to respond to a summons before a court of inquiry. I did not hear this until late the next morning, when I went at once to the general headquarters to ascertain whether the startling announcement was true. General Rosecrans admitted that he had received intimations from Washington that such orders would be issued, but he had not yet received them. Such was the fact, and the formal order was not promulgated by him until October 9. The intelligence created a great sensation throughout the camps, and consternation at the headquarters of the two affected corps. Generals McCook and Crittenden took it very hard, although they tried to seem indifferent. They felt that the indirect method of relieving them by the consolidation would deceive nobody, but would still leave upon them the stigma of punishment for their part in the battle by removal from command, and they made known their determination to demand courts of inquiry without delay. They manifested deep regret that ignominy should also be fastened upon their troops by the wiping out of the two corps organizations. I expected that the consolidation would not, on that account, be well received by their officers and men; but all, from commanders of division down, appeared to submit quietly to the change.
I tried to discover who was directly responsible for the act. Both Rosecrans and Garfield denied that they had recommended it or any other punitive measure at Washington, and subsequent developments confirmed this. Then I had a talk with Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, still at the army headquarters, but he was entirely non-committal. It is a matter of record, however — first through the publication of his reports to Secretary Stanton, and again lately through his own admission in the personal memoirs printed in McClure's Magazine — that his representations regarding the part played by the two generals at Chickamauga and its effect upon their subordinates had as much to do with the decision of the Washington authorities to remove them as any other influ-
