Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

[241] been evident, even to the War Department, that both could not be held with the troops then at General Beauregard's disposal. Instead of an answer to the questions asked, a series of inquiries came, the next day, from the War Department: ‘At what hour, during the night of the 15th, did you evacuate the line across Bermuda Hundreds Neck?’ asked General Bragg in his official capacity, as Chief of Staff and military adviser of the President. ‘At what hour during the night did General Johnson make the movement? Did you inform General Lee of that movement? If so, at what hour and through what channel?’ Such was, in substance, the strange and querulous communication forwarded from Richmond to General Beauregard.

Here was one of the three leading generals of the Southern armies straining every nerve to guard the ‘entrance-gate’ to the Confederate capital, with no reliance but his own tenacity of purpose and the intrepidity of the handful of men he had under him; with an attacking foe becoming hourly bolder and hourly increasing in number; and because, after repeatedly pointing out the precariousness of his condition, and asking for advice which was persistently denied him, he finally determined to act with promptness and vigor, he was called upon, amid his anxieties and multitudinous duties, to suspend his weighty task and respond to this inquisitorial investigation of his conduct.¹

Another very serious error we find at page 510 of Mr. McCabe's book.

We quote as follows:

‘Grant's whole army was now before Petersburg; and, still holding to his original resolve to capture the city, he ordered a general assault for the morning of the 18th. In the mean time, however, General Lee had been engaged in constructing a formidable line of works immediately around the city, and on the morning of the 18th he withdrew from the temporary line he had held in advance, and occupied that which was destined to become memorable for the siege it sustained.’

Here Mr. McCabe evidently drew from his imagination, and not from the reliable sources from which he claims to have derived his knowledge of the events he deals with. This new line has already been specially referred to in another part of this chapter. General Lee had had nothing to do with it. General Beauregard