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[211] temporarily, with the understanding that he will apply for orders in the field. I trust this will fully meet your approval. The enemy has retired to his lines across the Neck. I have telegraphed General Bragg as to my position and intentions.


Following this recital, we are again compelled to refer to the errors contained in Mr. Davis's book. The passages to be found in Vol. II., pp. 511-515, wherein is described his interview with General Beauregard, at Drury's Bluff, and its results, are here alluded to:

In the afternoon of the 14th I rode down to visit General Beauregard at his headquarters in the field. Supposing his troops to be on the line of intrenchment, I passed Major Drury's house to go thither, when some one by the roadside called to me and told me that the troops were not on the line of intrenchment, and that General Beauregard was at the house behind me.

‘My first question on meeting him was to learn why the intrenchments were abandoned. He answered that he thought it better to concentrate his troops. Upon my stating to him that there was nothing then to prevent Butler from turning his position, he said he would desire nothing more, as he would then fall upon him, cut him off from his base, etc.’

What else General Beauregard is supposed to have then said is not given by Mr. Davis, whose memory, no doubt, failed him at this point. Or was it that General Beauregard only began, and never ended, his explanation? Be this as it may, Mr. Davis affords the reader neither satisfaction nor enlightenment.

The impossibility of any such occurrence, or of any such conversation, will now be demonstrated.

It was between the hours of eight and nine in the morning of the 14th, and not in the afternoon of that day, that Mr. Davis first saw General Beauregard at the Drury house; the object of his coming thither being to confer concerning the plan laid before him, through General Bragg, the tenor of which is already known. General Beauregard had no ‘headquarters,’ at that time, ‘in the field,’ or elsewhere. The Drury house was the first he had entered on his arrival at Drury's Bluff that morning, and he had not yet left it when the President was ushered in. The ‘line of intrenchments’ spoken of by Mr. Davis, and for the abandonment of which he called General Beauregard to account, had been taken by the enemy on the evening before; that is to say, before General Beauregard's arrival at Drury's Bluff. And it must be borne in mind that, at the time of Mr. Davis's visit there, General

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