204

MANASSAS TO SEVEN PINES.

demolish our water-batteries, drive us from the intrenchments at Yorktown,and enable the enemy to turn us by the river. Mr. Davis quotes from one ofhis dispatches to me:

“ Your announcement to-day [May 1st] that you would withdraw to-morrow night takes usby surju'ise, and must involve enormous losses, including unfinished gun-boats. Will the safetyof your army allow more time 1 ” [II., 92],

My own announcement was made April 27th, not May 1st, and reachedRichmond in ten hours; so the President had abundant time to prevent thewithdrawal. The appearance of the enemy’s works indicated that fire fromthem might open upon us the next morning. The withdrawal just then wasto avoid waste of life. With regard to the property abandoned he says:

“ The loss of public property, as was anticipated, was great, the steamboats expected for itstransportation not having arrived before the evacuation was made. From a narrative by GeneralEarly I make the following extract: ‘ A very valuable part of the property so lost . . .

consisted of a very large number of picks and spades. . . . All of our heavy guns, includ-

ing some recently arrived and not mounted, together with a good deal of ammunition piledupon the wharf, had to be left behind ’ ” [II., 91],

The steamboats he mentions were controlled in Richmond. As to theloss of very valuable picks and spades, Colonel Henry T. Douglas, chiefengineer at Yorktown, wrote to me, May 12tli, 1883:

“I was at Yorktown the evening before,the evacuation commenced. I did not seeany quantity of picks and shovels there, andcannot understand how they could have accu-mulated there when they were needed so muchfrom Redoubt Number Five to Lee’s Mills —that is, on the extreme right of our line.”

General D. H. Hill, who command-ed in and near Yorktown, said, in hisofficial report: “We lost very littleby the retreat, save some medicalstores which Surgeon Coffin desertedin his flight, May 1st. The heavyguns were all of the old navy pat-tern.” We had very little ammu-nition on hand at the time. Theheavy guns could have been savedonly by holding the place, whichwas impossible.

Mr. Davis says that General Ma-gruder’s “absence at this momentwas the more to be regretted, as itappears that the positions of theredoubts he had constructed [be-fore Williamsburg] were not allknown to the commanding general ”

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REGION BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND RICHMOND.