who "deemed the co-operation of the gun-boats so essential to success that he (Porter) had to run some risks and make unusual exertions to get them over the falls." This implies that the responsibility of his action rests upon the army; but it is not consistent with the facts. The co-operation of the navy was an indispensable condition and basis of the expedition.

Major-General Halleck informed me, January 11, that he had been assured by the Navy Department that Admiral Porter would be prepared to co-operate with the army in its movements, and the admiral himself informed me, February 26, that he was "prepared to ascend Red River with a large fleet of gun-boats," and to co-operate with the army at any time when the water was high enough. The fleet was as necessary to the campaign as the army. Had it been left to my discretion, I should have reluctantly under-taken, in a campaign requiring but eight or ten light-draught gun-boats, to force twenty heavy iron-clads 490 miles upon a river proverbially as treacherous as the rebels who defended it, and which had given notice of its character by steadily falling when, as the admiral reports, "all other rivers were booming." There is a better reason for the disregard of the palpable difficulties of navigation than the overzealous counsel of army officers in nautical affairs.

In a subsequent dispatch Admiral Porter says that "all my vessels navigated the river to Grand Ecore with ease, and with some of them I reached Springfield Landing, the place designated for the gun-boats to meet the army. My part was successfully accomplished; the failure of the army to proceed and the retreat to Grand Ecore left me almost at the mercy of the enemy." The record of the campaign do not at all support the reckless and fiery ardor of this statement. The fleet did not reach the "place appointed" until two full days after the first decisive battle with the enemy. The admiral occupied four days in moving 104 miles on what he calls "a rising river," with "good water," to the place appointed. General T. Kilby Smith states that the fleet made 20 miles on the 7th, 57 miles on the 8th, 18 miles on the 9th, and 9 miles on the 10th of April; total, 104 miles. The failure of the fleet to move up the river with ordinary expedition, together with the fact that the gun-boats were unable to pass Grand Ecore until the 7th, justified the belief that its advance had been prevented by the low stage of water, and governed the army exclusively in its retrograde movement to Grand Ecore, as it did in every important operation of the campaign. The admiral's dispatch does not mention the fact that, in addition to the "mercy" of the enemy, he had the support of General T. Kilby Smith's division of 2,500 men, whose most gallant and honorable part in the preservation of the fleet of gun-boats and transports is not referred to in what the admiral calls "this curious affair between (the enemy's) infantry and gun-boats." In view of the published dispatches of Admiral Porter, it is proper for me to say that every position of difficulty in which the army was placed in this campaign was the immediate and direct consequence of delay in the operations of the navy. This may have been inevitable and entirely justifiable from the condition of the river. It is not my province to pass judgment upon its operations, but the fact remains, nevertheless.

During my term of service it has been an invariable rule of conduct, from which I have never departed, to forbear the expression of opinion or complaint upon the official action of others, but I feel it to be a solemn duty to say, in this official and formal manner, that