The Day of the Confederacy
By Nathaniel W. Stephenson
A Chronicle of the Embattled South
Volume 30 of the
Chronicles of America Series
?
Allen Johnson, Editor
Assistant Editors
Gerhard R. Lomer
Charles W. Jefferys
Abraham Lincoln Edition
New Haven: Yale University Press
Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.
London: Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
1919
Copyright, 1919
by Yale University Press
CONTENTS
The Day of the Confederacy
Chapter Chapter Title Page
I. The Secession Movement 1
II. The Davis Government 24
III. The Fall of King Cotton 45
IV. Reaction Against Richmond 58
V. The Critical Year 87
VI. Life in the Confederacy 99
VII. The Turning of the Tide 112
VIII. A Game of Chance 130
IX. Desperate Remedies 145
X. Disintegration 165
XI. An Attempted Revolution 183
XII. The Last Word 200
Bibliographical Note 205
Index 209
THE DAY OF THE CONFEDERACY
?
CHAPTER I.
The Secession Movement
The secession movement had three distinct stages. The first, beginning
with the news that Lincoln was elected, closed with the news, sent
broadcast over the South from Charleston, that Federal troops had taken
possession of Fort Sumter on the night of the 26th of December. During
this period the likelihood of secession was the topic of discussion in
the lower South. What to do in case the lower South seceded was the
question which perplexed the upper South. In this period no State north
of South Carolina contemplated taking the initiative. In the
Southeastern and Gulf States immediate action of some sort was expected.
Whether it would be secession or some other new course was not certain
on the day of Lincoln's election.
Various States earlier in the year had provided for conventions of their
people in the event of a Republican victory. The first to assemble was
the convention of South Carolina, which organized at Columbia, on
December 17, 1860. Two weeks earlier Congress had met. Northerners and
Southerners had at once joined issue on their relation in the Union. The
House had appointed its committee of thirty-three to consider the
condition of the country. So unpromising indeed from the Southern point
of view had been the early discussions of this committee that a
conference of Southern members of Congress had sent out their famous
address To Our Constituents: "The argument is exhausted. All hope of
relief in the Union ... is extinguished, and we trust the South will not
be deceived by appearances or the pretense of new guarantees. In our
judgment the Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing
that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor,
safety, and independence of the Southern people require the organization
of a Southern Confederacy--a result to be obtained only by separate
state secession." Among the signers of this address were the two
statesmen who had in native talent no superiors at Washington--Judah P.
Benjamin of Louisiana and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
The appeal To Our Constituents was not the only assurance of support
tendered to the convention of South Carolina. To represent them at this
convention the governors of Alabama and Mississippi had appointed
delegates. Mr. Hooker of Mississippi and Mr. Elmore of Alabama made
addresses before the convention on the night of the 17th of December.
Both reiterated views which during two days of lobbying they had
disseminated in Columbia "on all proper occasions." Their argument,
summed up in Elmore's report to Governor Moore of Alabama, was "that the
only course to unite the Southern States in any plan of coöperation
which could promise safety was for South Carolina to take the lead and
secede at once without delay or hesitation ... that the only effective
plan of coöperation must ensue after one State had seceded and presented
the issue when the plain question would be presented to the other
Southern States whether they would stand by the seceding State engaged
in a common cause or abandon her to the fate of coercion by the arms of
the Government of the United States."
Ten years before, in the unsuccessful secession movement of 1850 and
1851, Andrew Pickens Butler, perhaps the ablest South Carolinian then
living, strove to arrest the movement by exactly the opposite argument.
Though desiring secession, he threw all his weight against it because
the rest of the South was averse. He charged his opponents, whose leader
was Robert Barnwell Rhett, with aiming to place the other Southern
States "in such circumstances that, having a common destiny, they would
be compelled to be involved in a common sacrifice." He protested that
"to force a sovereign State to take a position against its consent is to
make of it a reluctant associate.... Both interest and honor must
require the Southern States to take council together."
That acute thinker was now in his grave. The bold enthusiast whom he
defeated in 1851 had now no opponent that was his match. No great
personality resisted the fiery advocates from Alabama and Mississippi.
Their advice was accepted. On December 20, 1860, the cause that ten
years before had failed was successful. The convention, having adjourned
from Columbia to Charleston, passed an ordinance of secession.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, at a hundred meetings, the secession issue was
being hotly discussed. But there was not yet any certainty which way the
scale would turn. An invitation from South Carolina to join in a general
Southern convention had been declined by the Governor in November.
Governor Brown has left an account ascribing the comparative coolness
and deliberation of the hour to the prevailing impression that President
Buchanan had pledged himself not to alter the military status at
Charleston. In an interview between South Carolina representatives and
the President, the Carolinians understood that such a pledge was given.
"It was generally understood by the country," says Governor Brown, "that
such an agreement ... had been entered into ... and that Governor Floyd
of Virginia, then Secretary of War, had expressed his determination to
resign his position in the Cabinet in case of the refusal of the
President to carry out the agreement in good faith. The resignation of
Governor Floyd was therefore naturally looked upon, should it occur, as
a signal given to the South that reinforcements were to be sent to
Charleston and that the coercive policy had been adopted by the Federal
Government."
While the "canvass in Georgia for members of the State convention was
progressing with much interest on both sides," there came suddenly the
news that Anderson had transferred his garrison from Fort Moultrie to
the island fortress of Sumter. That same day commissioners from South
Carolina, newly arrived at Washington, sought in vain to persuade the
President to order Anderson back to Moultrie. The Secretary of War made
the subject an issue before the Cabinet. Unable to carry his point, two
days later he resigned. ¹
¹ The President had already asked for Floyd's resignation because of
financial irregularities, and Floyd was shrewd enough to use Anderson's
coup as an excuse for resigning. See Rhodes, History of the United
States, vol. II pp. 225, 236 (note).
The Georgia Governor, who had not hitherto been in the front rank of the
aggressives, now struck a great blow. Senator Toombs had telegraphed
from Washington that Fort Pulaski, guarding the Savannah River, was "in
danger." The Governor had reached the same conclusion. He mustered the
state militia and seized Fort Pulaski. Early in the morning on January
3, 1861, the fort was occupied by Georgia troops. Shortly afterward,
Brown wrote to a commissioner sent by the Governor of Alabama to confer
with him: "While many of our most patriotic and intelligent citizens in
both States have doubted the propriety of immediate secession, I feel
quite confident that recent events have dispelled those doubts from the
minds of most men who have, till within the past few days, honestly
sustained them." The first stage of the secession movement was at an
end; the second had begun.
A belief that Washington had entered upon a policy of aggression swept
the lower South. The state conventions assembling about this time passed
ordinances of secession--Mississippi, January 9; Florida, January 10;
Alabama, January 11; Georgia, January 19; Louisiana, January 26; Texas,
February 1. But this result was not achieved without considerable
opposition. In Georgia the Unionists put up a stout fight. The issue was
not upon the right to secede--virtually no one denied the right--but
upon the wisdom of invoking the right. Stephens, gloomy and pessimistic,
led the opposition. Toombs came down from Washington to take part with
the secessionists. From South Carolina and Alabama, both ceaselessly
active for secession, commissioners appeared to lobby at Milledgeville,
as commissioners of Alabama and Mississippi had lobbied at Columbia.
Besides the out-and-out Unionists, there were those who wanted to
temporize, to threaten the North, and to wait for developments. The
motion on which these men and the Unionists made their last stand
together went against them 164 to 133. Then at last came the square
question: Shall we secede? Even on this question, the minority was
dangerously large. Though the temporizers came over to the
secessionists, and with them came Stephens, there was still a minority
of 89 irreconcilables against the majority numbering 208.
"My allegiance," said Stephens afterwards, "was, as I considered it, not
due to the United States, or to the people of the United States, but to
Georgia, in her sovereign capacity. Georgia had never parted with her
right to demand the ultimate allegiance of her citizens."
The attempt in Georgia to restrain impetuosity and advance with
deliberation was paralleled in Alabama, where also the aggressives were
determined not to permit delay. In the Alabama convention, the
conservatives brought forward a plan for a general Southern convention
to be held at Nashville in February. It was rejected by a vote of 54 to
45. An attempt to delay secession until after the 4th of March was
defeated by the same vote.
The determination of the radicals to precipitate the issue received
interesting criticism from the Governor of Texas, old Sam Houston. To a
commissioner from Alabama who was sent out to preach the cause in Texas
the Governor wrote, in substance, that since Alabama would not wait to
consult the people of Texas he saw nothing to discuss at that time, and
he went on to say:
Recognizing as I do the fact that the sectional tendencies of the Black
Republican party call for determined constitutional resistance at the
hands of the united South, I also feel that the million and a half of
noble-hearted, conservative men who have stood by the South, even to
this hour, deserve some sympathy and support. Although we have lost the
day, we have to recollect that our conservative Northern friends cast
over a quarter of a million more votes against the Black Republicans
than we of the entire South. I cannot declare myself ready to desert
them as well as our Southern brethren of the border (and such, I
believe, will be the sentiment of Texas) until at least one firm attempt
has been made to preserve our constitutional rights within the Union.
Nevertheless, Houston was not able to control his State. Delegates from
Texas attended the later sessions of a general Congress of the seceding
States which, on the invitation of Alabama, met at Montgomery on the 4th
of February. A contemporary document of singular interest today is the
series of resolutions adopted by the Legislature of North Carolina,
setting forth that, as the State was a member of the Federal Union, it
could not accept the invitation of Alabama but should send delegates for
the purpose of persuading the South to effect a readjustment on the
basis of the Crittenden Compromise as modified by the Legislature of
Virginia. The commissioners were sent, were graciously received, were
accorded seats in the Congress, but they exerted no influence on the
course of its action.
The Congress speedily organized a provisional Government for the
Confederate States of America. The Constitution of the United States,
rather hastily reconsidered, became with a few inevitable alterations
the Constitution of the Confederacy. ¹ Davis was unanimously elected
President; Stephens, Vice-President. Provision was made for raising an
army. Commissioners were dispatched to Washington to negotiate a treaty
with the United States; other commissioners were sent to Virginia to
attempt to withdraw that great commonwealth from the Union.
¹ To the observer of a later age this document appears a thing of haste.
Like the framers of the Constitution of 1787, who omitted from their
document some principles which they took for granted, the framers of
1861 left unstated their most distinctive views. The basal idea upon
which the revolution proceeded, the right of secession, is not to be
found in the new Constitution. Though the preamble declares that the
States are acting in their sovereign and independent character, the new
Confederation is declared "permanent." In the body of the document are
provisions similar to those in the Federal Constitution enabling a
majority of two-thirds of the States to amend at their pleasure, thus
imposing their will upon the minority. With three notable exceptions the
new Constitution, subsequent to the preamble, does little more than
restate the Constitution of 1787 rearranged so as to include those basal
principles of the English law added to the earlier Constitution by the
first eight amendments. The three exceptions are the prohibitions (1) of
the payment of bounties, (2) of the levying of duties to promote any one
form of industry, and (3) of appropriations for internal improvements.
Here was a monument to the battle over these matters in the Federal
Congress. As to the mechanism of the new Government it was the same as
the old except for a few changes of detail. The presidential term was
lengthened to six years and the President was forbidden to succeed
himself. The President was given the power to veto items in
appropriation bills. The African slave-trade was prohibited.
The upper South was thus placed in a painful situation. Its sympathies
were with the seceding States. Most of its people felt also that if
coercion was attempted, the issue would become for Virginia and North
Carolina, no less than for South Carolina and Alabama, simply a matter
of self-preservation. As early as January, in the exciting days when
Floyd's resignation was being interpreted as a call to arms, the
Virginia Legislature had resolved that it would not consent to the
coercion of a seceding State. In May the Speaker of the North Carolina
Legislature assured a commissioner from Georgia that North Carolina
would never consent to the movement of troops "from or across" the State
to attack a seceding State. But neither Virginia nor North Carolina in
this second stage of the movement wanted to secede. They wanted to
preserve the Union, but along with the Union they wanted the principle
of local autonomy. It was a period of tense anxiety in those States of
the upper South. The frame of mind of the men who loved the Union but
who loved equally their own States and were firm for local autonomy is
summed up in a letter in which Mrs. Robert E. Lee describes the anguish
of her husband as he confronted the possibility of a divided country.
The real tragedy of the time lay in the failure of the advocates of
these two great principles--each so necessary to a far-flung democratic
country in a world of great powers!--the failure to coördinate them so
as to insure freedom at home and strength abroad. The principle for
which Lincoln stood has saved Americans in the Great War from playing
such a trembling part as that of Holland. The principle which seemed to
Lee even more essential, which did not perish at Appomattox but was
transformed and not destroyed, is what has kept us from becoming a
western Prussia. And yet if only it had been possible to coördinate the
two without the price of war! It was not possible because of the stored
up bitterness of a quarter century of recrimination. But Virginia made a
last desperate attempt to preserve the Union by calling the Peace
Convention. It assembled at Washington the day the Confederate Congress
met at Montgomery. Though twenty-one States sent delegates, it was no
more able to effect a working scheme of compromise than was the House
committee of thirty-three or the Senate committee of thirteen, both of
which had striven, had failed, and had gone their ways to a place in the
great company of historic futilities.
And so the Peace Convention came and went, and there was no consolation
for the troubled men of the upper South who did not want to secede but
were resolved not to abandon local autonomy. Virginia was the key to the
situation. If Virginia could be forced into secession, the rest of the
upper South would inevitably follow. Therefore a Virginia hothead, Roger
A. Pryor, being in Charleston in those wavering days, poured out his
heart in fiery words, urging a Charleston crowd to precipitate war, in
the certainty that Virginia would then have to come to their aid. When
at last Sumter was fired upon and Lincoln called for volunteers, the
second stage of the secession movement ended in a thunderclap. The third
period was occupied by the second group of secessions: Virginia on the
17th of April, North Carolina and Arkansas during May, Tennessee early
in June.
Sumter was the turning-point. The boom of the first cannon trained on
the island fortress deserves all the rhetoric it has inspired. Who was
immediately responsible for that firing which was destiny? Ultimate
responsibility is not upon any person. War had to be. If Sumter had not
been the starting-point, some other would have been found. Nevertheless
the question of immediate responsibility, of whose word it was that
served as the signal to begin, has produced an historic controversy.
When it was known at Charleston that Lincoln would attempt to provision
the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to the
Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at
Montgomery, hesitated--drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon
the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the
desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of
State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution
and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide,
murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.... It is
unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal," said he. But the
Cabinet and the President decided to take the risk. To General Pierre
Beauregard, recently placed in command of the militia assembled at
Charleston, word was sent to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter.
On Thursday, the 7th of April, besides his instructions from Montgomery,
Beauregard was in receipt of a telegram from the Confederate
commissioners at Washington, repeating newspaper statements that the
Federal relief expedition intended to land a force "which will overcome
all opposition." There seems no doubt that Beauregard did not believe
that the expedition was intended merely to provision Sumter. Probably
every one in Charleston thought that the Federal authorities were trying
to deceive them, that Lincoln's promise not to do more than provision
Sumter was a mere blind. Fearfulness that delay might render Sumter
impregnable lay back of Beauregard's formal demand, on the 11th of
April, for the surrender of the fort. Anderson refused but "made some
verbal observations" to the aides who brought him the demand. In effect
he said that lack of supplies would compel him to surrender by the
fifteenth. When this information was taken back to the city, eager
crowds were in the streets of Charleston discussing the report that a
bombardment would soon begin. But the afternoon passed; night fell; and
nothing was done. On the beautiful terrace along the sea known as East
Battery, people congregated, watching the silent fortress whose brick
walls rose sheer from the midst of the harbor. The early hours of the
night went by and as midnight approached and still there was no flash
from either the fortress or the shore batteries which threatened it, the
crowds broke up.
Meanwhile there was anxious consultation at the hotel where Beauregard
had fixed his headquarters. Pilots came in from the sea to report to the
General that a Federal vessel had appeared off the mouth of the harbor.
This news may well explain the hasty dispatch of a second expedition to
Sumter in the middle of the night. At half after one, Friday morning,
four young men, aides of Beauregard, entered the fort. Anderson repeated
his refusal to surrender at once but admitted that he would have to
surrender within three days. Thereupon the aides held a council of war.
They decided that the reply was unsatisfactory and wrote out a brief
note which they handed to Anderson informing him that the Confederates
would open "fire upon Fort Sumter in one hour from this time." The note
was dated 3:20 A.M. The aides then proceeded to Fort Johnston on the
south side of the harbor and gave the order to fire.
The council of the aides at Sumter is the dramatic detail that has
caught the imagination of historians and has led them, at least in some
cases, to yield to a literary temptation. It is so dramatic--that scene
of the four young men holding in their hands, during a moment of
absolute destiny, the fate of a people; four young men, in the
irresponsible ardor of youth, refusing to wait three days and forcing
war at the instant! It is so dramatic that one cannot judge harshly the
artistic temper which is unable to reject it. But is the incident
historic? Did the four young men come to Sumter without definite
instructions? Was their conference really anything more than a careful
comparing of notes to make sure they were doing what they were intended
to do? Is not the real clue to the event a message from Beauregard to
the Secretary of War telling of his interview with the pilots? ¹
¹ A chief authority for the dramatic version of the council of the aides
is that fiery Virginian, Roger A. Pryor. He and another accompanied the
official messengers, the signers of the note to Anderson, James Chestnut
and Stephen Lee. Years afterwards Pryor told the story of the council in
a way to establish its dramatic significance. But would there be
anything strange if a veteran survivor, looking back to his youth, as
all of us do through more or less of mirage, yielded to the unconscious
artist that is in us all and dramatized this event unaware?
Dawn was breaking gray, with a faint rain in the air, when the first
boom of the cannon awakened the city. Other detonations followed in
quick succession. Shells rose into the night from both sides of the
harbor and from floating batteries. How lightly Charleston slept that
night may be inferred from the accounts in the newspapers. "At the
report of the first gun," says the Courier, "the city was nearly emptied
of its inhabitants who crowded the Battery and the wharves to witness
the conflict."
The East Battery and the lower harbor of the lovely city of Charleston
have been preserved almost without alteration. What they are today they
were in the breaking dawn on April 12, 1861. Business has gone up the
rivers between which Charleston lies and has left the point of the
city's peninsula, where East Battery looks outward to the Atlantic, in
its perfect charm. There large houses, pillared, with high piazzas,
stand apart one from another among gardens. With few exceptions they
were built before the middle of the century and all, with one exception,
show the classical taste of those days. The mariner, entering the
spacious inner sea that is Charleston Harbor, sights this row of stately
mansions even before he crosses the bar seven miles distant. Holding
straight onward up into the land he heads first for the famous little
island where, nowadays, in their halo of thrilling recollection, the
walls of Sumter, rising sheer from the bosom of the water, drowse idle.
Close under the lee of Sumter, the incoming steersman brings his ship
about and chooses, probably, the eastward of two huge tentacles of the
sea between which lies the city's long but narrow peninsula. To the
steersman it shows a skyline serrated by steeples, fronted by sea,
flanked southward by sea, backgrounded by an estuary, and looped about
by a sickle of wooded islands.
This same scene, so far as city and nature go, was beheld by the crowds
that swarmed East Battery, a flagstone marine parade along the seaward
side of the boulevard that faces Sumter; that filled the windows and
even the housetops; that watched the bombardment with the eagerness of
an audience in an amphitheater; that applauded every telling shot with
clapping of hands and waving of shawls and handkerchiefs. The fort lay
distant from them about three miles, but only some fifteen hundred yards
from Fort Johnston on one side and about a mile from Fort Moultrie on
the other. From both of these latter, the cannon of those days were
equal to the task of harassing Sumter. Early in the morning of the 12th
of April, though not until broad day had come, did Anderson make reply.
All that day, at first under heavily rolling cloud and later through
curiously misty sunshine, the fire and counterfire continued. "The
enthusiasm and fearlessness of the spectators," says the Charleston
Mercury, "knew no bounds." Reckless observers even put out in small
boats and roamed about the harbor almost under the guns of the fort.
Outside the bar, vessels of the relieving squadron were now visible, and
to these Anderson signaled for aid. They made an attempt to reach the
fort, but only part of the squadron had arrived, and the vessels
necessary to raise the siege were not there. The attempt ended in
failure. When night came, a string of rowboats each carrying a huge
torch kept watch along the bar to guard against surprise from the sea.
On that Friday night the harbor was swept by storm. But in spite of
torrents of rain East Battery and the rooftops were thronged. "The wind
was inshore and the booming was startlingly distinct." At the height of
the bombardment, the sky above Sumter seemed to be filled with the
flashes of bursting shells. But during this wild night Sumter itself was
both dark and silent. Its casements did not have adequate lamps and the
guns could not be used except by day. When morning broke, clear and
bright after the night's storm, the duel was resumed.
The walls of Sumter were now crumbling. At eight o'clock Saturday
morning the barracks took fire. Soon after it was perceived from the
shore that the flag was down. Beauregard at once sent offers of
assistance. With Sumter in flames above his head, Anderson replied that
he had not surrendered; he declined assistance; and he hauled up his
flag. Later in the day the flagstaff was shot in two and again the flag
fell, and again it was raised. Flames had been kindled anew by red-hot
shot, and now the magazine was in danger. Quantities of powder were
thrown into the sea. Still the rain of red-hot shot continued. About
noon, Saturday, says the Courier, "flames burst out from every quarter
of Sumter and poured from many of its portholes ... the wind was from
the west driving the smoke across the fort into the embrasures where the
gunners were at work." Nevertheless, "as if served with a new impulse,"
the guns of Sumter redoubled their fire. But it was not in human
endurance to keep on in the midst of the burning fort. This splendid
last effort was short. At a quarter after one, Anderson ceased firing
and raised a white flag. Negotiations followed ending in terms of
surrender--Anderson to be allowed to remove his garrison to the fleet
lying idle beyond the bar and to salute the flag of the United States
before taking it down. The bombardment had lasted thirty-two hours
without a death on either side. The evacuation of the fort was to take
place next day.
The afternoon of Sunday, the 14th of April, was a gala day in the harbor
of Charleston. The sunlight slanted across the roofs of the city,
sparkled upon the sea. Deep and rich the harbor always looks in the
spring sunshine on bright afternoons. The filmy atmosphere of these
latitudes, at that time of year, makes the sky above the darkling,
afternoon sea a pale but luminous turquoise. There is a wonderful soft
strength in the peaceful brightness of the sun. In such an atmosphere
the harbor was flecked with brilliantly decked craft of every
description, all in a flutter of flags and carrying a host of passengers
in gala dress. The city swarmed across the water to witness the ceremony
of evacuation. Wherry men did a thriving business carrying passengers to
the fort.
Anderson withdrew from Sumter shortly after two o'clock amid a salute of
fifty guns. The Confederates took possession. At half after four a new
flag was raised above the battered and fire-swept walls.