teemed and affectionately remembered by me, as is my deceased friend, the late General Hardee. This is intensified by the fact that the discussion involves another most highly respected, and whose memory is personally dear to me, the late General Hood. Both have gone where they will know as they are known, and both have left a reputation embalmed in the love and gratitude of those they served faithfully and well.
I sympathise in your desire to vindicate General Hardee, and recognize your right to call upon me for that purpose. The duty is one which I cheerfully perform.
The inference you draw from the statement in General Hood's book that I held a conference with Generals Stewart and S. D. Lee to determine the fitness of General Hardee for his command, the propriety of his conduct in the operations around Atlanta, is justified by the text, and was no doubt desired by General Hood.
I had, however, known General Hardee too long, too intimately, and in too many relations, to doubt his personal or soldierly qualities. My object in the conference, and that for which I visited the army, was to learn its condition, and what might be expected from it in active operations against the enemy. At this day, so remote from the event, I cannot claim to remember any conversation upon incidental points which may have occurred, but I can say with certainty that General Hardee was not relieved because of any depreciation of his capacity, his zeal or fidelity. General Hardee had earnestly requested to be relieved; it had been the subject of correspondence between us before my visit to the army, and my objections to complying with his wish were entirely complimentary to him. My assent to his persistent request to be relieved was finally given because of irreconcilable difference between himself and the officer commanding-in-chief.
Among the motives which induced me to make that visit to the Army of Tennessee, it is hardly supposable that one of them was to make enquiries about General Hardee's fitness for command, as there was probably no one in that army who knew him as well as I. He had first attracted my attention by his good conduct and cool courage, when, in the early part of the war against Mexico, he, as junior captain of a squadron of dragoons, extricated the portion of the command more immediately under him from an ambuscade into which it had fallen, and saved them from impending massacre. At a later day, because of his professional accomplishments, I, as Secretary of War, selected him to prepare the system of tactics which bears his name, and for a long time we daily worked together. In his appointment as Commandant of Cadets, and in his selection for promotion in a new regiment of cavalry, was manifested my appreciation of him as a gentleman and a soldier.
In his various high commands during the war between the States, my estimate of him was confirmed and increased, but never diminished. By reference to his letters from me received during the war, you will find the frequent expression of my confidence and regard,
