his brigade was larger than Walker's, making the strength of this division less than 3,200.

With the exception of the brigade last mentioned and the two brigades of A. P. Hill's Division, which are estimated, the following recapitulation is established upon indisputable and contemporaneous authority, being nothing less than the testimony of the commanding officers, as shown by their official reports made immediately after the battle:

The cavalry and artillery have been generally estimated at 8,000. They certainly did not exceed this. The returns of the Army of Northern Virginia for October 10th, 1862, shows an effective force of these two arms of the service of 7,870 men.

The figures given above can be verified by reference to the official reports of the operations of the Army of Northern Virginia, published by authority of the Congress of the Confederate States and also contained in the records of the Union and Confederate armies. Series I, Vol. XIX, Part I.

It is an abandonment of the argument to contend that the ranking officers in General Lee's army made their reports without knowledge of such important facts, and it would be a suggestion unworthy of notice to intimate that such men, in such a matter, would make any statement that was not true. In the one case, it would be a reflection upon their intelligence; and in the other, a denial of their integrity.

With the official reports of his subordinates before him, General Lee, in his report of this battle to the War Department, says: "This great battle was fought by less than 40,000 men on our side, all of whom had undergone the greatest labors and hardships in the field and on the march." The figures given in this statement will allow ample margin for probable discrepancies and yet be found within the numbers as reported by General Lee.

The army had marched and fought incessantly for over a month. Its route was marked by stragglers, who for many reasons had been unable to keep up with their commands. After the army crossed into Maryland, orders were given to collect these men and hold them on the south side of the Potomac, as it would have been dangerous for them to attempt to rejoin their commands while the army was operating in Maryland. I was sent by General Lee from Frederick City to Virginia to meet President Davis and dissuade him from his purpose of joining the army. On my return to General Lee, whom I rejoined just before the battle of Sharpsburg, I found the provost guard at Winchester with orders to halt and collect at that point all men who were attempting to rejoin their commands. The men returning from furlough, the stragglers from Cedar Run, Second Manassas, Chantilly, and Harper's Ferry, and those left on the march before the army crossed into Maryland, as well as in the hurried movements involved in the capture of Harper's Ferry, were collected on the south side of the Potomac and only rejoined their commands after the return of the Army to Virginia.

General McClellan did not renew his attack on the 18th of September; the day was one of comparative quiet; both armies had suffered terribly, and during the night of the 18th General Lee withdrew his army to the south side of the Potomac river.

Every day after the battle witnessed the return of a large number of men to their regiments, and those, together with the force collected about Winchester, made a very material increase in the strength of the army before the next regular return was made.

General McClellan, in his official report, states that he had in action in the same engagement 87, 164 men of all arms. If, however, we undertake to construct a table of strength of his army after the method adopted by the critic of General Fitz. Lee's book, these numbers would be materially increased.

Treating all the engagements between the 14th and the 18th as one encounter, as does this critic, let us proceed to construct a statement, similar to his, of the strength of the Union army:

The return of that army for September 20th, 1862, shows an effective total of

The Federal loss at Boonsborough and Sharpsburg, as offi

cially reported, was

The force at Harper's Ferry was about

Total strength, by this method,

93, 149

We might thus contend that General Lee had 120,000 men opposed to him, which would bear to 57,000, the number of his army as made up by General Fitz. Lee's critic, about the same proportion as the "less than 40,000" reported by General Lee, bears to the "87, 164 carried into action" by General McClellan.

WALTER H. TAYLOR.

[From the Times Democrat, June, 1895]

GENERAL W. H. C. WHITING.

A CHEVALIER OF THE LOST CAUSE.

His Incomparable Gifts and One Misfortune-Were Mr. Davis and General Bragg Responsible for His Fatalities?

A recent elaborate and sympathetic article on the career of the late General W. H. C. Whiting, while properly eulogizing the hero of it, may have, unintentionally, done injustice to Hon. Jefferson Davis, as President of the Southern Confederacy, and General Braxton Bragg, who was conspicuous in the same cause. The phenomenal accomplishments of General Whiting are admirably summed up. Few men have been born into the world with such astonishing endowments of body and mind. His personal masculine beauty was a splendid shrine for one of the most brilliant, comprehensive, and versatile intellects. His record at West Point has not yet, I presume, been matched. The late Dr. Greebough, of the navy, who knew him well, declared to me that Whiting not only surpassed all of his military contemporaries in serious or manly accomplishments, but could even beat all the boys of his time playing marbles. He was by parentage a northern man, southern born, however, and, like Byron, his "blood was all meridian." My personal acquaintance with him was very slight, but it happened at a time when this extraordinary man was in the crisis of his destiny, and, perhaps, with as much delicacy as possible, I may clear up some of the adverse criticisms made, in all sincerity, no doubt, upon men who, like Whiting, are with the historic dead, and whose characters need not fear truth as well as commendation.

The charge made against Mr. Davis substantially is that he did not

thoroughly appreciate General Whiting, and so this gifted and intrepid soldier did not have the scope his eminent and exceptional talents, to say nothing of his services, deserved. This is a hard question to decide, where much, no doubt, could be said on both sides, but it may be due to Mr. Davis' memory, without injustice to the memory of Whiting, to state some facts which I have reason to believe well-founded.

HIS REMOVAL.

Whether Mr. Davis removed General Whiting from the field of active operations for wise or unwise motives or reasons, others must. settle who are more competent to judge than myself; but my recollection is that nothing could have been more unfortunate for this wonderfully gifted officer than initially giving him command at Wilmington, N. C. We may charitably suppose that Mr. Davis intended no harm to General Whiting, for Wilmington was one of the important sea-gates of the Confederacy, and the man who defended it had need of just such engineering skill as Beauregard had at Charleston. I have always been under the impression from personal experience at the time when stationed at Wilmington, that General Whiting would have been spared many troubles if it had not happened that blockade running was one of the most demoralizing agencies at that place. He was honest and incorruptible, but like many another dazzling genius, he did not always avoid the danger of the "insidious spirit of wine." He was placed in a trying position, with very inadequate materials for exploiting his great talents. He was possessed of an active, fearless, resolute spirit, that loved the combat of the field of arms. He was presumably chafing under what he deemed the grievance of banishment from glorious combat. He felt unsphered, and this tormenting sentiment may have forced him into moodiness, and opened the way for what seemed his one temptation. At any rate, he never rested until, through the request of General Beauregard, he was assigned to an important command under that distinguished leader, who was operating in the vicinity of Petersburg against General B. F. Butler, who had been making a diversion in favor of General Grant at Bermuda Hundreds. I was told at the time that General Beauregard exacted from General Whiting a promise that he would not, while with him, use potent liquors. It appears to be a historical fact that Beauregard had Butler in what he called a sack, and Whiting was assigned to watch the neck of it so that the Federal commander, who, as Grant phrased it, was "bot

tled up," should not slip away or uncork himself. There was a huge promise, coupled with lively expectation, that Butler and his whole force would be captured, and it was considered peculiarly significant that the man who made himself notoriously obnoxious-to put it mildly at New Orleans, should be enmeshed and made prisoner by the Creole General. At the very moment when this master piece of strategy and dramatic revenge of time was about to be consummated, Butler escaped, and the blame is attached to General Whiting.

KEPT HIS PROMISE.

Some weeks afterward I happened to meet the chief engineer of General Beauregard near Charleston, and asked him if the misadventure was due to General Whiting's infirmity. He replied almost in these words: "You were never more mistaken. Whiting's failure was wholly ascribed to the fact that, like a man of honor and truth, he kept his promise. Had he had a single dram, at the critical moment, to clear his brain, Butler and his whole army would have been prisoners of war."

After this episode, General Whiting returned to Wilmington, and his subsequent career was at once heroic and inspirational. He performed prodigies of valor, and stamped himself as one of the most worthy of "the chevaliers of the Lost Cause," by grand tactics at Wilmington and the sacrifice of his life in splendid, but vain, defence of Fort Fisher. On the ruined ramparts of that fort he fought like a hero of old days, and only ceased to struggle when, what proved a mortal wound, closed his military achievements. There was then, and there is now, complaint that General Bragg did not come to his rescue when Fort Fisher was assailed on the land side by General Terry. It may be that Bragg was culpable, but it may be also that he could no more, for the same reason, help Whiting than Joseph E. Johnston could disentangle Pemberton at Vicksburg. This must be solved by experts. Many of the men who had consummate knowledge of the situation are dead, but they have left records, and some persons may survive who can set the matter right, without disparagement of any actors in the scene. What prominent general of our interstate conflict was free from commission of error, on either side? The greatest of all-Robert E. Lee-ascribed to himself the disaster at Gettysburg, although Major Kyd Douglas told the Count of Paris that Lee needed just such a reverse to admonish him that Stonewall Jackson was dead. At Shiloh, General Beauregard's unfortunate order of retreat saved the Federals from capture or destruction,