from capture.

The disaster to the Union arms at Winchester was, by General Halleck,
charged upon General Milroy, and General Schneck was ordered by
Halleck to place Milroy in arrest. In August, 1863, a Court of
Inquiry convened at Washington to investigate and report upon
Milroy's conduct and the evacuation of Winchester. Schenck's action
in relation to the matter was also drawn in question. The court
was in session twenty-seven days, heard many witnesses, including
Generals Schenck and Milroy, and had before it a mass of orders
and dispatches. I was a known friend of Milroy, hence was not
called against him, and he did not have me summoned because I had
differed so radically with him as to the necessity of evacuating
Winchester. The testimony, while doing me ample justice, did not
disclose much of the information communicated by me to Milroy, nor
my views with respect to the judgment displayed by him in a great
emergency. Milroy and his friends maintained, with much force,
that his holding Winchester for about three days delayed, for that
time or longer, Lee's advance into Pennsylvania, and thus saved
Harrisburg from capture, and gave the Army of the Potomac time to
reach Gettysburg, and there force Lee to concentrate his army and
fight an unsuccessful battle. The Court of Inquiry made no formal
report, but Judge-Advocate-General Holt reviewed the testimony,
and reached conclusions generally exonerating Milroy from the charge
of disobedience of orders and misconduct during the evacuation,
but reflecting somewhat on Schenck for not positively ordering the
place evacuated. President Lincoln made a characteristic indorsement
on this record, not unfavorable to either Schenck or Milroy,
concluding with this paragraph:

"Serious blame is not necessarily due to any serious disaster, and
I cannot say that in this case any of the officers are deserving
of serious blame. No court-martial is deemed necessary or proper
in this case."(18)

Halleck did not, however, cease in his hostility to Milroy, and
not until in the last months of the war did the "Gray Eagle" have
another command in the field. He was a rashly-brave and patriotic
man, and his whole heart was in the Union cause. In battle he
risked his own person unnecessarily and without exercising a proper
supervision over his entire command. He died at Olympia, Washington,
March 29, 1890, when seventy-five years of age. The colored people
of America should e