proceeding. While the war department was conducted by Mr. Graham, previous to Mr. Calhoun's entering upon its duties, an order had issued, either through inadvertence, or for reasons which the president deemed sufficient, to a subordinate officer in General Jackson's department, without being communicated through him. This step produced, from the general, an order of the 22d of April, 1817, prohibiting all his subordinate officers from obeying any order emanating from the war department, unless coming through him, as the proper organ of communication. In justification of a proceeding so extraordinary, the general remarks, “that superior officers having commands assigned them, are responsible to the government for the character and conduct of that command, and it might as well be justified in an officer, senior in command, to give orders to a guard on duty, without passing that order through the officer of that guard, as that the department of war should countermand the arrangement of commanding generals, without giving their orders through their proper channel. To acquiesce in such a course, would be a tame surrender of military rights and etiquet, and at once subvert the established principle of subordination and good order. Obedience to the lawful commands of superior officers, is constitutionally and morally required; but there is a chain of communication, binding the military compact, which, if broken, opens the door to disobedience and disrespect, and gives loose to the turbulent spirits which are ever ready to excite mutiny." order was issued to General Jackson's subordinate officers, and communicated, through the medium of the press, to the public.

This

Whether General Jackson, or the war department were in the right, in relation to this measure, depended on circumstances which have not been disclosed, as it never has been the subject of legislative or executive inquiry. But there was something novel, and something which had a tendency to produce that very insubordination, which the general so much deprecates, for the commanding officer of a district to prohibit those under his command, yielding obedience to the supreme military authority of the nation. It placed them in a situation peculiarly embarrassing; if, in compliance with the general's mandate, they refused obedience to the orders of the war department, they were liable to immediate removal by the president, or to be arrested, tried, and punished by a court martial; if they complied, they were liable to the same process from General Jackson.