The General tells me he intends to ask of the War Department
permission to take the 10th Army Corps away from here and lead it in the field
himself. Halleck has asked him how many troops he can spare, reserving enough
for purely defensive operations. He says he can spare eight or nine thousand.
Now, the effective force of the 10th Corps is eleven thousand men, and the
troops composing it are such as have been longest in the Department, and the
medical director advises that they be moved first. Gen. Gillmore will make this
application by to-day's steamer.
We got on board at about four o'clock and soon after weighed
anchor. We lay in the stream until
Gen Gillmore boarded us in a tug, and gave me despatches for
Halleck and Cullum of the tenor aforesaid.
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and
Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 178-9. See Michael Burlingame & John
R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln's White House: The
Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 181 for the full diary entry.
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