238 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (THE Fm-Jonx POETEE CASE.) 



acted upon his own judgment, his action had been 

 wise and judicious. 1'or ihe disaster of the succeed- 

 ing day he was in no degree responsible. Whosoever 

 else may have been responsible, it did not flow from 

 any action or inaction of his. 



The judgment of the court-martial upon Gen. Por- 

 ter's conduct was evidently based upon greatly erro- 

 neous impressions, not only respecting what that 

 conduct really was, and the orders under which he 

 was acting, but also respecting all the circumstances 

 under which he acted. Especially was this true in re- 

 spect to the character of the battle of the 29th of August. 

 That battle consisted of a number of sharp and gallant 

 combats between small portions of the opposing forces. 

 Those combats were of short duration, and were 

 separated by long intervals of simple skirmishing and 

 artillery duels. Until after six o'clock only a small 

 p_art of the troops on either side were engaged at any 

 time during the afternoon. Then, about sunset, one 

 additional division on each side was engaged near 

 Groveton. The musketry of that last contest, and 

 the yells of the Confederate troops about dark, were 

 distinctly heard by the officers of Porter's corps ; but 

 at no other time during all that atternoon was the vol- 

 ume of musketry such that it could be heard at the 

 position of Porter's troops. .No sound but that of ar- 

 tillery was heard by them during all those hours when 

 Porter was understood by the court-martial to have 

 been listening to the sounds of a furious battle raging 

 immediately to his right. And those sounds of artil- 

 lery were by no means such as to indicate a general 

 battle. 



The reports of the 29th and those of the 30th of 

 August have somehow been strangely confounded 

 with each other. Even the Confederate reports have, 

 since the termination of the war, been similarly mis- 

 construed. Those of the 30th have been misquoted 

 as referring to the 29th, thus to prove that a furious 

 battle was goin- - ~ 1?1 - ^ ^ ^ *_ 



inactive on the 

 of his own troops 

 sustain the original error under which he was con- 

 demned. Gen. Porter was in effect condemned for 

 not having taken any part in his own battle. Such 

 was the error upon which Gen. Porter was pronounced 

 guilty of the most shameful crime known among sol- 

 diers. We believe not one among all the gallant sol- 

 diers on that bloody field was less deserving of such 

 condemnation tlian he. 



Mr. Sewell added : " I am interested in this 

 case of Fitz-John Porter, because I served in 

 the Army of the Potomac during the entire 

 period he was connected with it from its forma- 

 tion, and because I know the man and his repu- 

 tation as a soldier. 



" General Porter entered West Point, and 

 graduated high in his class in 1845. He was 

 assigned to duty as second lieutenant of the 

 Fourth. Artillery, in which regiment he served 

 in the war with Mexico, taking part in the bat- 

 tles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Molino del Rey, 

 the sieges of Vera Cruz and Chapultepec, and 

 in the capture of the city of Mexico, in which 

 struggle he was wounded at the Garita of Belin. 

 For his services in these battles he was twice 

 brevetted. In 1857 we find him serving on the 

 staff of Gen. Johnson as chief of staff. 



u At the breaking out of the late war Gen. 

 Porter, upon his return from Texas with the 

 remnant of troops stationed there, was as- 

 signed to duty in Pennsylvania with the gen- 

 eral charge of keeping the roads open to the 

 capital at a critical period of our history, which 

 duty was performed to the satisfaction of the 



Government. While at Harrisburg he was in- 

 strumental in organizing and forwarding troops 

 for the protection of the capital: and learning 

 through Gov. Curtin that the arsenal and other 

 public property at St. Louis was liable to fall 

 into the hands of the secessionists of Missouri, 

 and being cut off from telegraphic communica- 

 tion with Washington, he assumed the responsi- 

 bility and telegraphed in the name of the Sec- 

 retary of War to muster in the Missouri vol- 

 unteers, under the command of Capt. Lyon, 

 for the protection of public property. 



" Mr. President, it required not only a good 

 soldier, but a strong man, to assume such re- 

 sponsibilities. It was not the act of one luke- 

 warm in the service of his country. His action 

 was warmly approved by Gen. Scott and the 

 Secretary of War on his reporting the case. 

 Gen. Porter's next service was as chief of staff 

 with Gen. Patterson, after which, upon the or- 

 ganization of the Army of the Potomac, he was 

 assigned to the command of a division, and had 

 charge of the siege of Yorktown until it fell, 

 when he was placed in command of the Fifth 

 Army Corps, with which he fought the bat- 

 tles of New Bridge, Hanover Court-House, 

 Gaines's Mills, Turkey Bridge, and Malvern. 

 For his services in this campaign he was pro- 

 moted major-general of volunteers and brevet 

 brigadier-general in the regular army. Upon 

 the abandonment of the Peninsula by the Army 

 of the Potomac, Gen. Porter reported to Gen. 

 Pope at Bealeton, Aug. 26, 1862. The charges 

 and specifications under which he was tried re- 

 fer to the period between this date named and 

 the 31st of August. 



" I have endeavored, in answer to the mi- 

 nority report presented by the honorable Sen- 

 ator from Illinois (whom 1 had hoped would be 

 by this time, as was another great soldier, con- 

 vinced by a study of the case), to show the in- 

 nocence of Gen. Porter. 



" Personally, Mr. President, I believe, as was 

 reported by the board, that Gen. Porter did his 

 whole duty on the occasion referred to, and par- 

 ticularly in connection with the order to move 

 his command at one o'clock, and what is known 

 as the 'four-thirty order.' I will say more. 

 From my knowledge of the man as a soldier 

 and a gentleman I do not believe it possible that 

 he could be guilty of directly or indirectly con- 

 tributing to the defeat of his comrades in arms 

 by the non-performance of his duties as he un- 

 derstood them. 



" The reputation of Gen. Porter in the army 

 was that when he had a company it was the best 

 in the battalion ; when he commanded a regi- 

 ment it was the best in the brigade; when 

 commanding a brigade it was the best in the di- 

 vision; and his corps, the fifth, was the pride 

 of the Army of the Potomac. This man, whom 

 the records show as I have quoted them, pushed 

 the movements of his corps from the Peninsula 

 in order to sustain Pope, making the junction 

 four days sooner than his orders would have 

 required. This does not bear on the face of it 



