Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

In 1871 the report of General J. G. Barnard “On the defenses of Washington” was published at the Government Printing Office, and in it he gives a full account of the condition of those defenses and of the armament and troops within them from the beginning of the war, including the period of my advance upon and presence in front of them. General Barnard was the engineer officer who had the principal control of the construction of those defenses, and was present in them when my advance was made; and it is to be presumed that he has given an accurate statement as to their condition and the forces within them at the time, though he seems to have so far shared the general panic as not to be able to form a correct estimate of the strength of the force threatening the Federal City. An accurate account of my advance upon and operations in front of Washington is given in a publication made by me in 1867, entitled “A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States of America,” the operations in front of Washington being described on pages 56-62. Those operations are also the subject of two articles published by me in the Southern Magazine (Baltimore, Md.), June, 1871, and June, 1872, the first being in reply to some criticisms by John Esten Cooke, and the last in reference to General Barnard's report. Those publications give fully and accurately the facts in regard to my operations in front of Washington, as well as my strength, and I could add nothing of interest to them. The writer in The Republican begins his article by saying: “Toward the latter part of June, 1864, General Lee finding that he was being steadily and surely hemmed in by the Union army, under General Grant, resorted to an expedient which, when tried two years earlier, had resulted in relieving him from a state of siege. Early was sent up through the Shenandoah Valley to threaten the National Capital.” It is a little singular that it did not occur to this writer that if General Lee was being so steadily and surely hemmed in as he supposes, he could have spared from his army so large a detachment as I am represented to have carried across the Potomac to the front of Washington.

This writer further says: “As already stated, the enemy appeared in force in close proximity to the northern defenses of Washington upon the morning of July 11; but small bodies of the invaders had been observed as early as the morning of the day previous” --that is, on the morning of the 10th. My advance, a small body of cavalry, arrived for the first time in front of the defenses about noon of the 11th, and I followed this advance in person, arriving in sight of the defenses a little after noon. The main body of my command did not get up until