Recollections of General Beauregard's Service in West Tennessee in the Spring of 1862.
By General Thomas Jordan.
General G. T. Beauregard, New Orleans, La.:
My Dear General—In compliance with your request, I make the following statement of my recollections of an important incident of your official visit to the headquarters of General Albert Sidney Johnston, at Bowling Green, Kentucky, early in the month of February, 1862.
Upon leaving Centreville, Virginia, at the end of January, 1862, under orders attaching you to the Confederate forces in the West, you proceeded directly to Bowling Green to report to and confer with General Johnston; while, under your instructions, I repaired to Richmond to discuss with the Confederate Secretary of War certain matters, the arrangement of which you regarded as vital to the effective discharge of the duties that were to be devolved upon you. My orders were to meet you subsequently at Columbus, Kentucky, the headquarters of Major-General Polk, whom you were to succeed in command.
My visit to Richmond having been in the main unfruitful, I proceeded immediately to Columbus, where I soon received telegraphic orders to retrace my steps to meet you at Jackson, West Tennessee, at which place I joined you within a week after the fall of Fort Donelson.
At once, in the course of a full conversation with me touching your visit to Bowling Green, you stated first your grievous disappointment at finding the Confederate force there so very much smaller than you had been led to suppose before leaving Virginia—while your preconceived opinion of the malstrategic character of the position had been fully sustained by the state of affairs which you found there. The position which you had previously regarded as fatally salient and unsupported, you found ready to fall by its own weight, in consequence of the appearance in the Tennessee river of a heavy offensive Federal force under General Grant on the one side, and of General Buell on the other, threatening Nashville in co-operation with the turning movement on the other flank.
As you informed me, your views of the exigent character of the
