HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF INDIAN TERRITORY,
Fort McCulloch, July 1, 1862.

[Honorable GEORGE W. RANDOLPH,

Secretary of War:]

SIR: I received on yesterday the letter, a copy of which I inclose,* from Charles A. Carroll, who seems to be in command at Fort Smith, a portion of which post, being in the Choctaw country, is within the limits of this department. I forward it to you without replying to it, because I learn from it that Major-General Hindman instructs this colonel to urge on me the necessity of a forward movement of my command as rapidly as practicable; because the colonel orders me to send him all the caps and flints to be spared from my command; and because I learn from it that one Colonel Clarkson, who lately raised some men in Arkansas and with my consent entered the Indian country, has been placed whether, by General Hindman or Colonel Carroll I do not know, in command of three Indian regiments in the Cherokee country, the colonel of each of which ranks him by an older commission.

I find this passage in Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula:

The Duke of Dalmatia would not suffer Drouet to stir; and Joseph, whose jealousy had been excited by the marshal's power in Andalusia, threatened to deprive him of his command. The inflexible Duke replied that the King had already virtually done so by sending orders direct to Drouet; that he was ready to resign, but he would not permit a gross military error.

Major-General Hindman, in like manner, has virtually deprived me of my command by sending orders direct to Colonel Clarkson.

I have inclosed to you, with another communication, a printed handbill, purporting to contain "General Orders, Numbers 17," of Major-General Hindman which has been circulated in the Indian country and forwarded by Major N. B. Pearce, assistant commissary of subsistence, to the quartermaster and commissary of this department direct, with orders to these officers to send him all their funds. In this again Major-General Hindman has virtually deprived me of my command by attempting to make these staff officers wholly independent of me, sending them orders which neither pass through me nor am I notified of them; requiring them to obey the instructions of and report to an assistant commissary of subsistence not within the department, who is also made by him an acting quartermaster, and empowered to send orders to a major in the quartermaster's department, ordering them to send this person all the funds in their hands, estimated for by them for special purposes, to be used as he pleases, perhaps in part to pay the debts for which it was procured, but more probably to pay contractors for hay, beef, corn, and flour, with which Fort Smith will swarm, like a dead carcass in the tropics.

I have also been relieved of the services of my medical director, Dr. E. L. Massie, by order of Major-General Hindman, who has placed him on a medical board of examination to examine surgeons and assistant surgeons in this department without any power as I suppose, on his part to order any such, board anywhere, and certainly without any power to do it in this department except through me, and especially without any power to turn my medical director, by edict of Surgeon Keller, of whom I know nothing, into a mere brigade surgeon, and to enable him to leave headquarters when he likes and go where he pleases without any notice to me whatever, unless he chooses to give it as a matter of politeness and courtesy. In this respect also I am relieved of my command.

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*See Carroll to Pike, p. 951.

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