[CHAP. XXVIII.

propriety and self-respect and my regard for the public interests, reply to your questions. My regard for you personally induces me to assign a few reasons for my action:

1st. It is improper for me to reply categorically to your questions, because my views were given as a matter of duty on the requirement of Lieutenant-General Polk. They were used or rejected by him at the time on his own responsibility, and therefore any official demand for information in regard to them should be sought that channel.

2d. It is inconsistent with my feelings of self-respect to reply, because the subject may become one of legal investigation, and I consider it unworthy the commission I hold to make myself in advance a party either to aid the prosecution of an officer on the one hand or to defend a subordinate against the legitimate authority of his superior on the other. All the facts within my knowledge can be elicited before the proper tribunal.

3d. It would be hurtful to the public interests for me to reply, because whatever statements I may make to you in reference to the action of Lieutenant-General Polk I must, as an officer and a gentleman, make equally to him, together with the occasion which calls upon me to respond. Such a result would not tend to promote that degree of harmony which should always exist between the first and second in command, and in my opinion the public interest has suffered sufficiently in consequence of the unfortunate differences which have prevailed in the Army of Tennessee.

Such are the chief reasons which have influenced the character of my reply. It has been made in no unkind spirit, but with a sense of what I think is due to you, to myself, and to the public interests.

I cannot close this letter, general, without incurring the risk of appearing perhaps obtrusive. Our acquaintance has been brief, and neither my military position nor personal relations justify me in advising you; but the latter, though they have never been intimate, have not been unkind; and as your military subordinate, even when I may have differed with you officially, I have received every consideration at your hands and have ever found you sensitive to the public good. It is therefore with a confidence that you will review what I saw in the kind spirit in which it is urged when I venture upon giving unsought advice. It was the remark of Turenne, when acknowledging a military fault, that "He must have made war but a short time indeed who had not committed errors." The remark is applicable now as it was then, and every officer in his distinct sphere of duty must expect the legitimate criticism of the public and of military men. It is true that these criticism may sometimes be urged with intemperance, but that should not the less prevent us from awaiting the matured verdict of public opinion and of history.

As to what may have occurred since the Kentucky campaign I am not fully advised, but from my associations with the general officers of your army in Kentucky I feel warranted in stating that while there were essential differences of opinion in regard to the general conduct of the campaign you were sustained in your authority by the whole weight of their character. There was a disposition among all with whom I was thrown to lend their ability and their zeal to carry out successfully the determinations at which you arrived. I think they were alive to the difficulties which surrounded you, and did not view your actions in a critical or censorious spirit even when their views may have differed from yours. From my knowledge of these gentlemen as soldiers of ability and distinction I think I do not hazard too much