Note 101 — Chapter XX · 1860—December.

When this extraordinary blunder was brought to the General’s attention, in his controversy with Mr. Buchanan, in 1862, he said that the only error he had made was in giving March instead of January as the time when the order was countermanded, and that this error was immaterial! He still insisted that he gave the information to Mr. Holt that the shipment had commenced, and that he stopped it. It is certainly most remarkable that he did not see that time was of the essence of his charge against the Buchanan administration, for his charge imputed to that administration a delay from January to March in countermanding the order, and claimed for himself the whole merit of the discovery and the countermand. He would better have consulted his own dignity and character if he had frankly retracted the whole statement. But probably the story of the Pittsburgh ordnance, as he put it, has been believed by thousands, to the prejudice of President Buchanan. (See the letters of General Scott, published in the National Intelligencer.)