lish the aforesaid scandalous allegation of peculation and fraud, so wantonly set forth against his superior and commanding officer. THOS. AP C. JONES, Late Commander-in-chief of the Pacific Squadron. DECEMBER 7, 1850. A. UNITED STATES SLOOP DALE, Bay of Monterey, October 19, 1848. SIR: By your special order No. 2, I find myself, in common with other "watch officers" of this ship, forbidden to visit the shore. As the order is a most unusual one, and bears exceedingly hard upon those who are subjected by the necessities of their profession to so many privations, I beg most respectfully to call your attention to the matter, that it may be reconsidered by you, for I am not aware of having committed any offence which should occasion such restraint. If the discipline of the squadron or general good of the service require a non intercourse with the shore to be observed rigidly by officers of every grade, I submit cheerfully; but when I find myself among a proscribed set, it becomes a duty to myself and station to make this appeal to your sense of justice. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, T. AUGUS. M. CRAVEN, Lieutenant. Commodore THOS. AP C. JONES, Commanding United States Naval Forces, Pacific. Forwarded: B. JOHN RUDD, Commander. To Lieutenants Joseph F. Green, J. B. Marchand, T. A. M. Craven, and others of their class, in the Pacific squadron. I am deeply mortified to hear verbally, through Captain Stribling, that some of the sea officers of this squadron have taken exception to so much of my special order No. 2, as, for the present, stops watch officers going on shore on liberty. I am more than mortified to find that there is even one among us who cannot perceive the imperious necessity of the measure, and the especial care that was taken, in framing the order, to avoid imposing unnecessary restraint on any individual under my command. After the bold and daring acts of desertion which occurred from the Warren, the Ohio, the Lexington, and Southampton, while all the officers were on board-as in the case of running away with the Ohio's boat on the evening of the 18th instant, and with the Warren's in noon day— who can foresee what may not happen if one-half or one third of the offi * All lieutenan's, masters, passed and acting midshipmen, and all other sea-officers, excepting only pursers, surgeons, chaplains, clerks, &c. cers should be out of the ship? Is it not manifest that if such things have occurred with all on board, and could not be prevented by al', that the absence of many might offer facilities and even induce acts of still greater violence? How often has every commander in the squadron (and I might add lieutenants, too) complained of the want of officers for boat duty, even in the usual intercourse with the shore, when there was comparatively no inducement to desert. Is there one among you who does not see the absolute necessity of at least doubling the usual number of midshipmen in every boat sent on shore, exclusive of such officers as must land to guard any watering or other parties employed to get off provisions and stores? With the limited number of passed midshipmen and midshipmen in the squadron, every lieutenant ought to know that, from that class, there are none to spare from duty to go on liberty. Of the other watch, i. e. regular sea officers, the squadron is also short; and to fill the vacancies, besides the impediments imposed by the restraints of law, to increase the number of lieutenants, by acting appointments, would be to reduce still lower the number of officers for boat-duty. Cannot officers see in the urgent necessity for increased vigilance-in the additional employment of several of the class of complainants on courts-martial that I should have been recreant to my trust had I done less than I have done to prevent and punish desertion? Is it, then, because I did not enact the dog and manger law, and impose unnecessary restraint on non-combatants, whose presence, in my opinion, might be dispensed with during the day, thereby enabling them to attend to the personal wants of their messmates, restrained or curtailed in their liberty on shore by imperious official necessity, that dissatisfaction has shown itself where I least of all expected opposition? I cannot-I will not believe it! The complaint has grown out of misapprehension of our true position and what is due to our country, and to conclusions hastily drawn by irresponsible subordinates undertaking to discuss and to judge of the motives, orders, and measures of their commander in chief, who is held responsible to his country for all that occurs in the squadron under his command. Can any officer devise any less oppressive means or measures, with the slightest prospect of success, for the suppression of desertion, than those which I have employed? Some may answer, Quit the coast, abandon your station! Go home and say to those who intrusted us with command, I can't command my men-they will run away from me!! Those who love ease and comfort better than their country, and those who are not willing to meet their country's foe in whatever shape, phase, name, or guise, he may appear, might do it! For one, I will not, until I have exhausted all the means which God and the laws of our country have placed in my hands to prevent and punish offences. The combined efforts of the Old World against our common country could not inflict so deep a wound upon her power and future greatness as would be the recreant act of abandoning our station because we cannot suppress desertion from our ships! That any officer of the squadron holding the rank of lieutenant, which now a days can only be reached by many years of long service, and at the age of mature manhood, can see in the restrictive special order No. 2 anything of a personal or reproachful character, is to me beyond conception. If the passing over the captain of marines be the exception, that exception arose from inadvertence. And, furthermore, my general orders in relation to captains granting liberty to officers, (art. 9) in its true spirit, would require my special permission for the only remaining officer of any class to leave the ship on liberty, whilst all others of the same class were out of her. Since I have been thus most unexpectedly called on to arouse the sea officers of the squadron by endeavoring to withdraw the veil which seen.s to obstruct a direct and clear view of things as they actually exist in the squadron, and consequently prevents their seeing or feeling the necessity for the extraordinary vigilance required of them, I will take occasion here to say, that although nothing was further from my mind in framing special order No. 2 than to give it the character of a reprimand, I must nevertheless now add, that the present state of things in the squadron has, in my opinion, been not a little aggravated by the unguarded expressions of officers of every grade in the squadron, who too frequently, and without much regard to time and place, have conceded that the tempta tion to desert was too great to be resisted; that the men would desert; that the officers could not prevent it, &c.; and I am sure some of you will recollect my occasional chidings upon this subject, from the very first arrival of the "Southampton" at La Paz, bringing intelligence of the gold mania; and from that day to this I have never suffered any such expressions to be uttered in my presence, whether by officers under my command or by any other person, without promptly admonishing the utterer of such frightful admissions; having, as I can but think they have had, a highly pernicious influence on the minds of the men of the squad ron. A moment's reflection ought to satisfy every well-regulated mind that, if the rulers of any community, and, above all, of military bodies, admit that any temptation or allurements can justify or even palliate infidelity in those under them, such admissions must render superiors who acknowledge them, impotent to prevent and powerless to punish offence. THOS. AP C. JONES, Commander in chief U. S. Naval Forces, Pacific Ocean. FLAG-SHIP OHIO, Monterey Bay, October 20, 1848. C. UNITED STATES SLOOP DALE, SIR: In compliance with your advice, sent through Lieutenant Yard, I have withheld the accompanying communication one day longer. If the restriction has been entirely removed, or is made general in its operation, I am satisfied, and withdraw; but otherwise, I desire that my letter to Commodore Jones be handed him at the earliest hour. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, T. AUGUS. M. CRAVEN, Lieutenant. Captain STRIBLING, NATIONAL HOTEL, WASHINGTON, SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 10th instant, (this day returned to me from Prospect Hill, Va.,) in reply to mine of the 22d ultimo, in which I sought to relieve myself from the great embarrassment I labor under while endeavoring to defend my char acter and hitherto good name, so long as the name of the Secretary of the Navy is affixed to the charges on which I am now on trial. I shall not pretend to controvert the Hon. Mr. Graham's views, as expressed in his letter under consideration; but, once for all, here say, that if, in course of the trial already commenced, I may, and as of necessity I must, speak of my real prosecutors in language less courteous than I am in the habit of using when applied to the honorable Secretary of the Navy, I hope he will understand that I do not mean any nominal or official accuser, but the inferior officers who brought the original charges against me. I have the honor to be, most respectfully, your obedient servant, THOS. AP C. JONES, Late Commander-in-chief Pacific Squadron. The Hon. WM. A. GRAHAM, NATIONAL HOTEL, WASHINGTON, December 26, 1850. SIR: I beg leave with the utmost deference and respect to ask your serious attention to what I conceive to be an irregularity, injurious to myself individually and of most pernicious tendency and consequence to the service, that has somehow occurred in your department, and which I hope, when properly brought to your notice, may be corrected and redressed, so far as redress is yet in your power. I beg leave to refer you, sir, to the long standing order of the depart. ment, originally issued by Secretary Southard in the form of a circular, calling for periodical reports from all commanders of ships, &c., of the conduct, good or bad, of every commissioned officer under their command, &c. These reports have ever been held, and from their nature must neces sarily be held, as of inviolate confidence between the reporting officer and the department; and access to them has ever been denied under every administration of the department, without exception, to officers having reason to suspect that they had been injuriously mentioned in such reports. There was an army regulation of similar import, though more in detail, calling for half yearly confidential reports from the inspectors general. (See Army Regulations, September, 1816, p. 93, and Army Regulations, May, 1847, par. 972, 973, with some modifications of the original order.) Though this army regulation expressly designates the reports thereby called for as "confidential," the reports made in obedience to the standing order of the Navy Department have never been considered or treated as any less strictly confidential in their nature. It would be vain to expect the freedom and candor of remark that constitute the true value of these reports, and which it was the purpose of the standing order of the department to invite, if the officers who were required to put the department in possession of the undisguised results of their observations of the conduct of officers under their command were to be put to fending and proving every time their reports contained any remark offensive to the irritable self love of individuals. The reports, if published, would in innumerable cases be so many fire brands of discord scattered on the decks of our ships of-war. It is not at all material that the writers of these reports have failed to superscribe them "confidential:" the nature of the reports and the clear intent of the standing order which calls for them necessarily impress that character on them. But in practice the confidential character of correspondence with the department has been extended to communications altogether without the purview of the standing order which calls for reports from commanding officers upon the conduct of officers under their command. Even the denunciations of inferior officers against their superior and commanding officers have been put under the seal of inviolable confidence. A very recent case has occurred in your department, wherein a very respectable officer of the navy applied for a view of a very defamatory vituperation of his character and conduct, said to have been sent into the department by an officer lately under his command, and all access to the document was denied him. The superior officer who thus demanded and was refused access to the defamatory communication of his inferior, stood in the relation also of accuser to the author of that communication. Yet, sir, by some peculiar, and exceptional, and to me wholly unaccountable anomaly in the rules of conduct adopted and pursued by the person or persons in your department having custody of its correspondence, my official reports as commander in chief of the Pacific squadron have been laid open to, and put in the hands of, a vindictive prosecution, conducted by some of the very officers of the squadron under my command, and whose conduct was remarked on in my reports. The case is this: In the second specification of the third charge, I am charged with having made and transmitted to the Secretary of the Navy, in my report No. 34, dated October 25, 1848, a false, scandalous, and raalicious report of the conduct of three lieutenants; and a literal extract from my report is set forth in the specification. I should here remark, that the late Secretary of the Navy, Judge Mason, when he gave out that despatch for publication, had marked out all that portion of my report which related to some of the officers of the squadron and to the three lieutenants to be omitted in the printing. But, by some oversight either of the clerk who delivered the papers to the printer, or of the printer himself, the Secretary's direction was not regarded, and the extract quoted in the specification was printed with the rest of my report. Of this accidental and unintentional publication of so much of my report as was of a confidential nature, I do not complain. But of this I do complain: that a subsequent report of mine, No. 52, dated 9th of April, 1849, six months after the report upon which the second specification of the 3d charge is founded, has been laid open to, and put into the hands of, the vindictive prosecution, consisting of the lieutenants who preferred the charge founded on my former report. The principal topics treated in my second despatch are the conduct and the * Referring to the case of Commander Johnston and Lieutenant Stanly. |