rs, are doing
well.

I regret having been obliged, on the 20th, to leave Major-General
Quitman, an able commander, with a part of his division, the fine
2d Pennsylvania Volunteers, and the veteran detachment of United
States marines, at our important depot, San Augustin. It was
there that I had placed our sick and wounded, the siege, supply
and baggage trains. If these had been lost, the army would have
been driven almost to despair; and considering the enemy's very
great excess of numbers, and the many approaches to the depot, it
might well have become, emphatically, the post of honor.

After so many victories, we might, with but little additional
loss, have occupied the capital the same evening. But Mr. Trist,
commissioner, etc., as well as myself, had been admonished by the
best friends of peace, intelligent neutrals, and some American
residents, against precipitation, lest, by wantonly driving away
the government and others, dishonored, we might scatter the
elements of peace, excite a spirit of national desperation and
thus indefinitely postpone the hope of accommodation.

Deeply impressed with this danger, and remembering our mission,
_to conquer a peace_, the army very cheerfully sacrificed to
patriotism, to the great wish and want of our country, the
_eclat_ that would have followed an entrance, sword in hand, into
a great capital. Willing to leave something to this republic, of
no immediate value to us, on which to rest her pride, and to
recover temper, I halted our victorious corps at the gates of the
city (at least for a time), and have them now cantoned in the
neighboring villages, where they are well sheltered and supplied
with all necessaries.

On the morning of the 21st, being about to take up battering or
assaulting position, to authorize me to summon the city to
surrender, or to sign an armistice with a pledge to enter at once
into negotiations for peace, a mission came out to propose a
truce. Rejecting its terms, I dispatched my contemplated note to
President Santa Anna, omitting the summons. The 22d,
commissioners were appointed by the commanders of the two armies;
the armistice was signed the 23d, and ratifications exchanged the
24th.

All matters in dispute between the two governments have been thus
ha