have impelled you to sustain me against the machinations of McClellan and his parasites, knowing well, as you did, that the result of the late campaign in Virginia was directly due to the neglect of duty (to call it by no worse name) of these very men. if you desire to know the personal obligation to which I refer, I commend you to the President, the Secretary of War, or any other member of the administration. Any of these can satisfy your inquiries. No man knows better than your self the constancy, the constancy, the energy, and the zeal with which I endeavored to carry out your programmed in Virginia. Your own letters and dispatches from beginning to end are sufficient evidence fo this fact, and also of the fact that I not only committed no mistake, but that every act and movement met with your heartiest concurrence. of the details of these movements I challenge examination. Your own declarations to me up to the last hour I remained in Washington bore testimony that I had shown every quality to command success.

It may be, and doubtless was, true that considering the relations between myself and McClellan and many of his followers who held high commands in that army, it was better to change the commander of the armies around Washington, but this fact did not necessitate nor justify, in view of the facts in your possession, that McClellan should be thus advanced nor that I should be banished to a remote and unimportant command. A great and fatal mistake for the country as for yourself was committed when he was thus assigned.

If you had sustained me as I had every reason to expect, and did expect you would do, you would have had a warm and earnest friend, as I had always been. By yielding to and advancing McClellan you have only put into the hands of an enemy a club to beat your own brains out with. You can never be forgiven for occupying the place you do. You of course do not imagine McClellan to be your friend in any sense. Every motive a man can have has to displace you from your position, which is a constant reproach and humiliation to him. Neither he nor his clique will omit any means to destroy you.

Having at your own urgent request and from a sense of duty laid before the Government the conduct of McClellan, Porter, and Griffin and substantiated the facts stated by their own written documents, I am not disposed to push the matter further, unless the silence of the Government in the midst of the unscrupulous slander and misrepresentation purposely put in circulation against me and the restoration of these officers without trial to their commands, coupled with my banishment to a distant and unimportant department, render it necessary as an act of justice to myself.

As I have already said, I challenge and seek examination of my campaign in Virginia in allies details, and unless the Government by some high mark of public confidence, such as they have given me in private, relieves me from the atrocious injury done to my character as a soldier by the means I have specified above, justice to myself and to all connected with me demands that I should urge the court of inquiry that was ordered, but suspended through the influence of the very men charged with the crimes to be investigated. This investigation, under the circumstances above stated, I shall assuredly urge in every way. If it cannot be accomplished by military courts, it will undoubtedly be the subject of Inquiry in Congress. It is hard that I should be subjected to such a necessity by a Government which has approved my conduct so highly in private, and which knew so well the truth of the facts I have stated, but it is especially hard, in view of my relations

52 R R-VOL XII, PT III