[Inclosure Numbers 13.]

BRIEF STATEMENT AS TO THE JAMES ISLAND AFFAIR.

In my report to General Hunter, I reminded him that he had himself approved the movement, and, although I was at once deprived of command and put in arrest under the verbal pretense of disobedience of orders, he has never preferred any such charge against me officially. I can find nothing at the War Department in the way of accusation, except two letters of General Hunter, one of June 27, forwarding a letter of General Stevens of June 22, with indorsement of General Wright, and another of July 10, forwarding a letter of General Stevens of July 8, which was printed in the New York Times of July 16, in neither of which does General Hunter call for or suggest any action against me.

In his first letter, General Hunter assumes that the letter of General Stevens states that my subordinate generals warned me that I "was about to fight a battle in violation of orders." This assumption, however, General Stevens' letter will not warrant. He says simply that I "was about to fight a battle will not warrant. He says simply that I "was warned that under" "my" orders they were going to fight" a battle," and in a subsequent card published in the New York Times, July 22, he fully refutes General Hunter's assumption, saying that "General Hunter's orders to General Benham were not a matter brought before the conference."

General Stevens' letter is a very artful production, and wonderfully calculated to deceive. He assumes that I had said that they did not oppose it; and Captain Drayton, who was present at the conference, sustains me in this, when he states that if they were opposed to it, "none of the, however, said so much as this." General Stevens also alleges that he was opposed to the attack on the morning of the 16th, and that he understood that General Wright was opposed to it, but neither does he nor General Wright say that General Wright or Colonel Williams expressed themselves so opposed, while Captain Drayton states that neither of them expressed any opposition. General Stevens indeed opposed making the attack in the morning, or rather he proposed its being made in the afternoon. That he absolutely favored an attack I had every reason to believe from a latter I had from him on the 7th, proposing for the 9th the details for a "dash, with every, man thrown in," and at "daylight to seize the lower part of James Island," embracing, of course, this battery; to receive which letter I was waked up at 1 o'clock in the morning, though my headquarters were but a few hundred yards from General Stevens'.

The simple facts were, first, that this battery covered our main landing and essentially commanded our camps; second, that the first order to attack this battery was issued by me with the full knowledge and approbation of General Hunter; third, that while this attack was in preparation, General Hunter's order (draughted by myself) directing me "not to advance on Charleston," 10 miles, and not to "attack Fort Johnson," 7 miles distant, but ordering me to "provide for a secure entrenched encampment, where my front could be covered by the fire of the gunboats from the Stono on the left and the creek from Folly River on the right," was issued by him; fourth, that circumstances having delayed the exaction of my first order to amtrack it became, in my judgment, absolutely necessary to renew it after his departure from the Stono, and, therefore, in obedience to a military necessity, to prevent our being driven from the island, as well as in obedience to the order of General Hunter, to secure our camps and enable our gunboats to ascend the Folly River Creek, which could not otherwise be done, I ordered the attack which was made on the 16th; fifth, I did not advance one yard on the route to Charleston or Fort Johnson,