That court was in session from November 27, 1862, until May 6, 1863, with the gallant Major-General Lew Wallace presiding. Its opinion recited that Halleck had ordered General Buell to march against Chattanooga and take it, with the ulterior object of dislodging Kirby Smith and his rebel force from East Tennessee; that General Buell had force sufficient to accomplish the object if he could have marched promptly to Chattanooga; that the plan of operation prescribed by General Halleck compelled General Buell to repair the Memphis and Charleston railroad from Corinth to Decatur, and put it in running order; that the road proved of comparatively little service; that the work forced such delays that a prompt march upon Chattanooga was impossible, while they made the rebel invasion of Tennessee and Kentucky possible. Our forces were driven northward to the Ohio, leaving the Memphis and Charleston railroad in excellent condition for the use of the Confederates. Strangely enough, Halleck’s orders to Buell had inured to the benefit of the Confederates in the West, in the same manner and along the same lines as his orders to McClellan and to Pope had inured to the benefit of the Confederates in the East.

Both Washington and Cincinnati were imperiled at the same time, and by the same officer, General-in-Chief Halleck, and in the same way—by a succession of steps that appear to have been carefully planned.

Now, mark what follows.

On March 1, 1872, the House of Representatives called upon the Secretary of War for a copy of the proceedings of that military court; and on April 13 the Secretary reported to the House, “that a careful and exhaustive search among all the records and files in this Department fails to discover what disposition was made of the proceedings of the Commission,” etc.

But though the records of those proceedings which fix the blame for that campaign upon Major-General Halleck were lost or stolen from the archives of the War Department, Benn Pitman, the phonographic reporter of the court, had possession of a report of those proceedings. And, by Act of Congress, approved by President Grant on June 5, 1872, the Secretary of War was “directed to employ at once Benn Pitman to make a full and complete transcript of the phonographic notes taken by him during the said investigation, and to put the same on file among the records of the War Department, and to furnish a copy of the same to Congress.”

The report of those proceedings may now be found in “Official Records,” Series I, Vol. XVI, Part I, pp. 6 to 726, inclusive. The most melancholy part of the story lies in the fact that Porter, who certainly helped to save Washington from falling into Lee’s hands, had his life blasted by Halleck, and died without knowledge that Halleck, not Pope, was really guilty of the disaster which so nearly resulted in the abandonment of the Capital to the Confederates, and while Halleck was directing affairs in the West in such a manner as to imperil Cincinnati.

The remarkable co-operation between Pope and Buell for the surrender of those cities, and which was attempted by Halleck, does not look like a concatenation of accidental circumstances. This is accentuated by the charge against Halleck’s loyalty to the Republic which was made by the gallant Wallace after he had presided over that Buell military court. He was a careful man; and, being a good lawyer, he understood the laws and effect of evidence. Porter, who prevented the surrender of Washington, and Buell, who saved Cincinnati, were both punished. It looks as if they had interfered with Halleck’s plan of a general surrender.

L’ENVOI

In January, 1899, the writer commenced to unravel the mystery surrounding the battle of Harper’s Ferry, which culminated in the surrender of that post September 15, 1862. He was a member of that garrison, and he knew that history had not truthfully recorded the defense, some chronicles reading that “Harper’s Ferry fell without a struggle,” others that “there was no defense”; in the main, historians were a unit.

Such reports are wholly false. The defense of that post was stubborn and prolonged, lasting from September 11, when the Confederates showed themselves in Pleasant Valley, until the 15th, when the garrison was subjected to one of the fiercest bombardments of the Civil War. Never was hope abandoned until the last shell was expended, though the little garrison of 12,500 men was besieged by what was practically the whole of Lee’s army. Starting on a new line of research, and abandoning the path beaten by others, he found many battles lost in the same manner, and the responsibility shifted from the shoulders of the guilty and carefully loaded upon those of the innocent, and all by the use of the same means, a false report by General-in-Chief Halleck, and a bogus trial by a military court.