Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/232

 224 Southern Historical Society Papers.

ton, establish our communications across the Potomac by Manassas Junction, with Gordonsville and Richmond, and by making this a new base of operations, force Grant to let go his hold and come to the rescue of Pennsylvania.

The co-operative movement on Point Lookout failed, I have since understood, because the secret expedition of John Taylor Wood, by sea from Wilmington, was spoken of on the streets of Richmond, th day before he was to have started from Wilmington. It was, therefore, countermanded, because the Confederate authorities well knew that the Federal general was so well served that he was accu- rately and promptly informed of everything as soon as it transpired in Richmond.

General Early 's attack failed, as I have shown, because of the impossibility of getting to Washington before Monday afternoon. For before then, the energy and sagacity of John W. Garrett had hurled reinforcements from Locust Point to Washington, many of which had arrived before Early.

His trains were running from Locust Point on Sunday night, all day Monday and on Tuesday night, and the last of them had passed over the road not many hours before I reached it at Beltsville on Tuesday morning. The movement on Washington was a feint to draw Grant from Richmond, to be converted into an attack if oppor- tunity offered. I believed that Grant had begun to move from Richmond, I knew that two of his corps were on the Patapsco, at Baltimore, and had information that others had moved up the Poto- mac. A young man, represented to me as reliable, well known to some of my people, had left Washington and Georgetown on Mon- day, and he reported to me that he had seen General Grant in Washington on Sunday. I was therefore forced to believe that Grant was in motion, and I so reported to General Early, first from near Baltimore, and afterwards when I joined him on the morning of the i3th. I do not to this day know the origin of the story of General Grant's presence in Washington on Sunday. He may have been there or it may have been another general officer of that name. I have understood that there was another General Grant in Wash- ington. But be that as it may, it is clear that at no time after Mon- day morning, the nth of July, could General Early have been justified in attacking the strong fortifications of Washington. His command consisted of the depleted divisions of Gordon, Rodes, Breckinridge and Ramseur, of about 8,500 muskets, the Cavalry Division of Major-General Robert Ransom, consisting of the brigades