CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (THE FITZ-JOHN POBTER CASE.) 



239 



any probability that, having pushed his com- 

 mand ahead of time, he would fail within the 

 next few hours to give that prompt succor to 

 the army of Gen. Pope which he had been 

 making forced marches to accomplish. 



"No, Mr. President, these things are incon- 

 sistent. Fitz-John Porter was sacrificed to a 

 public sentiment which at that time required 

 somebody should suffer, that somebody should 

 be made an example of for the mismanagement 

 of military affairs. 



"He comes now before the only tribunal 

 which can give him justice, after twenty years 

 of suffering under what he believes, under what 

 I believe, and what a large portion of the 

 American people believe to be an unjust sen- 

 tence. Gen. Porter only asks that he may be 

 restored to that army in which he served so 

 faithfully, and in which he was one of its 

 brightest ornaments." 



In conclusion, he made an article of Gen. 

 Grant's in the "North American Review " for 

 December, 1882, a part of his argument. 



Mr. Logan, of Illinois, spoke for several days 

 against the bill. He began by making a letter 

 of his own in reply to Gen. Grant's article a part 

 of the record. Touching the alleged disobedi- 

 ence of the order to march on the night of Aug. 

 27, 1862, he said : " The Senator who votes that, 

 Fitz-John Porter was not convicted properly 

 and legally, votes that he obeyed that order or 

 that it was impossible to obey it ; any one who 

 votes to relieve this man from the sentence of 

 that court-martial votes in the face of all the 

 testimony that was given even by his own 

 friends, and votes that the court-martial found 

 him guilty when he ought to have been found 

 not guilty, when in fact the evidence shows 

 that he never attempted to obey the order. 

 The law says that he must obey it, that he sub- 

 jects himself to the death-penalty if he does not 

 obey; and yet he did not obey it, he did not 

 try to obey it. He violated the law and vio- 

 lated the order ; and yet, forsooth, you say he 

 is not guilty ! Well, if gentlemen can do that, 

 it is for them to say and not for me ; but that is 

 the fact, and there is the l.w. Under the law 

 and the evidence the judgment of that court- 

 martial was as righteous a judgment as ever 

 was given. It was just, it was right, because 

 it was in accordance with the law and in ac- 

 cordance with the evidence. 



" If commanders of divisions and corps are to 

 be permitted to be judges for themselves as to 

 whether they will obey an order or not, then I 

 would not give a straw for all the armies of the 

 United States. If a corps commander may say 

 an order need not be obeyed, why can not his 

 brigade commander or division commander say 

 the_ same, and why can not their colonels and 

 their captains say the same ? What kind of an 

 army would you have if you gentlemen were all 

 division commanders or corps commanders and 

 were off some miles, the enemy was approach- 

 ing, and the commanding general should send 

 orders to each one of you to concentrate at day- 



light to-morrow morning, for the reason that 

 he expected either to make an attack or to 

 be attacked, and each man should say, l Well, it 

 is too dark : I will not go until to-morrow morn- 

 ning,' and no one of you started? If one of 

 you may disobey an order, all may. Suppose 

 no one starts, and the general is left there with 

 a small force to fight the next morning, nobody 

 to come to his rescue, nobody to obey his or- 

 ders, what kind of an army would you have? 



" Oh, but some gentlemen say one of the 

 great chiefs of the world has said he could not 

 move because the road was obstructed ; there- 

 fore we must give a judgment that he could 

 not. I should like to put some of the sworn 

 statements of that chief against his published 

 statements which are not sworn to. 



"Take the history of the world from the 

 time we have had wars, and you can not find 

 such an excuse as is given here by Fitz-John 

 Porter for not moving, that there were wagons 

 in the road. I could give instance after instance 

 where marches were made after night, where 

 marches were made in rain-storms, where bat- 

 tles were fought after night, and I could recite 

 numbers of instances where armies moved and 

 corps moved without orders to the sound of 

 battle, if it were necessary, but I will not give 

 the instance for reasons that will be -well un- 

 derstood. 



" One of the greatest battles fought during 

 the whole campaign called the Atlanta cam- 

 paign was fought without one single order be- 

 ing given by the commanding general ; but they 

 were not Fitz-John Porters who commanded 

 the corps there. The general in his report of 

 that battle said that all of his orders were an- 

 ticipated. That battle was fought from early 

 dawn until nine o'clock at night without orders 

 from the general commanding the army, and it 

 was successfully fought. They took the max- 

 im of Napoleon, 'March to the sound of the 

 enemy's guns,' and that was why Napoleon 

 always had his army on the field first, because 

 that was a standing order. His corps com- 

 manders marched to the sound of the enemy's 

 guns, and hence the army was always concen- 

 trated before the army of the enemy. 



' k Wherever successful battles have been 

 fought in history they have been -fought by 

 officers knowing their duties and performing 

 them without waiting for orders. Why, sir, 

 I could cite instances I did in my remarks 

 before, and I do not wish to repeat now what 

 I said then instance after instance where 

 marches were made at the dead hour of the 

 night, when the clouds were lowering and no 

 moon and no stars giving light. Here is a man 

 who sits before me (Mr. Miller, of California) 

 who marched one night ten miles, when it was 

 raining, with 6.000 men to oppose 60,000, and 

 to hold them there until the General of the 

 Army could take his position and get ready, to 

 fight. And yet this man Porter would not 

 move for fear he would be drowned in a mud- 

 hole ! " 



