what point or in what manner I am considered to have disobeyed this joint order. General Pope, upon being asked in his examination-in-chief as to the manner in which I had disobeyed this join order, stated, if I understand him, that I had partially obeyed it and partially disobeyed it; giving, however, no particulars of such partial obedience or disobedience on my part. Being examined further upon this point, he began by stating that I had failed to attack the enemy in flank, as directed to do, not by this joint order, which is now in question, but by the subsequent order of 4.30 p.m. of the 29th, which is not now under consideration. General Pope, then returning go my alleged disobedience of this joint order, produces a not which, on the 29th, I addressed to Generals McDowell and King, in which, after stating my information and belief that our troops were falling back toward Bull Run, I expressed my determination in that state of facts also to fall back to Manassas Junction.

In the same note I stated my unsuccessful efforts to effect a junction with the other corps, and anticipated in the joint order, and some of the reasons why those efforts failed. Now, the writing of this note by me, upon information which turned out to be erroneous, and the expression of determination, in view of such information, to make a retiring movement to Manassas Junction, which I actually did not make, because, in the mean time, my first erroneous information had been corrected by surer intelligence; all this is certainly no act of disobedience. In point of fact, it is no act at all. It is only the expression of an intention never carried into effect; an intention proper, under the circumstances in which it was formed and announced, an an intention which was abandoned by me as soon as more correct information showed its abandonment to be proper. Yet, if my actual disobedience to this joint order does not consist in writing this note and sending it to General McDowell and King, then I ask in what else is it charged that I did disobey this joint order? The join order directed me to proceed Gainesville. It is fully proved that when I received that join order I was already proceeding toward Gainesville under a prior order (referred to in the joint order) to that effect, and that I continued to proceed toward Gainesville in pursuance of that join order. That order directed me to halt as soon as I could from a junction with the other specified forces, supposed to be near Gainesville. I proceeded until I arrived about on a line with the position of those forces; perhaps a very little in advance of them in the Gainesville direction, and then I did halt, and did make such efforts as it was in my power to make to effect that junction; relying for that purpose mainly upon General King's division, so long as it remained with me, and baffled in this purpose in spite of all my efforts, first, by the unexpected position and force of the enemy immediately in my front; secondly, by the unexpected position of our own corps, specified in the order, which the order anticipated would be much nearer Gainesville than they actually were; thirdly, by the impracticable character of the country between me and them, and, fourthly, by the fact that General King's division was soon taken away from my command by my senior officer, General McDowell acting with the authority which, under the Sixty-second Article of War, and by the discretionary terms of the joint order, he considered himself to possess.

In proof of all this, I refer in the first place to the testimony of General McDowell, a witness for the Government, who declares that the joint order found, when it reached us, both his corps and my own executing the very movement which it prescribed. He further declares that the