My position as Gen. Lyon's principal staff officer gave mo very favorable opportunities for judging of Gen. Sigel's merits as an officer, and hence I appreciate his good as well as his bad qualities more accurately than most of those who presume to judge him. Gen. Sigel, in point of theoretical education, is far above the average of commanders in this country. He has studied with great care the science of strategy, and seems thoroly conversant with the campaigns of all the great captains, so far as covers their main strategic features, and also seems familiar with the duties of the staff; but in tactics, great and small logistics, and discipline he is greatly deficient. These defects are so apparent as to make it absolutely impossible for him to gain the confidence of American officers and men, and entirely unfit him for a high command in our army. While I do not condemn Gen. Sigel in the unmeasured terms so common among many, but on the contrary see in him many fine qualities, I would do less than my duty did I not enter my protest against the appointment to a high command in the army of a man who, whatever may be his merits, I know cannot have the confidence of the troops he is to command. I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant, J. M. SCHOFIELD, Brigadier-General. U. S. Volunteers. This was accompanied by a statement embodying the same facts and signed by substantially all the higher officers who had been with Lyon. 186 At the first halt of the army, about two miles from the battlefield, while the dead and wounded were being gathered up, it was discovered that Gen. Lyon's body had been left behind. The Surgeon and another officer volunteered to take an ambulance and return to the battlefield for it They were received graciously by Gen. McCulloch; the body was delivered to them and they reached Springfield with it shortly after dark. The Surgeon made an attempt to embalm it by injecting arsenic into the veins, but decomposition, owing to exposure to the hot sun, had progressed too far to render it practicable, and they were compelled to leave it when the army moved off. Mrs. Phelps, wife of the member of Congress from that District, and a true Union woman, obtained it and had it placed in a wooden coffin, which was hermetically sealed in another one of zinc. Fearing that it might be molested by the Confederate troops when they entered the city, Mrs. Phelps had the coffin placed in an out-door cellar and covered with straw. Later she took an opportunity of having it secretly buried at night.