Headquarters Army Of The Potomac, April 6, 1864.
General Grant returned yesterday, and I have seen him
to-day. Nothing new or important has transpired. General Hunt has been up to Washington and
before the committee. He says, after questioning him about the famous order of
July 2, and his telling them he never heard of it, and from his position and
relations with me would certainly have heard of it, they went to work and in
the most pettifogging way, by a cross-examination, tried to get him to admit
such an order might have been issued without his knowing anything about it.
This, after my testimony, and that of Warren, Hancock, Gibbon and Hunt,
evidently proves they are determined to convict me, in spite of testimony, and
that Butterfield's perjury is to outweigh the testimony of all others. I
suppose you have seen the last effusion of Historicus. There is no doubt now
about the author, as he quotes a private letter from Birney, which could not
have been written to any one but Sickles. The best joke is that Barnes, it is
said, has a letter from Birney, denying that he ever made any statements of the
kind quoted in his letter to Historicus. Is it not too bad that one's
reputation should be in the hands of such men?
SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George
Gordon Meade, Vol. 2, p. 187-8
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