“I learn with much astonishment that the prevailing opinion in this army points the imputation of ‘scandalous’ contained in the third, and the invocation of the ‘indignation of the great number’ in the fourth paragraph of Orders No. 349, printed and issued yesterday, to myself as one of the officers alluded to.  Although I can not suppose those opinions to be correctly formed, nevertheless, regarding the high source from which such imputations flow, so seriously affecting the qualities of a gentleman, the character and usefulness of him at whom they may be aimed, I feel it incumbent on me to ask, as I do now most respectfully, of the frankness and justice of the commander in chief, whether in any sense or degree he condescended to apply, or designed to have applied, the epithets contained in that order to myself, and consequently whether the general military opinion or sentiment in that matter has taken a right or intended direction.  I trust I shall be pardoned for pressing with urgency an early reply to this communication.”

On the day General Worth addressed his communication to General Scott, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan wrote to the editor of the North American (a newspaper published in the City of Mexico in English), in which he avowed that the substance of the “Tampico letter” was communicated by him to a friend in Pittsburg from Tacubaya soon after the battles, and added:  “The statements in the letter are known by very many officers of this army to be true, and I can not but think that the publication of the truth is less likely to do violence to individuals or to the service than the suppression of it.”  He states that justice to General Worth, who was evidently one of the persons pointed at in Orders No. 349, requires him [Duncan] to state that he [General Worth] knew nothing of the writer’s purpose in writing the letter in question; that General Worth never saw it, and did not know, directly or indirectly, even the purport of one line, word, or syllable of it until he saw it in print; that this letter was not inspired by General Worth, but that both the “Tampico letter”—­or rather the private letter to his friend which formed the basis of that letter—­and this were written on his own responsibility.

On November 14, 1847, General Scott acknowledged General Worth’s letter of the 13th, and said:  “The General Order No. 349 was, as is pretty clearly expressed on its face, meant to apply to the letter signed ‘Leonidas’ in a New Orleans paper, and to the summary of two letters given in the Washington Union and copied into a Tampico paper, to the authors, aiders, and abettors of those letters, be they who they may.”

It may be well questioned if an officer has a right to demand of his superior in command whether or not certain expressions used in written orders apply to him.  If one officer could claim this privilege another also could, until every officer in the command had interrogated the commanding officer as to the intention of words used in general orders.  To comment upon and disapprove or censure the official acts of his subordinates is not only a privilege of the commanding general, but an obligation, for the maintenance of discipline and the morale of the army.