e extent your opinion on the subject. If you are able to
recollect the substance of that conversation, a statement of it
would be an effective answer to the malicious charge that I was
not faithful to Thomas as my commanding officer.

"Not knowing where you may be when this letter reaches the United
States, I send it to Colonel Wherry, to be sent you by mail or
handed you by one of my aides, as may be most convenient. Please
do me the great favor to send to Wherry, or the other officer who
may call upon you, an answer which he may use in public refutation
of the malicious charge which has been made against me.

"He can then send it to me. The vipers are taking advantage of my
absence to publish falsehoods and given them a long start of the
truth which must be sent in pursuit. I am, dear General, as ever,
sincerely yours,

"J. M. Schofield."

THEIR FALSITY CONFIRMED BY GENERAL GRANT

"New York, August 1, 1881.
"General J. M. Schofield.

"Dear General: Your letter of the 12th of July has just been handed
me by Colonel Wherry of your staff. I have read it carefully,
together with the article from the Toledo "Democrat." The elapse
of time since the event spoken of in that article is so great that
I feel some hesitation in answering your letter and the article
from the "Democrat" as I might do if I had access to the archives
at Washington; but, writing from memory, I think I can say with
great positiveness there was never any despatch from you to me, or
from you to any one in Washington, disparaging General Thomas's
movements at Nashville. On the contrary, my recollection is that
when I met you on your way to Wilmington, N. C., subsequent to the
battle of Nashville, you explained the situation at Nashville prior
to General Thomas's movement against Hood, with a view of removing
the feeling that I had that Thomas had been slow. I was very
impatient at that time with what I thought was tardiness on the
part of General Thomas, and was very much afraid that while he was
lying there at Nashville and not moving his army, Hood might cross
the Tennessee River either above or below the city of Nashville,
and get between him and the Ohio River, and make a retrograde
movement of our army at Nashville a necessity, and very much
embarrass and delay future operations of the armies. Laboring
under this feeling and impression, I was telegraphing General Thomas
daily, and almost hourl