ell and General Beauregard; and the result is now a matter
of history.

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 Russel