I have received your Letters of the 10th. & 18th. I wrote you advisedly on the 7th. but it appears I was mistaken in the impression that no definitive answer had been then received from the Secretary of the Navy. As I had reason to believe his recommendation would have great weight, I perhaps inferred, from inconclusive premises, that it had not then been given. The uncertainty after it was given, would lead me more to the belief that the Ground was preoccupied, which, when I wrote you last, I thought it was not. My own opinion agreeing with yours, remains unchanged. I am with great Regret,