Edwin W. Moore to Louis P. Cooke, December 24, 1841 - Page 3
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3.
under which the Sappho was at anchor[.] [T]he Captain said
he would forward the letter with pleasure[.] [T]he boat
returned at sun-set, and we had not filled away
more that ten minutes, when the wind hauled so that
we had a dead beat to windward of about five miles,
to clear the Shoals, which we did by half past nine
o’clock, and the next morning (18th Sept) at daylight we
were off Point Mariandrea when we fell in with the
San-Antonio, by which vessel I received your communication
of the 7th Aug in which you say, “the Secty of the Navy does not
approve of the proceedings of the Court of Inquiry held in
Galveston in June last by order of His Excellency the President”
and consequently re-iterate the order to me, to cause, “the imme-
diate arrest of Lt Comdr Postell and send him by the
“first vessel to Galveston for trial,” which order, it was not
in my power to execute for that officer had gone to Galveston
some-time previous. As there appears to me to be some mis-
understanding on the part of the Secty of the Navy in
relation to the first order, bearing date 19th May, given me
to arrest Lt. W.R. Postell, which order was countermanded
by his Excellency the President, a copy of which I enclosed
in my letter of the 18th June in which I explained to the
Department the disagreeable situation in which I was
placed by that order; and the fact that the law required,
that when an officer is arrested, his charges must be given
him in twenty four hours after. Otherwise, no matter
what offence an officer may have been guilty of, he can
set aside any decision of a Court Martial, upon the
simple plea of illegality of the proceedings of said Court,
and I feel bound to state that my sole object was,
that if Lt Posttell, or any one else connected with the
service, had, for one moment conceived such an idea
as the one which by rumor had been imputed to some officers
of the service; that they should be disgraced, and no creeping out place left for them.
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When
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Edwin W. Moore to Louis P. Cooke, December 24, 1841. Texas Navy Papers, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.