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[241] of your department to another been withdrawn, restricted, or modified.

XXXIV. Now that Vicksburg has disastrously fallen, this subject would present no pressing demand for attention, and its examination would have been postponed to a future period, had not your dispatch of the 5th instant, with its persistent repetition of statements which I had informed you were erroneous, and without adducing a single fact to sustain them, induced me to terminate the matter at once by a review of all the facts. The original mistakes in your telegram of 12th of June would gladly have been overlooked as accidental, if acknowledged when pointed out. The perseverance with which they have been insisted on has not permitted me to pass them by as mere oversights, or, by refraining from an answer, to seem to admit the justice of the statements.

Very Respectfully, Your obedient servant, (Signed) Jefferson Davis. General J. E. Johnston.
Note.-The paragraphs in the above letter were numbered by me, for precision of reference.


This letter seems to have been written to prove that I committed a grave military offense, by regarding the order of May 19th as assigning me to a new position, and limiting my command to the Department of Mississippi.

Much of it is to prove what those concerned could not doubt, and never denied: that, on the 24th of November, 1862, I was assigned to the command of

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