Some question can be made whether some of General Halleck’s dispatches to General Schenk should not have been construed to be orders to withdraw the force, and obeyed accordingly; but no such question can be made against General Milroy.  In fact, the last order he received was to be prepared to withdraw, but not to actually withdraw until further order, which further order never reached him.

Serious blame is not necessarily due to any serious disaster, and I cannot say that in this case any of the officers are deserving of serious blame.  No court-martial is deemed necessary or proper in the case.

A. Lincoln.

TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

Private and confidential

Executive Mansion,
Washington, October 28, 1863.

General John M. Schofield: 

There have recently reached the War Department, and thence been laid before me, from Missouri, three communications, all similar in import and identical in object.  One of them, addressed to nobody, and without place or date, but having the signature of (apparently) the writer, is a letter of eight closely written foolscap pages.  The other two are written by a different person, at St. Joseph, Mo., and of the dates, respectively, October 12 and 13, 1863, and each inclosing a large number of affidavits.  The general statements of the whole are that the Federal and State authorities are arming the disloyal and disarming the loyal, and that the latter will all be killed or driven out of the State unless there shall be a change.  In particular, no loyal man who has been disarmed is named, but the affidavits show by name forty-two persons as disloyal who have been armed.  They are as follows:  [The names are omitted.]

A majority of these are shown to have been in the rebel service.  I believe it could be shown that the government here has deliberately armed more than ten times as many captured at Gettysburg, to say nothing of similar operations in East Tennessee.  These papers contain altogether thirty—­one manuscript pages, and one newspaper in extenso, and yet I do not find it anywhere charged in them that any loyal man has been harmed by reason of being disarmed, or that any disloyal one has harmed anybody by reason of being armed by the Federal or State Government.  Of course, I have not had time to carefully examine all; but I have had most of them examined and briefed by others, and the result is as stated.  The remarkable fact that the actual evil is yet only anticipated—­inferred—­induces me to suppose I understand the case; but I do not state my impression, because I might be mistaken, and because your duty and mine is plain in any event.  The locality of nearly all this seems to be St. Joseph and Buchanan County.  I wish you to give special attention to this region, particularly on election day.  Prevent violence from whatever quarter, and see that the soldiers themselves do no wrong.