A sudden and very welcome change in my position now took place.
I cannot say that my connection with General Longstreet had been
pleasant to me personally, for the reason that he was disposed to
be reserved himself, while the principal members of his staff, with
two exceptions, were positively disagreeable. Colonel Sorrell, the
Adjutant-General, was bad tempered and inclined to be overbearing.
Colonel Fairfax was clownish and silly, and Major Walton, whom
I have mentioned before, was always supercilious. Colonel Osman
Latrobe was courteous enough at all times, and Colonel Manning was
exceedingly kind and considerate. Besides Colonel Manning, I had
not a friend on the staff. The staff had “no use” for me, which
was perhaps not surprising, as I was a stranger and a foreigner,
and I was on no better terms with them in 1864 than I had been in
1862. Still I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had a good
reputation in the army as an officer, and that it was known at
General Lee’s head-quarters that the whole responsibility in the
Ordnance Department of the corps rested upon me. General Anderson
had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and was to
take command of a corps at Petersburg when General Longstreet
should return to duty, and he was kind enough to tell me that if
Colonel Baldwin, the Chief of Ordnance of the army, would consent
to the transfer, he would take me with him to Petersburg, and make
me Chief Ordnance Officer of his corps. This would have given me
the rank of Major or Lieutenant-Colonel. I rode over to Petersburg
to see Colonel Baldwin, and he told me that he would be delighted
to see me promoted, and would order the assignment to be made.
Unfortunately, though properly, General Anderson, upon reflection,
came to the conclusion that it would not be just to Captain E. N.
Thurston, who had been his Ordnance Officer while he was in command
of a division, to promote me over his head, and that he ought to
make Captain Thurston his Chief Ordnance Officer. I assented, of
course, but was determined to seize any opportunity that offered
to leave Longstreet’s Corps. As far back, indeed, as the month of
June I had made a written application to be relieved from duty with
the command. The opportunity came when I least expected it. General
Fitzhugh Lee, a nephew of General R. E. Lee, while in the command
of the cavalry in the Valley of Virginia had lost his Ordnance
Officer, Captain Isaac Walke, of Norfolk, Virginia, who was killed
in action, to the deep regret of his comrades. Through some kind
friend General Lee heard of me. It seems that he had told Colonel
Baldwin and others that he wanted an officer to take Captain
Walke’s place, who was both “a good officer and a gentleman.” To
my great pleasure I was recommended to him. He made application
for me, and I was relieved from duty with Longstreet’s Corps and
directed to report to General Fitz Lee at Richmond. This was in
November, 1864.
General Longstreet had already resumed command of the 1st Corps,
and I have not seen him since I took leave of him before I went to
join Fitz Lee. The reputation that Longstreet had as a fighting
man was unquestionably deserved, and when in action there was no
lack of energy or of quickness of perception, but he was somewhat
sluggish by nature, and I saw nothing in him at any time to make
me believe that his capacity went beyond the power to conduct a
square hard fight. The power of combination he did not possess,
and whenever he had an independent command he was unsuccessful.
A better officer to execute a prescribed movement, and make such
variations in it as the exigencies of the battle required, would
be hard to find, but he needed always a superior mind to plan
the campaign and fix the order of battle. It should be said of
Longstreet, especially in view of his political course since the
war, that he never faltered or hesitated in his devotion to the
Confederate cause. A stauncher soldier the South did not have, and
at Appomattox, when hope was gone, and General Lee, to prevent
the useless loss of blood, was prepared to surrender, Longstreet
pleaded for permission to take the remnant of his men and endeavor
to cut his way through the surrounding enemy. But Longstreet was
a soldier, and nothing else. Of the principles that underlay
secession he knew nothing, and when we were defeated, and the war
was over, he considered that might had made the North right, and
that he could, without any impropriety, go over to the victors. The
whirligig of time brought its revenges, however, when Longstreet,
at the head of the Metropolitan Police in New Orleans, endeavoring
to maintain, by armed force, the political supremacy of the
“carpet-baggers,” was confronted and routed by the old soldiers of
his corps, whom he had again and again led to victory in Virginia.
They spared him in remembrance of what he had been, but they drove
his Metropolitan Police like rabbits before them.
I have come across a note written by Mr. Frank Vizetelly, of the
_Illustrated London News_, in 1864, in response to enquiries of one
of my relatives in London, where Mr. Vizetelly then was. I give
what he says, as the testimony of one who knew me while I was with
Longstreet. The note is as follows: “Will you tell your friend that
I knew Lieutenant Dawson very well indeed. He is Ordnance Officer
to General Longstreet, and when I left the Confederacy, at the end
of January, he was quite well. He is very much liked, and is a very
good officer, and, I have no doubt, will make his way.” I should
like to quote here also what was said by the Richmond _Examiner_,
in 1863, about the Englishmen then in the Confederacy: