Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-07-31
NATIONAL INTELLIGENGER.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE JONES BATTALION.

readers with such statement of the case as would
distinctly show its salient points and meantime
(no matter what our conclusions) we have taken
care that they who here speak for the Executive
should, through our columns, be heard, so far as
they found any thing that could be said either to
Justify to extenuate his conduct, at one time las
il seems to us) deceptive and at another arbitrary,
not only towards the chosen officer and author of
this corps but towards the individuals who compose
it. We delayed to speak out for, in the first place,
we have not The facility Of adopting at once cause,
merely because we may be well-afiected towards
this party or Unaffected towards that and, in the
second place, we are slow to make ourselves the
advocates of even good cause or person, until we
have the means OF establishing, in the minds Of
other fairly disposed people, our own views Of
the case.
These means are now before us, in the form OF
a printed statement by Gen. WALTER JONES, Zone
OF those aggrieved,) an epitome of which we are
about TO place before our readers We cannot think
wholly inapplicable to what is around us that an
cient definition of the Best Government which says
:. Ii is one in which wrong TO any citizen, how
ever obscure or weak is felt by every other as II II
were his own" We trust that there is still some
refuge in the public sentiment from official lack of
regard for engagements. If things impapable and
abstract, like Constitutions, can be sport, we hope
honor their rights, their feelings, and their legt-
mate interests, cannot be tramped on, as 10 acts
themselves Of high spirit and patriotism, such as
give them strong public claim and that here, at
least, In personal instances, oppression and IMPOSE
tion will meet with just condemnation And that,
if in this war, made al such cost for uncertain and
questionable ends. the Executive has been able, in
clerogation of every thing else, to arm himself with
such boundess military powers, it is at least to be
required of him that he shall not check by the most
fragrant and humiliaing i'll usage, the very spirit
ehch can alone shed redeeming honor upon the
unfortunate contest into which he has plunged US.
As long as the well-subsantiated averments OF the
compliments remain unmet, we, and we think the
country, must look upon the Exposition by Gen.
JONES which has been generally circulated in pam
phle form, as establishing facts highly worthy of
public regard.
Before we proceed to synopsis of the contents
Of this pamphlet, it is due to our fellow-ciizen,
Gen. WALTER JoNEs-who has for more than forty
years enjoyed the unbounded confidence and high
est respect not only of the People of Washington,
out of those that have during that long period re-
sorted from other parts of the country to this me-
ropolitan city whose truth, candor and charity in
al things proverbal as his political integrity
and personal disinterestedness-to state, in his
own language, the ground upon which he has come
before the public on this occasion. We extract
from the opening of his :. introductory Notice "
the following:
My peculiar relations the transaction, and to the par
les necessarily called to the duty of yndcang the repua
ton Of my son, and the rights of than hundred Of his
and comrades who had volunteered under his
banner against ndgniy and insult added to positive nus
tice from hands armed with powers and welding influences
far potent of evil when operating for evil ntents, than
If
ton. Conscious as was, of being myself the real mark
aimed by the archers, yet had alone been exposed
their shafts should have continued in nay accustomed silence
and contempt of the anmosy which has occasionally been
manifested towards me by in power but never mani
tested with much Of ow-mnded spite and artfce
the occasions when pride OF place and poverty Of soul
have been found strangely conrased in the person
But neither neutrality nor inactivity compatible with such
impulses have been accustomed obey when the shafts
Of which was to be made the butt contrived pass
70 their destined mark through the sides of designed
be wounded more my account than his and whose
slightest wound must prove deeper and painful
than the deepest that the malice Of any earthly power
could inaict directly and exclusively myself"
The pages Of the pamphlet, thus introduced to
the public notice, 90 TO prove:
That originally, in November last, Gen. JONES,
through his son, Mr.. CHARLES LEE JONES, offered,
as the Commanding General of the Militia of this
District TO raise within it volunteer corps bat
talon, upon condition that he, the son, should COM
mand II. That this offer was then declined by the
President, not on the ground Of any personal OBJ
lection 10 MIR. Jones, (such seems not to have been
raised until he had nearly finished enlsting the
men that he engaged TO furnsh,) but only on that
of It's not being then intended TO employ any fur
ther volunteer force. That, however, he afterwards
laid before the War Office body of such Senate.
rial recommendations should have removed any
personal objections, if they had existed. That.
further, all such were more than Withdrawn 1--WE
say withdrawn, though they had never been stated.
because they are now alleged to have existed be-
yond all revocation, from the first by the volunta-
~ promise made by the Secretary of War, through
Senators Crittenden and X. Johnson, that If The
ten regiment bill passed las it did, Mr.. Jones
should have lieutenant coonelcy under it, or
might raise his battalion and be attached as its COM
mander 10 one OF those regiments. That this pro-
mise was, when the occasion arrived, eluded by
the allegation of a reason (some principle of ap
portioning Offices to populaton which, if il wa.
worth any thing, should have been thought of be
fore. That, finally, in April, he received a verba
communication from the President, through the
Adjutant General, 1.-THE proper organ for such
thing) accepting distinctly his offer to raise a.
lieutenant colonel three companies in this District
and two in Maryland. To place this point more
distinctly in view, quote the entire passage o
Gen Jones's letter 10 the Secretary of War which