al Grant has occasion
to speak in his "Personal Memoirs" (vol. ii. p. 144), and whose
facility in changing his point of view in historical writing was
shown in his "McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed,"
which was published in 1864 by the Union Congressional Committee
(first appearing in the "New York Times" of February, March, and
April of that year), when compared with his "History of the Army of
the Potomac" which appeared two years later. Burnside accused him of
repeated instances of malicious libel of his command in June, 1864.
Official Records, vol. xxxvi. pt. iii. p. 751.] I was, however,
deeply convinced that my position was the right one, and never
changed my rule of conduct in the matter. The relations of newspaper
correspondents to general officers of the army became one of the
crying scandals and notorious causes of intrigue and demoralization.
It was a subject almost impossible to settle satisfactorily; but
whoever gained or lost by cultivating this means of reputation, it
is a satisfaction to have adhered throughout the war to the rule I
first adopted and announced.

Wise made no resolute effort to oppose my march after I left
Charleston, and contented himself with delaying us by his
rear-guard, which obstructed the road by felling trees into it and
by skirmishing with my head of column. We however advanced at the
rate of twelve or fifteen miles a day, reaching Gauley Bridge on the
morning of the 29th of July. Here we captured some fifteen hundred
stands of arms and a considerable store of munitions which the
Confederate general had not been able to carry away or destroy. It
is safe to say that in the wild defile which we had threaded for the
last twenty miles there were as many positions as there were miles
in which he could easily have delayed my advance a day or two,
forcing me to turn his flank by the most difficult mountain
climbing, and where indeed, with forces so nearly equal, my progress
should have been permanently barred. At Gauley Bridge he burned the
structure which gave name to the place, and which had been a series
of substantial wooden trusses resting upon heavy stone piers. My
orders definitively limited me to the point we had now reached in my
advance, and I therefore sent forward only a detachment to follow
the enemy and keep up his precipitate retreat. Wise did not stop
till he reached Greenbrier and the White Sulphur Springs, and there
was abundant evidence that he regard