THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN.

227

Of the exact purport of these two letters General Johnston could not have"been ignorant when he wrote his report of the battle. Nor could he haveheen unaware that the leading Southern newspapers had in effect attributedto me the chief direction of that battle on the Confederate side. Therefore,if it were the gross historical error which, twenty odd years after the affair,General Johnston characterizes it to be, and one that imputed to him theshirking of a duty which he could not have left unassumed without personal"baseness, certainly that was the time for him by a few explicit words in hisofficial report to dispose of so affronting an error. In that report, however,no such exigent, peremptory statement of his relation to the battle is to befound. On the other hand, upon page 57 of his “Narrative” published in1874 (D. Appleton & Co.), may be found, I fear, the clew to the motive ofhis actual waiver of command in this curious paragraph:

“ If the tactics of the Federals had been equal to their strategy, we should have been beaten.If, instead of being brought into action in detail, their troops had been formed in two lines,with a proper reserve, and had assailed Bee and Jackson in that order, the two Southernbrigades must have been swept from the field in a few minutes, or enveloped. GeneralMcDowell would have made such a formatiou, probably, had he not greatly underestimated thestrength of his enemy.”

Coupled with the disquieting, ever-apprehensive tenor of his whole corre-spondence with the Confederate War Department, from the day he assumedcommand in the Valley of Virginia in May, 1861, down to the close of thestruggle in 1865, the fair inference from such language as that just cited fromhis “ Narrative ” is that General Johnston came to Manassas beset with theidea that our united forces would not be able to cope with the Federal army,and that we should be beaten— a catastrophe in which he was not solicitousto figure on the pages of history as the leading and responsible actor. Origi-nally and until 1875,1 had regarded it as a generous though natural act on thepart of General Johnston, in such a juncture, to leave me in command andresponsible for what might occur. The history of military operations aboundsin instances of notable soldiers who have found it proper to waive chief com-mand under similar conditions.

ASS?

CONFEDERATE QUAKER GUNS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

Confederate fortifications, near Centreville, after tlieir evacuation in the spring of 1862 . The muzzle of the log waspainted black and the breech was covered with brush to conceal its character from observation by balloon.