Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 02.djvu/231

 four hundred subtracted from fifteen thousand leave fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three, which is here given as the number surrendered at the capitulation? This writer's memory seems scarcely long enough for the vocation he has chosen.

His whole account, indeed, of these operations, especially where the relative forces engaged are involved, is utterly unreliable and inconsistent. It would be a matter of some interest to know upon what authority or authorities he relies for these remarkable and often conflicting statements. He has even gone so far as to assert that when Beauregard was assigned to the Mississippi Department, he took with him fifteen thousand men, withdrawn from the army confronting McClellan, a statement for which there is absolutely no foundation whatever. He took with him, as is perfectly well known, not a single man from the army in Virginia. Nor was there afterwards, in spite of this writer's confident assertion to that effect, any force detached from that point to reinforce him. The whole story, from beginning to end, is in every particular a pure figment of its author's imagination, and reminds us of nothing so much as of Falstaff's eleven men in Buckram reinforced by three in Kendalgreen. The enormously exaggerated force which the author places at General Johnston's disposal in the West can no longer be matter of surprise, when we are once made aware of the easy process by which those armies on paper are created.

We had intended to go farther—to follow the Count of Paris upon another element—and to show that the singular, and in one sense even admirable faculty of getting everything hopelessly wrong, and involving himself in a perfect labyrinth of absurdities, which we have seen attend him so faithfully on land, by no means deserts him at sea. We had also thought of pointing out instances of the strange prejudice which he seems to entertain against particular individuals; the awkward blows which he deals his own party; his profound ignorance of the internal condition of Southern society, and the false English and confused style which very worthily set off the matter of this work. But we forbear; our space is well nigh exhausted, and to correct all the author's errors would be in effect to rewrite his book. Those to which we have called attention have all been taken from a single volume. Much, very much, remains untouched; yet we have said enough to abundantly demonstrate the utter worthlessness of this so-called history, and the eminent incapacity of the writer for the high task he has undertaken.