Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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[536] from his army to reenforce others. The last instance had been a call from General Beauregard for reenforcements from the Army of Virginia. He had always been attentive, and ready as far as he could to meet the wants of other commands of our army, but at this time those who knew his condition could not suppose he had any men to spare; yet the fact of thinking so was a compliment to his success in resisting the large army which was assailing his small one. There had always been entire co-intelligence and accord between General Lee and myself, but the Congress about this time thought his power would be increased by giving him the nominal dignity of general-in-chief, under which he resumed, as far as he could, the general charge of armies from which, at his urgent solicitation, I had relieved him after he took command, in the field, of the Army of Northern Virginia.

A few days subsequent to the events in North Carolina to which reference has been made, General Lee proposed to me that General J. E. Johnston be put in command of the troops in North Carolina. He still had the confidence in that officer which I had once felt, but which his campaigns in Mississippi and Georgia had impaired. With the understanding that General Lee was himself to supervise and control the operations, I assented to the assignment. General Johnston, on February 23d at Charlotte, North Carolina, relieved General Beauregard and assumed command. General Lee's first instructions to General Johnston were to ‘concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman.’ The first part of the instructions was well executed; the last part of it was more desirable than practicable, though the brief recital made herein of the events of the campaign claimed the credit due to a vigorous effort.

General Johnston's force, according to his estimate when he took command, amounted to about sixteen thousand infantry and artillery, and four thousand cavalry; if to this be added the portion of the army of Tennessee, about twenty-five hundred men under command of General Stephen D. Lee, which afterward joined the army at Smithfield, North Carolina, and that of General Bragg's command at Goldsboro, which amounted to about eight thousand, the aggregate would be about thirty thousand five hundred men of all arms.

After leaving Columbia, the course of the Federal army through Winnsboro, across the Catawba at Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, and Peay's Ferry, and in the direction of Cheraw on the Great Pedee, indicated that it would attempt to cross the Cape Fear River at Fayetteville, North Carolina--a town sixty miles south of Raleigh, and of special importance, as containing an arsenal, several government shops, and a