March 31st.—Gen. Joseph E. Johnston is to command on the Peninsula. The President took an affectionate leave of him the other day; and Gen. Lee held his hand a long time, and admonished him to take care of his life. There was no necessity for him to endanger it—as had just been done by the brave Sydney Johnston at Shiloh, whose fall is now universally lamented. This Gen. Johnston (Joseph E.) I believe has the misfortune to be wounded in most of his battles.
CHAPTER XIII.
Gen. Beauregard succeeds Gen. Sydney Johnston.—Dibble, the traitor.—Enemy at Fredericksburg.—They say we will be subdued by the 15th of June.—Lee rapidly concentrating at Richmond.—Webster, the spy, hung.
April 1st.—Gen. Sydney Johnston having fallen in battle, the command in the West devolved on Gen. Beauregard, whose recent defense at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi, has revived his popularity. But, I repeat, he is a doomed man.
April 2d.—Gen. Wise is here with his report of the Roanoke disaster.
April 3d.—Congress is investigating the Roanoke affair. Mr. Benjamin has been denounced in Congress by Mr. Foote and others as the sole cause of the calamities which have befallen the country.
I wrote a letter to the President, offering to show that I had given no passport to Mr. Dibble, the traitor, and also the evidences, in his own handwriting, that Mr. Benjamin granted it.
April 4th.—The enemy are shelling our camp at Yorktown. I can hear the reports of the guns, of a damp evening. We are sending back defiance with our guns.