The Artillery at Second Manassas—Rejoinder of General S. D. Lee to General Longstreet.
In the November number of the Southern Historical Society Papers is the following letter of General Longstreet's, supplemented by one from Colonel J. B. Walton, claiming to be a reply to my article in the August number touching the artillery used at the battle of second Manassas:
Southern Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia:
In your issue of last month a paper appears from the pen of General S. D. Lee, claimed to be a reply to a part of my official report of the second battle of Manassas as published in an article on the Gettysburg campaign by myself.
No part of my official report of second Manassas was published in any of my writings upon Gettysburg. In my last I gave an account of the leading features of second Manassas, as connected with my command and myself, but distinctly announced in that paper that my sole purpose was to illustrate, as well as might be, the official as well as personal relations between General R. E. Lee and myself.
General S. D. Lee seems to have started from erroneous premises, therefore, and may mislead some of your readers.
The inclosed account of the artillery combat of second Manassas from Colonel J. B. Walton, commander of the Washington artillery of New Orleans upon that field, seems to meet the only real point of issue made by General S. D. Lee. I have to ask, therefore, that you give it a place in your Papers whenever it may be convenient.
I am, very respectfully, your most obedient servant,
The above letter, including Colonel Walton's, does not at all meet the issue I raised in my article in the August number of the Historical Society Papers, but is a clear ignoring and evasion of that issue.
The point raised in my article was that my eighteen (18) guns consisting of the batteries of Eubank, Jordan, Parker, Rhett, and a section of Grimes' battery under Lieutenant Cakum (to use the-words of General R. E. Lee's official report), posted "in a position a little in advance of Longstreet's left," together with General Jackson's infantry, had something to do with the repulse of the enemy on the 30th August, 1862, in their desperate and gallant assault on General Jackson's position.
