"False credit may no doubt be attained at hand by such despicable self-puffings and malignant exclusion of others, but at the expense of the just esteem and consideration of all honorable officers who love their country, their profession, and the truth of history. The indignation of the great number of the latter class can not fail in the end to bring down the conceited and envious to their proper level." The day after the publication of the above General Orders General Worth forwarded to army headquarters a communication in which he said: "I learn with much astonishment that the prevailing opinion in this army points the imputation of 'scandalous' contained in the third, and the invocation of the 'indignation of the great number' in the fourth paragraph of Orders No. 349, printed and issued yesterday, to myself as one of the officers alluded to. Although I can not suppose those opinions to be correctly formed, nevertheless, regarding the high source from which such imputations flow, so seriously affecting the qualities of a gentleman, the character and usefulness of him at whom they may be aimed, I feel it incumbent on me to ask, as I do now most respectfully, of the frankness and justice of the commander in chief, whether in any sense or degree he condescended to apply, or designed to have applied, the epithets contained in that order to myself, and consequently whether the general military opinion or sentiment in that matter has taken a right or intended direction. I trust I shall be pardoned for pressing with urgency an early reply to this communication." On the day General Worth addressed his communication to General Scott, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel James Duncan wrote to the editor of the North American (a newspaper published in the City of Mexico in English), in which he avowed that the substance of the "Tampico letter" was communicated by him to a friend in Pittsburg from Tacubaya soon after the battles, and added: "The statements in the letter are known by very many officers of this army to be true, and I can not but think that the publication of the truth is less likely to do violence to individuals or to the service than the suppression of it." He states that justice to General Worth, who was evidently one of the persons pointed at in Orders No. 349, requires him [Duncan] to state that he [General Worth] knew nothing of the writer's purpose in writing the letter in question; that General Worth never saw it, and did not know, directly or indirectly, even the purport of one line, word, or syllable of it until he saw it in print; that this letter was not inspired by General Worth, but that both the "Tampico letter"--or rather the private letter to his friend which formed the basis of that letter--and this were written on his own responsibility.