losses; again, that I am arrested and being sent North; again, that my command is turned over to another officer, and, again, that you have personally assumed command of it. These reports are finding their way from the landings up the river. I hardly need say to you that all these reports are false; that I obeyed orders in attacking; that my attack was prompt and in a larger measure more successful than any other; that the ultimate failure of the general attack and the losses attending it were, under the circumstances, unavoidable consequences of obstacles found to be unsurmountable, and [notwithstanding] a determined effort, at least on my part, to carry and hold the works in obedience to your express and peremptory order. You know that I am not yet under arrest, or being known to you, and these false reports being brought to your notice, it remains for you to determine whether truth, justice, and generosity do not call on you for such a declaration as will be conclusive in the matter.

Your obedient servant,

JOHN A. McClernand,

Major-General, Commanding.

[Inclosure E.]

BATTLE-FIELD, near Vicksburg, MISS., June 18, 1863.

Major General U. S. GRANT,

Commanding Department of the Tennessee:

Your order, relieving me and assigning Major-General Ord to the command of the Thirteenth Army Corps, is received. Having been appointed by the President to the command of that corps, under a definite act of Congress, I might justly challenge your authority in the premises, but forbear to do so at present. I am quite willing that any statement of fact in my congratulatory [order] to the Thirteenth Army Corps, to which you think just exception may be taken, should be made the subject of investigation, not doubting the result.

Your obedient servant,

JOHN A. McClernand,

Major-General.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 27, 1863.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

Under authority conferred by you in previous correspondence to communicate freely, I inclose the accompanying correspondence* between Major-General Grant and myself. From that correspondence you will learn that General Grant has assumed power to relieve me from the command of the Thirteenth Army Corps and to banish me from the Department of the Tennessee. The ostensible motive for this act is the failure of my adjutant to send General Grant a copy of a congratulatory order communicated to commanders of DIVISIONS of the Thirteenth Army Corps, the design of which was to assert the just claims of that corps and to stimulate its soldierly pride and conduct.

the order reflected upon no one, nor was it to have been expected that I could have personally supervised the routine of the adjutant's office in this or any like particular. I was in the presence of the enemy,

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*See McClernand to Halleck, p. 165.

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