Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/300

 292 Southern Historical Society Papers.

be gone long! " Forrest left 1,500 men to play upon the flanks of Dodge's 20,000. He took 3,000, and, starting at a gallop, kept his gait up. He halted to build three bridges over swollen streams on his line of march, but in thirty-six hours he rode the 90 miles, and at daylight the second day out rode into the office of the Gayasi Hotel, Memphis. Dodge was up-stairs asleep. Forrest got his uni- form from his chamber. Washburn remarked on the event that he had been removed because he couldn't keep Forrest out of Tennes- see, but his successor couldn't even keep him out of his bed-room!

Colonel Mosby's generalship in command of 300 mounted men is the most wonderful tale of the war. Beauregard's defence of a long line of seacoast by land forces only, the chief feature being Colonel Rhett's defence of Fort Sumter, has nothing in the literature of war to rival it.

Joseph E. Johnston's generalship in ordering Pemberton not to fall back into Vicksburg after he had marched out to fight Grant at Baker's Creek, but to abandon the fortified position completely sur- rounded by land and naval forces of the enemy and move northward to join him, was generalship indeed. It required a moral courage that was sublime to adopt such strategy in the face of the terrible disappointment of the people at home, the army and the President. We see now how superb the generalship was. The Secretary ol War, a politician, countermanded the order of the commanding general direct to Pemberton, and we know a part of the infirmities of our civil government and obtain a slight clew to the cause of our ultimate ruin.

I do not find the statement in any biography of the actors, but I am in search, and hope The Times will aid me, of the truth in regard to an alleged proposal made by General Lee to the President to the effect that, while he retreated before Grant from the Wilderness to- ward the James, the government should abandon Richmond, mov- ing the machinery of the ordnance department, archives, etc., ahead of him. That having been done, he would continue his retreat slowly, weakening Grant as he forced him to lengthen his line, and ultimately calling General Joseph E. Johnston, then retreating before Sherman, into reach, the two united Confederate armies would de- stroy both Grant and Sherman. This is a profoundly important inquiry into the military ability of General Lee. He must have known in advance that an attempt to defend Richmond as late as the winter of 1864-' 65 was a military solecism. The effort was out ot date and hopeless. Lee certainly approved the generalship of John-