Editor’s Note: Many Confederate records from 1864 were lost during Lee’s retreat from Richmond and Petersburg. As a result, many useful primary sources from the Confederate side are simply never going to be available. What might be less well known is that not all of Robert E. Lee’s known writings from the time of the Petersburg Campaign were put into the Official Records. In 1915, some of Lee’s previously unpublished letters and dispatches to Jefferson Davis and the War Department were published in Lee’s Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A., to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of the Confederate States of America, 1862-65. These letters and dispatches came from the private collection of Wymberley Jones De Renne of Wormsloe, Georgia. Many of these letters and telegrams contain insight into the Siege of Petersburg, and will appear here 150 years to the day after they were written by Lee. The numbering system used in the book will also be utilized here, but some numbers may be missing because the corresponding letter or dispatch does not pertain directly to the Siege of Petersburg.
No. 143.
[Telegram]
Received at Richmd. June 27th 1864.
By Telegraph from Head Quarters A. N. Va.
Near Petersburg 28
To Gen. B. Bragg
Col. Gorgas reports four thirty pounder Parrotts and two ten inch mortars in defence around Richmond.(1) I desire to be sent to me immediately two thirty pounder Parrotts & the two ten inch Mortars unless wanted there.(2)
R. E. Lee
377/40 Col.
[Endorsed]
Hd. Qrs. A. N. Va.
Near Petersburg.
June 28TH. 1864.
R. E. Lee
Genl.
Desires two thirty pounder Parrotts & two ten inch Mortars sent to him immediately.
Copy referred to Col. Gorgas for compliance.
R. B. 1320.
Recd. June 28th. 64.
***
No. 144.
[Telegram]
Dunn’s House, June 27th. 64.
Genl. B. Bragg
Please return the two thirty pounder Parrotts that were removed from here unless they are needed at Richmond.(3)
(Sd) R. E. Lee
Genl.1
***
Douglas Southall Freeman’s Notes:
(1) Not found.
(2) To this apparently Gorgas replied with a telegram that appears in the De Renne collection: “I am informed that one 30 prd. and one 4.62 rifle were brought back from Chester. Are these the guns referred to? The guns are now in charge of Lt.-Col. Pemberton.” (June 27.) See No. 144.
(3) See supra, No. 143.
***
Source/Notes:
- Freeman, Douglas Southall (ed.). Lee’s Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. Lee, C. S. A. to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of the Confederate States of America 1862-65. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915, pp. 261-262 ↩