GENERAL:  I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th inst., with its inclosure in reference to the women, children, and others, whom you have thought proper to expel from their homes in the city of Atlanta.  Had you seen proper to let the matter rest there, I would gladly have allowed your letter to close this correspondence, and, without your expressing it in words, would have been willing to believe that, while “the interests of the United States,” in your opinion, compelled you to an act of barbarous cruelty, you regretted the necessity, and we would have dropped the subject; but you have chosen to indulge in statements which I feel compelled to notice, at least so far as to signify my dissent, and not allow silence in regard to them to be construed as acquiescence.

I see nothing in your communication which induces me to modify the language of condemnation with which I characterized your order.  It but strengthens me in the opinion that it stands “preeminent in the dark history of war for studied and ingenious cruelty.”  Your original order was stripped of all pretenses; you announced the edict for the sole reason that it was “to the interest of the United States.”  This alone you offered to us and the civilized world as an all-sufficient reason for disregarding the laws of God and man.  You say that “General Johnston himself very wisely and properly removed the families all the way from Dalton down.”  It is due to that gallant soldier and gentleman to say that no act of his distinguished career gives the least color to your unfounded aspersions upon his conduct.  He depopulated no villages, nor towns, nor cities, either friendly or hostile.  He offered and extended friendly aid to his unfortunate fellow-citizens who desired to flee from your fraternal embraces.  You are equally unfortunate in your attempt to find a justification for this act of cruelty, either in the defense of Jonesboro, by General Hardee, or of Atlanta, by myself.  General Hardee defended his position in front of Jonesboro at the expense of injury to the houses; an ordinary, proper, and justifiable act of war.  I defended Atlanta at the same risk and cost.  If there was any fault in either case, it was your own, in not giving notice, especially in the case of Atlanta, of your purpose to shell the town, which is usual in war among civilized nations.  No inhabitant was expelled from his home and fireside by the orders of General Hardee or myself, and therefore your recent order can find no support from the conduct of either of us.  I feel no other emotion other than pain in reading that portion of your letter which attempts to justify your shelling Atlanta without notice under pretense that I defended Atlanta upon a line so close to town that every cannon-shot and many musket-balls from your line of investment, that overshot their mark, went into the habitations of women and children.  I made no complaint of your firing into Atlanta in