A sudden and very welcome change in my position now took place. I cannot say that my connection with General Longstreet had been pleasant to me personally, for the reason that he was disposed to be reserved himself, while the principal members of his staff, with two exceptions, were positively disagreeable. Colonel Sorrell, the Adjutant-General, was bad tempered and inclined to be overbearing. Colonel Fairfax was clownish and silly, and Major Walton, whom I have mentioned before, was always supercilious. Colonel Osman Latrobe was courteous enough at all times, and Colonel Manning was exceedingly kind and considerate. Besides Colonel Manning, I had not a friend on the staff. The staff had “no use” for me, which was perhaps not surprising, as I was a stranger and a foreigner, and I was on no better terms with them in 1864 than I had been in 1862. Still I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had a good reputation in the army as an officer, and that it was known at General Lee’s head-quarters that the whole responsibility in the Ordnance Department of the corps rested upon me. General Anderson had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and was to take command of a corps at Petersburg when General Longstreet should return to duty, and he was kind enough to tell me that if Colonel Baldwin, the Chief of Ordnance of the army, would consent to the transfer, he would take me with him to Petersburg, and make me Chief Ordnance Officer of his corps. This would have given me the rank of Major or Lieutenant-Colonel. I rode over to Petersburg to see Colonel Baldwin, and he told me that he would be delighted to see me promoted, and would order the assignment to be made. Unfortunately, though properly, General Anderson, upon reflection, came to the conclusion that it would not be just to Captain E. N. Thurston, who had been his Ordnance Officer while he was in command of a division, to promote me over his head, and that he ought to make Captain Thurston his Chief Ordnance Officer. I assented, of course, but was determined to seize any opportunity that offered to leave Longstreet’s Corps. As far back, indeed, as the month of June I had made a written application to be relieved from duty with the command. The opportunity came when I least expected it. General Fitzhugh Lee, a nephew of General R. E. Lee, while in the command of the cavalry in the Valley of Virginia had lost his Ordnance Officer, Captain Isaac Walke, of Norfolk, Virginia, who was killed in action, to the deep regret of his comrades. Through some kind friend General Lee heard of me. It seems that he had told Colonel Baldwin and others that he wanted an officer to take Captain Walke’s place, who was both “a good officer and a gentleman.” To my great pleasure I was recommended to him. He made application for me, and I was relieved from duty with Longstreet’s Corps and directed to report to General Fitz Lee at Richmond. This was in November, 1864.

General Longstreet had already resumed command of the 1st Corps, and I have not seen him since I took leave of him before I went to join Fitz Lee. The reputation that Longstreet had as a fighting man was unquestionably deserved, and when in action there was no lack of energy or of quickness of perception, but he was somewhat sluggish by nature, and I saw nothing in him at any time to make me believe that his capacity went beyond the power to conduct a square hard fight. The power of combination he did not possess, and whenever he had an independent command he was unsuccessful. A better officer to execute a prescribed movement, and make such variations in it as the exigencies of the battle required, would be hard to find, but he needed always a superior mind to plan the campaign and fix the order of battle. It should be said of Longstreet, especially in view of his political course since the war, that he never faltered or hesitated in his devotion to the Confederate cause. A stauncher soldier the South did not have, and at Appomattox, when hope was gone, and General Lee, to prevent the useless loss of blood, was prepared to surrender, Longstreet pleaded for permission to take the remnant of his men and endeavor to cut his way through the surrounding enemy. But Longstreet was a soldier, and nothing else. Of the principles that underlay secession he knew nothing, and when we were defeated, and the war was over, he considered that might had made the North right, and that he could, without any impropriety, go over to the victors. The whirligig of time brought its revenges, however, when Longstreet, at the head of the Metropolitan Police in New Orleans, endeavoring to maintain, by armed force, the political supremacy of the “carpet-baggers,” was confronted and routed by the old soldiers of his corps, whom he had again and again led to victory in Virginia. They spared him in remembrance of what he had been, but they drove his Metropolitan Police like rabbits before them.

I have come across a note written by Mr. Frank Vizetelly, of the Illustrated London News, in 1864, in response to enquiries of one of my relatives in London, where Mr. Vizetelly then was. I give what he says, as the testimony of one who knew me while I was with Longstreet. The note is as follows: “Will you tell your friend that I knew Lieutenant Dawson very well indeed. He is Ordnance Officer to General Longstreet, and when I left the Confederacy, at the end of January, he was quite well. He is very much liked, and is a very good officer, and, I have no doubt, will make his way.” I should like to quote here also what was said by the Richmond Examiner, in 1863, about the Englishmen then in the Confederacy: