Canby has been authorized to exercise control over the Department of the Tennessee I do not know, but in placing a commander at Vicksburg it was by my direction. General Slocum being ordered to the army operating against Atlanta, I deemed it important that he should be replaced at Vicksburg by an officer of rank and experience. General Sherman had no such officer to spare. General A. J. Smith was not ordered to Missouri by General Canby, but by my direction under the belief that Price had passed the line held by Steele and was making his way to Missouri. General Canby should, when he gives any orders affecting the troops in the Department of the Tennessee, inform General Howard of the order he had given and the necessity for it, and when troops are taken out of the department to which they belong they should be returned as soon as the exigency for which they are taken ceases to exist.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

U. S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

WASHINGTON, September 28, 1864.

Major-General CANBY,

New Orleans:

GENERAL: I wrote you some days ago urging the necessity of a careful and thorough inspection of affairs in the Department of Arkansas. Reports from various sources received for some time past have charged much irregularity, mismanagement, and inefficiency in that department. On the receipt of these statements, staff officers of several departments were sent out to inspect. So far as their reports have been received they are exceedingly unfavorable. There seems to have been special negligence and inefficiency in regard to supplies. For example, hay sent from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio has been destroyed by guerrilla bands along the railroad for the want of proper guards, and horses have starved at posts, while within a few miles the prairies were covered with rich grass. It is said that hay enough could have been cut in the country to supply all the army animals, but that no efforts were made to procure it, and that what little there was cut was allowed to rot and be destroyed in the fields. It is also alleged that instead of getting supplies from the country, large issues have been made from the army commissariat to families, the male members of which are in the rebel service; that the proper security of the line of the Arkansas River by fortifications has been utterly neglected, and that measures were not taken to meet and attack the rebel raiders as they came up the river, or to pursue them till after they had passed beyond our reach; that the enemy has supplied his army in Northern Arkansas, from which our army failed to obtain any supplies, thus virtually leaving them to the enemy's use. In fine, that General Steele has utterly neglected his duty as a department commander in enforcing order and discipline, but, on the contrary, has allowed his army to become demoralized by dissipation, uncleanliness, inaction, and inefficiency. It is very probable that many of these charges will prove utterly unfounded, but as they come from so many sources, and are supported by so many circumstances, they must not be overlooked. I always found General Steele a good officer as a division commander, but very possibly he is wanting in those firmed traits of character required in a commander of an army or department in a hostile or semi-hostile State like Arkansas.