P. Blair, esq., at
Washington, marked "private," containing a request that it be shown to
the President; which letter was exposed and brought to light by the
dignified and magnanimous act of the President in causing it to be
placed on file in the Department of War as an official document, and
which forms part of the proceedings. (See Document No. 214.) Conduct
so extraordinary and inexplicable on the part of Major-General Jesup,
in reference to the character of said letter, should, in the opinion
of the court, be investigated.
The foregoing opinion is not accompanied by any report of the _facts_
in the case, as required by the order constituting the court; on the
contrary, the facts are left to be gathered from the mass of oral and
documentary evidence contained in the proceedings, and thus a most
important part of the duty assigned to the court remains unexecuted.
Had the court stated the facts of the case as established to its
satisfaction by the evidence before it, the President, on comparing
such state of facts found by the court with its opinion, would have
distinctly understood the views entertained by the court in respect to
the degree of promptitude and energy which ought to be displayed in a
campaign against Indians--and one which the President's examination of
the evidence has not supplied, inasmuch as he has no means of knowing
whether the conclusions drawn by him from the evidence agree with those
of the court.
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