The facts of this matter have been set forth in detail in General Beauregard's official reports, and in other authoritative publications. Only a synopsis of them is necessary in this history. The Confederate army lay at Manassas in the midst of a country abounding in supplies, but its quartermasters and commissaries were not permitted to draw upon that source of supply even in the smallest way. For months, before and after the battle of Manassas, an entirely unused railroad--the Manassas Gap line--lay idle. It penetrated a country to the west of the army whose granaries were full, whose smoke-houses were rich in food, and whose fields were laden with ripening corn. A country similarly rich in food lay to the north, between the Federal and Confederate lines. Its supplies were sure to fall into Federal hands presently if not seized upon by the Confederates while they had opportunity. But the Confederate supply departments at Richmond absolutely forbade their own lieutenants at Manassas to feed and forage the army from such easily available sources. They forbade any food or forage purchases to be made in that region except by purchasing agents of their own, and they required that all food and forage so purchased in the immediate neighborhood of the army should be shipped to Richmond over the already overburdened, single track Virginia Central railroad, and shipped back again in such meager doles as the broken-down railroad could carry. This peculiar imbecility of management continued till very nearly the end of the war to keep the Confederate armies half starved or wholly starved even when their camps lay in the midst of available plenty. The difference between the admirable management of the supply departments at the North and the phenomenally stupid management of the like departments at the South was, from beginning to end, the full equivalent of an army corps' difference in the number of fighting men. Besides Beauregard's army there was a small force at Fredericksburg from which Beauregard was able to draw 1,355 men and six guns in time for the battle. In the last preceding chapter it has been shown how Johnston succeeded in transferring a large part of his army--6,000 men and twenty guns--to Manassas in time for the battle, while none of Patterson's regiments or batteries succeeded even in placing themselves within supporting distance of the Federal army there engaged. Thus, according to the official reports, the Confederates had in all 29,188 men and fifty-five guns with which, in a strong position of their own selection, to meet the advance of McDowell's force estimated by the best Northern authorities at about 34,000 men.