Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/109

 President Davis and General Johnston. 103

wagons, stores, arms and cannon at Bull Run they urged their ina- bility to advance on Washington at the heels of a routed army for want of these very things. The rebel army itself had been pretty well shaken up, and a large portion of it was little better than a mob; the commanders lacked information of the extent of the Yankee stampede ; they also lacked experience, and hence lacked nerve to act with vigor. In fact, neither the President nor Johnston was responsible for the failure to capture the entire Federal army and the capital.

Another cause of irritation to Davis was Johnston's official report of this battle, which advanced the theory that his march from the Shenandoah to join Beauregard was discretionary. But it is clearly shown that his movement was directed by positive orders from

Richmond.

CONFLICTING STATEMENTS.

In the effort to justify themselves each, in the heat of the quarrel, makes conflicting statements. Johnston, in summing up, argues that the Confederates were too weak for offensive operations, yet at the Fairfax conference, September 30, we find him- perfectly willing, apparently, to invade Maryland with an army of sixty thousand men. And he makes cause against the president for professing to be unable to reinforce the army to that extent. This point he cites to show that the president was never willing to give him force enough and that when properly equipped he favored aggression. It is not probable, however, that Johnston was really anxious to invade Mary- land. Four weeks later his effective force was forty-seven thousand two hundred, and on December 31, 1861, fifty-seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven, yet he made no offensive movement. But relative conditions may have changed. The Antietam and Gettys- burg campaigns in the East and the Bragg and Hood invasions in the West undeniably demonstrate the correctness of Johnston's judgment that the South was too weak for offensive warfare.

Johnston's sudden retreat in the spring of 1862 from Fairfax back to the Rappahannock before McClellan's slow advance, with the unnecessary destruction oflarge quantities of greatly needed stores, is the subject of much animadversion by Davis. But notwithstanding, when McClellan advanced from the peninsula, the President no doubt reluctantly, placed Johnston in command of the army assembled on the new front to defend Richmond.