Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

That such a statement should have been inserted in a work purporting to be a true exposition of Confederate history is beyond comprehension. The facts are these:

Colonel Elliott, who had been promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General, was relieved, on the 4th of May, 1864, from the command of Fort Sumter, and sent to Virginia, to take charge of Walker's brigade, of South Carolina. The successor of General Elliott at the fort was Captain John C. Mitchel, of the 1st South Carolina Artillery (Regulars). He remained in command until the 20th of July, 1864, when, during the third regular bombardment of Sumter, he was killed by a mortar-shell. Captain Mitchel was a son of the distinguished Irish patriot, and a highly accomplished and daring officer. On his death Captain T. A. Huguenin, of the South Carolina Infantry (Regulars), was appointed in his place, and held command of Sumter until its evacuation, on the 17th of February, 1865—nearly eight months after General Elliott had been relieved. The evacuation of Sumter was effected at night, in silence, without a speech from any one, without a cheer from the garrison, without the firing of a gun. In order to keep the enemy in ignorance of the movement then in course of execution, the withdrawal was proceeded with as secretly and noiselessly as possible. And yet the ex-President of the Confederate States and ex-Commander-in-chief of its armies published to the world in his work (seventeen years in preparation) this extravagant fiction. The enormity being pointed out to him by friends, he has, in a second publication of the first edition of his book, resorted to another and different version, but one which is also erroneous in several particulars. We shall again refer to this matter when treating of the evacuation of Charleston.