James Island, June 6, 1862.
Dear General,—I understand your wish to be to make an armed reconnoissance of the enemy’s position, and if the result be favorable, to follow it up by a dash, in order to seize James Island below James River and Newton Cut.
We shall probably be as well able to make it day after to-morrow (daylight) as at any other time.
Should you decide to make it day after to-morrow, it is of the first consequence to make that decision without delay. It will require all day to-morrow to prepare for it. I would suggest that not more than three companies be left at Legareville; that everything else be brought over to-morrow, including the six guns of Hamilton’s battery; that arrangements be made with the gunboats to open cross-fires. The system of signals will require careful arrangement.
I desire that the dash be successful, and therefore I want to see every man thrown in. But I desire particularly to express my judgment that, in the present position of our troops, twenty-four hours of vigorous work is absolutely essential in the way of preparation.
Very truly yours,
Isaac I. Stevens.
Brigadier-General Benham.
How completely this judicious caution as to the necessity of due preparation was thrown away upon the opinionated Benham was proved ten days later, but for the present he gave up the idea of a dash.
In a letter to his wife, dated June 11, General Stevens gives expression to his disgust at the incompetents set over him:—
“I am not in very good spirits to-night, for the reason that I have two commanders, Hunter and Benham, who are imbecile, vacillating, and utterly unfit to command. Why it has been my fortune to be placed in positions where I was of little account, and to be subjected to such extreme mortification and annoyance, is beyond my imagining. It may not even teach me patience. I shall, however, do the best I can. If the authorities would send some man not altogether incompetent, I should be better satisfied. Why can’t Mansfield be sent here, and both Hunter and Benham relieved? As for myself, I am tabooed. No proper use is intended to be made of me, and as everybody is in the humor to speak highly of my abilities, I shall be held in part responsible for the follies of others. Benham is an ass,—a dreadful man, of no earthly use except as a nuisance and obstruction.”