al letter, with the records
to which it belonged, must, it is presumed, have been deposited at
the headquarters of the department in St. Louis when the Army of
the West was disbanded, in the latter part of August, 1861. Neither
the original letter nor any copy of it can now (July, 1897) be
found. It can only be conjectured what motive caused General
Fremont to omit a copy of the letter from the papers submitted to
the committee, which were at the time strongly commented upon in
Congress, or what caused to be removed from the official files the
original, which had again come into his possession.

General Lyon's answer to this letter, given below, the original
draft which was prepared by me and is yet in my possession, shows
that Fremont's letter to Lyon was dated August 6, and was received
on the 9th. I am not able to recall even the substance of the
greater part of that letter, but the purport of that part of it
which was then of vital importance is still fresh in my memory.
That purport was instructions to the effect that _if Lyon was not
strong enough to maintain his position as far in advance as
Springfield, he should fall back toward Rolla until reinforcements
should meet him_.

It is difficult to see why General Fremont did not produce a copy
of those instructions in his statement to the committee. It would
have furnished him with the best defense he could possibly have
made against the charge of having sacrificed Lyon and his command.
But the opinion then seemed so strong and so nearly universal that
Lyon's fight at Wilson's Creek was a necessity, and that Fremont
ought to have reinforced him before that time at any cost, that
perhaps Fremont had not the courage to do what was really best for
his own defense, namely, to acknowledge and maintain that he had
ordered Lyon to fall back, and that the latter should have obeyed
that order.

LYON'S REPLY

At my suggestion, General Lyon instructed me to prepare an answer
to General Fremont's letter on the morning of August 9. He altered
the original draft, in his own hand, as is shown in the copy
following; a fair copy of the letter as amended was then made, and
he signed it.

"Springfield, Aug. 9, 1861.
"General: I have just received your note of the 6th inst. by special
messenger.

"I retired to this place, as I have before informed you, reaching
here on the 5th. The enemy followed to withi