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Chapter 9 THE QUESTION OF EXECUTIVE POLICY was by no means left at rest among the exponents of public opinion in Richmond. While there was a large faction supporting the President in his disapproval of General Johnston’s method of playing the game of war with General Sherman in northern Georgia, many a bitter comment was heard upon Mr. Davis’s final action in relieving Johnston of his command. People we met said outspokenly that the Executive’s animus against Johnston was based upon a petty feud between their wives, who had been daily associates and friends in the old Washington days. Others warmly defended Mr. Davis, declaring that the brilliant and aggressive Hood was the general of all others to make up for Johnston’s delay in bringing matters to a crisis. It is certain that Johnston felt keenly the blow of his removal. One of my cousins, close to this general throughout the war, told me the great soldier shed tears of bitter mortification upon his removal, and that he heard him say: “I had drawn and drawn and drawn Sherman, and just when I got him where I wanted him to be, I was taken away.” And now for a stirring chapter in family annals, supplied by our midshipman , between whom and his mother and sister the veil of silence and uncertainty had fallen for several months. I knew that England had struck her fiercest blow at Spain by preying upon her commerce in open waters; that France, in the Seven Years’ War, had sent numbers of bold privateers to destroy shipping off the English coast and in the Irish Sea; that, following these depredations, “all England had gone mad after privateering,” and had sent out hundreds of vessels great and small to put the Frenchmen back in their proper places. Anyone might read of the liberal use made by America in her war for independence of the fleets of commissioned privateers sent forth to harry Britain upon the ocean. It was all fair play Refugitta of Richmond 144 according to historical precedent, and our President had issued letters of marque and reprisal to private armed ships to do their best against Northern merchant-men. All that one felt in cold blood, however, was swept away in the thrilling excitement of actual adventure. I may here state that a diary (exacted of their midshipmen by the Confederate navy, following the old-time custom of the navies of England and the United States), kept by my brother on the cruise of the Chickamauga and during the siege of Fort Fisher, achieved, unexpectedly to him, the honor of passing into the archives of the State Department at Washington, where, in “Room 311, Case 21,” this boy’s record of sea adventure is now preserved. Found in the naval school after the occupation of Richmond by Lieutenant-Commander James Parker, U.S.N., it was sent by him to the Navy Department in Washington. “The journal of Midshipman Cary,” says Commander Parker, “seemed to me a very important and valuable contribution to the naval side of a dispute between Admiral Porter and General Butler as to the propriety of the withdrawal of the troops at Fort Fisher. It was just such a journal as I would have kept in my midshipman days fifteen or more years before; and its entire truthfulness and correctness were apparent, colored as they were by boyish enthusiasm and frankness of statement. “I promptly sent it to the Navy Department. I heard no more of it until its reappearance several years later in evidence before the Geneva Tribunal; where it contributed largely to fix the responsibility of Great Britain for the destruction of our shipping by these Confederate cruisers, whose doings were faithfully chronicled in the journal.” How the diary came to be discovered in the files of the Navy Department by those charged with preparing the case of the United States for the Geneva Tribunal, and extracts from it edited for that case, Mr. Cary has never heard. It was not until the publication of the arbitration proceedings in 1871 that he learned of the continued existence of his almost forgotten journal, or that it had so contributed to the making of history. “The purpose of the production of the journal,” writes Mr. Cary, “was to show that the British had granted undue favors to the Chickamauga during her call at their neutral port at St. George’s in Bermuda, both in respect of coal...

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