Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Volume 22 by United States Department of the Navy

Author:United States Department of the Navy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Official Records, Civil War
Publisher: United States Department of the Navy
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*

GEO. D. WISE.

[Telegram.]

CAIRO, December 27, 1861.

Required immediately by railroad express cars thirty of 9-inch breechings, 27 feet long. For rifle guns twenty breechings of 8-inch, 25 feet long. A. H. Foom, Captain A. A. JIARWOOD, Flag-Officer. Chief of Bureau of Ordnance, Wa8hington, D. C

Page 473

NAVAL FORCES ON WESTERN WATERS. 478

Letter from~ Flag-Officer Foote, U. S. Navy, to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, transmitting correspondence with Major-General Hallecic, U. S. Army.

CAIRO, December 28,1861.

SIR: I send herewith copies of a correspondence and telegrams with Major-General Halleck, commanding, by which you will readily per- ceive the great embarrassments in which we are involved for want of men, as well as the difficulty of any military commander fully appre- ciating the wants of men-of-war, or even Western gunboats. The general, as you will at once perceive, has fully misunderstood my letter of the 25th instant, which asks him what I am to do with the temporary masters and crews on board the tugs or small propellers ordered to us and intended for our mortar boats. He has confounded these officers and men (river men and officers) with the regiment of volunteers, and answers that letter under an erroneous conception of its meaning, and does not touch the subject of the letter at all. If the general had written such a letter in reply to my enclosed letter of the 26th instant (which he had not received when he wrote his letter of the 27th instant), I should not have been so much surprised, although his ideas, as you will see, are wholly impracticable, in sending a regi- ment with its officers and men to act as marines. We had all things in comparative good condition, and only wanted men to begin, if not to complete, the commission of all the gunboats this week or early in the next, as stated in my letter of the 26th instant to General Halleck. Now we are thrown back again for want of men. I see no other way possible for us to organize effectively but to have 1,000 men sent us from the East immediately, unless I am authorized to ship men who are discharged from the different regiments in the Army for the purpose of entering the navy gunboats. This I had authority to do from General Fr6inont. In fact, an order was given to the Adjutant-General to discharge such men from the Army as I should want for the gunboats. I know General Hallecks difficulties, and find no fault with him or his course, except that he seems to question my judgment about navy matters, of which, of course, he c~n know but little, and I, of course, must know vastly more than he does. I present the whole matter to you, knowing that your resources will apply the corrective, as you have, superadded to good sound judgment, great experience in naval matters and wants. The appointment and assignment of officers, the difficulty in obtain- ing supplies of articles required while about commissioning vessels.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.