John Pope to Alfred Sully, September 5, 1864

GENERAL:

Your private and official letters by Captain Pope just received. Of course you can leave six companies of Second Cavalry instead of four at Wadsworth, if you think necessary. Also, you can bring down to Minnesota to be kept for the winter as maay horses from Wadsworth as you think best and as soon as you think best. Those now at the post ought not to be fed on grain, nor did I intend they should be during the summer. I never dreamed of your hauliug grain to Wadsworth to feed animals during the summer months. They should be grazed, not fed with grain. I always proposed, as you will find in my first letter of instructions to you and Sully before the campaign began, that as soon as grazing was no longer sufficient for the cavalry horses at Wadsworth that they should be sent to some point in Minnesota to be wintered, but I never had an idea of hauling grain to feed horses at Wadsworth this summer. You surely greatly misunderstand my order about the companies of the Thirtieth Wisconsin Regiment. I wrote you thatthe three companies of that regiment now at Wadsworth would, as soon as relieved by the four companies Second Cavalry, which Colonel Thomas is ordered to leave at Wadsworth, march down to Saint Paul, where they would take boats, &c., for the south. Of course in coming down from Wadsworth to Saint Paul they would pass by Fort Ridgely, and there be joined by the other company. Why you are sending the company from Ridgely to Wadsworth to join the other three companies, when those very companies will march by Fort Ridgely on their way to Saint Paul within a few weeks, I cannot understand, unless you have wholly misconceived the meaning of my letter of August 13. Please read that letter again. Iam sending you up two companies First U. 8. Volunteers; may go to-morrow. Two other companies of same regiment I will send also as soon as I can spare them. These four companies were designed to replace the companies of the Thirtieth Wisconsin. Of course, general, I do not design to specify the exact force to be stationed at each post in your district. That is a matter you must regulate yourself by your knowledge of the necessity in every case. I send you all the troops I can, with certain general instructions, the details of which you are of course authorized to modify or alter. I send Sully’s official report by this mail, which you can publish if you think best; or rather, you can publish the substance without giving it an official aspect. I did not say nor mean to say that Sully was returning to Fort Rice, or would return until he had been to the Yellowstone and established Fort Stevenson. His report was dated August 2, and I wrote you that I expected soon to hear of his return to Fort Rice, giving hin a month to go to the Yellowstone and return. You will see from his report that he never had the slightest idea of coming back to Fort Rice until he had gone to Yellowstone. I am sure I never entertained such an idea.

JNO. POPE,