General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[427] so extensively circulated as to lead to an investigation by a committee of the House of Representatives, in January, 1861. The chairman of that committee was one of the most respected members of the Republican party in that House, Mr. Stanton, of Ohio. The report of that committee completely exonerated Mr. Floyd, and refuted the calumny. Yet it continued to be circulated and believed-while the refutation, although by such a body, was unnoticed-and, I believe, is now forgotten.

The facts that were distorted into that calumny are clearly stated in the report of the committee, and must be well known by the principal officers of the United States Ordnance Bureau, and recorded in that Bureau; for the orders in question were given through that, the proper channel. They are briefly these: Previous to the year 1859, the infantry arms manufactured under the direction of the War Department had been accumulating in the Springfield Armory, in consequence of the neglect of an old rule of the Government which required the distribution of these arms in arsenals constructed for the purpose, in the different sections of the country. In the beginning of that year, the accumulation had filled the places of deposit at Springfield, where the newly-adopted improved arms were made. To make room there for the new arms as they were finished, Mr. Floyd ordered the removal of about a hundred and five thousand muskets¹ and ten thousand rifles,