HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE UNSEEN
If you are not balked by adherence, either to the rapidly waning
overpositiveness of materialism, or to the ferocious orthodoxy which
denies that there has been any providential interference in human affairs
since that told of in the bible; and if you are exempt from the fear of
being regarded as superstitious which keeps a great number of even the
most cultivated people forever in a fever of incredulity as to every
example of what they call the supernatural, you have long since become
convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by some power or powers
in the unseen. I seem to myself to discern plainly in many important
crises of history the palpable influence of what are to me the directors
of evolution. Washington, to found our great federation, and Lincoln to
perpetuate it--these come at once as examples. Now follow me while I try
to show you what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct of
the brothers' war, of purpose that the north should triumph and save the
union. Of course I am precluded from all attempt to be exhaustive. I shall
only glance at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most
important.
In the first place, they deferred the war until under the effect of
foreign immigration the population of the north greatly outnumbered that
of the south and had become almost unanimous against slavery; and until
the south was almost entirely dependent upon her railroads and her river
and ocean commerce. Had secession occurred because of the excitement over
the application of Missouri for admission into the union with a slave
constitution, there might have been a war, but it would have been short,
the end being that every foot of the public domain admitting of profitable
slave culture would have fallen to the south. Suppose a serious effort had
been made in 1833 to collect the revenue in South Carolina, how long would
the south have endured invasion of the little State and slaughter of its
citizens? Even President Jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to
Calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water. The time was not
then ripe, as the directors saw; and so they effected an adjustment of the
controversy. It did not suit the directors to have the war commence in
1850, for there was at the time no general use of ironclads, and the
railroad system was far from completion. Consider for a moment the
advantage to the north of having gunboats and the disadvantage to the
south of not having them. Fort Donelson really fell because of gunboats.
Grant got re-enforcements in time to save him from disastrous defeat at
Shiloh because of the command of the river by gunboats. The gunboats
caused the fall of Vicksburg. And it was the holding of the James from its
mouth to Fort Darling by gunboats which gave Grant such secure grip at
Petersburg that Richmond had to fall at last, and with it the confederacy.
Now a word as to the southern railroads. Next to the navigable rivers they
were the lines of easiest penetration to invaders. Remember how the
British in 1898 advanced in Africa only as they completed their railroad
behind them. Of course had the railroad been already made their advance
would have been along it. How could Sherman have ever crossed the
devastated tract from Dalton to Atlanta had he been without the railroad
behind him? During his retreat Johnston kept the invading army between
himself and the railroad without which it could not have been subsisted,
and staid so close that Sherman had him constantly in view; conduct which
is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly beyond compare.
To conceive more vividly the river and railroad situation which I am
striving to explain, suppose that during the Revolutionary war the States
had been as dependent as the south afterwards became upon rivers and
railroads, and the British had and the Americans did not have iron-clad
gunboats; as matters now look, our forefathers would have been beaten back
to the foot of the throne. I believe that the railroads alone would have
rendered their subjugation certain.
So much for the matchless judgment shown by the directors in deciding as
to the time of the war. I shall now tell what I have long thought is most
unmistakably their work in conducting that war.
As soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they deprived the better
southern statesmanship of all guidance of the brothers' war now inevitable
and about to begin. In such a war a proper executive is of far more
importance than good legislators and even good generals. Toombs was the
man who stood forth head and shoulders above all others as the logical
president of the southern confederacy. But the wily directors hypnotized
the electors into believing that Davis, because of his military education,
service in Mexico, and four years' secretaryship of war, was the right
man. It is generally believed in the south that the considerations just
mentioned turned the scale in favor of Davis. But sometimes I think that
the true explanation is different. Stephens has told how Toombs was got
out of the way. When this narrative[111] was published, both Toombs and
Davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive, and regard for them
may have kept him silent as to a reported mischance to Toombs, which
provoking opposition--as was whispered--from some of those who had been
among his most earnest supporters, decided him to retire. A biographer
writes: "There was a story, credited in some quarters, that Mr. Toombs's
convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery estranged from him some
of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like
Toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at the banquet
board was another sort of a man from Toombs in a deliberative body."[112]
Something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as
Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty Hall--the name which he gave his
hospitable home at Crawfordville, Georgia. I was present more than once at
such times.
Such could have been the work of the directors.
Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation, was by many
conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs she had two other men, far abler
statesmen than Davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye--A. H.
Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one of these would really
have been the same almost as the election of Toombs, for the three were in
complete accord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So great
was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand
for the place after he had missed it. The directors saw to it that neither
one of the three should be president of the Confederate States.
Suppose that Toombs--or that either Stephens or Cobb--had been made
president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war.
Besides being the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its very
ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis in practical and
business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and
inexperienced woman. Not intending to disparage the other great
qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of all his
contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles
according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed
than were the greenbacks by the other side. A letter of his during the war
to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta, Georgia, published at the time in the
paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the
subject equal to Ricardo's. Toombs as president of the confederacy would
have had congress enact proper currency measures. When he was in place to
advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that
I ever knew.
But this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. He and
Stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling
importance to the confederacy of these two things: (1) to make full use of
cotton as a resource; (2) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. I
make these extracts following from a speech of Stephens's at
Crawfordville, Georgia, November 1, 1862:
"What I said at Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of
you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you
in the public speech last year to which I have alluded. Cotton, I have
maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power,
if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and
efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. Samson's
strength was in his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I
believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more
serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. It
was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. How
was it to be done?... I thought it ... could be done through the
agency of cotton.... I was in favor, as you know, of the government's
taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent
bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of
the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain on this
plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight,
would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. With
this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty,
of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built
in Europe--steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been
procured, equal in every way to the 'Monitor.' Thirty millions would
have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our
purpose. Five might have been ready by the first of January last to
open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. Three of these
could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have
conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. Thus, the debt
could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than
it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as
many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same
way. At a cost of less than one month's present expenditure on our
army, our coast might have been cleared. Besides this, at least two
more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted
upon--this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the
planters of $200,000,000. But this cotton, held in Europe until its
price became fifty cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least
$1,000,000,000 which would not only have kept our finances in sound
condition, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the
entire expenses of the war for years to come."[113]
The reader who carefully reflects over the passage just quoted may well
think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers
than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be
recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could
easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. Such a fleet would have
kept the southern ports open. The advantage of which would have been very
great. It would have held the Mississippi from the first, or have
recovered it after the capture of New Orleans. It would have cleared the
gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not
forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing New
York, and forcing an early peace.
I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. There has been
from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world
demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. I
can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is
as imperishable. But wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while
cotton does neither. If you but safe it against fire it will not
deteriorate by age. In 1884 I was told of a sale just made of some cotton
for which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865. It brought the
market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new
cotton. It was at least 19 years old. Wine and liquor cannot be
compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky
every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of
cash in hand. Now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and
remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry
out cotton in spite of the blockade. The European purchasing agent of the
Confederate States government says "it possessed a latent purchasing
power such as probably no other ... in history ever had."[114] He means
cotton. There were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of
which could be had for the taking--much of it for merely the asking. And
there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot
understand how Professor Brown could have ever written, "The government
had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it."[115]
Surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all
the men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind.
If Toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best
possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. At the
time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that
cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full
and appreciating. It is very probable that almost at the beginning of the
war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with
some warships far superior to any with which the United States could have
then supplied itself. In this case there never would have been any
Monitor. And the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry
and conduct.
During his short premiership of the confederacy Toombs showed marked
ability. Note his extraordinary insight when instructing the
commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor
establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both
conditions;" and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would
be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort Sumter,
and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.[116]
Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. He
counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our
territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of
our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by
attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The
more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this was the true way
for us to have fought. Stephens's influence would have been so great with
Toombs or Cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the
war.
There would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and
no efficient one would have been kept out. Mr. Lincoln would have had an
executive rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched diligently and
with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in
Grant, so Toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern
general in the west. It would have been Forrest. The marvellous military
genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not
have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to
his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort Donelson. The
lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire
command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the
commander to pilot the whole army out. From this moment Forrest moves on
and upward with the stride of a demigod. The night after Johnston has
fallen at Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that Grant is
receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives
Beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. Read
his letter of August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general of the
Confederate States,[117] in which he proposes to do what will virtually
wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of
his biographer.[118] Think of him just after the battle of Chickamauga;
how, had Bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great
victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. Meditate the capture
of Fort Pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat,
by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and
executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant
tactics of all the engagements of the brothers' war. And his incomparable
conduct by which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at Brice's
Cross-Roads. The conception of Forrest is as yet, even in the south, very
untrue. He is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge,
in the very front crying "Mix!" sabring an antagonist, and having his
horse killed under him. When he is rightly studied he is found to be a
happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad
Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as Marion
and Stonewall Jackson, of such as Hannibal, whose action both before,
during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the
northern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the military
problem. I think Forrest's grasp was equal. Toombs would have divined the
genius of Forrest. The confederate army under him would probably have
equalled--possibly surpassed--the achievements and glory of that under
Lee.
It was one of Toombs's epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too
much West Point. Of course one must not unjustly disparage the military
school. Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too
much of it. This was true of Halleck and McClellan; also of Davis and
Bragg. Mr. Davis, by reason of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not
nearly so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few real generals
in the south. Toombs, with the help of Stephens and all the real statesmen
of the section, would have kept the best generals in command.
Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been president these things would
have followed:
1. The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given
her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public
credit. It would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats
out of our rivers.
2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it
was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly
outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat.
3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best
commanders.
These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the
south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of
the French Commune in 1871. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of
money and money's worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could
have all been had by mere taking.[119] But the Commune made no use of this
great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him
that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had
had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the
southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with
so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were
all ready. "Confederate States" was instantaneously substituted for
"United States" in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and the
thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government
seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United
States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained
statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great
resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder
than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You
can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate
put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as
ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people.
That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the
only men who could have saved the southern cause.
To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told.
Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the
importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had
given him resistless prestige. Beauregard's failure to make use of the
daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been
prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been
sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than
McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the
Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal.
Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him
to the James. The tone of McClellan's boasting over the flank movement by
which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's army within
cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously
escaped an unshunnable peril.
The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that
Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville.
They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of
here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi
shortly after the fall of Vicksburg.
I need not go further. The student of the brothers' war can add to the
foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the
unseen.
Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against
increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of
all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson,
Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These
should have some such eternizing epitaph as this:
"For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy."
The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has
incalculably deepened the interest I take in Vergil's great description.
Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his goddess mother
removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave AEneas to see Neptune,
Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid
illumination falls upon the statement,
"Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae
Numina magna deum."[120]