Why was this disgrace so long submitted to? No man knows or attempts to explain. Month after month one of the most splendid armies the world had ever seen, of 200,000 men, permitted itself and the national capital to be besieged by a force never exceeding one-half its own number.
During the month of December, the nation became impatient. The time had arrived and passed when we were promised a forward movement. The roads were good, the weather splendid, the army in high condition, and eager for the fray. How long the roads and weather would permit the movement, no man could predict; still there was no movement. The generals, with great unanimity, declared that the army had reached its maximum of proficiency as volunteers, but still there was no movement. Under these circumstances, the Committee on the Conduct of the War asked an interview with the President and Cabinet, and urged that the winter should not be permitted to pass without action, as it would lead to an incalculable loss of life and treasure by forcing our brave troops into a summer campaign, in a hot and to them inhospitable climate. The President and Cabinet were united in the desire that an immediate advance should be made, but it was not made, although we were assured by General McClellan that it would be very soon, that he had no intention of going into winter quarters, and he did not! While the enemy erected comfortable huts at Centreville and Manassas for their winter quarters, our brave and eager troops spent the most uncomfortable winter ever known in this climate under canvas, as thousands and tens of thousands of invalid soldiers throughout the length and breadth of the land will attest. Why did not the army move in all December, or why did it not go into winter quarters? No man knows, nor is any reason assigned.
On the 1st day of January, 1862, and for months previous to that date, the armies of the republic were occupying a purely defensive position upon the whole line from Missouri to the Atlantic, until on or about the 27th of January the President and Secretary of War issued the order forward. Then the brave Foote took the initiative, soliciting 2,000 men from Halleck to hold Fort Henry after he had captured it with his gunboats. They were promptly furnished, and Henry fell; then Donelson, with its 15,000 prisoners; then Newbern, and the country was electrified. Credit was given where credit was due. Do-nothing strategy gave way to an "immediate advance upon the enemy's works," and the days of spades and pickaxes seemed to be ended. On the 22d of February a forward movement upon our whole line was ordered, but did not take place. The Army of the Potomac was not ready; but on the 10th of March it moved, against the protest of the commanding general and eight out of twelve of the commanders of divisions; but the President was inexorable, and the movement must be made. It proceeded to Centreville, and there found deserted huts, wooden artillery, and intrenchments which could and can be successfully charged by cavalry. It proceeded to Manassas, and found no fortifications worthy of the name, a deserted, abandoned camp, and dead horses for trophies. The enemy, less than 40,000 men, had leisurely escaped, carrying away all their artillery, baggage, arms, and stores. Our Army of the Potomac, on that 10th day of March, showed by its muster-roll a force of 230,000 men. Comment is needless! The Grand Army of the Potomac proceeded toward Gordonsville, found no enemy, repaired the railroad, and then marched back again.
Why this Grand Army of the Potomac did not march upon Richmond has never been satisfactorily explained, and probably never will be. One reason assigned was lack of transportation; but there were two railroads, one by way of Acquia Creek and Fredericksburg, the other via Manassas and Gordonsville, which could have been repaired at the rate of ten miles per day, and our army was ample to guard it. Had this overwhelming force proceeded directly to Richmond by these lines, it would have spent the 1st day of May in Richmond, and ere this the rebellion would have been ended. This grand army, ably commanded, was superior to any army the world has seen for five hundred years. Napoleon I. never fought 130,000 men upon one battle-field. Yet this noble army was divided and virtually sacrificed by some one. Who is the culprit?
Before the advance upon Manassas, General McClellan changed his plans, and demanded to be permitted to leave the enemy intrenched at Centreville and Manassas; to leave the Potomac blockaded, and to take his army to Annapolis by land, and there embark them for the rear of the enemy to surprise him. In the council of war called upon this proposition, the commanding general and eight out of twelve of the commanders of divisions (and here permit me to say that I am informed that seven out of the eight generals were appointed upon the recommendation of General McClellan) voted that it was not safe to advance upon the wooden guns of Centreville, and to adopt the new plan of campaign. The President and the Secretary of War overruled this pusillanimous decision, and compelled McClellan to "move immediately upon the enemy's works." He marched, and the trophies of that memorable campaign are known to the Senate and the country.
At Fairfax, General McClellan changed his plan and decided not to advance upon the rebels with his whole force, but to return to Alexandria, divide his army, and embark for Fortress Monroe and Yorktown. It was decided that 45,000 men should be left for the defense of the capital, and he was permitted to embark. After much delay (unavoidable in the movement of so vast a force, with its enormous material) the general-in-chief himself embarked. Soon after he sailed it came to the knowledge of the Committee on the Conduct of the War that the capital, with its vast accumulation of material of war, had been left by General McClellan virtually without defense, and the enemy's whole force, large or small, was untouched in front. [Mr. Chandler here introduced the official testimony to prove that General McClellan had so denuded Washington as to compel the President to interpose and detain General McDowell's corps for its adequate defense. He then said:] The country has been deceived. It has been led to believe that the Secretary of War or somebody else has interfered with General McClellan's plans, when he had an army that could have crushed any other army on the face of the earth. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand of the best troops that ever stood on God's footstool were sent down to the Peninsula and placed under command of General McClellan; and yet the whole treasonable press of the country has been howling after the Secretary of War because of his alleged refusal to send reinforcements to General McClellan. As I said the other day, he has sent every man, every sabre, every bayonet, every horse, that could be spared from any source whatever to increase that grand army under General McClellan in front of Richmond. Why did he not enter Richmond? We shall see.... It is not for me, sir, to state the strength of McClellan's army at this time; but I know it is 158,000 men, less the number lost by sickness and casualties. Does any man doubt that this army, ably handled, was sufficiently strong to have captured Richmond and crushed the rebel army? I think not, if promptly led against the enemy; but instead of that, it sat down in malarious swamps and awaited the drafting, arming, drilling, and making soldiers of an army to fight it, and in the meantime our own army was rapidly wasting away. Unwholesome water, inadequate food, overwork, and sleeping in marshes, were rapidly filling the hospitals, and overloading the return boats with the sick. Sir, we have lost more men by the spade than the bullet, five to one, since the army started from Yorktown under McClellan. Had the soldiers been relieved from digging and menial labor by the substitution of negro laborers, the Army of the Potomac would to-day, in my estimation, contain 30,000 more brave and efficient soldiers than it does. Had it been relieved from guarding the property of rebels in arms, many valuable lives would have been saved. Yorktown was evacuated after a sacrifice of more men by sickness than the enemy had in their works when our army landed at Fortress Monroe. The battle of Williamsburg was fought by a small fraction of our army, and the enemy routed. During the battle, General McClellan wrote a dispatch, miles from the field of battle, saying he should try to "hold them in check" there.... He would try to "hold them in check!" He could not hold them. He could not stop his eager troops from chasing them. After a small fraction of his army had whipped their entire force and had been chasing them for hours, he penned that dispatch and sent it to the Secretary of War, and, if I remember aright, it was read in one of the two houses of Congress. As you may suppose from that dispatch, there was no great eagerness in following up that victory. Three Michigan regiments were not only decimated, they were divided in twain, in that bloody battle at Williamsburg. They fought there all day without reinforcements. One Michigan regiment went into the trenches and left sixty-three dead rebels, killed by the bayonet, weltering in their blood. But who has ever heard, by any official communication from the head of the army, that a Michigan regiment was in the fight at Williamsburg? I do not blame him for not giving credit where credit is due, for I do not believe he knew anything more of that fight than you or I.
When that battle was fought and won, all the enemy's works were cleared away, and we had an open road to Richmond. There was not a single fortification between Richmond and Williamsburg. All we had to do was to get through those infernal swamps, march up, and take possession of Richmond. What did we do? We found the worst swamp there was between Richmond and Williamsburg, and sat right down in the center of it and went to digging. We sacrificed thousands and tens of thousands of the bravest troops that ever stood on the face of God's earth, digging in front of no intrenchments, and before a whipped army of the enemy. We waited for them to recruit; we waited for them to get another army. They had a levy en masse. They were taking all the men and boys between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five, and magnanimously we waited weeks and weeks and weeks for them to bring these forced levies into some sort of consistency as an army. The battle of Fair Oaks was fought. There the enemy found again a little fraction of our army, very much less than half, and they brought out their entire force. I have it from the best authority that they had not a solitary regiment in or about Richmond that was fit to put in front of an enemy that they did not bring to Fair Oaks and hurl upon our decimated army. Again the indomitable bravery of our troops (of the men, of private soldiers, the indomitable energy of Michigan men and New Jersey men—but I will not particularize, for all the troops fought like lions), and the fighting capacity of our army not only saved it from being utterly destroyed by an overwhelming force, but gave us a triumphant victory. The enemy went back to Richmond pell-mell. I have been informed by a man who was there at the time, that two brigades of fresh troops could have chased the whole Confederate army through the city of Richmond and into the James river, so utter was their rout and confusion.
And what did we do then? We found another big swamp, and we sat down in the center of it and went to digging. We began to throw up intrenchments when there were no intrenchments in our front, no enemy that was not utterly broken. We never took advantage of the battle of Fair Oaks. Again Michigan soldiers were cut to pieces by hundreds. Go into the Judiciary square hospital in this city, and you will find more than half the occupants are Michigan men who were shot at Fair Oaks and Williamsburg, men who stood until a regiment of 1,000 men was reduced to 105, and even then did not run. Sir, these men have been sacrificed, uselessly sacrificed. They have been put to hard digging, and hard fare, and hard sleeping, and if there was any hard fighting to do they have been put to that; and, besides all this, at night they have had to guard the property of rebels in arms. They have been so sacrificed that two or three of the Michigan regiments to-day cannot bring into the field 250 men each out of 1,000 with whom they started.
Fair Oaks was lost; that is to say, we won a brilliant victory, but it did us no good; we did not take advantage of it. Of course it would have been very unfair to take advantage of a routed army [laughter]; it would not have been according to our "strategy." We magnanimously stopped, and commenced digging. There was no army in our front, there were no intrenchments in our front; but we did not know what else to do, and so we began to dig and ditch, and we kept digging and ditching until the rebels had impressed and drilled and armed and made soldiers of their entire population. But that was not enough; they sent Jackson up on his raid to Winchester, and we waited for him to come back with his twenty or thirty thousand men. We heard that Corinth was being evacuated, and of course it would have been very unfair to commence an attack until they brought their troops from Corinth, and so we waited for the army at Corinth to get to Richmond. After the rebels had got all the troops they ever hoped to raise from any source, we did not attack them, but they attacked us, as we had reason to suppose they would. They attacked our right wing, and, as I am informed upon what I must deem reliable authority, they hurled the majority of their entire force upon our right wing of 30,000 men, and during the whole of that Thursday our right wing of 30,000 men held their ground, and repulsed that vast horde of the enemy over and over again, and held their ground at night. Of course you will say a reinforcement of twenty or thirty thousand men was sent to these brave troops that they might not only hold their ground the next day, but send this dastardly army into Richmond a second time, as at Fair Oaks. No, sir, nothing of the sort was done.
At night, instead of sending them reinforcements, they were ordered to retreat. That was "strategy!" The moment they commenced their retreat, as is said in the dispatches, the enemy fought like demons. Of course they would. Who ever heard of a retreating army that was not pursued by the victors like demons, except in the case of rebel retreats? No other nation but ours was ever guilty of stopping immediately after a victory. Other armies fight like demons after a victory, and annihilate the enemy, but we do not. Our left wing and center remained intact. A feint was made upon the left and center, and I have here, not the sworn testimony, but the statement of one of the bravest men in the whole Army of the Potomac—I will not give his name, but a more highly honorable man lives not—that when his regiment was ordered under arms, he had no doubt that he was going to march into Richmond. He believed the whole force of the enemy had attacked our right wing; he believed there was nothing but a screen of pickets in front; and he thought that now our great triumph was to come off. His men sprang into line with avidity, prepared to rush into Richmond and take it at the point of the bayonet. He never discovered his error until he saw a million and a half dollars' worth of property burned in front of his regiment, and then he began to think that an advance upon Richmond was not intended. And it was not! We had been at work there and had lost 10,000 men in digging intrenchments; we had spent months in bringing up siege guns, and we abandoned those intrenchments without firing one gun. Our army was ordered to advance on the gunboats instead of on Richmond. This colonel told me that his regiment fought three days and whipped the enemy each day, and retreated each night. The left wing and center were untouched until they were ordered to retreat. No portion of our vast force had been fought except the right wing under Porter, and they whipped the enemy the first day.
This is called strategy! Again, sir, I ask, Why was this great Army of the Potomac of 230,000 men divided? Human ingenuity could not have devised any other way to defeat that army; Divine wisdom could scarcely have devised any other way to defeat it than that which was adopted. There is no army in Europe to-day that could meet the Army of the Potomac when it was 230,000 strong, the best fighting material ever put into an army on the face of the earth. Why was that grand army divided? I simply charge that grave and serious errors have been committed, and, as I have said, no other way could have been devised to defeat that army. If the 158,000 men that were sent to General McClellan had been marched upon the enemy, they could have whipped all the armies the Confederates have, and all they are likely to have for six months. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand men are about as many as can be fought on any one battle-field. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand men are a vast army, a great deal larger army than that with which Napoleon destroyed 600,000 of the Austrians in a single year. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand men ably handled can defeat any force the Confederates can raise; and that is the force that went down to the Peninsula. But, sir, it lay in ditches, digging, drinking rotten water, and eating bad food, and sleeping in the mud, until it became greatly reduced in numbers, and of those that were left very many were injured in health. Still they fought; still they conquered in every fight, and still they retreated, because they were ordered to retreat.
Sir, I have deemed it my duty to present this statement of facts to the Senate and the country. I know that I am to be denounced for so doing, and I tell you who will denounce me. There are two classes of men who are sure to denounce me, and no one else, and they are traitors and fools. The traitors have been denouncing every man who did not sing pæans to "strategy," when it led to defeat every time. The traitors North are worse than the traitors South, and sometimes I think we have as many of them in the aggregate. They are meaner men; they are men who will come behind you and cut your throat in the dark. I have great respect for Southern traitors who shoulder their muskets and come out and take the chances of the bullets and the halter; but I have the most superlative contempt for the Northern traitors, who, under the pretended guise of patriotism, are stabbing their country in the dark.
The effect of this speech was profound. It enraged McClellan's friends to the highest pitch; it was not supported at the time by any like utterance in Congress, and at first many who believed it to be true condemned, or at least deprecated, the fierceness of the attack; but those who knew that "the young Napoleon" at heart preferred a pro-slavery compromise to the conquest of a durable and honorable peace, and who had marked with righteous indignation the attempt of his claquers to make the Secretary of War the scape-goat for his own blunders, greeted with enthusiasm the signal courage of the man who, in the face of abuse, prejudice, and popular blindness, dared to tell with words of rugged force this story of disastrous imbecility. Mr. Chandler disregarded the remonstrances of weak friends, and met without quailing the storm of vituperation he had invited. Events made themselves his justifiers and within four months[24] President Lincoln, with the full approval of the patriotic masses of the North, relieved General McClellan from all command and abruptly terminated his military career. Nothing contributed more to this salutary change than Mr. Chandler's arraignment, of which it has been well said, that "with words resembling battles he told the American people that they were leaning upon a broken reed, that 'the idol of the soldiers' was as incapable of helping them as the idols of the heathen, and that McClellan was only digging graves for the brave men who followed him and a last ditch for the cause he defended; he shocked by his language the mass of the people into a right comprehension of the death's dance this military Jack-o'-lantern was leading them through the swamps of Virginia."
Mr. Chandler, who took this step after full deliberation and not from any passing impulse, rated the McClellan speech as his most important public service, alike in its necessity, its timeliness, and its results. He also felt that it involved more real hazard, and made larger demands upon his courage, than any other act of his Senatorial career, for such relentless invective could scarcely fail to mortally wound either its object or its maker. Had time shown that he had uttered calumnies and not the sober truth, he would have been inevitably driven from public life; and even when he spoke, the men who thoroughly doubted McClellan were still a small minority. History has shown that his indictment was as true in substance as it was unsparing in terms and bold in spirit.
Two other matters naturally group themselves with this speech: Mr. Chandler distrusted McClellanism in the Army of the Potomac as thoroughly as he did McClellan. The investigations of this committee convinced him that General Pope's campaign was so unfortunate because of the insubordination of General McClellan's friends among the corps commanders, and led him to believe that the same cause crippled the movements of both Burnside and Hooker, who, if faithfully supported, would have won decisive victories. So strong were his convictions on these points, that when General Grant became commander-in-chief he called upon the Secretary of War and requested him to make out a list of the incompetent, suspected and insubordinate generals of the Army of the Potomac, to be furnished to that officer so that he would be able to place them where they could do the least harm in the service. This Secretary Stanton promised to do. A few days afterward Mr. Chandler called again at the War Department, and, learning that this had not yet been done, said, "I will make out the list myself and send it to Grant;" and he did so, Major-Gen. C. C. Washburn being its bearer. Mr. Chandler carefully studied and vigilantly watched the Fitz-John Porter case, and approved of the findings of the court-martial, except the failure to inflict the death penalty, which he believed that the character and consequences of Porter's action fully merited. The attempt to secure the reversal of this verdict and the re-instatement in the army of the dismissed officer aroused his sternest indignation, and he fought it resolutely at every stage—and successfully, while he remained in the Senate. He spoke at length on this subject in that body on Feb. 21, 1870, declaring that he did so in fulfillment of a voluntary pledge given some years before in the same chamber to General Pope, "that justice should be done to him and to his campaign in the valley of Virginia, even although I were called upon to vindicate him from my seat in the Senate." After rehearsing the facts connected with Pope's movement, which was planned to create a diversion of Lee's army for the extrication of McClellan's forces from the Peninsula, in conformity with the suggestion of Gen. James S. Wadsworth, and showing that Pope had frequently requested to be relieved from the hazardous work laid out for him and that he had only a force of 42,000 men scattered between Harper's Ferry and Acquia Creek, Mr. Chandler said:
I asked him in the presence of the committee: "What is to prevent you from being struck by a superior force of the enemy and overwhelmed?" Said he: "Nothing on earth is more probable than that I shall be struck by a superior force and shall be whipped; but I will keep my troops near the mountains, and there are no ten miles where there is not a gulch up which I can take my men and small-arms, and, by abandoning my artillery and baggage, save my men; I shall probably be whipped, but it must be done." Any military man can see and appreciate the difficulties and responsibilities of so desperate a campaign. "Yet," said he, "it must be done."
Well, sir, General Pope started on that campaign. Had he announced to the newspaper press of Washington, or of the North, the number of his men or his object, the object itself would have been defeated. General Pope did what I believe is allowable in war: he perpetrated a ruse de guerre. He sent his scouts all through the mountains of Virginia proclaiming that he had an army of 120,000 men. And, sir, he fooled the newspaper correspondents of the city of Washington and of the whole North. General Pope, when he started on that campaign, had no more idea of going to Richmond than he had of following Elijah to Heaven in a chariot of fire without seeing death. He started with one single object, and that was to save the army of McClellan, or to do all that was in his power to save it. He massed his troops, and that terrible battle of Cedar Mountain was fought; and by that battle he not only fooled the people of this country, but he fooled the rebels. The rebels believed that he had 120,000 men, and that, unless they fought him and crushed him before he could unite with the Army of the Potomac, their cause was lost; and he drew upon his shoulders with that little force the whole rebel army, so that, when McClellan started for Yorktown, there was not even a popgun fired at his troops. The ruse was a perfect success, and, as I told General Pope then, "I consider that your campaign has been one of the most brilliant that has been fought up to this time"—which was February, 1863—"you saved two armies; you first saved the Army of the Potomac, and then you saved your own."
Sir, General Pope fought for eleven days, fought night and day, fought the whole rebel army with his little force, his force never having exceeded 70,000 men,—comprising not simply his own army, but also General Burnside's forces, and the 20,000 men who had in thirty days been brought up from the Army of the Potomac, and of whom Porter's corps was part. The force which he had met with these was that originally in his front, but overwhelmingly augmented by that rebel force from which McClellan, with his 90,000 men, had to be delivered by a demonstration in their rear. He fought for time. He defended every brook, every barn, every piece of woods, every ravine. He fought for time for the Army of the Potomac to reach him and unite with him, so as to crush the advancing and overwhelming force of the rebels.
Mr. Chandler then reviewed at length (and with copious citations from the testimony of eye-witnesses and the official orders) the facts as to Fitz-John Porter's course in Pope's campaign, adding extracts from the reports of rebel officers which had come into the possession of the government since the war, and closed as follows:
Mr. President, if I had more time I should like to go more fully into this subject; but I cannot. The court, after forty-five days spent in careful investigation, brought in unanimously the verdict against Porter. Many of the members of that court were in favor of sentencing him to suffer death. It is rumored, and many believe, that the only reason the death-penalty was not inflicted was the fear that Mr. Lincoln, whose kindness of heart was so well-known, would not execute the sentence; and, hence, they unanimously brought in the verdict they did. It was first carefully examined seriatim by the then Secretary of War and the President. No more just tribunal ever investigated a case, I presume to assert, than this tribunal, and there its finding stands.
It may be asked, How came it that a misunderstanding, almost as universal as complete, was suffered to be put upon the country? General Pope himself says: "The next day it (my report) was delivered to General Halleck; but by that time influences of questionable character, and transactions of most unquestionable impropriety, which were well known at the time, had entirely changed the purposes of the authorities. It is not necessary, and, perhaps, would scarcely be in place, for me to recount these things."
It is as well known to others present as to me that, during that gloomy, eventful Sunday which succeeded the last battle on Saturday, the 30th of August, the President and Mr. Stanton were overrun and overcome with statements that, unless McClellan was restored to command "the army would not fight." These statements came from men who did not mean it should fight, who could not in the exigency of the moment be displaced. The President was able afterward to relieve McClellan and court-martial Porter. Had he lived, he would have seen justice to General Pope awarded also. It remains for me, while I live, to do my portion of that duty.
There is one other point to which I wish to allude. During this very trial—during the very pendency of the trial—Fitz-John Porter said, in the presence of my informant, who is a man whom most of you know, and who is to-day in the employment of Congress, and whose word I would take as soon as I would most men's—though I told him I would not use his name, but I will give his sworn testimony, taken down within two minutes after the utterance was made—Fitz-John Porter said in his presence: "I was not true to Pope, and there is no use in denying it." Mr. President, what was "not true to Pope"? If he was not true to Pope, whom was he true to? Being true to Pope was being true to the country; "not true to Pope" was being a traitor to the country. Sir, "not true to Pope" meant the terrible fight of the 30th of August, with all the blood and all the horrors of that bitter day; "not true to Pope" meant the battle of Antietam, with its thousands of slain and its other thousands maimed; "not true to Pope" meant the first battle of Fredericksburg, with its 20,000 slain and maimed; "not true to Pope" covered the battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, and all the dreadful battles that followed. Had Fitz-John Porter been true to his government, Jackson would have been destroyed on the 29th of August, and on the 30th the rebels could scarcely have offered any resistance to our victorious army. "Not true to Pope" meant 300,000 slain and 2,000,000,000 of additional dollars expended.
Sir, I wish to put this on the record for all time, that it may remain. Let Fitz-John Porter thank God that he yet lives, and that he was not living at that time under a military government. I told General Pope, in the first interview I had with him, that I had but one fault to find in the whole conduct of the campaign. He asked, "What is that?" Said I, "That you ever allowed Fitz-John Porter to leave the battle-field alive!"
In 1877 Porter at last succeeded, by the most persistent effort, in obtaining the order for the re-examination of his case, and when Mr. Chandler re-entered the Senate in 1879, he found himself confronting an organized movement to secure that officer's restoration to his old rank with full pay since the date of his dishonorable dismissal from the army. To this contemplated action he proposed to offer the most strenuous resistance, and the last volumes he drew from the Congressional Library were authorities he wished to consult in the preparation of his argument against the reversal of the Porter finding.
Mr. Chandler's positive opinions in the McClellan and Porter cases were shared by his colleagues of the Committee on the Conduct of the War of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and are justified by their elaborate reports covering the history of the Army of the Potomac from the battle of Ball's Bluff to the close of the Fredericksburg campaign. The Thirty-eighth Senate adopted a resolution continuing the existence of this committee, and, the House concurring, the old members, so far as they were in Congress, were re-appointed. Senator Harding of Oregon took the place of Mr. Wright, and afterward Mr. Buckalew of Pennsylvania succeeded Mr. Harding. From the House, Mr. B. F. Loan of Missouri was appointed as the successor of Mr. Covode. Wm. Blair Lord was re-elected clerk and stenographer. This committee also devoted much of its time to the troubles of the Army of the Potomac. General Burnside had resigned the command because of a misunderstanding with the President, brought about by the interference of Gens. John Cochrane and John Newton, and General Hooker was appointed in his place, with General Halleck as commander-in-chief. But Halleck disliked Hooker, and forced his resignation by overruling his plans and countermanding his orders, General Meade succeeding. The committee examined closely into this matter, reaching the conclusion that Hooker had not been fairly dealt with, and incidentally disposing of the false statement then current that that officer was intoxicated at the battle of Chancellorsville, and was defeated from that cause. The committee condemned Hooker's removal, and Mr. Chandler firmly believed in his courage, patriotism and ability, and regarded him as the victim of circumstances. These facts make it an interesting coincidence that these two men—both bold, frank and positive in their respective spheres of public activity—should have died sudden and painless deaths within the same week.