PETERSBURG, VA., June 11, 1864.

General BRAXTON BRAGG, Richmond, Va.:

In an interview with me after my removal from the Army of Tennessee you said that you had no fault to find with me up to the close of the battle of Chickamauga and you placed my removal uponm personal grounds. I learn that you have made a similar statement through Senator Semmes to Senatro Graham. You promised at Missionary ridge, in the presence of Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson, to put this statement in writing, but upon reflection declined to do so. I have been kept out of the field eight months and reduced in rank. This satisfaction is full enough to gratify most men, and I trust that no reason now exists for withholding the promised paper. Beside, your own sense of propriety will suggest that it is more proper to put in an official form that which you have privately said. The public generally, and North Carolina especially, held you responsible for the severe treatment I have received. If this be unjust, you ought not to bear the odium of the act. While making this appeal to you for simple justice, I must candidly tell you that I do not regret my course whilst connected with the Army of Tennessee. I acted solely from a sense of duty and, with a full knowledge of all the suffering attendant upon the act, would renew it again.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

D. H. HILL,

Major-General.

[First indorsement.]

RICHMOND, June 16, 1864.

Respectfully submitted to His Excellency the President, who will remember the circumstances of General Hill's relief from duty under my command.

In the personal interview to which the general refers, he demanded to know on what charges he was removed from his command, and was distinctly informed I had made "no charges against him." As I consider no human "faultless," the general's desire for exculpation must have given coloring to his understanding of my reply. He can but know that the immediate cause of his removal by yourself was his own act, not mine. Having taken active steps to procure my removal in a manner both unmilitary and unofficer-like, in which he failed, after a full personal investigation by yourself (though I aided his efforts by an expression of my desire to retire) he was, at my request, transferred from that army as a necessary consequence of the line of conduct he had pursued. His having been kept from the field for eight months and reduced in rank was certainly no act of mine, but, as I learn since my arrival here, resulted from his declining to go on duty when ordered without conditions which the Department could not grant,

BRAXTON BRAGG.

[Second indorsement.]

JUNE 17, 1864.

General BRAGG:

The request you preferred that General Hill should be removed from your command for the reason that it would conduce to the public interest was connected in my mind with events previously communicated, some os which preceded the battle of Chickamauga and all of which, taken in connecion with the fact that he had been promoted and assigned to duty in the army then under your command without previous service with [it] and without your recommendation, formed in my