were no reports from either of them to General Lee at the time of the movements of the enemy.

WOULD NOT HAVE CROSSED.

What General Lee would have done, had he known the facts fully instead of being compelled to act upon the imperfect information of the scout, is a question open to speculation, for General Lee never disclosed what were his plans in contingencies that never arose. But had he known that Meade's army was moving—the left wing, composed of three corps-through Emmetsburg to Gettysburg, and the other four moving on lines east of that route and kept within easy supporting distance, the 12th and 2d Corps directed upon Gettysburg, the 5th upon Hanover, and the 6th to Manchester, to be a general reserve to the whole, it is almost positively certain that he would not have crossed his army over the mountain.

The Union correspondence may throw some light to guide the speculations of those inclined to construct a theory based upon probabilities.

General Couch, commanding in that department, with headquarters at Harrisburg, wrote to the Secretary of War June 29th (page 407): “I hold from Altoona along the Juniata and Susquehannah to Conowingo bridge above Havre-de-Grace (a distance of more than 200 miles). My whole force organized is, perhaps, 16,000 men. 5,000 regulars can whip them all to pieces in an open field. I am afraid they will ford the river in its present state." Again, on the same day, to General Meade: "I have only 15,000 men, such as they are, on my whole line-say 9,000 here."

Lieutenant Thomas, Adjutant-General, wrote to Secretary E. M. Staunton from Harrisburg July 1st (page 478): "This is a difficult place to defend, as the river is fordable both above and below," and proceeds to comment upon the "want of artillery and especially of practiced artillerists," and the deficiency of cavalry, and concludes: "The excitement here is not so great as I found it in Philadelphia, and the people begin to understand that the fate of this city depends entirely upon the results of the operations of the Army of the Potomac."

FEDERAL APPREHENSION.

Simon Cameron to Mr. Lincoln from Harrisburg June 29th (409): "Let me impress upon you the absolute necessity of action by Meade to-morrow, even if attended with great risk, because if Lee

gets his army across the Susquehannah and puts our army on the defensive on that line, you will readily comprehend the disastrous results that must follow to the country.'

Secretary E. M. Stanton to General Dana in command at Philadelphia, dated War Department, June 29th (408): "It is very important that machinery for manufacturing arms should not fall into the hands of the enemy, and that it should be preserved for the use of the government. In case of imminent danger to the works of Alfred Jenks & Son, of Philadelphia, who is manufacturing arms for the government, you are authorized and directed to impress steam tugs, barges or any description of vessels to remove the gunmanufacturing machines beyond the reach of the enemy.

These extracts indicate what the highest officials of the United States Government thought were some of the possibilities before General Lee, and also that Harrisburg would not have attempted to resist an attack by Ewell. It is presumed that General Lee knew something of these conditions, for he had always heretofore kept himself well-informed in regard to the conditions he had to encounter. He must have known something of the quality of the militia, for Early's cavalry had come upon a full regiment of this militia at Gettysburg, which had dispersed so quickly that Jenkins could not get in sight of it. York had been abandoned by the military, and the municipal officers met Early several miles from the city to treat for its surrender. Again, at Wrightsville, 1,200 militia had retreated across the bridge and set fire to it, before Gordon could get his brigade in position to attack. General Early writes (p. 467): "I regretted very much the failure to secure the bridge, as, finding the defenseless condition of the country generally, and the little obstacle likely to be afforded by the militia to our progress, I had determined, if I could get possession of the Columbia bridge, to cross my division over the Susquehannah.”

EWELL'S POSSIBILITIES.

General Ewell reached Carlisle on the 27th, and writes (p. 443): 'From Carlisle I sent forward my engineer, Captain H. B. Richardson, with Jenkins' cavalry, to reconnoitre the defences of Harrisburg and was starting on the 29th for that place, when ordered by the General commanding to join the main body of the army at Cashtown, near Gettysburg. General Rodes writes (p. 552): "On the arrival at Carlisle, Jenkins' cavalry advanced towards Harrisburg

and had, on the 29th, made a thorough reconnoisance of the defenses of the place, with the view of our advance upon it, a step which every man in the division contemplated with eagerness, and which was to have been executed on the 30th." Ewell, therefore, must have known that the river was fordable above and below the city, and something of the number and quality of the troops defending it.

With these lights to guide us, it seems probable that General Lee, with his communications safe, would not have called off Ewell from before Harrisburg, but rather pressed him forward to its capture, and after the capture, it may be to turn back to the assistance of Hill, possibly to cross over the river and meet Meade on the line of the Susquehannah, a condition that appeared so alarming to Senator Cameron, or even to hasten to the capture of Philadelphia, trusting to his ability, with the two corps of Longstreet and Hill, to hold Meade's army in check in the mountain passes-an expectation that does not appear so unreasonable, since he, with but little more than two-thirds of his present army, at Chancellorsville, had defeated the Army of the Potomac, stronger in numbers and morale than at this time. General Meade could not possibly have moved upon the gap in rear of Cashtown before July 1st, and he states that he proposed to make that a day of rest and to bring up his supply there. On the 29th, Hill was at Fayetteville, on the road from Chambersburg to Cashtown, and in his report, writes (p. 606): "I was directed to move on this road in the direction of York, and to cross the Susquehannah, menacing the communications of Harrisburg with Philadelphia, and to co-operate with General Ewell, acting as circumstances might require. Accordingly, on the 29th, I moved Heth's division to Cashtown, some eight miles from Gettysburg, following on the morning of the 30th with the division of Pender." This order, under which Hill was acting, was evidently the one for the general advance upon Harrisburg and the line of the Susquehannah, issued on the 28th, under the impression that the army of the Potomac was still in Virginia.

NOT UNFAVORABLE CONDITIONS.

It so happened that Hill was just where he should have been to observe the movements of Meade's army and to guard the passes through the mountains. Longstreet at Chambersburg, midway between the two wings, was in easy supporting distance of either of them. Stuart, with his three brigades of cavalry, would have re

joined the army on July 1st, for on the morning of that day he reached Dover and in the afternoon Carlisle. It must have been, however, with great reluctance that General Lee would adopt a line of action predicated upon Stuart, for it might be for aught he knew that he had met with a disaster, or been driven back into Virginia.

Because General Lee preferred to operate with his army in Pennsylvania until compelled to accept defensive battle with the Army of the Potomac, it by no means follows that an aggressive battle, in which he attacked the enemy as they were assembling, must be unsuccessful, or even that the conditions were necessarily favorable to the enemy. The results of the first and second days' fighting establish this fact; for, though lacking the important qualities of rapidity of movements and promptness of action, they were so favorable to General Lee as to warrant the belief that the third day would result in the total defeat of the enemy. By the light of facts now known from the records, reasonable promptness of action and better co-ordination between the two wings of the army would have secured a complete victory on the second day. The responsibility for the (as it proved to be) fatal delays has led to much crimination and recrimination. The third day's fighting on the right was a miserable failure, because it was so conducted that, in fact, it was divided into two separate and distinct battles, the first fought by artillery without any infantry, and the second by infantry without any artillery. And yet, in spite of the unnecessary delays and want of co-operation on the second day, and the gross mismanagement of the fighting on the third day, the killed, wounded and missing on the Confederate side were not as great as that on the Union side, and the disparity between the numbers in the two armies at the beginning had been almost obliterated by the fighting, for General Meade reported July 4th that the strength of his army (infantry and artillery), equipped, was only 55,000, and General Lee's numbers could not have been much less. ROBERT M. STRIBLING.

Markham, Va., June 4, 1897.

[From the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, July 27, 1897.]

THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.

Judge Reagan on the Hampton Roads Conference.

A REPLY TO WATTERSON.

No Offer Made to Pay for the Slaves-The Testimony of President Davis, Vice-President Stephens and Others.

To the Editor of the Dispatch:

AUSTIN, TEXAS, July 20, 1897.

In the address delivered by me at the annual reunion of Confederate veterans at Nashville, Tenn., on the 22d of June, discussing the question as to why the war was not brought to an end sooner than it was by a compromise, it became necessary for me to refer to a story often told, that President Lincoln, at the Hampton Roads Conference, February 3, 1865, offered to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves of the South to secure peace and a restoration of the Union. This statement has been often made for the purpose of showing that the Southern people might have been paid that sum for their slaves, and that the war might have been terminated and its sacrifices avoided, if President Davis and the Confederate authorities had accepted this offer from President Lincoln. I felt that it was due to the Confederate authorities, due to truth, and necessary as a historic fact, that I should declare, on that great occasion, "that no such offer in any form was made."

The Nashville American newspaper, of the 26th of June, 1897, published a communication from Mr. R. H. Baker, of Watertown, Tenn., under the head lines, "Judge Reagan in Error," in which he took issue with me on that question, thereby necessarily assuming that President Lincoln had made such an offer.

The day on which Mr. Baker's article was published I sent a note to the American, stating that on my return home I would send to that paper a statement of the authorities on which I made the denial that any such offer had been made.

Pursuant to that promise, on the 7th day of July, 1897, I sent my letter of that date to the American, giving some of the authorities on which I based my denial that President Lincoln had offered