Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

[157] officers and seven hundred men. The entire loss of the enemy, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, was between one thousand and twelve hundred. Among the slain was General Baker, whose body was returned to the Federal lines. When, at a later date, General Stone was arrested and put on trial for his conduct of that expedition, Colonel Jordan, General Beauregard's Chief of Staff, noticed in a Northern journal that one of the charges against General Stone was his failure to give certain orders to General Baker. Written orders, however, had been found on General Baker's body, which would aid in vindicating General Stone; and Colonel Jordan, having mentioned the fact to General Beauregard, the latter caused the papers to be immediately sent North, under a flag of truce; an act of chivalry to the imperilled honor of a foe.

Until early October, the personal relations of General Beauregard with the government officials—except in the case of Colonel Northrop's violent eccentricities—had been those of unstudied friendship, although serious obstructions had also been encountered from the Quartermaster's Department at Richmond. Having now occasion to recommend the appointment of Mr. T. B. Ferguson, as Chief of Ordnance of the ‘First Corps,’ in the place of Captain E. P. Alexander, whose services had been transferred to General Johnston, on account of his needs as General-in-Chief, General Beauregard received from a subordinate in the War Department¹ the brief reply that the President did not approve the division of the army into two corps, and preferred that there should be but one Chief of Ordnance to the Army of the Potomac.

General Beauregard was more than disappointed at this abrupt, unceremonious way of rejecting his demand. Though not always successful in his applications, he had been accustomed to more courteous treatment from the War Department. He thought that, apart from the question of giving him an ordnance officer, of the need of whose services he was no doubt the better judge, the President ought not arbitrarily to interfere with measures of usefulness and efficiency, which generals actually in the field could more accurately appreciate and more wisely manage. In the antagonism of Mr. Davis to a system of organization which had