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‘ [359] him, nor have I any one to send there. General J. E. Johnston is the only officer whom I know who has the confidence of the army and people; and if he was ordered to report to me I would place him there on duty.’1

It seems strange that General Lee should have declared himself ignorant of the whereabouts of General Beauregard's forces, and of the lines upon which they moved, when so many despatches of General Beauregard, to him and to the War Department, were replete with the most exact information on these two points, as is shown by the telegrams contained in this and the preceding chapter, and in the appendices to both. But stranger still appears his further assertion that he has ‘also heard that his own [General Beauregard's] health is indifferent, though he has never so stated.’ And, acting upon this supposition, without making the least inquiry of General Beauregard, he proposes, not that General Johnston shall be called from retirement and held in readiness, should his services be required for the emergency referred to, but that he shall be immediately ordered to supersede General Beauregard and take command of his army.

And why should General Lee have been ‘disturbed’ by General Beauregard's urgent demand for reinforcements from the Army of Virginia? Why should his plan for concentration have been the apparent immediate cause of his removal, when we find the vital necessity of just such a movement strongly advocated by Colonel W. H. Taylor, late Adjutant-General of the Army of Northern Virginia—‘one who,’ as he says himself, ‘was brought into daily and intimate relations with General Lee,’ and whose statements upon such topics were but ‘the reflex of the views and opinions2 of his commander? In Colonel Taylor's book, entitled ‘Four Years with General Lee,’ we find the following significant passage given as a certified extract from his war journal:

Edge Hill, Feb. 24th, 1865.
Now that General Johnston has been placed in command of his old army by General Lee, it is not probable that the latter will go to South Carolina— at any rate, not immediately. * * * It is not to be denied that our condition at this time is a critical one; but although it is a crisis in our affairs, it is the same with the enemy. Suppose we were to concentrate on Sherman and crush him,


1 See, in Appendix, General Lee's despatch to General Breckenridge, Secretary of War.

2 ‘Four Years with General Lee,’ p. 140. The italics are ours.

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