manding the line of defenses. All acting staff officers upon General Gillmore's staff will report to their several commands for duty.

IV. Brigadier-General Foster will report to Brigadier-General Terry, to be assigned to duty.

By command of Major-General Butler:

R. S. DAVIS,

Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HDQRS. DEPT. OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA,
Near Point of Rocks, Va., June 14, 1864.

Major-General GILLMORE,

U. S. Army:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 14th of June, dated headquarters Tenth Army Corps, in the field near Hatcher's, June 14, 1864.* I take leave to call your attention to the heading. After having been relieved from the command of the Tenth Army Corps, or of any troops in the field, such heading must have been an inadvertence. General Gillmore is laboring under a much more grave misapprehension than he imports to the commanding general if he supposes that it became the painful duty of the commanding general to relieve him from his command because of his request for the court of inquiry. The special order so relieving him was made because of the opinions expressed and the allegations made in the review by the major-general commanding of General Gillmore's action near Petersburg. If those are in any degree correct, and General Gillmore will understand that be the major-general, commanding they must be assumed to be so, then General Gillmore's services in the field would not be valuable to the service or the country;but, on the contrary, great mischief might arise, because of his rank, from the necessity of putting him in command of troops which, if the facts in that report are substantially correct, could not be safely intrusted to General Gillmore's charge with hopes of success. In kind consideration, therefore, to General Gillmore, the major-general commanding coupled the order relieving him from command, which from the 9th day of June has been, in the judgment of the major-general commanding coupled the order relieving him from command, which from the 9th day of June has been, in the judgment of the major-general commanding, a necessity, with another paragraph in the order which gratified his request for a court of inquiry; and leave is taken to assure General Gillmore that he would have been relieved from command without any such request, and the time was only delayed until the hourly expected arrival of an officer of experience and ability to take his place. It is a source of regret that General Gillmore should have misconstrued what was intended as a kindness. General Gillmore will, therefore, at once proceed to Fortress Monroe, and there await further orders. The major-general commanding has the honor to state his understanding of General Gillmore's request for a court of inquiry, and the regulations and the purport of the article of was as governing the action which ought to be taken upon such request. First, then the Ninety-second Article of War provides, among other things, that:

As courts of inquiry may be perverted to dishonorable purposes, and may be considered as engines of destruction to military merit in the hands of weak and envious commanders, they are hereby prohibited, unless directed by the President of the United States, or demanded by the accused.

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*See p. 291.

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