r pressing with urgency an early reply to this
communication."

On the day General Worth addressed his communication to General Scott,
Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan wrote to the editor of the
North American (a newspaper published in the City of Mexico in
English), in which he avowed that the substance of the "Tampico
letter" was communicated by him to a friend in Pittsburg from Tacubaya
soon after the battles, and added: "The statements in the letter are
known by very many officers of this army to be true, and I can not but
think that the publication of the truth is less likely to do violence
to individuals or to the service than the suppression of it." He
states that justice to General Worth, who was evidently one of the
persons pointed at in Orders No. 349, requires him [Duncan] to state
that he [General Worth] knew nothing of the writer's purpose in
writing the letter in question; that General Worth never saw it, and
did not know, directly or indirectly, even the purport of one line,
word, or syllable of it until he saw it in print; that this letter was
not inspired by General Worth, but that both the "Tampico letter"--or
rather the private letter to his friend which formed the basis of that
letter--and this were written on his own responsibility.

On November 14, 1847, General Scott acknowledged General Worth's
letter of the 13th, and said: "The General Order No. 349 was, as is
pretty clearly expressed on its face, meant to apply to the letter
signed 'Leonidas' in a New Orleans paper, and to the summary of two
letters given in the Washington Union and copied into a Tampico paper,
to the authors, aiders, and abettors of those letters, be they who
they may."

It may be well questioned if an officer has a right to demand of his
superior in command whether or not certain expressions used in written
orders apply to him. If one officer could claim this privilege another
also could, until every officer in the command had interrogated the
commanding officer as to the intention of words used in general
orders. To comment upon and disapprove or censure the official acts of
his subordinates is not only a privilege of the commanding general,
but an obligation, for the maintenance of discipline and the _morale_
of the army.

But any officer aggrieved by any censure or disapproval may demand a
court of inquiry, which General Worth did in a letter dated November
14, 1847, addressed to General Scott, in which he says: