Dear general:  Last evening, just before leaving my office, I received your note of the 10th, and had intended answering it according to your request; but, after I got home, I got your dispatch of yesterday, announcing that the order I dreaded so much was issued.  I never felt so troubled in my life.  Were it an order to go to Sitka, to the devil, to battle with rebels or Indians, I think you would not hear a whimper from me, but it comes in such a questionable form that, like Hamlet’s ghost, it curdles my blood and mars my judgment.  My first thoughts were of resignation, and I had almost made up my mind to ask Dodge for some place on the Pacific road, or on one of the Iowa roads, and then again various colleges ran through my memory, but hard times and an expensive family have brought me back to staring the proposition square in the face, and I have just written a letter to the President, which I herewith transmit through you, on which I will hang a hope of respite till you telegraph me its effect.  The uncertainties ahead are too great to warrant my incurring the expense of breaking up my house and family here, and therefore in no event will I do this till I can be assured of some permanence elsewhere.  If it were at all certain that you would accept the nomination of President in May, I would try and kill the intervening time, and then judge of the chances, but I do not want you to reveal your plans to me till you choose to do so.

I have telegraphed to John Sherman to oppose the nomination which the papers announce has been made of me for brevet general.

I have this minute received your cipher dispatch of to-day, which I have just answered and sent down to the telegraph-office, and the clerk is just engaged in copying my letter to the President to go with this.  If the President or his friends pretend that I seek to go to Washington, it will be fully rebutted by letters I have written to the President, to you, to John Sherman, to Mr. Ewing, and to Mr. Stanbery.  You remember that in our last talk you suggested I should write again to the President.  I thought of it, and concluded my letter of January 31st, already delivered, was full and emphatic.  Still, I did write again to Mr. Stanbery, asking him as a friend to interpose in my behalf.  There are plenty of people who know my wishes, and I would avoid, if possible, the publication of a letter so confidential as that of January 31st, in which I notice I allude to the President’s purpose of removing Mr. Stanton by force, a fact that ought not to be drawn out through me if it be possible to avoid it.  In the letter herewith I confine myself to purely private matters, and will not object if it reaches the public in any proper way.  My opinion is, the President thinks Mrs. Sherman would like to come to Washington by reason of her father and brothers being there.  This is true, for Mrs. Sherman has an idea that St. Louis is unhealthy for our children, and because most of