The mention of a
former order was another sheer blunder on General Halleck's part,
and Burnside indignantly protested against the imputation contained
in it. [Footnote: _Id_., pp.593, 594.] The truth seems to be that
Halleck was in such a condition of irritation over his
correspondence with Rosecrans, that nothing pertaining to the
Department of the Ohio was accurately placed in his mind or
accurately stated when he had occasion to refer to it. In cutting
the knot by peremptory orders to both armies to move, he was right,
and was justified in insisting that the little column of 12,000
under Burnside should start although it could only be got together
in greatest haste and with the lack of equipment occasioned by the
"wear and tear" of the operations against Morgan. If, in insisting
on this, he had recognized the facts and given Burnside and his
troops credit for the capture of the rebel raiders and the
concentration, in a week, of forces scattered over a distance of
nearly a thousand miles, no one would have had a right to criticise
him. The exigency fairly justified it. But to treat Burnside as if
he had been only enjoying himself in Cincinnati, and his troops all
quietly in camp along the Cumberland River through the whole
summer,--to ignore the absence of the Ninth Corps and his own
suspension of a movement already begun when he took it away,--to
assume in almost every particular a basis of fact absolutely
contrary to the reality and to telegraph censures for what had been
done, under his own orders or strictly in harmony with them,--all
this was doing a right thing in as absurdly wrong a way as was
possible.
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