[Footnote C:  General Worth wrote to Colonel Duncan from Tacubaya, March 31, 1848:  “General Scott evinced a disposition to gather information as respected this route (Chalco) on the 12th....  As I have said, General Scott directed me to send and examine the Chalco route,” etc.]

“4.  That while at Ayotla, from the 11th to the 15th of August, he [Scott] sent a Mexican from Ayotla, independent of General Worth, all around the village of Xochimilco to report to him [Scott] whether there had been any recent change in the route, either in the matter of fortifications or from overflowing of the lakes.

“5.  That in the evening of the 13th he [Scott] had ordered Captain Mason, of the engineers, to report to General Worth the next morning, to be employed in reconnoitering that same southern route, in which service he had already been anticipated by the reconnoitering party under himself—­Colonel Duncan.”

The officer was authorized to say that if Colonel Duncan would state that he was ignorant of these facts, he would withdraw and abandon, upon his word, the second charge and specification.

To this Colonel Duncan replied that he “believed the facts therein (’Tampico letter’) set forth to be substantially true, and still believed so; had no desire to detract directly or indirectly from the merits of any officer, and no one could regret more than himself if he had done so.  If the statements of General Scott were facts, he learned them for the first time, and was ignorant of them when he wrote the ‘Tampico letter.’” General Scott’s reply was that “ample evidence, both oral and written, was at hand to substantiate his averments in respect to the route around Lakes Chalco and Xochimilco.”  He then withdrew the second charge against Colonel Duncan.

Following is the opinion of the court of inquiry in General Pillow’s case: 

“On reviewing the whole case, it will be seen that the points on which the conduct of General Pillow has been disapproved by the court are his claiming in certain passages of the paper No. 1” (the letter he gave Mr. Freuner, correspondent of the New Orleans Delta, and which had been pronounced a twin brother to the “Leonidas letter"), “and in his official report of the battles of Contreras and Churubusco, a larger degree of participation in the merit of the movements appertaining to the battle of Contreras than is substantiated by the evidence, or he is entitled to, and also the language above quoted, in which that claim is referred to in the letter to General Scott.

“But as the movements actually ordered by General Pillow at Contreras on the 19th were emphatically approved by General Scott at the time, and as the conduct of General Pillow in the brilliant series of military operations carried on to such triumphant issue by General Scott in the Valley of Mexico appears by the several official reports of the latter, and otherwise, to have been highly meritorious, from these and other considerations the court is of the opinion that no further proceedings against General Pillow in this case are called for by the interests of the public.”