[Inclosure Number 3.]

HDQRS. THIRTEENTH ARMY CORPS, June 13, 1863.

Major-General GRANT:

I have just returned. The newspaper slip is a correct copy of my congratulatory order, Number 72. I am prepared to maintain its statements. I regret that my adjutant did not send you a copy promptly, as he ought, and I thought he had.

JOHN A. McClernand,
Major-General.

[Inclosure Number 4.]

HEADQUARTERS Fifteenth ARMY CORPS, Camp on Walnut Hills, June 17, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel John A. RAWLINS,
Assistant Adjutant-General, Department of the Tennessee:

SIR: On my return last evening from an inspection of the new works at Snyder's Bluff, General Blair, who commands the SECOND DIVISION of my corps, called my attention to the inclosed publication in the Memphis Evening Bulletin of June 13, instant, entitled "Congratulatory Order of General McClernand," with a request that I should notice it, lest the statements of fact and inference contained therein might receive credence from an excited public. It certainly gives me no pleasure or satisfaction to notice such a catalogue of nonsense - such an effusion of vain-glory and hypocrisy; nor can I believe General McClernand ever published such an order officially to his corps. I know too well that the brave and intelligent soldiers and officers who compose that corps will not be humbugged by such stuff.

If the order be a genuine production and not a forgery, it is manifestly addressed not to an army, but to a constituency in Illinois, far distant from the scene of the events attempted to be described, who might innocently be induced to think General McClernand the sagacious leader and bold hero he so complacently paints himself; but it is barely possible the order is a genuine one, and was actually read to the regiments of the Thirteenth Army Corps, in which case a copy must have been sent to your office for the information of the commanding general.

I beg to call his attention to the requirements of General Orders, Numbers 151, of 1862, which actually forbids the publication of all official letters and reports, and requires the name of the writer to be laid before the President of the United States for dismissal. The document under question is not technically a letter or report, and though styled an order, is not an order. It orders nothing, but is in the nature of an address to soldiers, manifestly designed for publication for ulterior political purposes. It perverts the truth to the ends of flattery and self-glorification, and contains many untruths, among which is one of monstrous falsehood. It substantially accuses General McPherson and myself with disobeying the orders of General Grant in not assaulting on May 19 and 22, and allowing on the latter day the enemy to mass his forces against the Thirteenth Army Corps alone. General McPherson is fully able to answer for himself, and for the Fifteenth Army Corps I answer that on May 19 and 22 it attacked furiously, at three distinct points, the enemy's works, at the very hour and minute fixed in General Grant's written orders; that on both days we planted our colors on the exterior slope and kept them there till nightfall; that from the first hour of investment of Vicksburg until now my corps has at all times been far in