As an instance of the changes which the whirligig of time brings round, I will relate a fact which is purely personal. In December, 1878, I was appointed a member of the Commission authorized by Congress to investigate the Yellow Fever Epidemic of that year, and sessions were held in several southern cities, including New Orleans. While the Commission was in session in that city, General Beauregard was a regular attendant at the meetings, and for some days I was thrown much with him, and we talked over together the campaign of 1861. In answer to one of my questions, why the southern army did not follow up their victory and capture the city of Washington, he replied that President Davis was strongly of the opinion that such an event would produce a revulsion of feeling on the part of northern sympathizers with the south and thus would defeat their own purpose.
A few years later, in the summer of 1883, I was a member of the Board of Visitors appointed by the President to make the annual examination at Annapolis, Maryland, where I was thrown into intimate relations with General McDowell. I slept under the same roof with him and ate at the same table, and often we discussed military matters. These two episodes in my life are now pleasant events to remember.
I was deeply impressed with General McDowell's strict abstinence from the use of champagne and other alcoholic liquors. Receiving his early education in France, one would suppose that, like the French boys who were his companions, he would drink Bordeaux wine as freely as milk; but he told me that never in Europe or here was he in the habit of taking anything stronger than water. In my intercourse with him for a week I saw nothing in his life to disprove this statement.
Mr. James Ford Rhodes said:
The reports in circulation after the Battle of Bull Run, regarding McDowell, are an instance of the hasty and uncharitable judgment of newspapers and their readers. It was at once said that the Union defeat was due to McDowell's intoxication. As a matter of fact McDowell never in his life drank a drop of beer, wine, or any alcoholic beverage, and curiously enough too did not use tobacco in any form. The proof of this is undoubted, but as part of it I may mention the positive assurances of Dr. William H. Russell, the American correspondent of the London Times, sometimes spoken of as "Bull-Run Russell," who knew McDowell well and saw him on the day of the battle, and of Colonel Franklin Haven, who served on his staff during the war. Dr. Russell told me that on the morning of the battle McDowell ate watermelon for breakfast, and the free indulgence in this succulent fruit made him ill, which was the sole foundation for the cruel report.[5]
[5] Since my statement our associate Barrett Wendell has communicated to me this information: "Edmund Clarence Stedman, who was present at Bull Run as a reporter, told me that on the night before the battle McDowell, hungry after his preparation, was served at his supper with canned fruit,—I think peaches,—and ate heartily of them. The fruit was probably tainted and brought on an attack of cholera morbus, from which Stedman saw him acutely suffering while the battle was in progress." I have no doubt that this is a more accurate version than Russell's.