"The attention of certain officers of this army is recalled to the foregoing—650th paragraph, 1,825 regulations—a regulation prohibiting officers of the army from detailing in private letters or reports the movements of the army, which the general in chief is resolved to enforce so far as it may be in his power. As yet but two echoes from home of the brilliant operations of our army in this basin have reached us—the first in a New Orleans and the second through a Tampico newspaper.
"It requires not a little charity to believe that the principal heroes of the scandalous letters alluded to did not write them, or especially procure them to be written; and the intelligent can be at no loss in conjecturing the authors, chiefs, partisans, and pet familiars. To the honor of the service, the disease—pruriency of fame not earned—can not have seized upon half a dozen officers present, all of whom, it is believed, belonged to the same two coteries.
"False credit may no doubt be attained at hand by such despicable self-puffings and malignant exclusion of others, but at the expense of the just esteem and consideration of all honorable officers who love their country, their profession, and the truth of history. The indignation of the great number of the latter class can not fail in the end to bring down the conceited and envious to their proper level."
The day after the publication of the above General Orders General Worth forwarded to army headquarters a communication in which he said:
"I learn with much astonishment that the prevailing opinion in this army points the imputation of 'scandalous' contained in the third, and the invocation of the 'indignation of the great number' in the fourth paragraph of Orders No. 349, printed and issued yesterday, to myself as one of the officers alluded to. Although I can not suppose those opinions to be correctly formed, nevertheless, regarding the high source from which such imputations flow, so seriously affecting the qualities of a gentleman, the character and usefulness of him at whom they may be aimed, I feel it incumbent on me to ask, as I do now most respectfully, of the frankness and justice of the commander in chief, whether in any sense or degree he condescended to apply, or designed to have applied, the epithets contained in that order to myself, and consequently whether the general military opinion or sentiment in that matter has taken a right or intended direction. I trust I shall be pardoned for pressing with urgency an early reply to this communication."
On the day General Worth addressed his communication to General Scott, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan wrote to the editor of the North American (a newspaper published in the City of Mexico in English), in which he avowed that the substance of the "Tampico letter" was communicated by him to a friend in Pittsburg from Tacubaya soon after the battles, and added: "The statements in the letter are known by very many officers of this army to be true, and I can not but think that the publication of the truth is less likely to do violence to individuals or to the service than the suppression of it." He states that justice to General Worth, who was evidently one of the persons pointed at in Orders No. 349, requires him [Duncan] to state that he [General Worth] knew nothing of the writer's purpose in writing the letter in question; that General Worth never saw it, and did not know, directly or indirectly, even the purport of one line, word, or syllable of it until he saw it in print; that this letter was not inspired by General Worth, but that both the "Tampico letter"—or rather the private letter to his friend which formed the basis of that letter—and this were written on his own responsibility.
On November 14, 1847, General Scott acknowledged General Worth's letter of the 13th, and said: "The General Order No. 349 was, as is pretty clearly expressed on its face, meant to apply to the letter signed 'Leonidas' in a New Orleans paper, and to the summary of two letters given in the Washington Union and copied into a Tampico paper, to the authors, aiders, and abettors of those letters, be they who they may."
It may be well questioned if an officer has a right to demand of his superior in command whether or not certain expressions used in written orders apply to him. If one officer could claim this privilege another also could, until every officer in the command had interrogated the commanding officer as to the intention of words used in general orders. To comment upon and disapprove or censure the official acts of his subordinates is not only a privilege of the commanding general, but an obligation, for the maintenance of discipline and the morale of the army.
But any officer aggrieved by any censure or disapproval may demand a court of inquiry, which General Worth did in a letter dated November 14, 1847, addressed to General Scott, in which he says: "I have the honor to receive your letter in reply, but not in answer to mine of yesterday, handed in this morning. The General Order is too clearly expressed on its face to admit of any doubt in regard to papers, and, in public military opinion, in regard to persons. The object of my letter, as I endeavored clearly to express, was to seek to know distinctly, and with a view to further measures to protect myself, if, as is supposed, I was one of the persons referred to. Regretting the necessity for intrusion, I am compelled again respectfully to solicit an answer to that question. I ask it as an act of simple justice, which it is hoped will not be denied."
To this General Scott replied through his assistant adjutant general [H.L. Scott], November 14, 1847, "that he [General Scott] can not be more explicit than in his reply through me already given; that he has nothing to do with the suspicions of others, and has no positive information as to the authorship of the letters alluded to in General Orders No. 349. If he had valid information he would immediately prosecute the parties before a general court-martial."