Annotation
[1] ALS, DLC-RTL; copy, RPB. The copy in John Hay's handwriting was originally in the files of the War Department telegraph office. Brigadier General Thomas A. Davies had been assigned to the Department of the Mississippi on March 25, and Brigadier General James W. Denver on orders from Halleck had assumed command at Fort Leavenworth on April 2. Major General Ethan A. Hitchcock had written Halleck on March 22, that Secretary Stanton ``conversationally told me that Jim Lane had been to him to-day with an order from the President for you not to put Denver in command in Kansas, but that Davies. . . was to be assigned to that command. He told me that his answer to Lane was a positive refusal to attend to any such order. . . .'' (OR, I, VIII, 832-33). There is no reply from Halleck in the Lincoln Papers, but on April 7, he reported to Stanton that Denver had been assigned to the Indian Territory (ibid., p. 672).