of the military contribution fund, referred from the Fourth Auditor's office. I also transmit, in accordance with your verbal request, a copy of the statement in relation to said fund, transmitted to the department with your despatch No. 79, of the 5th November, 1849. I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, United States Navy, Washington. WILL. A. GRAHAM. NAVY DEPARTMENT, December 16, 1850. SIR: Agreeably to your request communicated through your son, I enclose, herewith, an authenticated copy of a despatch addressed to you as commander of the United States squadron, Pacific ocean, on the 15th February, 1849, in reply to your despatch No. 22, of July 27, 1848, by the Hon. John Y. Mason, then Secretary of the Navy. I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, WILL. A. GRAHAM. United States Navy. NAVY DEPARTMENT, December 23, 1850. SIR: In accordance with your request of the 23d instant, a copy of the instructions from this department to Purser R. M. Price, dated December 6, 1848, is here with sent you. I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, United States Navy, Washington. WILL. A. GRAHAM. NAVY DEPARTMENT, December 27, 1850. SIR: Your communication of yesterday's date has been received. An examination of the documents to which it refers cannot be made in season for a reply to day, without neglecting a prior engagement, which I am not at liberty to disregard. This reply may be expected to-morrow, and in the mean time I have to express the hope that the judge advocate will not urge a decision on the point in dispute. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, U. S. Navy, Washington. WILL. A. GRAHAM. NAVY DEPARTMENT, December 28, 1850. SIR: The receipt of your letter of the 26th instant was acknowledged on yesterday, and a reply promised to day. In that letter you allege that the usage of this department, and the confidence reposed in it by officers in communicating with it, has been violated in permitting a despatch, numbered 52, addressed by you to the Hon. J. Y. Mason, Secretary of the Navy, to be examined and offered as evidence before the court martial now in session for the trial of charges preferred against you, and you ask that the head of the department will cause this document to be withheld from publication by directing it not to be exhibited in evidence. The ground of this application is stated to be an order, originally is. sued by Mr. Secretary Southard, requiring the commanders of squadrons to make reports on the conduct of officers under their command for the information of the department, which were to be received in confidence. I have caused the records of the department to be examined, and discover that such an order as that alleged did issue in 1825, and that a book was opened to register the information thus obtained; but no memorial of any report made in obedience to it is to be found in the department, except in that year. It seems by the concurrence of those who have admin. istered its affairs since, including Mr. Southard himself, to have become entirely obsolete. That order required detailed reports to be made semiannually, on the first days of January and July, on the character, conduct, and attainments of officers. The despatches referred to, which I have read, as requested by you, do not purport to be made in pursuance of this order, nor do they correspond with it in date or other circumstances. They can, therefore, in my opinion, derive no claim to be treated as confidential under it. Appreciating your remarks, however, on the general confidence implied in communications between the department and commanders of squadrons, I deem it proper to declare that I by no means consider the corre spondence between them as open to general inspection. But privileged communications are not, under all circumstances, incapable of investigation in courts of justice; and when, as in this case, an offence against the naval laws is charged to have been committed in an official report, which has been published, I considered it proper to permit that report to go into the hands of the judge advocate for the preparation of the charges, and to be produced as evidence. And when a trial is pending on a charge thus made, and other communications on the same subject matter contain evidence pertinent to the issue, I deem it due to a fair investigation that they shall not be withheld. Indeed, I presume that their production, either in a military or civil court, might be compelled. I am constrained, therefore, respectfully to decline to issue any order in the premises. Of the competency or effect of the evidence I do not presume to speak. It is a question for the court alone. Of the propriety of omitting a part of the document, as suggested by you, I must also disclaim any power over the subject. The judge advocate only, as I presume, can arrange that. In support of your application, you refer to a recent decision of this department in declining to exhibit to Commander Johnston a communication from Lieutenant Stanly. In that case, Commander Johnston had lodged a complaint against Lieutenant Stanly. This complaint was referred to Lieutenant Stanly for an explanation-a course not unfrequently adopted for the purpose of determining whether a court-martial is necessary. The reply of the latter was not exhibited to Commander Johnston for the reasons-1st, that it had been sought to determine the action of the department alone; and, 2d, if unsatisfactory, and a court became necessary, it might be considered an unfair attempt to procure a confession to be used as evidence against him. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, U. S. Navy, Washington. WILL. A. GRAHAM. NAVY DEPARTMENT, January 25, 1851. SIR: Your two communications, the one dated on the 7th of December last, and the other on the 21st instant-both preferring charges against Lieutenant T. A. M. Craven, and asking his arrest and trial by a courtmartial-have been received. In reply, I have the honor to state, that the offences imputed to Lieutenant Craven in these charges are: 1st. Mutinous conduct in contempt of yourself as his superior officer, while he was under your command in the Pacific squadron. 2d. Scandalous conduct, tending to the destruction of good morals, in certain charges alleged by him against you, in a communication addressed to the head of this department, dated the 28th of August, 1850. As to the first of the charges brought forward by you, I observe that all the specifications refer to acts committed on board of vessels in the Pacific ocean, and belonging to the Pacific squadron, of which you were the commander in chief, in the month of October, 1848. I understand it to be now settled law, that, in your capacity as such commander, you had full power to order courts martial for the trial and punishment of all offences against naval discipline there occurring; a power which, according to your official reports, you exercised in repeated instances. The offences, constituting the supposed mutinous conduct in question, are not stated to have been recently discovered, but, on the contrary, appear to have been known to you very soon after their alleged commission; and I must infer that they were not then esteemed of sufficient moment for the cognizance of a court-martial, otherwise one would have been organized in the squadron where they took place, and where the necessary witnesses could have been readily convened. This was not done then, nor was a court-martial at any time invoked on them, until the receipt of your letter of the 7th December, a few days before the assembling of the court for your own trial. Under these circumstances, I cannot but regard this alleged mutinous conduct as having been either summarily punished by admonition or suspension, or else impliedly pardoned in the omission to order a court for its investigation, and I accordingly decline to make it the subject of a court-martial now. In respect to the second charge, that Lieutenant Craven, in his letter to the department arraigning your conduct, made false and unjust charges against you in the particulars stated in your letter, I have to remark, that had a court of inquiry been asked on all the matters of complaint against you when they were referred to you for explanation, it would at once have been ordered. But that course not having been adopted, the department felt constrained to order a court-martial for the trial of such of them as, in its opinion, required it. After the explanation submitted by you, it was not deemed necessary to refer the particular accusations, of which you now complain, to the judgment of the court ordered for your trial; and accordingly they, with several other of the complaints against you, were not embraced in the charges preferred in the name of the departiment. Your present application asks an investigation of the truth of these accusations, not in the form originally presented by Lieutenant Craven, of allegations against yourself, but in an averment of falsehood against him in preferring them. To this there are two objections: First. The department, in the exercise of its discretion, refused him the investigation in the form of direct accusation, and its action, as a preliminary tribunal, is so far an acquittal of yourself. Second. A prosecutor, although the accused be acquitted, is not to be subjected to any penalty for his complaint, unless the prosecution be both frivolous and malicious. I cannot so pronounce on this prosecution, with no other evidence than that now before me; and, therefore, I must respectfully decline the order requested by you for the arrest and trial of Lieutenant T. A. M. Craven. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore T. AP C. JONES, U. S. Navy, Washington, D. C. WILL. A. GRAHAM. NAVY DEPARTMENT, February 13, 1851. SIR: Your communication of this day's date has just been received. In reply, I have the honor to state that, purposely, no limits were assigned in the arrest which was necessary for your trial; and you have been informed, heretofore, that, in making the usual and necessary arrest, it was the wish of the department to interfere in as small a degree as possible with your personal comfort and convenience. I regard, therefore, the permission asked for leave to return to your residence as altogether needlessthough it would be cheerfully conceded were the fact otherwise. The record of the court-inartial is quite voluminous; and, although several days have elapsed since it was received, my engagements have not permitted a full examination of it. full examination of it. I hope, however, to be able to communicate the action of the department in regard to it within a very few days. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOMAS AP C. JONES, WILL. A. GRAHAM. United States Navy, Washington, D. C. NAVY DEPARTMENT, February 13, 1851. SIR: The department has received, from Commander Glynn, "the proceedings and report of a court of inquiry," referred to in your letter of the 11th instant. The department will be glad to receive all records of courts martial and courts of inquiry convened by you while in command of the squadron in the Pacific. I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, Commodore THOS. AP C JONES, WILL. A. GRAHAM. United States Navy, Washington, D. C. NEAR PROSPECT HILL, VA., SIR: Herewith I have the honor to transmit the original proceedings of two naval general courts martial, convened and held in the bay of San Francisco, California, by my orders, dated respectively March 12, 1849, and October 5, of the same year, by which courts you will perceive that Lieutenant Fubius Stanly, of the navy, was twice convicted; and, in accordance with the sentence of the first court, that officer was, by me, publicly reprimanded. It will also appear (in my opinion) that that unfortu nate officer escaped full conviction on his second trial by the irregular proceedings of the last court. Commander Z. F. Johnston was a member of the first of the abovementioned courts; when, by his searching cross-examination of a wit ness, he brought to light Lieutenant Stanly's unofficerlike duplicity in attempting to impress upon the court the idea that he, Stanly, had made every exertion to return to the ship the same evening that he left her; when, as the fact turned out, it was not until the next morning that he made the efforts to get back to the Warren. In the second case, Lieutenant Stanly was tried on charges preferred on the report of Commander Johnston, then in command of the sloop-ofwar St. Mary's, on board of which sloop Lieutenant Stanly was also serving. For Commander Johnston's faithful discharge of his official duties in the above cases, Lieutenant Stanly has not only assailed him in a scurrilous communication to the Navy Department, dated of January last, but he has recently assailed Commander Johnston through a person not amenable to military law, and has even posted in a public hotel in Washington his late commanding officer for his official acts while in command of a ship of the navy. Such conduct needs no comment. With the greatest respect, I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, THOS. AP C. JONES, Late Commander-in-chief U. S. Naval The Hon. WILL. A. GRAHAM, Secretary of the Navy. |