The Army of the Potomac

104 APPENDIX. should arm no troops whom she did not commission and or- yanizc. lie should not prevent Bartow from going to 1 irginia. with as manv men as chose to follow him, and when they reached Virginia, if anybody would give them arms they might form themselves into a regiment. But they would not be Georgian troops. and Georgig knew nothing about them. Colonel Bartow, raised quite a controversy over this matter, but the Governor was sustained by the people, and Bartow’s men (who by the wa> followed him gallantly on the field of Manassas) were known as the “ Independent regiment.'’ Note B.—I’oge 9. ELOYD AND THE SOUTH. The Prince's charge against Mr. Buchanan’s too famous Secretary, that ho sent “all the contents of the federal arsenals to the South,” is a clean case of crexcil eundo. If the Smith bad no positions more defensible than the character of Mr. Floyd, its conquest would indeed be easy: but that is no excuse for extravagant misrepresentations, which, if they have any force at all, only help to relieve us of responsibilities which we 'Hight to accept. That Floyd would have been only too glad to send all the arms, and all the arsenals, too, of the country to the South, is doubtless true, but there were obstacles in the way of either operation, and it has never yet been clearly proved that he tMrived any Northern State of her just quota of arms to the advantage of any Southern State. Indeed, he is blamed at the South for not doing what he is blamed at the North for doing; the simple fact being that he could not possibly do it. It. was no doubt the opportunity and not the will which he lacked. For I remember that at Washington, in the winter of 18GO-G1, just before Floyd went to Virginia, he did his best to persuade certain southern leaders into a plan for a ri. mg in Washington, or failing in that,

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