.MTEyMA.MTcwNQ

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true that he had conducted the operations against Fort Sumter, but that was a mere question of engineering and artillery. Experience in command is as necessary to make a thorough general, as actual service is to make a thorough soldier. Our generals, therefore, on this oc= casion, are not to be judged by the same rules by which experienced commanders would be judged under similar circumstances.

                                               a

In the next place, it must be borne in mind that ^ commanding General knows more about the condition of his troops and the obstacles in his way than any other can know. For very obvious reasons, he will not make public, during the progress of a war, the reasons and considerations which govern his course, and sufficient confidence must be extended to him, in cases where the parts are not fully known, to take it for granted, when he pursues any line of policy, that he has sufficient reasons for doing so. It must also be considered that it is impossible for him to know, beforehand, as much as the critics who form their judgments from the light of after events. Those, therefore, who as= certained some days after the battle, what was reported to to be utter demoralization of McDowell’s army, should recollect that this could not be known to General Johnston and General Beauregard, until that army was safe from pursuit, even if it had been practicable to have accomplished more than they did with their troops in their then condition.

General Johnston was the commander of our

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combined forces, and when the victory had been gained, the

                may have

same reasons which ^ induced him to defer to the opinions of General Beauregard during the battle, did not then exist. It is to him, therefore, we must look when we wish to know why an attempt was not made to capture Washington, as he alone was re= sponsible for what was done or omitted to be done; though doubtless he consulted General Beauregard and gave due weight to his opinions.

Without having been in General Johnston’s confidence, or professing to know more about his opinions than he has thought proper to disclose in his official report, I will undertake to show that it was utterly impossible for

                                                                                                                         pursuit

our army to have captured Washington by immediate ^ even if it had been in a condition to make such pursuit, and that, so far from being able to take Washington, it could not have crossed the Potomac. I will first say that the army was not in condition to make pursuit on the afternoon of the 21st after the battle, or that night. All the troops engaged, except the two regiments with Kershaw, Cocke’s regiment, and my brigade, were so much exhausted and shattered by the desperate conflict in which they had been en= gaged, that they made no attempt at pursuit and were incapable of making any. Ewell’s and Holmes’s brigade had made a very rapid march of more than ten miles to get to the fight, and their men were necessarily made exhausted. Jones’s

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brigade had met with a severe repulse from the enemy’s troops on the left of the position at Blackburn’s Ford, at the same point where I had been ordered to attack the battery in the morning, and it was not therefore available for pursuit. Longstreet was at Mitchell’s Blackburn’s Ford with his brigade & Bonham at Mitchell’s Ford with three or four regiments. They did move towards Centreville, but retired on the approach of night as the enemy still had his reserves in= tact at that point. The troops therefore who were in any condition to have pursued, were at points distant from each other, and it would have required time to concentrate them, which would have brought on night before any movement could have been made. To have sent these troops off separately after the enemy would have exposed them to destruction in detail if not from the enemy, very probably from conflict with each other in the dark. To have started them after dark would have been absurd. In the day time it is impossible to accom= plish anything by pursuit with infantry after a flying enemy. The pursuing force has to move in fighting order, which the flying one consults only its safety by the rapidity of its movements. Any attempt at pursuit therefore on the night

         with our infantry

of the 21st ^ would have resulted in ridiculous fail= ure, if not in disaster from a encounter with the division in reserve at Centreville, or another one

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which was under Runyon near Fairfax C.H.

Our cavalry consisted of one organized regiment of nine companies, and a number of unattached companies. This cavalry was armed principally with double-barrel shot-guns and sabres of an inferior kind, and was without the discipline or skill necessary to make cavalry effective in a charge. It had been necessarily scattered on the flanks and along the line, to watch the enemy and

                      his

give information of its ^ movements. It could not be readily concentrated for the purposes of an effective pursuit and the attempts made were desultory. Be=

                                    preserved

sides, the enemy still had organization enough to render abortive any charges by this cavalry, and all it was capable of, was the picking up of stragglers from the main body and the collection of abandoned plunder. In addition to all this, what good could have resulted from pursuit by our small force of cavalry? If the enemy was as badly demoralized as alleged, its hands must soon have become so full of prisoners, that it would

   been

have ^ rendered incapable of further effort by the [ ? ] of holding them. The critics say that the enemy was already a mass of panic stricken fugitives. If so, then it would have done no good to frighten them more, which would have been all that the cavalry could have done. It is idle therefore to talk about the results of an attempted

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pursuit on the night after the battle.

By light next morning after the battle, the greater part of the enemy’s army was in the streets of Washington or within reach of the fortifications at Arlington Heights. The question then arises, whether by pursuit in the morning of the 22nd, Washington could have been captured?

I will here call attention to some facts which seem to have entirely escaped the attention of the critics. The Potomac is more than a mile wide at Washington, and navigable to the place for the largest war vessels. The only means of crossing the river near Washington, except on vessels, are the Long Bridge which is more that a mile in length, the aqueduct of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal at Georgetown, and the Chain Bridge a short distance above Georgetown. The Long Bridge is an old wooden structure with one or two draws in it, and it could have been easily destroyed by fire, besides being susceptible of being commanded, through its entire length, by vessels of war lying near Washington out of range of any guns we could have brought-to bear. The aqueduct is narrow, with a channel for the water and a narrow tow path on the side. It is quite long and one piece of artillery at its northern end, could have effectually prevented the crossing of troops over it. Besides it could have been easily mined (if that had not already been done), and some of the

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spans blown up, so as to render it impassable. The Chain Bridge is a wooden structure and could have been easily burned. If therefore the entire Federal army had fled across the river on our ap= proach, we could not have crossed unless it had abandoned Washington, leaving the crossings un= harmed. If McDowell’s army had been to= tally demoralized and scattered to the winds, still a considerable force had been retained at the city under Mansfield, and if this force had been in= capable of fighting, still it is not to be presumed that McDowell, Scott, Mansfield, and all the officers of the regular army would have been so badly demoralized, as to abandon the city with= out making an effort to save it by destroying the crossings over the Potomac. The largest pieces of field artillery, or guns capable of transportation, which we had, were probably 12 pounder howitzers and certainly none larger than 24 pounder howitzers. We had no rifle pieces except one or two very small rifle pieces with the Washington artillery, and none of our guns could have reached across the river into the city. All the bridges on the Potomac a= bove, to Harper’s Ferry, had been burned, and the nearest ford to Washington over which infantry could pass, was White’s Ford several miles above Leesburg, in Loudon County, and fully forty miles from Washington. This was an obscure

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ford, where General Jackson, in 1862, had to have the banks leading to and from it dug down before our trains and artillery could cross, and then the canal on the north bank had to be bridged. We had nothing in the shape of pontoons, and it would have been impossible to procure them in a reasonable time. If therefore our army had moved promptly against Washington after the Battle of Manassas, we would have found our progress arrested at the southern bank of the Potomac by that river, which to us would have been an impassable obstacle, even if the enemy had fled from it; unless he had thought [proper?] voluntarily to leave it a [prey?] to us. If we determined to cross, we would then have had to move up the river seeking a ford, which we would not have found in less than forty miles. When we reached White’s Ford, we would probably have been met by Patterson’s and McLellan’s combined forces, to say nothing of Mansfield’s and that part of McDowell’s which had not been disorganized or had rallied. At this ford, a small body of troops on the Maryland side might have prevented the passage of a large army, for the hills and bluffs on that side are very commanding, and the canal on the banks of the river furnishes an impregnable fortification.

I had occasion in 1864 to make myself acquainted with the state of the Potomac, at and above Wash=