Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 34.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

How strange it is, at this late day—forty-five years after the battle—and in view of the indisputable proof furnished by the official record, that Baker's force was more than double that of Hunton's, and that not until late in the day, after the Eighteenth and Seventeenth Mississippi regiments came upon the field, was there an approximate equality of numbers—that such careless and glaring mistakes should be published. The contemporary exaggerations are pardonable — for the Confederates had a marvelous way of magnifying and multiplying themselves in battle and there were also Falstaffs in those days, in whose affrighted vision hundreds of ‘men in buckram’ appeared, whose names were not on the rolls; but now—when sectional passions have subsided and the truth is so easily accessible—there is no excuse for such misstatements.