"Your recal is, you assert, the long suspended "blow of power" which you had the sagacity clearly to predict. It is somewhat remarkable that your predictions preceded the events which you imagine provoked that blow. As early as the 25th of July-soon after "the happy change in my [your] relations, both official and private, with Mr. Trist"-you looked, you say, "to be dismissed from the service of my [your] country." If your recall can be regarded as a dismissal, you are entitled to all the credit of the fulfilment of your own early prediction.

In presenting in its true light the President's compliance with your own request to be recalled, which you now denominate your dismissal, I may be obliged to strip it of the embellishments you have ingeniously thrown around it, though, in doing this, you may be deprived of much upon which you depend to sustain your claim to be considered as a persecuted man.

As early as June you begged to be recalled. You allege that this application was "rebukingly declined." This is not saying the exact thing. The reply to your request was, "that it would be decided with exclusive reference to the public good. When that shall render it proper in his (the President's) opinion to withdraw you from your present command, his determination to do so will be made known to you." This was not a denial, but a suspension of present action, accompanied with an assurance of future action on the subject. Your request was still pending; a regard to the public good then stood in the way of the immediate gratification of your wishes, but the President promised to act definitively on the question when that obstacle should be removed. Judging from the state of things at the head-quarters of the army, in January, he concluded that it was removed, and that he ought no longer to require of you reluctant service as commanding general. This, certainly, cannot be called persecution, or punishment. I do not deem it proper to comment on the state of things at the head-quarters of the army, to which allusion is made in the letter granting your request, nor to express an opinion as to the share of responsibility therefor which rests upon yourself or others; that matter is to a considerable extent involved in the investigations before the court of inquiry now sitting in Mexico. Your request to be recalled, thus ultimately granted, was prefaced with imaginary complaints, which could not be passed without notice, nor noticed, without exposing their groundlessness. If the exposition has given offence, you can blame only yourself for introducing complaints so entirely unfounded.

The crowning outrage, as you regard it, is the simple fact that you and "the three arrested officers" are all to be placed together before the same court; "the innocent and the guilty, the accuser and the accused, the judge and his prisoners, are dealt with alike." "Most impartial justice!" you exclaim. And why is it not impartial justice? On what ground of right can you claim to have your case discriminated from theirs? It is true you have assumed to be their judge, and have pronounced them guilty; and complain and repine that the laws of the country do not allow you, their accuser,

to institute a court to register your decree. But you are not their rightful judge, although they were your prisoners. Before that court you all stand on the same level, and all have equal rights. Though you may have the self-satisfying conviction that you are innocent and they are guilty, the government could act upon no such presumption. By becoming an accuser you did not place yourself beyond the reach of being accused; and unless you are clothed with the immunity of despotic power, and can claim the benefit of the maxim "that the king can do no wrong," I know not why your conduct, when made the subject of charges, may not be investigated by a court of inquiry, nor can I perceive what other, or better, right you have to complain, and arraign the government, than the other officers whom you have accused, and whose cases, with yours were referred to the same court. If yours is a hard case, theirs is not less so: if you can rightfully complain of persecution by the government, so can they, with equal justice, and an equal claim to public sympathy.

The charges against you did not emanate from the government, nor did they relate to a matter in which it could feel any peculiar interest. Not believing it impossible for you to do wrong, or that you were exempt from all responsibility, for whatever you might have done, the government deemed it proper, when charges were preferred against you, coming from a source entitled to respect, to cause them to be investigated. As the usual and mildest mode of proceeding, they were referred to a court of inquiry. Until you can show that you enjoy the transcendental privilege to have your official conduct exempt from all examination, in any form whatever, you have no cause to complain of the course taken in regard to the charges against you.

If your extraordinary pretensions are to derive any support from your distinguished services in the field, you ought to be mindful that the three accused officers, put under arrest by you, have like claims for distinguished services. On the pages of impartial history their names, and their gallant deeds, must appear with yours, and no monopolizing claims, seeking "malignant exclusions," at the expense of the "truth of history," will be permitted to rob them of their fair share of the glory won by our gallant army while under your command.

With your assault upon the character of your "erratic brother" I shall not intermeddle, but I must repel your charge that he has been favored for being a political "deserter" to "the true faith," for signalizing his "apostacy, by acceptable denunciations of one" to whom he had formerly "professed (and not without cause) the highest obligations." The reasons for not sending your charges against Brevet Major General Worth to the court of inquiry are set forth in my letter of the 13th of January. I regret that they are so entirely unsatisfactory to you, but am consoled with the assurance that they are in other quarters more favorably received. The errors of your commentary on my letter have arisen from your misapprehension of the text. The principle there laid down is of vital im

portance to subordinate officers, and in no respect impairs the rights or the authority of those in chief command. As the principles which you arraign are the creations of your own fancy, and have no countenance or support from my letter, I am in no way implicated by the "fatal consequences" you deduce from them. Whether legitimate or fanciful, they do not disturb the positions laid down in my letter.

I cannot, however, but regard your solicitude for the support of discipline to be more ostentatious than profound. When a general at the head of an army of freemen, who do not lose their rights as citizens by becoming soldiers, sets up pretensions to dictatorial power-when he contemns the authority of his government, and is much more ready to censure than to execute its orders and instructions-when he denounces as an outrage and a punishment the attempt to submit his acts, charged to be an offence against a subordinate officer, to an investigation in the mildest form-when he administers an indignant reproof to his superior for upholding the sacred right of appeal, upon which depend the security and protection of all under his command-such a general sets an example of insubordinate conduct of wide and withering influence upon sound military discipline.

By extending my comments upon your letter, I might multiply proofs to show that your accusations against the head of the War Department are unjust; that your complaints are unfounded; that the designs imputed by you to the government to embarrass your operations, impair your rightful authority as commander, and to offer outrage and insult to your feelings, are all the mere creations of a distempered fancy; but to do more than I have done would, in my judgment, be a work of supererogation.

In conclusion, I may be permitted to say that, as one of the President's advisers, I had a full share in the responsibility of the act which assigned you to the command of our armies in Mexico. I felt interested even more than naturally appertained to my official position that success and glory should signalize your operations. It was my duty to bring to your aid the efficient co-operation of the War Department. I never had a feeling that did not harmonize with a full and fair discharge of this duty. I know it has been faithfully performed. There are some men for whom enough cannot be done to make them grateful, or even just, unless acts of subserviency and personal devotedness are superadded. From you I expected bare justice, but have been disappointed. I have found you my accuser. In my vindication I have endeavored to maintain a defensive line, and if I have gone beyond it at any time, it has been done to repel unproked aggression. To your fame I have endeavored to be just. I have been gratified with the many occasions I have had to bear public testimony to your abilities and signal services as a military commander in the field. It has been, and, under any change in our personal relations, it will continue to be, my purpose to be liberal in my appreciation of your distinguished military merits. In respect to your errors and your faults,

though I could not be blind, I regret that you have not permitted me to be silent.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. L. MARCY,

To Major General WINFIELD SCOTT,

U. S. Army, Mexico.

P. S. Papers herewith sent:

Secretary of War.

1. Duplicate of General Jesup's letter to me of the 18th February,

QUARTERMASTER GENERAL'S OFFICE,
Washington city, February 18, 1848.

SIR: In reply to the complaint of General Scott, in his despatch of the 25th of December, that Lieutenant Colonel Johnson's train had returned without one blanket, coat, jacket, or pair of pantaloons, the small depot at Vera Cruz having been exhausted by the troops under Generals Patterson, Butler, and Marshall, respectively, all fresh from home, I have the honor to state that, if the facts are as set forth by General Scott, the responsibility lies at other doors than mine. Understanding fully his views and wishes, I made ample provision for the old corps under his command. Those corps, I believe, never exceeded in the aggregate seven thousand men. To supply them I placed in depot at Vera Cruz, eleven thousand forage caps, fourteen thousand wool jackets, and four thousand cotton jackets; fifteen thousand flannel shirts, and seventeen thousand cotton shirts; eighteen thousand pairs of wool overalls, and four thousand pairs of cotton overalls; seventeen thousand pairs of flannel drawers; thirty-seven thousand pairs of bootees, (I ordered fifty thousand pairs;) twenty-seven thousand pairs of stockings; two thousand four hundred great coats, and nine thousand two hundred blankets. These supplies were all sent to Vera Cruz previous to the 30th of June.

I made no provision for the volunteers, for you are well aware I had not a single cent that I could legally apply to the purchase of clothing for them. If the generals named by General Scott exhausted the clothing placed in depot at Vera Cruz, by applying it to the use of their respective commands, they acted in violation of the 36th article of war, and the general should hold them accountable.

It is known here that several thousand suits of clothing, sent to New Orleans and Mexico, for the use of the old army, have been issued to the new regiments and to volunteers; but General Scott is mistaken in supposing that the depot at Vera Cruz was entirely exhausted by those issues; for I have official information that as late as the 6th of December, some time after Lieutenant Colonel

Johnson's train left Vera Cruz, there still remained in the depot at that post eight thousand forage caps; three thousand nine hundred wool coats and jackets, and six thousand nine hundred cotton jackets; nineteen hundred wool and seven thousand seven hundred cotton overalls; twenty-seven hundred flannel and thirteen thousand seven hundred cotton shirts; fifteen thousand six hundred pairs of drawers; two thousand seven hundred great coats; and seven thousand blankets, and eleven thousand pairs of bootees.

If the volunteers and new regiments went to Mexico without the proper supplies, that was the fault of those who commanded them. General Butler, I understand, was specially directed to superintend the organization, equipment, and movement of the volunteer force. It was his business, not mine, to see that they were properly clothed and supplied; and neither he, General Patterson, nor General Marshall had any right to take for their commands the supplies I had placed at Vera Cruz for General Scott's old regiments. For the new regiments I had made timely arrangements, and would have sent to Vera Cruz, in November, a large supply of clothing, but I received, in October, a report from Captain Irwin, the acting quartermaster general of General Scott's army, dated at the city of Mexico the 27th of September, of which the following is an extract: "I have now a thousand people engaged in making clothing; the quality of the material is not so good as our own, and the price on the average is fifty per cent. higher. Still supposing the road between this and Vera Cruz to be entirely open, I think the government will lose little, if anything, by purchasing here. I shall be able to fill, in a very short time, every requisition which has been made on me, with clothing, which, though not exactly of our uniform, will be comfortable and good."

This information, sir, was from a man who not only knew how to supply an army, by putting into requisition all the resources of the country around him, but was better qualified to command a large army than most of your generals in the field. The report of Captain Irwin delayed my action here, but, in December, I ordered from Philadelphia a supply of clothing sufficient for the whole army, regulars and volunteers.

To enable me to do this, I have been obliged to apply, on my own responsibility, three hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars of the funds of the quartermaster's department to the purchase of clothing, and to authorize purchases to be made on credit, which have been paid for by bills drawn on me at ninety days, which I have accepted, hoping Congress, by making an appropriation, will enable me to meet them by the time they become due.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

Hon. W. L. MARCY,

TH. S. JESUP, Quartermaster General.

Secretary of War, Washington City.