Ohio, February 4, 1863.

Brig. Gen. G. W. CULLUM, &c.:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the dispatch