[173]
compare his language with the result.
I do not know what he was sent to Wilmington for. I had hoped that I was considered competent; I acquiesced with feelings of great mortification.
My proper place was in command of the troops you sent to support the defence; then I should not now be a prisoner, and an effort, at least, would have been made to save the harbor, on which I had expended for two years, all the labor and skill I had. I should not have had the mortification of seeing works, which our very foes admire, yielding after four days attack, given up and abandoned without even an attempt to save them.
I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
The following letter is the last expression of General Whiting on the subject-matter of these reports:
To the Editor of the Times.
The enclosed is a copy of a fragmentary letter commenced by Whiting to me, and which he wrote lying on his back in the hospital, the day before he died.
He did not have the strength to finish or sign it. It was given to me after my return from Europe, having been found by the surgeon and preserved.
I was in England, having access to the London journals, and Whiting desired me, as a friend, to vindicate his reputation.
I do so now, for if there ever was a noble and gallant fellow, true to his friends and true to his convictions of duty, it was W. H. C. Whiting.
Very respectfully,
My dear Duncan: I am very glad to hear from you on my bed of suffering.
I see the papers have put you in possession of something of what has been going on. That I am here, and that Wilmington and Fisher are gone, is due wholly and solely to the incompetency, the imbecility and the pusillanimity of Braxton Bragg, who was sent to spy upon and supersede me about two weeks before the attack.
He could have taken every one of the enemy, but he was afraid.
