Comments on: Nathan George Evans

By: Harry Smeltzer

Harry Smeltzer — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:29:19 +0000

DeWitt,

I don’t have your book – that’s why I didn’t use it as a reference. I’ll have to pick that one up.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I hope you enjoy the site. If you have any more info on Evans (or anything else you think might help), please feel free to share!

By: DeWitt Stone

DeWitt Stone — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:42:12 +0000

You might want to add my book “Wandering to Glory: Confederate Veterans Remember Evans’ Brigade” (USC Press, 2002) to your bibliography. It it the only history so far of the brigade and the only history of Evans himself not written by a descendent.

By: Harry Smeltzer

Harry Smeltzer — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:27:35 +0000

Jim,

I checked the Goree book and the date is as it appears in the book, 10/18/61. Now, it’s a very long letter, and it’s possible that it was written over a period of time and merely started on the 18th. Without seeing the document itself, I can’t know for sure. And we have to consider the possibility that the editor got the date wrong, or it is simply a typo. But there is surely an inconsistency here.

Harry

By: Harry Smeltzer

Harry Smeltzer — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:16:15 +0000

Jim,

Thanks, I’ll take a look at Goree when I get back home and look at it again. I may have got the date wrong and heck, maybe I did a bad job of summarizing the thing. The point of my citing it was that it illustrates Evans’ reputation, but still I should get the facts right.

Harry

By: Jim Morgan

Jim Morgan — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:05:40 +0000

Harry,

That letter from Goree referring to events following Ball’s Bluff couldn’t have been written on “10/18/61.” That must be a typo. The battle was on 10/21. Perhaps the date of the letter should be 11/18/61?

Also, “a few days after Ball’s Bluff,” there were no yankees there for Evans to have attacked anyway. They were gone from the Edwards Ferry beachhead and back in Maryland by 4:00 a.m. on the 24th. Had Evans attacked them before that, he’d have been attacking a dug-in force larger than his own. The 13th Mississippi tried that on the afternoon of the 22nd and got handily repulsed.

Even if Goree was right about Evans being drunk, the criticisms of Evans for not attacking are off base.

regards,
Jim Morgan

By: Harry Smeltzer

Harry Smeltzer — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:45:54 +0000

Thanks, Teej. I’m always leery of wartime charges of drunkenness, because they get bandied about so cavalierly. The only bio of Evans that I have is written partly by a descendant, and you know how those books go. The chapter titled “Kinston” is pretty much a defense of Evans.

Goree does sound a bit like the Church Lady, doesn’t he?

By: Teej Smith

Teej Smith — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:25:54 +0000

Very nicely done, Harry. Goree considered himself somewhat of an authority on men who imbibed. As I recall he claimed Bee was under the influence at Bull Run which ultimatly led to his death. As for Evans, there were quite a few officers who thought he should be cashiered after the Dec. 14, 1862 battle of Kinston. Evans ordered a retreat but his orders only reached half his men. W/O checking to see who was where he ordered the only bridge to safety burned. To add insult to injury, he then fired on his own troops thinking they were federals. One of his officers wrote, “Any private in the ranks could have carried out things better than Gen. Evans. It was disgraceful the way he acted and sacrificed his men. He was drunk as usual, and it seems he did not know what he was about. He was not too drunk, however, to keep in a safe place, and he did not show himself once on the battlefield. He kept on his side of the bridge.”

Teej