More On J.P. Morgan
Thank you for publishing my letter to the editor [concerning Tom Huntington's article "The Profiteers" in the February 2006 "Living in the Past" department]. I am happy to see that you did some research, and it encourages me that your published articles are subject to reasonable verification. I take no exception to your response except as follows.

First, you quoted Jean Strouse from her biography of J.P. Morgan, "R. Gordon Wasson, a Morgan partner who later wrote a book about these events, claimed that Pierpont had not realized Stevens was selling the government its own arms, and that once he found out, he could no longer stomach the deal." This is a somewhat inaccurate reading by Strouse of Wasson’s book, it seems to me.

Second, your characterization of Morgan’s involvement as "fleecing the government" is severe, I believe. Morgan loaned $20,000 to a Mr. Simon Stevens, and because Stevens had no independent credit standing, Morgan held the carbines as collateral, not General John C. Frémont’s government purchase telegrams as Strouse contends. Morgan and Stevens agreed that when a buyer was found, the buyer would remit funds to Morgan to be applied to the loan. Morgan received $26,343.54 and so made only a little more than $6,000 on the deal.

I doubt that any of this will change the minds of those who nurture an anti-business bias. Wasson listed a number of Socialist, Communist and anti-capitalist writers who misrepresented the Hall Carbine episode in their writings. Even the quality of the Hall arms was misrepresented, with Carl Sandburg stating (incorrectly) that they shot the thumbs off the soldiers using them. To this group of writers it was not enough to declare that Morgan got his start by swindling the government — they believe he sold them worthless arms to boot.

Thomas K. Tate
Orefield, Pa.

Credit Where Credit Is Due
In his article "Hoodwinked: Union Military Deception," which appeared in the May 2006 issue, Maurice D’Aoust credits my book Chancellorsville for the story of Dan Butterfield’s signals ruse that resulted in a 20-mile gap in Lee’s Chancellorsville line through which Hooker was able to launch his flanking movement. Mr. D’Aoust should have credited (as I did) Edwin C. Fishel for discovering and publishing this deception in his groundbreaking study The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Mariner Books, 1996).

Stephen W. Sears
Norwalk, Conn.

The Sorry Stone Affair
Many thanks to James A. Morgan III and "A Table Full of Civilians" in the June 2006 issue for reporting the downfall of General Charles P. Stone, scapegoat for the Union debacle at Ball’s Bluff. This episode was termed by one writer "one of the most egregious examples of arbitrary authority in the entire American Civil War."

Stone was given no information as to the reason for his arrest. No charges were ever preferred against him, and he was released 189 days later, after a personal appeal to President Abraham Lincoln in July 1862. We can only speculate why Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued the order, on behalf of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, for Stone’s arrest and eventual release. Both Stanton and the committee of Radical Republicans were avidly opposed to Stone’s superior, General George B. McClellan, who exonerated Stone almost immediately.

Stone was shifted to a minor theater of the war — the Gulf — where he served as chief of staff under General Nathaniel Banks from May 1863 to April of the following year, when without apparent reason, he was removed and his volunteer’s commission was taken away.

Ross Tucker
Woodstock, Ga.

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