Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/14

 triumph in the end—and that he will live to see and understand that the principles we fought to uphold are essential to civil liberty in its highest perfection, and the time seems near at hand when all the world will know it.

Page 44, the statement of the strength of the garrison of Mobile is very inaccurate. Including 1,500 cavalry and all the available fighting men for defence of Mobile, and all its outposts, batteries and dependencies, my force did not exceed 9,000 men of all arms!

The cavalry constituted no part of the defensive force of the places attacked, and all of our infantry and a large part of our artillery was sent away from Mobile to Spanish Fort and Blakely. During the fighting on the eastern shore, the city of Mobile and all the works and forts immediately around it were garrisoned by scarce 3,000 artillerists! And by a bold dash, the place could have been carried any night during the operations against Spanish Fort.

Page 48, the author is mistaken in saying we had Parrott guns in Spanish Fort. The only Parrott gun we had at that time about Mobile was a thirty-pounder Parrott, named "Lady Richardson." We had captured her at Corinth in October, 1862, my Division Chief of Artillery, Colonel William E. Burnett, brought her off, and added her to our park of field artillery, and we had kept her ever since.

But we had some cannon better than any Parrott had ever made. They were the Brooke guns, made at Selma in the Confederate, naval works, of the iron from Briarsfield, Alabama—the best iron for making cannon in the world.

Our Brooke guns at Mobile were rifles, of 11-inch, 10-inch, 7-inch and $6 4⁄10$-inch callibres. They out-ranged the Parrotts, and, though subjected to extraordinary service, not one of them was ever bursted or even strained.

The mistakes into which General Andrews has fallen are natural and almost inevitable. His real desire to write fairly is evinced by the handsome compliments he pays to Confederate officers on several occasions, as in case of Lieutenant Sibley, who, with six men, boldly attacked the wagon train of Canby's army, brought off his spoils, and created a little flutter of alarm all throughout the post.

General Andrews persists in his mistake as to the numbers of the garrisons of the respective places, and he counts the same forces twice in the same place. Thus, when the "boy brigade" was relieved in Spanish Fort by the Alabama brigade, the boys were sent