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

[302] made the count. If it was a citizen, he was not unlikely to count a caisson as a piece of artillery. As General Barnard says that the name, rank, and regiment of the prisoners captured from my command between the 3d and 18th of July were carefully ascertained and recorded, and thus it was ascertained that I had ninety-nine regiments of infantry and thirty-six of cavalry, I defy the production of any such record. If such record exists, then it shows at least twenty-five more regiments of infantry, and twelve of cavalry, than I had. It is possible that men claiming to belong to so many regiments, may have been captured, as I afterward ascertained that there were a very large number of deserters from our army who had taken refuge in the mountains between the counties of Loudoun and Fauquier, and the Valley, who claimed to belong to Mosby's command whenever questioned by any of our officers. I have thus noticed especially the estimate of my force given by General Barnard, or rather the officer from whom he quotes, because that is the only one professing to be based on any data, the others being mere conjectural estimates, without any foundation to rest upon. It is a little singular that writers on the other side will persist in estimating our numbers upon the crude conjectures made during the war, when the returns showing our strength during the various campaigns are on file in the Archive Office, and have been for such a long period accessible to them. There was no reason why Confederate officers should have made inaccurate returns to their government, and they have certainly not had the opportunity of altering them since the close of the war. General Barnard's statement of the forces available for the defense of Washington at the time of my advance, is not based on conjecture or “circumstantial evidence,” but is derived from actual knowledge. He thus gives his statement of the forces within the defenses of Washington, and in adjacent camps on the 10th of July, 1864: “The effective forces were 1,819 infantry, 1,834 artillery, and sixty-three cavalry, north of the Potomac, and 4,064 infantry, 1,772 artillery, and fifty-one cavalry, south thereof. There were besides in Washington and Alexandria about 3,900 effectives (First and Second District of Columbia volunteers, ‘Veteran Reserves,’ and detachments), under Generals Wisewell and Hough, doing duty as guards, &c., &c., and about 4,400 (six regiments) of ‘Veteran Reserves.’ At the artillery camp of instruction (Camp Barry) were five field batteries (627 men). A ‘brigade’ of cavalry consisting of the Second Massachusetts, Thirteenth and Sixteenth New York regiments, numbering a little over 800 effectives, was posted in the neighborhood of Falls Church and Annandale, and commanded by the lamented Colonel C. R. Lowell (subsequently ”