strict enforcement of discipline. Still, while there was a decided gain in the latter respect, Halleck's personal observation of the sad plight in which the rebel onslaught had left the Army of the Tennessee, made him distrust the reliability of his forces for either offence or defence. Hence when, for sanitary, strategic, and political reasons, a forward change of position could no longer be put off, he deemed it his duty to act with the utmost caution in approaching the rebel army, which he assumed to be not much, if at all, inferior in numbers to his own. This belief was based on an intercepted despatch from Beauregard to the Richmond War Department, dated Corinth, April 9, in which he stated his effective strength on that day to be thirty-five thousand, which General Van Dorn's command, on the way from Arkansas to join him, would raise to fifty thousand, and urgently asked for reinforcements, as he had eighty-five thousand Federals to confront. Later information received from Halleck led him to believe that Beauregard's appeal for help was being largely responded to. This curious tendency always to overestimate the enemy, that seemed to afflict, like an epidemic mental disease, most Union leaders, now also infected Halleck. He communicated his fears to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott, who had arrived with General Pope, and who took it upon himself to recommend, as early as May 6, to the War Department to send, in view of the presumed large reinforcements that were reaching Beauregard, forty to fifty thousand more men to Halleck from the East. As this was not done, he repeated his recommendation several times, and finally induced Governor Morton of Indiana to urge the same measure strongly upon the Government. This led to a characteristic pathetic remonstrance from President Lincoln to Halleck, as follows:
May 24, 1862.—Several dispatches from Assistant Secretary Scott and one from Governor Morton, asking for reinforcements for you, have been received. I beg you to be assured we do the best we can.
