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which this statement is based will be found in his annual report for 1869.
General Rawlins died September 6, following the issuing of
General Order, No. 28, given above.
General Sherman was assigned temporarily to the desk of the
Secretary of War.
The following paragraph of the
President's order, as given above, was still in force:
By direction of the President, * * * * all official business which, by law or regulations, requires the action of the President or the Secretary of War, will be submitted by the Chiefs of Staff Corps, Departments, and Bureaus to the Secretary of War.
No order revoking this had been issued by the
President.
General Sherman was also aware that this order had been framed solely to control his official acts.
It was not an order that he would for a moment forget.
And yet, while speaking in his annual report of these same Chiefs of Staff Corps, Departments, and Bureaus,
General Sherman said:
‘The heads of these departments reside in Washington, and submit annually a written report of their operations for the past year.
It so happened that I was Secretary of War during the month of October, when by law these reports were made in order to reach the Public Printer by the first of November, and I required all the annual reports to be addressed, like all other military reports, to the Adjutant-General for the perusal of the General of the Army, who could make use of such information as they contained, and then lay them before the Secretary of War.
This is, in my judgment, the course that should always be pursued-though a different one has heretofore prevailed — for otherwise we would have the absurdity of a general commanding an army with his chief staff officer reporting to somebody else.’
A little further on in the same paper he called attention to a report made by the Military Committee of the
House, upon which, however, the
House had taken no action, much less Congress, in which the
Committee expressed the opinion that the staff corps should be as directly under the control of the general and the department commanders as the officers of the line.
He then added: ‘I heartily concur in these views, and, so far as my authority goes, will carry them out.’
And this
