THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
always would be, his property to be used as he might deem best. Even this did not satisfy General McDowell. He wrote again, telling me that he did not care for any further inquiry on my part. He merely appealed to my sense of justice, asking that I should correct—in all the papers in which my report had been published—the impression to his prejudice which that report had been calculated to produce. Then, I must confess, my patience began to be shaken. I replied that I had never thought the incriminated passage in my report to be liable to the construction he had given it; that I had never heard of anybody else having construed it as he did; that I was most willing to have our whole correspondence published; that, if he would send me copies of my letters, I not having kept any myself, I would be glad to send all the documents for publication to the New York Tribune, the only paper which had published my report; that, if he preferred, he might, to save time, send them there himself; but that some of the things he stated as facts rested on a mistake; that my troops, whom he had seen at the meeting-place in question, had not retreated to Bull Run, immediately after our meeting, but had gone to the assistance of our forces still fighting on our left; that two of my aides whom I had sent across Young's Branch, as well as one of my colonels, had seen him, General McDowell, about dusk, crossing the Stone Bridge over Bull Run, some of his officers crying out to the retreating soldiers, “Make room for the General!” and that I, with my division, had remained several hours longer on the battlefield. This closed our correspondence. As General McDowell did not return to me the copies of my letters I asked for, I did not send that correspondence to the New York Tribune. Whether General McDowell did, I do not know. I was sorry this controversy occurred, for I esteemed the General highly, and wished him no ill. He was, doubtless, a patriotic
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