General Ewell at First Manassas.
Colonel Campbell Brown's reply to General Beauregard.
[note.—The following letters appeared in the Century for March, 1885.
They are reprinted for circulation among the friends of General Ewell, especially those who were associated with him during his long service in the armies of the United States and of the Confederacy.
Many of these will be interested to know that the close of our great civil war (which he survived something over six years) by no means ended his usefulness or extinguished his patriotism.
Accepting frankly the results of that contest, he gave his energies and his influence to restoring the arts of peace and building up a new South.
With characteristic modesty he avoided publicity, but his quiet example was widely felt.
His Tennessee farm soon became known as a model of judicious and progressive management, and one of the very earliest centres of the new agricultural methods which are regenerating the South.
Upon this farm, in January, 1872, he quietly met the end of an unselfish, noble, and useful life.
General Ewell was scrupulously careful of the military reputation of his associates in arms, and doubly so when a subordinate was concerned.
These feelings, combined with his genuine modesty, led him, on more than one occasion within my knowledge, even in his official reports, to claim less than his due share of honor, and do less than justice to his own merits, and on other occasions caused him to remain silent rather than impute blame to a dead comrade.
Had the same moderation and self-restraint influenced General Beauregard, this publication would be unnecessary.
In General Beauregard's article on Bull Run, on page 101 of the November Century, is this severe criticism of one of his subordinates:
‘The commander of the front line on my right, who failed to move because he received no immediate order, was instructed in the plan of attack, and should have gone forward the moment General Jones, upon whose right he was to form, exhibited his own order, which mentioned one as having been already sent to that commander.
I exonerated him after the battle, as he was technically not in the wrong; but one could not help recalling Desaix, who even ’
