wrote to me again. "Your going to Nashville
without authority, and when your presence with your troops was of the
utmost importance, was a matter of very serious complaint at Washington,
so much so that I was advised to arrest you on your return." This was
the first I knew of his objecting to my going to Nashville. That place
was not beyond the limits of my command, which, it had been expressly
declared in orders, were "not defined." Nashville is west of the
Cumberland River, and I had sent troops that had reported to me for duty
to occupy the place. I turned over the command as directed and then
replied to General Halleck courteously, but asked to be relieved from
further duty under him.

Later I learned that General Halleck had been calling lustily for more
troops, promising that he would do something important if he could only
be sufficiently reinforced. McClellan asked him what force he then had.
Halleck telegraphed me to supply the information so far as my command
was concerned, but I received none of his dispatches. At last Halleck
reported to Washington that he had repeatedly ordered me to give the
strength of my force, but could get nothing out of me; that I had gone
to Nashville, beyond the limits of my command, without his authority,
and that my army was more demoralized by victory than the army at Bull
Run had been by defeat. General McClellan, on this information, ordered
that I should be relieved from duty and that an investigation should be
made into any charges against me. He even authorized my arrest. Thus
in less than two weeks after the victory at Donelson, the two leading
generals in the army were in correspondence as to what disposition
should be made of me, and in less than three weeks I was virtually in
arrest and without a command.

On the 13th of March I was restored to command, and on the 17th Halleck
sent me a copy of an order from the War Department which stated that
accounts of my misbehavior had reached Washington and directed him to
investigate and report the facts. He forwarded also a copy of a
detailed dispatch from himself to Washington entirely exonerating me;
but he did not inform me that it was his own reports that had created
all the trouble. On the contrary, he wrote to me, "Instead of relieving
you, I wish you, as soon as your new army is in the field, to assume
immediate command, and lead it to new victories." In consequence I felt
very grateful to him, and supposed