This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
‘
[73]
Department, Colonel L. B. Northrop, much credit is due for his well-directed efforts to provide both for immediate and prospective wants.’1
There was a great deficiency also in the means of transportation.
It was insufficient, and of such poor quality as to break down even in ordinary camp service.
This evil, which continued long after the battle of Manassas, was partially remedied before that event, but the remedy was applied independently of the Quartermaster's Department at Richmond.
That department having declared itself unable to procure transportation in the country, General Beauregard called to his aid Colonel James L. Kemper (7th Virginia Volunteers), whose knowledge of the resources of that portion of the State enabled him to gather, within a few days, at least two hundred effective wagons and teams.
Three times that number, and even more, could easily have been collected, but General Beauregard, wishing to avoid collision with the views of the administration at Richmond, limited Colonel Kemper to the number stated above.
On the 5th of June, upon pressing application to that effect, General Beauregard issued a proclamation to the people of the counties of Loudon, Fairfax, and Prince William, which has been much commented upon, but, outside of the South, where the facts were known, has never been well understood.
The reason for issuing the proclamation was, that a deputation of citizens, headed by a prominent lawyer of Alexandria, who, before the secession of Virginia, was noted for his Union sentiments, had presented a formal complaint, of very grave outrages practised on the people by Federal troops.
General Beauregard, believing it to be his duty to take immediate steps in the matter, appointed a commission of inquiry, composed of Colonels Thomas Jordan, his Adjutant-General, and John S. Preston, and William Porcher Miles, 2 his volunteer aids, both eminent citizens of South Carolina.
That committee, after careful investigation of the charges made, reported that the allegations were true.
Though General Mc-Dowell solicitously repressed all acts of violence—which, as was afterwards proved, were committed then only by marauding parties
1883. Harper. New York.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.