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 the Catholics here are tainted with the old secesh feeling.  But I know better what is to our common interest, and prefer to judge of the proprieties myself.  What I do object to is the false position I would occupy as between you and the President.  Were there an actual army at or near Washington, I could be withdrawn from the most unpleasant attitude of a “go-between,” but there is no army there, nor any military duties which you with a host of subordinates can not perform.  Therefore I would be there with naked, informal, and sinecure duties, and utterly out of place.  This you understand well enough, and the army too, but the President and the politicians, who flatter themselves they are saving the country, cannot and will not understand.  My opinion is, the country is doctored to death, and if President and Congress would go to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, the country would go on under natural influences, and recover far faster than under their joint and several treatment.  This doctrine would be accounted by Congress, and by the President too, as high treason, and therefore I don’t care about saying so to either of them, but I know you can hear anything, and give it just what thought or action it merits.

Excuse this long letter, and telegraph me the result of my letter to the President as early as you can.  If he holds my letter so long as to make it improper for me to await his answer, also telegraph me.

The order, when received, will, I suppose, direct me as to whom and how I am to turn over this command, which should, in my judgment, not be broken up, as the three departments composing the division should be under one head.