*apable notice of a disaster.

hich was on the lips of the w od patch of indignation. Congress, confessing the " of the ecouremos Congress ordered an in which Held the bisme o the War Department The President, seeing the resentment of the p Congress, In. defauce, as it seemed,

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Richmond for a few days, were present. In answer to a direct interrogatory of the President, the vice-President suggested General Beauregard as a proper selection; to which the Secretary replied, the personal relations of the President to that officer precluded his selection. The vice-President thereupon proposed General Joseph E. Johnston; and to this the same reply was made. Very much to the embarrassment of General Lee, the vice-President, in a third answer, named him; and the appointment was made.* While General Joseph E. Johnston commanded the army at Centreville, he was summoned to Richmond by a letter from the President to confer upon a subject in which the importance of secrecy would admit, as the letter alleged, of no other manner of communication. The Cabinet was called in session to receive the visit of General Johnston. The President explained that he wished to discuss the propriety and practicability of withdrawing the army from Centreville to a less exposed position. General Johnston said the position was untenable, so soon as McClellan was willing or ready to move against it. It was well known, at least to the President and Secretary of War, that against General Johnston's urgent protests, often repeated, the Commissary-General had erected a meat packing establishment, within army lines, as if the government intended to hold the army there, and that immense quantities of supplies were there stored, impossible to be moved, in a reasonable time. General Johnston stated the low condition of the artillery horses, the impassable state of the country and the impossibility of accomplishing the withdrawal, at that time, or until the season was so far advanced as to make the roads available. The discussion was understood to be strictly confidential and continued, in minutest details, from ten o'clock in the morning until late in the afternoon. General Johnston went directly from the council to his hotel and, upon entering, was accosted by Colonel Pender, commanding a Regiment in his army, now just returning from leave of absence at his home in North Carolina, inquiring if he had heard the report, circulating in the hotel, that the Cabinet had been engaged all day in discussing the withdrawal of the army. The next morning, on his way to Centreville, General Johnston was told by a

*Reply of A. H. Stephens to Richard Taylor, North American Review.

passenger, a civilian with whom he was on social terms, that the Cabinet, the day before, had considered the policy of withdrawing the army.* Gentlemen visiting the army, after association with Secretary Benjamin, were not slow in repeating to General Johnston specific allegations of the Secretary charging the commanding General with want of enterprise in face of the enemy. A prominent politician, walking the streets of Richmond, on the morning of May 11, 1862, much cast down, remarked to his acquaintances, that a sad day had befallen the Confederacy; the government was about to destroy the iron clad ram "Virginia," on the coast of the Chesapeake; he had heard it at the Capitol, from the highest authority. The ram was actually destroyed on that day, at a point inaccessible to telegraphic intercourse. Formal investigation by the government acquitted Commodore Tatnall, who commanded, but pronounced the act of destruction unjustifiable. The rank of General, "full" General, as it was known by the people, was created by the Provisional Congress. Five Generals were to be appointed from the army. In all cases where officers had resigned from the United States army, or might, in six months from the passage of the act, resign, to enter the Confederate States army, the new commissions should bear "one and the same date;" and the object of issuing, to that class of officers, commissions of the "same date was to preserve, in the new service, the relative rank held by them in the old. Thus the officers were required to sacrifice nothing of honorable pride of rank in the change; and it was hoped the cause would receive the benefit of the esprit du corps thus preserved. The President, holding the Constitutional rank of Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, could not create rank for officers. Nor had he the least legal authority to act, alone, in raising and organizing an army. In due time, the President issued commissions of General to five officers. To this extent he observed the law. But the commissions failed to bear "one and the same date." They were published to the army in the following order: S. Cooper, Colonel U. S. A., to rank from May 16; A. S. Johnston, Colonel U. S. A., to rank from May 28; R. E. Lee,

* Johnston's Narrative, pp. 96, 97.

+ Pollard's Second Year of the War.