Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/174

 174 Southern Historical Society Papers.

the first battle of Manassas and accompanied him as he rode over the field and described the course and incidents of the fight. Then, I being ordered to the West, met him no more until about Christmas, 1862. When he came to our army at Grenada with President Davis, who reviewed and inspected it, the army was in position in our entrenchments on the Yallabusha. I commanded the centre and was in my place when General Johnston rode out from the President's corttge, greeted me most cordially, and asked me to ride with him, which we did for several hours.

A MISTAKE.

He had just returned from an inspection of Vicksburg, and told me he had never seen so much fortification, and thought it a mistake to keep so large an army in an entrenched camp; that the army ought to be in the field; that a heavy work should be constructed to command the river just above Vicksburg at "the turn," with a year's supply for a good garrison of about three thousand men, which would guard the river better than the long line of dispersed guns and entrench- ments and troops which extended above and below Vicksburg for more than twenty miles.

While commanding the Department of the Gulf I occasionally sent him supplies of provisions, troops, and some siege-pieces, which he mounted on the works of Atlanta, declaring thereby his intention to " keep that place" After his removal from command I received this very interesting letter from him:

MACON, GA., September i, 1864. MY DEAR MAURY:

I have been intending ever since my arrival at this place to pay a part of the epistolary debt I owe you. But you know how lazy it makes one to have nothing to do, and so with the hot weather we have been enduring here I have absolutely devoted myself to idleness. I have been disposed to write more particularly of what concerns myself to explain to you as far as practicable the operations for which I was laid on the shelf, for you are one of the last whose unfavorable opinion I should be willing to incur.

You know that the army I commanded was that which, under General Bragg, was routed at Missionary Ridge. Sherman's army was that which routed it, reinforced by the Sixteenth and Twenty- third corps. I am censured for not taking the offensive at Dalton