On the 17th of July Halleck wrote to Hunter, giving him some directions in regard to his future movements, saying that "General Grant directs, if compelled to fall back, you will retreat _in front of the enemy_ towards the Potomac, so as to cover Washington _and not be squeezed out to one side_, so as to make it necessary to fall back into West Virginia to save your army." This order he disregarded most ignominiously. In the same letter Halleck wrote Hunter that General Grant said that in the marching _he does not want houses burned_, but "that he wants your troops to eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they can, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the year will have to carry their rations with them." (Id. 366.) C.A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, wrote to Grant on the 15th of July (Id. 332): "Hunter appears to have been engaged in a pretty active campaign _against the newspapers_ in West Virginia." And Halleck on the same day wrote to Grant that he thought "_Hunter's command was badly used up in the Lynchburg expedition_." (Id. 331.) These assaults, and many others of a like nature, wounded General Hunter so greatly that he not only asked to be relieved, but wrote a letter to Grant, in which, after speaking of the depressing effect upon him of these comments, he unstopped the vials of his wrath against his subordinates, upon whom he put the blame of his defeat. In this letter he says that Sullivan, who commanded one of his divisions, was "_not worth one cent_; in fact very much in my way," and, again, he says: "I dashed on toward Lynchburg, and _should certainly have taken it if it had not been for the stupidity and conceit of that fellow Averell_, who unfortunately joined me at Staunton, and of whom I unfortunately had, at the time, a very high opinion, and trusted him when I should not have done so." (71 W. of R. 366.) With these quotations from the correspondence of his associates, General Hunter may be left to the verdict which will be accorded him by the future historian of the stirring events in which he took part.