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BALL’S BLUFF AND THE ARREST OF GENERAL STONE.

execution of the order was informally suspended in deference to GeneralMcClellan ’s express statement to the Secretary, that he did not see how anycharges could he framed on the testimony. ☆

In a few days the missing link was supplied by a surprising occurrence.A refugee came into General W. W. Burns’s lines from Leesburg, with avague and utterly groundless story of mysterious flags of truce and of howmuch the Confederates thought of their friend Stone. % General McClellan was now placed in a cruel dilemma. He had either to show the refugee’sstory to the Secretary, or withhold it. The course he chose was that whichseemed to him his duty. Mr. Stanton instantly renewed the order, andStone’s ruin was accomplished.

Not only were no charges ever preferred, but no acknowledgment of errorwas ever made, unless Stone’s retention in the service and his restoration toduty, long subsequently, and under secret surveillance, be so considered. Gen-eral McClellan in vain applied for him. General Hooker’s first act on takingcommand was to ask for him as chief-of-staff. At last, in May, 1863, uponthe earnest request of General Banks , commanding the Department of theGulf, Stone was ordered to report to him. He arrived during the siege ofPort Hudson, and rendered valuable service, though without assignment.Immediately afterward, General Banks appointed him chief-of-staff, in whichcapacity he served until April 16th, 1864, when, coiucidently with the disasteron the Red River, but under orders previously issued at Washington, he wasdeprived of his commission as brigadier-general, and ordered to “ report byletter ” as colonel of the 14th infantry. In the following August, Lieutenant-General Grant assigned hi m to the command of a brigade in the Fifth ArmyCorps. A month later, worn out at last by the strain of the unmerited suffer-ing he had so long endured in silence, he resigned.

And thus it was that this most gallant, accomplished, and faithful soldierwas, upon no charges, without a hearing, upon “ evidence ” on which nohumane or fair-minded man would punish a pet terrier, condemned notmerely to long and rigorous imprisonment, but to a punishment so muchworse than death that in all ages men have sought death because they havelacked the courage to endure it.

■fe The Joint Committee on the Conduct of theWar, appointed in December, 1861, during thesecond session of the 37th Congress , consisted ofSenators Benjamin P. Wade, of Ohio ; ZachariahChandler, of Michigan, and Andrew Johnson , ofTennessee ; and Representatives D. W. Gooch, ofMassachusetts; John Covode, of Pennsylvania ;George W. Julian, of Indiana , and M. P. Odell, ofNew York. On the appointment of Andrew John-son as Military Governor of Tennessee , March4th, 1862, his place on the committee was filled,temporarily, by Joseph A. Wright, of Indiana .Only six names appear in the report, submittedApril 6th, 1863, with respect to the First BullRun, Ball’s Bluff, the Western Department ofMissouri, and other subjects.— Editors.

& General McClellan informed General Stone thathe had last seen the written statement at the WarOffice on the 8th of February, 1862. I saw it athis headquarters in Washington in September,1862, in a wardrobe full of papers turned overto me when I, as Acting Assistant Adjutant-Gen-eral, was detached “to prevent the tail of the armyfrom being again cut off,” and it was among adouble handful which I delivered back to GeneralSeth Williams after Antietam. I suggest that thename of this refugee, and all the facts regardinghim, and all the statements made by him, willprobably turn up in the archives of the “SecretService.” I know the man was turned over to“ Colonel E. J. Allen” (Allen Pinkerton ) and ex-amined by him.— R. B. I.