Saturday, September 20, 2014

Senator James W. Grimes to Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, March 15, 1862

Washington, March 15, 1862.

I beg you to receive my thanks for your kind remembrance of me as shown by the valuable rifle sent me by Captain Davis. The gun of itself is valuable, but the fact that it comes from you renders it doubly so. You may be assured that your services on the South Atlantic coast are fully appreciated by the country.

I send you the Globe newspaper, containing some remarks of mine in the Senate on the operations of the Western flotilla under Captain Foote. There was to my mind a manifest intention on the part of the military commanders to do Captain Foote injustice; and, although I have no acquaintance with him, I was resolved to see “the record made right,” as not only an act of justice to him, but also to the service. I flatter myself that the sentiment here is now with Foote; I know that it is wholly so in the Senate. He intended to attack the rebel forts at New Madrid, on the Mississippi River, to-day.

SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, p. 182-3

No comments: