Thursday, June 20, 2013

July 6, 1862---"Ignorance."



JULY 6, 1862:              

The Richmond Daily Examiner takes the Confederate Army to task for botching the victories of the Seven Days’ Battles:

“The glory and fruits of our victory may have been seriously diminished by the grave mishap or fault by which the enemy was permitted to leave his camp on the south side of the Chickahominy, in an open country, and to plunge into the dense cover of wood and swamp, where the best portion of four or five days has been consumed in hunting him and finding out his new position… The future historian of this war, if he does justice to any feature of its progress, will present the saddest picture in all his narrative when he tells how our wounded soldiers are treated…But, alas! what shall he say for those who are in authority, whose business it was to have made preparations for several thousand wounded, (for the most short-sighted knew that they would be numbered by thousands), when he tells that to incomplete were the arrangements that the houses prepared for hospitals were not capable of accommodating one-fourth of those requiring attention…that scores of wagons filled with men who have suffered in defence of the Capital of the Confederacy, have been driven about from one place to another, sometimes for two or three hours, vainly endeavoring to find room...Nor is there any excuse for this. Not even that which is so often offered for the short-comings of those who control many of our Government Departments -- ignorance.”


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