Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/273

 Military Operations of General Beauregard. 263

proofs of this. General Beauregard is entitled to a large share of credit for this remarkable victory, and we think this has been accorded to him ; but it must have been under some malign star that he allowed his biographer to make such claims as we have quoted.

There is no better commentary to be found upon the claim that General Beauregrrd was prevented from taking Washington and thus perhaps ending the war, than in Beauregard's own action after Manassas. Colonel Roman's claim is that if Johnston had been ordered to join Beauregard on July 15th, McDowell would have been overthrown, and next Patterson, and next, perhaps, McClellan, and that then Washington might have fallen before the Confederates ad- vancing on both sides of the Potomac. Well, Johnston was ordered to join Beauregard with his whole force on July 17, and eluding Pat- terson with great skill he reached Manassas in time to secure a vic- tory over McDowell, a victory one of the most thorough and complete upon record. This was in accordance with General Beauregard's programme. What then became of the rest of that plan? We do not hear that Beauregard urged the return of Johnston to demolish Patterson and McClellan, and Colonel Roman informs us distinctly that Beauregard opposed any advance on Washington at the time and declared it impracticable. Now, no one can show that General Beauregard could have reasonably expected more favorable condi- tions, had Johnston joined him two days earlier, than were actually at the command of the Confederate leaders after their victory. Yet he saw then that it was impossible to carry out the scheme he had proposed. It would be perhaps unkind and unfair to Beauregard to say he ought to have seen this before the proposition was made, but surely, to speak of Colonel Roman's course as unkind and unfair, in bitterly denouncing Beauregard's superiors twenty years after the above facts became known, is to characterize that course but mildly.

Our author continues in the same strain in regard to Beauregard's position on the field of Manassas, about which there is no proper room to doubt. He was second in command under Johnston, who adopted his plans until McDowell's advance checkmated them, when each in his sphere did his best to secure success — Beauregard as com- mander of the troops engaged, and Johnston as commander-in-chief. After the battle Johnston was strongly opposed to advancing, and so, too, was Beauregard for a time. But Colonel Roman, through many pages, labors to prove that Johnston had nothing to do with the battle of Manassas except to act as a dead weight upon Beauregard.

A similar tone pervades the whole book. When General Beaure-