issued it. I request, however, to state this in explanation of my order: Every paper at the North has published an account of the rout of the advance guard of our army. I suppose that a manuscript order, issued only for the troops of my command, could not add to the publicity given to that affair. (See New York Times, herewith inclosed.) I must beg to say that the language refereed to in my last paragraph is wholly misunderstood, and that I only intended to do justice to my own troops by saying that they had done their duty at least. The paragraph referring to the battle of Cane River is addressed to the whole of the Nineteenth Army Corps there present, and was to understood by those to whom I read it before issuing the order. Look at the list if killed and wounded in the Third Brigade of the First Division and see if it was not my duty to make special mention of this brigade, particularly as it had been censured at the battle of Pleasant Hill. I have no other motive under Heaven than to do my own troops justice and to vindicate them from slander, and I have not the least thought of overlooking the services of the Second Division, which is a part of them, or of casting the shadow of reproach upon the brave men of the cavalry or the detachments of the Thirteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Army Corps, which have been serving with us with harmony and unity. If with this explanation the major-general commanding still thinks I have done injustice and wrong in issuing this order, I request I may be permitted to publish to the troops his letter of censure and this my letter of reply, as the only atonement I can make for the injury which in his opinion has been inflicted.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. H. EMORY,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF WEST VIRGINIA,
Cumberland, Md., October 29, 1865.

Brigadier-General RAWLINS,

Chief of Staff, Armies of the United States:

GENERAL: I have the honor to request authority to submit for the consideration of Lieutenant-General Grant, and such disposition as he may deem proper to make of them, the inclosed two reports, made on the 13th [12th] and 28th April, 1864 to Major-General Franklin, then commanding the Nineteenth Army Corps, and by him, as the endorsements on the back of the reports will show, forwarded to the general then commanding the army engaged in what is known as the Red River campaign.* This request, though not without precedent, is unusual, and I should not make it except from a sense of duty to myself and the brave men of my command, who whipped the enemy wherever they met them. The newspaper accounts which went to the world as true histories of that campaign were false in fact, and utterly unjust to my command, which was the First Division of the Nineteenth Army Corps, and almost the only part of the corps at tat time engaged in the active portion of that campaign. I trusted to the official reports to correct the injustice which the newspapers inflicted, but in that I have been disappointed, for it does not appear that my reports, or any reports based

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* See pp. 389, 394.

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