the admirable parts of Rosecrans's generalship and skilfully avoided
the question of personal conduct on the field. He carried the House
with him, but a joint resolution must pass the Senate also, and it
never came to a vote in that body.

When in 1880 Garfield was elected President, and in the midst of a
heated campaign had to run the gantlet of personal attacks
infinitely worse than the picket fire under which he had galloped
across the Kelley farm, a letter was produced which he had written
to Mr. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, in June, 1863, when he was
urging Rosecrans to terminate the inglorious delays at Murfreesboro
by marching on Tullahoma. In his letter to Mr. Chase he had
expressed in warmest terms his personal affection for Rosecrans, but
had also condemned the summer's delays as unnecessary and contrary
to military principles. In the violence of partisan discussion the
letter was seized upon as evidence of a breach of faith toward his
chief, who was now acting with the political party opposed to
Garfield's election. The letter was a personal one, written in
private friendship to Mr. Chase, with whom Garfield had kept up an
occasional correspondence since the beginning of the war. I had done
the like, for Mr. Chase had admitted us both to his intimacy when he
was Governor of Ohio. It cannot for a moment be maintained that
military subordination is inconsistent with temperate and respectful
criticism (for such this was) of a superior, in private
communications to a friend. But it was argued that the relation of
chief of staff involved another kind of confidence. It
unquestionably involved the duty of observing and maintaining
perfectly every confidence actually reposed in him. But the public
acts of the chief were anything but confidential. They were in the
face of all the world, and these only were the subject of his