GENERAL: Yours of the 7th instant, with copy of letter to Governor Andrew Johnson, is before me, and it is with extreme satisfaction that I note the decided manner in which the case is laid down to Governor Johnson.
This outside pressure has become intolerable and must be met with firmness, or the Army may as well be disbanded.
With importunate citizens on one side and meddlesome reporters for papers on the other, I can scarce find time to attend to the appropriate duties of my position. By the way, cannot something be done to rid our camps of this latter class? I have really reached that point that I am afraid to address my staff officer above a whisper in my own tent. My most trivial remarks to my officers are caught up, magnified, and embellished, and appear in print as my "expressed opinions," much to the surprise of myself and those to whom my remarks were addressed, thus keeping me continually in a false position with my superior officers and the country.
So far as a forward movement is concerned, I have never urged it; do not now urge it; but on the contrary believe that in the present condition of my command (having a large sick list) it would be most decidedly imprudent. I am nevertheless ready to obey your order to advance, come when it may. That is a question for my superiors, and not for me, to determine.
After eight days of labor on the part of Captain Everett, he has returned the regimental monthly returns to the respective commanders, to be forwarded direct to your headquarters; Captain Everett having declared his inability to obtain from any one regiment anything like a passable document, or even the data upon which he could frame one.
My consolidated morning reports will be commenced on the 10th and promptly continued as per orders every ten days, and forwarded upon the days upon which they are made.
Please furnish the regimental commanders with blanks in time for the close of the present month, when, perhaps, by "line upon line and precept upon precept," they may be brought to produce a more businesslike sheet in future.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 4 (Serial No. 4), p. 347-8
