retreat by a movement from Beverly." Captain W. J. Kountz, an
experienced steamboat captain, was in charge of
water-transportation, and would furnish light-draught steamboats for
my use. [Footnote: What purports to be McClellan's letter to me is
found in the Records (Official Records, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 197), but
it seems to be only an abstract of it, made to accompany his
dispatch to Washington (_Id_., p. 198), and by a clerical error
given the form of the complete letter. It does not contain the
quotation given above, which was reiterated before the letter was
closed, in these words: "Remember that my present plan is to cut
them off by a rapid march from Beverly after driving those in front
of me across the mountains, and do all you can to favor that by
avoiding offensive movements."

After the printing of the earlier volumes of the Records, covering
the years 1861-1862, I learned that the books and papers of the
Department of the Ohio had not been sent to Washington at the close
of the war, but were still in Cincinnati. I brought this fact to the
attention of the Adjutant-General, and at the request of that
officer obtained and forwarded them to the Archives office. With
them were my letter books and the original files of my
correspondence with McClellan and Rosecrans in 1861 and 1862.
Colonel Robert N. Scott, who was then in charge of the publication,
informed me that the whole would be prepared for printing and would
appear in the supplemental volumes, after the completion of the rest
of the First Series. Owing to changes in the Board of Publication in
the course of twenty years, there were errors in the arrangement of
the matter for the printer, and a considerable part of the
correspondence between the generals named and myself was
accidentally omitted from the supplemental volume (Official Records,