Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard.
His comprehensive and aggressive strategy.Drewry's Bluff and Petersburg.
An address of Gen Johnson Hagood at the Beauregard Memorial meeting at Charleston, S. C., December 1, 1894.Following is the admirable address of General Johnson Hagood at the great Beauregard memorial meeting in Charleston, S. C., December I, 1894. It is a graphic story of three engagements, or rather series of engagements, in the defence of Richmond. South Carolinians had a leading place in the picture, as their brigade commander and General Beauregard attest: The winter of 1863-‘64, with its comparative quiet, had closed, and the Federals and Confederates were concentrating and marshalling their forces for a more vigorous and decisive campaign than had yet marked the history of the war. Virginia and Tennessee were respectively in the East and West, the theatres upon which the opposing banners were unfurled, and it was evident that around these two centres would be collected in hostile array all the strength that either party possessed. Gilmore, with the bulk of his army, had early in April been transferred from South Carolina to Virginia. Beauregard had been assigned to the department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia —a territorial command which was made to extend from Wilmington to Richmond. Of the infantry under his command at Charleston, Wise's and Walker's Brigades followed him; soon after Hagood's Brigade, and a week later Colquitt's. Hagood's Brigade was concentrated at Wilmington by the 4th of May, whence it was directed to report by letter to General Beauregard's headquarters, at Weldon. On the 5th of May it received orders to proceed by rail to Petersburg. Some reference to the general strategy of the Virginia campaign is here necessary. Grant, made commander-in-chief of all the armies of the United States a few months before, had made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, numbering 140,000 men, and lying behind the Rapidan, sixty miles north of the Confederate
