Edwin M. Stanton to Charles A. Dana, September 30, 1863 – 6:30 p.m.

WAR DEPARTMENT,          

September 30, 1863 — 6.30 p.m.

Maj. C. A. DANA,

Nashville :

Your action retaining Surgeon Clendenin is approved. Report whether medical assistance and supplies are adequate. On Monday the President's order was sent to Rosecrans removing Crittenden and McCook, ordering them to Indianapolis for a court of inquiry, consolidating their corps, and appointing General Gordon Granger commander of the consolidated corps. If Hooker's command get safely through, all that the Army of the Cumberland can need will be a competent commander. The merit of General Thomas and the debt of gratitude the nation owes to his valor and skill are fully appreciated here, and I wish you to tell him so. It was not my fault that he was not in chief command months ago.

EDWIN M. STANTON.

SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 30, Part 3 (Serial No. 52), p. 946

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B Hayes: Tuesday, January 14, 1862

My old veteran orderly, Gray, says it makes his flesh creep to see the way soldiers enter officers’ quarters, hats on, just as if they were in civil life! [The] Twenty-sixth Regiment left today. Three or four inches snow. Some winter!

Spent the afternoon looking over a trunk full of letters, deeds, documents, etc., belonging to General Alfred Beckley. They were buried in the graveyard near General Beckley's at Raleigh. Some letters of moment showing the early and earnest part taken by Colonel Tompkins in the Rebellion. The general Union and conservative feeling of General Beckley shown in letters carefully preserved in his letter-book. Two letters to Major Anderson, full of patriotism, love of Union and of the Stars and Stripes — replies written, one the day after Major Anderson went into Sumter, the other much later. His, General Beckley's, desire was really for the Union. He was of West Point education. Out of deference to popular sentiment he qualified his Unionism by saying, “Virginia would stay in the Union as long as she could consistently with honor.”

General Beckley's note from “J. C. Calhoun, Secretary of War,” informing him of his appointment as a cadet at West Point, and many other mementos, carefully preserved, were in the trunk. Title papers and evidence relating to a vast tract of land, formerly owned by Gideon Granger and now by Francis Granger and brother, were also in it. All except a few letters as to the Rebellion were undisturbed.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 187