Today in History:

394 Series I Volume XL-III Serial 82 - Richmond, Petersburg Part III

Page 394 OPERATIONS IN SE. VA. AND N. C. Chapter LII.

deavored to advance your interests, but I cannot shut my eyes to what I think is wrong in you, and on several occasions I have differed from you in what you seemed to consider was your prerogative. In your conversation of the 19th ultimo I thought you exhibited a great deal of temper and positive ill-feeling against me, not justified, as I think, by anything I have either said or done. It is my earnest desire to have harmony and co-operation with my subordinate officers, but I cannot always yield my judgment to theirs, and if it is impossible to have these relations, necessary for harmonious co-operation, a separation is inevitable. I do not make these remarks for any other purpose than to explain the reason I felt called on to speak to General Grant about you.

Truly, yours,

GEO. G. MEADE.

[Inclosure.]


HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, July 22, 1864.

Major-General WARREN:

GENERAL: I have received your note of this date, calling my attention to an article in the Pittsburg Commercial of the 14th instant. The statement therein made that I had preferred charges against you for disobedience and tardy execution of orders is entirely without foundation in fact.

Very truly, yours.

GEO. G. MEADE,
Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS FOURTH DIVISION, FIFTH ARMY CORPS, July 22, 1864.

The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

SIR: The fact that I have lived to about the same age as yourself, that I have the same interest as yourself in the perpetuity of a free government; that I have left family and broken up my business and been in the field from the first to aid so far as I could the restoration of the Government to its authority over all the country, is my excuse, if any is needed, for writing you. Perhaps there is not one who has been more hopeful and confident as to the final result of the struggle than myself or less inclined to despond because we did not go faster or accomplish more. For the first time since the war commenced I confess that I am seriously apprehensive for the result, not from any lack of confidence in the army or its commanders, but because I am almost certain that you will not get the necessary number of men of the right sort, and in season, under the late call, and if you do not, and the struggle goes on through the autumn without decisive results, it requires no prophet to foretell the consequences. I take it for granted that a large proportion of the new men are to be substitutes furnished by those able to do so. They will get the cheapest they can, and unless some thorough, radical change is effected among provost-marshals, examining surgeons, and superintendents of recruits, we shall, as heretofore, receive a batch of aged paralytics, scorbutics, imbeciles, &c., to be sent to hospitals or discharged-an element of weakness instead of


Page 394 OPERATIONS IN SE. VA. AND N. C. Chapter LII.