6. Gen. Longstreet did not particularly order the Fifty-Fifth North Carolina Regiment to that vicinity for the protection of the battery. It was one of the regiments of my command, and I sent it down to support two thirty-two-pounders that Col. Cunningham had mounted at a place we had selected farther down the river. The "protection" to the two guns at the fort was the garrison Hood sent to the fort and such other as he directed. The better explanation is, the guns were asked of me to aid the garrison.
7. The statement that "no official report of the affair has yet been received from Gen. French" is misleading, and a report from me would have been supererogatory. The report of that "affair" was strictly a matter between the general commanding and Gen. Hood, who commanded the division and placed the garrison in the fort to protect his extreme left, then "in air."
8. When headquarters announced that "it was some little consolation that only five guns and ammunition chests were lost," it may have been joyous that only the garrison was lost instead of the whole of Hood's Division, of which it formed a part.
9. I must give Gen. Longstreet's adjutant general the manliness to be the only officer in Longstreet's Corps who has, in any manner or form, put on record the fact, directly or indirectly, that there was a garrison placed in that redoubt by order of Longstreet, or Hood, or both, and it was captured by the enemy, and with the garrison went the two guns. To the world has the publication gone that Gen. French lost Stribbling's battery.
10. If it be creditable for headquarters to publish that "this affair is regarded as a most remarkable and discreditable instance of an entire absence of vigilance" on my part, then I claim it is proper for me to remark that this effusion from the head of this army may be also "regarded as a most remarkable and discreditable instance of an entire absence of correctness in stating that affair."
There was no doubt a want of vigilance; and if Gen. Longstreet had desired, he could have learned whether the commander of the garrison put out pickets or not. He could have ascertained what orders were given the commander by his colonel, or Gen. Law, or by Gen. Hood, and fixed the responsibility where it belonged. Who put the garrison there, and what instructions were given the commander? embraces the question. He says he "particularly ordered Col. Connally's regiment there himself for the protection of this battery," which is an error.
Like the ghost of Banquo, Stribbling's battery rises up again at headquarters and will not out.
Headquarters Near Suffolk, April 20, 1863, 7 P.M.
Brig. Gen. H. L. Benning, Commanding Brigade.
Your communication of 3 A.M. to-day has been received.... The cannonade that you heard last night arose from a successful effort of the enemy to capture one of our batteries on the river. Under cover of darkness and the fire of his gunboats and land batteries he landed a force near Hill's Point, and took possession of Stribbling's battery by a surprise.