Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/509

Rh same court—the innocent and the guilty, the accuser and the the accused. The judge and his prisoners are dealt with alike. Most impartial justice. But there is a discrimination with a vengeance. While the parties are on trial, if the appealer is to be tried at all, which seems doubtful, two are restored to their corps, one of them with his brevet rank, and I am deprived of mine. There can be but one step more in the same direction. Throw the rules and articles of war into the fire, and leave all ranks in the army free to engage in denunciations and a general scramble for precedence, authority and executive favor. The pronunciamiento on the part of my factious juniors is most triumphant.

My recall—under the circumstances a severe punishment before trial, but to be followed by a trial here that may run into the autumn, and on matters I am but partially permitted to know by the Department and my accusers—is very ingeniously placed on two grounds:—1. My own request, meaning that of June 4 (quoted above, and there was no other before the Department), which had been previously (July 12) acknowledged and rebukingly declined; 2. The arrest of Brevet-Major-Gen. Worth for writing to the Department, under the pretext and form of an appeal, an open letter, to be sent through me, in which I was grossly and falsely accused of malice and conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman, in the matter of the General Order No. 349, on the subject of puffing letters for the newspapers at home.

On the second point, the letter from the Department of January 13 is more than ingenious; it is elaborate, subtle and profound—a professional dissertation, with the rare merit of teaching principles, until now wholly unknown to military codes and treatises, and of course to all mere soldiers, however great their experience in the field.

I have not in this place time to do more than hint at the fatal consequences of the novel doctrine in question. According to the department, any factious junior may at his pleasure, in the midst of the enemy, using the pretext and