The Reaction Against Richmond
A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great period of
Confederate history--these six months of Titanic effort which embraced
between March and September, 1862, splendid success along with
catastrophes. But there was a marked difference between the two tides of
popular emotion. The wave of alarm which swept over the South after the
surrender of Fort Donelson was quickly translated into such a high
passion for battle that the march of events until the day of Antietam
resounded like an epic. The failure of the triple offensive which closed
this period was followed in very many minds by the appearance of a new
temper, often as valiant as the old but far more grim and deeply seamed
with distrust. And how is this distrust, of which the Confederate
Administration was the object, to be accounted for?
Various answers to this question were made at the time. The laws of the
spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis was held
responsible for them and also for the slow equipment of the army.
Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its business in
secret session, the President was charged with a love of mystery and an
unwillingness to take the people into his confidence. Arrests under the
law suspending the writ of habeas corpus were made the texts for
harangues on liberty. The right of freedom of speech was dragged in when
General Van Dorn, in the Southwest, threatened with suppression any
newspaper that published anything which might impair confidence in a
commanding officer. How could he have dared to do this, was the cry,
unless the President was behind him? And when General Bragg assumed a
similar attitude toward the press, the same cry was raised. Throughout
the summer of victories, even while the thrilling stories of Seven
Pines, the Peninsula, Second Manassas, were sounding like trumpets,
these mutterings of discontent formed an ominous accompaniment.
Yancey, speaking of the disturbed temper of the time, attributed it to
the general lack of information on the part of Southern people as to
what the Confederate Government was doing. His proposed remedy was an
end of the censorship which that Government was attempting to maintain,
the abandonment of the secret sessions of its Congress, and the taking
of the people into its full confidence. Now a Senator from Alabama, he
attempted, at the opening of the congressional session in the autumn of
1862, to abolish secret sessions, but in his efforts he was not
successful.
There seems little doubt that the Confederate Government had blundered
in being too secretive. Even from Congress, much information was
withheld. A curious incident has preserved what appeared to the military
mind the justification of this reticence. The Secretary of War refused
to comply with a request for information, holding that he could not do
so "without disclosing the strength of our armies to many persons of
subordinate position whose secrecy cannot be relied upon." "I beg leave
to remind you," said he, "of a report made in response to a similar one
from the Federal Congress, communicated to them in secret session, and
now a part of our archives."
How much the country was in the dark with regard to some vital matters
is revealed by an attack on the Confederate Administration which was
made by the Charleston Mercury, in February. The Southern Government was
accused of unpardonable slowness in sending agents to Europe to purchase
munitions. In point of fact, the Confederate Government had been more
prompt than the Union Government in rushing agents abroad. But the
country was not permitted to know this. Though the Courier was a
government organ in Charleston, it did not meet the charges of the
Mercury by disclosing the facts about the arduous attempts of the
Confederate Government to secure arms in Europe. The reply of the
Courier to the Mercury, though spirited, was all in general terms. "To
shake confidence in Jefferson Davis," said the Courier, "is ... to bring
'hideous ruin and combustion' down upon our dearest hopes and
interests." It made "Mr. Davis and his defensive policy" objects of all
admiration; called Davis "our Moses." It was deeply indignant because it
had been "reliably informed that men of high official position among us"
were "calling for a General Convention of the Confederate States to
depose him and set up a military Dictator in his place." The Mercury
retorted that, as to the plot against "our Moses," there was no evidence
of its existence except the Courier's assertion. Nevertheless, it
considered Davis "an incubus to the cause." The controversy between the
Mercury and the Courier at Charleston was paralleled at Richmond by the
constant bickering between the government organ, the Enquirer, and the
Examiner, which shares with the Mercury the first place among the
newspapers hostile to Davis. ¹
¹ The Confederate Government did not misapprehend the attitude of the
intellectual opposition. Its foreign organ, The Index, published in
London, characterized the leading Southern papers for the enlightenment
of the British public. While the Enquirer and the Courier were singled
out as the great champions of the Confederate Government, the Examiner
and the Mercury were portrayed as its arch enemies. The Examiner was
called the "Ishmael of the Southern press." The Mercury was described as
"almost rabid on the subject of state rights."
Associated with the Examiner was a vigorous writer having considerable
power of the old-fashioned, furious sort, ever ready to foam at the
mouth. If he had had more restraint and less credulity, Edward A.
Pollard might have become a master of the art of vituperation. Lacking
these qualities, he never rose far above mediocrity. But his fury was so
determined and his prejudice so invincible that his writings have
something of the power of conviction which fanaticism wields. In
midsummer, 1862, Pollard published a book entitled The First Year of the
War, which was commended by his allies in Charleston as showing no
"tendency toward unfairness of statement" and as expressing views
"mainly in accordance with popular opinion."
This book, while affecting to be an historical review, was skillfully
designed to discredit the Confederate Administration. Almost every
disaster, every fault of its management was traceable more or less
directly to Davis. Kentucky had been occupied by the Federal army
because of the "dull expectation" in which the Confederate Government
had stood aside waiting for things somehow to right themselves. The
Southern Congress had been criminally slow in coming to conscription,
contenting itself with an army of 400,000 men that existed "on paper."
"The most distressing abuses were visible in the ill-regulated hygiene
of our camps." According to this book, the Confederate Administration
was solely to blame for the loss of Roanoke Island. In calling that
disaster "deeply humiliating," as he did in a message to Congress, Davis
was trying to shield his favorite Benjamin at the cost of gallant
soldiers who had been sacrificed through his incapacity. Davis's
promotion of Benjamin to the State Department was an act of "ungracious
and reckless defiance of popular sentiment." The President was "not the
man to consult the sentiment and wisdom of the people; he desired to
signalize the infallibility of his own intellect in every measure of the
revolution and to identify, from motives of vanity, his own personal
genius with every event and detail of the remarkable period of history
in which he had been called upon to act. This imperious conceit seemed
to swallow up every other idea in his mind." The generals "fretted under
this pragmatism" of one whose "vanity" directed the war "from his
cushioned seat in Richmond" by means of the one formula, "the defensive
policy."
One of Pollard's chief accusations against the Confederate Government
was its failure to enforce the conscription law. His paper, the
Examiner, as well as the Mercury, supported Davis in the policy of
conscription, but both did their best, first, to rob him of the credit
for it and, secondly, to make his conduct of the policy appear
inefficient. Pollard claimed for the Examiner the credit of having
originated the policy of conscription; the Mercury claimed it for Rhett.
In other words, an aggressive war party led by the Examiner and the
Mercury had been formed in those early days when the Confederate
Government appeared to be standing wholly on the defensive, and when it
had failed to confide to the people the extenuating circumstance that
lack of arms compelled it to stand still whether it would or no. And
yet, after this Government had changed its policy and had taken up in
the summer of 1862 an offensive policy, this party--or faction, or what
you will--continued its career of opposition. That the secretive habit
of the Confederate Government helped cement the opposition cannot be
doubted. It is also likely that this opposition gave a vent to certain
jealous spirits who had missed the first place in leadership.
Furthermore, the issue of state sovereignty had been raised. In Georgia
a movement had begun which was distinctly different from the
Virginia-Carolina movement of opposition, a movement for which Rhett and
Pollard had scarcely more than disdainful tolerance, and not always
that. This parallel opposition found vent, as did the other, in a
political pamphlet. On the subject of conscription Davis and the
Governor of Georgia--that same Joseph E. Brown who had seized Fort
Pulaski in the previous year--exchanged a rancorous correspondence.
Their letters were published in a pamphlet of which Pollard said
scornfully that it was hawked about in every city of the South. Brown,
taking alarm at the power given the Confederate Government by the
Conscription Act, eventually defined his position, and that of a large
following, in the extreme words: "No act of the Government of the United
States prior to the secession of Georgia struck a blow at constitutional
liberty so fell as has been stricken by the conscript acts."
There were other elements of discontent which were taking form as early
as the autumn of 1862 but which were not yet clearly defined. But the
two obvious sources of internal criticism just described were enough to
disquiet the most resolute administration. When the triple offensive
broke down, when the ebb-tide began, there was already everything that
was needed to precipitate a political crisis. And now the question
arises whether the Confederate Administration had itself to blame. Had
Davis proved inadequate in his great undertaking?
The one undeniable mistake of the Government previous to the autumn of
1862 was its excessive secrecy. As to the other mistakes attributed to
it at the time, there is good reason to call them misfortunes. Today we
can see that the financial situation, the cotton situation, the
relations with Europe, the problem of equipping the armies, were all to
a considerable degree beyond the control of the Confederate Government.
If there is anything to be added to its mistaken secrecy as a definite
cause of irritation, it must be found in the general tone given to its
actions by its chief directors. And here there is something to be said.
With all his high qualities of integrity, courage, faithfulness, and
zeal, Davis lacked that insight into human life which marks the genius
of the supreme executive. He was not an artist in the use of men. He had
not that artistic sense of his medium which distinguishes the statesman
from the bureaucrat. In fact, he had a dangerous bent toward
bureaucracy. As Reuben Davis said of him, "Gifted with some of the
highest attributes of a statesman, he lacked the pliancy which enables a
man to adapt his measures to the crisis." Furthermore, he lacked humor;
there was no safety-valve to his intense nature; and he was a man of
delicate health. Mrs. Davis, describing the effects which nervous
dyspepsia and neuralgia had upon him, says he would come home from his
office "fasting, a mere mass of throbbing nerves, and perfectly
exhausted." And it cannot be denied that his mind was dogmatic. Here are
dangerous lines for the character of a leader of revolution--the
bureaucratic tendency, something of rigidity, lack of humor, physical
wretchedness, dogmatism. Taken together, they go far toward explaining
his failure in judging men, his irritable confidence in himself.
It is no slight detail of a man's career to be placed side by side with
a genius of the first rank without knowing it. But Davis does not seem
ever to have appreciated that the man commanding in the Seven Days'
Battles was one of the world's supreme characters. The relation between
Davis and Lee was always cordial, and it brought out Davis's character
in its best light. Nevertheless, so rooted was Davis's faith in his own
abilities that he was capable of saying, at a moment of acutest anxiety,
"If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us
wrest a victory from those people." And yet, his military experience
embraced only the minor actions of a young officer on the Indian
frontier and the gallant conduct of a subordinate in the Mexican War. He
had never executed a great military design. His desire for the military
life was, after all, his only ground for ranking himself with the victor
of Second Manassas. Davis was also unfortunate in lacking the power to
overcome men and sweep them along with him--the power Lee showed so
conspicuously. Nor was Davis averse to sharp reproof of the highest
officials when he thought them in the wrong. He once wrote to Joseph E.
Johnston that a letter of his contained "arguments and statements
utterly unfounded" and "insinuations as unfounded as they were
unbecoming."
Davis was not always wise in his choice of men. His confidence in Bragg,
who was long his chief military adviser, is not sustained by the
military critics of a later age. His Cabinet, though not the
contemptible body caricatured by the malice of Pollard, was not equal to
the occasion. Of the three men who held the office of Secretary of
State, Toombs and Hunter had little if any qualification for such a
post, while the third, Benjamin, is the sphinx of Confederate history.
In a way, Judah P. Benjamin is one of the most interesting men in
American politics. By descent a Jew, born in the West Indies, he spent
his boyhood mainly at Charleston and his college days at Yale. He went
to New Orleans to begin his illustrious career as a lawyer, and from
Louisiana entered politics. The facile keenness of his intellect is
beyond dispute. He had the Jewish clarity of thought, the wonderful
Jewish detachment in matters of pure mind. But he was also an American
of the middle of the century. His quick and responsive nature--a nature
that enemies might call simulative--caught and reflected the
characteristics of that singular and highly rhetorical age. He lives in
tradition as the man of the constant smile, and yet there is no one in
history whose state papers contain passages of fiercer violence in days
of tension. How much of his violence was genuine, how much was a manner
of speaking, his biographers have not had the courage to determine. Like
so many American biographers they have avoided the awkward questions and
have glanced over, as lightly as possible, the persistent attempts of
Congress to drive him from office.
Nothing could shake the resolution of Davis to retain Benjamin in the
Cabinet. Among Davis's loftiest qualities was his sense of personal
loyalty. Once he had given his confidence, no amount of opposition could
shake his will but served rather to harden him. When Benjamin as
Secretary of War passed under a cloud, Davis led him forth resplendent
as Secretary of State. Whether he was wise in doing so, whether the
opposition was not justified in its distrust of Benjamin, is still an
open question. What is certain is that both these able men, even before
the crisis that arose in the autumn of 1862, had rendered themselves and
their Government widely unpopular. It must never be forgotten that Davis
entered office without the backing of any definite faction. He was a
"dark horse," a compromise candidate. To build up a stanch following, to
create enthusiasm for his Administration, was a prime necessity of his
first year as President. Yet he seems not to have realized this
necessity. Boldly, firmly, dogmatically, he gave his whole thought and
his entire energy to organizing the Government in such a way that it
could do its work efficiently. And therein may have been the proverbial
rift within the lute. To Davis statecraft was too much a thing of
methods and measures, too little a thing of men and passions.
During the autumn of 1862 and the following winter the disputes over the
conduct of the war began to subside and two other themes became
prominent: the sovereignty of the States, which appeared to be menaced
by the Government, and the personality of Davis, whom malcontents
regarded as a possible despot. Contrary to tradition, the first note of
alarm over state rights was not struck by its great apostle Rhett,
although the note was sounded in South Carolina in the early autumn.
There existed in this State at that time an extra assembly called the
"Convention," which had been organized in 1860 for the general purpose
of seeing the State through the "revolution." In the Convention, in
September, 1862, the question of a contest with the Confederate
Government on the subject of a state army was definitely raised. It was
proposed to organize a state army and to instruct the Legislature to
"take effectual measures to prevent the agents of the Confederate
Government from raising troops in South Carolina except by voluntary
enlistment or by applying to the Executive of the State to call out the
militia as by law organized, or some part of it to be mustered into the
Confederate service." This proposal brought about a sharp debate upon
the Confederate Government and its military policy. Rhett made a
remarkable address, which should of itself quiet forever the old tale
that he was animated in his opposition solely by the pique of a
disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as ever
against the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit of the
state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the moment
rendered the organization of such an army inopportune. A year earlier he
would have strongly supported the plan. In fact, in opposition to Davis
he had at that time, he said, urged an obligatory army which the States
should be required to raise. The Confederate Administration, however,
had defeated his scheme. Since then the situation had changed and had
become so serious that now there was no choice but to submit to military
necessity. He regarded the general conscription law as "absolutely
necessary to save" the Confederacy "from utter devastation if not final
subjugation. Right or wrong, the policy of the Administration had left
us no other alternative...."
The dominant attitude in South Carolina in the autumn of 1862 is in
strong contrast, because of its firm grasp upon fact, with the attitude
of the Brown faction in Georgia. An extended history of the Confederate
movement--one of those vast histories that delight the recluse and scare
away the man of the world--would labor to build up images of what might
be called the personalities of the four States that continued from the
beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederate
system--Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to forget
that the Confederacy was practically divided into separate units as
early as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a great history of
the time would have a special and thrilling story of the conduct of the
detached western unit, the isolated world of Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Texas--the "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"--cut off from the main
body of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army and the
deep sea. Another group of States--Tennessee, Mississippi,
Alabama--became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, on
which the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity for
genuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its
gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldiers
larger than its voting population.
Thus, after the loss of New Orleans, one thing with another operated to
confine the area of full political life to Virginia and her three
neighbors to the South. And yet even among these States there was no
political solidarity or unanimity of opinion, for the differences in
their past experience, social structure, and economic conditions made
for distinct points of view. In South Carolina, particularly, the
prevailing view was that of experienced, disillusioned men who realized
from the start that secession had burnt their bridges, and that now they
must win the fight or change the whole current of their lives. In the
midst of the extraordinary conditions of war, they never talked as if
their problems were the problems of peace. Brown, on the other hand, had
but one way of reasoning--if we are to call it reasoning--and, with
Hannibal at the gates, talked as if the control of the situation were
still in his own hands.
While South Carolina, so grimly conscious of the reality of war and the
danger of internal discord, held off from the issue of state
sovereignty, the Brown faction in Georgia blithely pressed it home. A
bill for extending the conscription age which was heartily advocated by
the Mercury was as heartily condemned by Brown. To the President he
wrote announcing his continued opposition to a law which he declared
"encroaches upon the reserved rights of the State and strikes down her
sovereignty at a single blow." Though the Supreme Court of Georgia
pronounced the conscription acts constitutional, the Governor and his
faction did not cease to condemn them. Linton Stephens, as well as his
famous kinsman, took up the cudgels. In a speech before the Georgia
Legislature, in November, Linton Stephens borrowed almost exactly the
Governor's phraseology in denying the necessity for conscription, and
this continued to be the note of their faction throughout the war.
"Conscription checks enthusiasm," was ever their cry; "we are invincible
under a system of volunteering, we are lost with conscription."
Meanwhile the military authorities looked facts in the face and had a
different tale to tell. They complained that in various parts of the
country, especially in the mountain districts, they were unable to
obtain men. Lee reported that his army melted away before his eye and
asked for an increase of authority to compel stragglers to return. At
the same time Brown was quarreling with the Administration as to who
should name the officers of the Georgia troops. Zebulon B. Vance, the
newly elected Governor of North Carolina and an anti-Davis man, said to
the Legislature: "It is mortifying to find entire brigades of North
Carolina soldiers commanded by strangers, and in many cases our own
brave and war-worn colonels are made to give place to colonels from
distant States." In addition to such indications of discontent a vast
mass of evidence makes plain the opposition to conscription toward the
close of 1862 and the looseness of various parts of the military system.
It was a moment of intense excitement and of nervous strain. The country
was unhappy, for it had lost faith in the Government at Richmond. The
blockade was producing its effect. European intervention was receding
into the distance. One of the characteristics of the editorials and
speeches of this period is a rising tide of bitterness against England.
Napoleon's proposal in November to mediate, though it came to naught,
somewhat revived the hope of an eventual recognition of the Confederacy
but did not restore buoyancy to the people of the South. The
Emancipation Proclamation, though scoffed at as a cry of impotence, none
the less increased the general sense of crisis.
Worst of all, because of its immediate effect upon the temper of the
time, food was very scarce and prices had risen to indefensible heights.
The army was short of shoes. In the newspapers, as winter came on, were
to be found touching descriptions of Lee's soldiers standing barefoot in
the snow. A flippant comment of Benjamin's, that the shoes had probably
been traded for whiskey, did not tend to improve matters. Even though
short of supplies themselves, the people as a whole eagerly subscribed
to buy shoes for the army.
There was widespread and heartless speculation in the supplies. Months
previous the Courier had made this ominous editorial remark:
"Speculators and monopolists seem determined to force the people
everywhere to the full exercise of all the remedies allowed by law." In
August, 1862, the Governor of Florida wrote to the Florida delegation at
Richmond urging them to take steps to meet the "nefarious smuggling" of
speculators who charged extortionate prices. In September, he wrote
again begging for legislation to compel millers, tanners, and saltmakers
to offer their products at reasonable rates. As these men were exempt
from military duty because their labor was held to be a public service,
feeling against them ran high. Governor Vance proposed a state
convention to regulate prices for North Carolina and by proclamation
forbade the export of provisions in order to prevent the seeking of
exorbitant prices in other markets. Davis wrote to various Governors
urging them to obtain state legislation to reduce extortion in the food
business. In the provisioning of the army the Confederate Government had
recourse to impressment and the arbitrary fixing of prices. Though the
Attorney-General held this action to be constitutional, it led to sharp
contentions; and at length a Virginia court granted an injunction to a
speculator who had been paid by the Government for flour less than it
had cost him.
In an attempt to straighten out this tangled situation, the Confederate
Government began, late in 1862, by appointing as its new Secretary of
War, ¹ James A. Seddon of Virginia--at that time high in popular favor.
The Mercury hailed his advent with transparent relief, for no
appointment could have seemed to it more promising. Indeed, as the new
year (1863) opened the Mercury was in better humor with the
Administration than perhaps at any other time during the war. To the
President's message it gave praise that was almost cordial. This
amicable temper was short-lived, however, and three months later the
heavens had clouded again, for the Government had entered upon a course
that consolidated the opposition in anger and distrust.
¹ There were in all six Secretaries of War: Leroy P. Walker, until
September 16, 1861; Judah P. Benjamin, until March 18, 1862; George W.
Randolph, until November 17, 1862; Gustavus W. Smith (temporarily),
until November 21, 1862; James A. Seddon, until February 6, 1865;
General John C. Breckinridge.
Early in 1863 the Confederate Government presented to the country a
program in which the main features were three. Of these the two which
did not rouse immediate hostility in the party of the Examiner and the
Mercury were the Impressment Act of March, 1863 (amended by successive
acts), and the act known as the Tax in Kind, which was approved the
following month. Though the Impressment Act subsequently made vast
trouble for the Government, at the time of its passage its beneficial
effects were not denied. To it was attributed by the Richmond Whig the
rapid fall of prices in April, 1863. Corn went down at Richmond from $12
and $10 a bushel to $4.20, and flour dropped in North Carolina from $45
a barrel to $25. Under this act commissioners were appointed in each
State jointly by the Confederate President and the Governor with the
duty of fixing prices for government transactions and of publishing
every two months an official schedule of the prices to be paid by the
Government for the supplies which it impressed.
The new Tax Act attempted to provide revenues which should not be paid
in depreciated currency. With no bullion to speak of, the Confederate
Congress could not establish a circulating medium with even an
approximation to constant value. Realizing this situation, Memminger had
advised falling back on the ancient system of tithes and the support of
the Government by direct contributions of produce. After licensing a
great number of occupations and laying a property tax and an income tax,
the new law demanded a tenth of the produce of all farmers. On this law
the Mercury pronounced a benediction in an editorial on The Fall of
Prices, which it attributed to "the healthy influence of the tax bill
which has just become law." ¹
¹ The fall of prices was attributed by others to a funding act,--one of
several passed by the Confederate Congress--which, in March, 1863, aimed
by various devices to contract the volume of the currency. It was very
generally condemned, and it anticipated the yet more drastic measure,
the Funding Act of 1864, which will be described later.
Had these two measures been the whole program of the Government, the
congressional session of the spring of 1863 would have had a different
significance in Confederate history. But there was a third measure that
provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of the
Mercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bitter
controversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed A Despotism over
the Confederate States Proposed in Congress amounted to a declaration of
war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drew
steadily further and further apart and their antagonism grew steadily
more relentless.
What caused this irrevocable breach was a bill introduced into the House
by Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi, an old friend of President Davis.
This bill would have invested the President with authority to suspend
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any part of the
Confederacy, whenever in his judgment such suspension was desirable. The
first act suspending the privilege of habeas corpus had long since
expired and applied only to such regions as were threatened with
invasion. It had served usefully under martial law in cleansing Richmond
of its rogues, and also had been in force at Charleston. The Mercury had
approved it and had exhorted its readers to take the matter sensibly as
an inevitable detail of war. Between that act and the act now proposed
the Mercury saw no similarity. Upon the merits of the question it fought
a furious journalistic duel with the Enquirer, the government organ at
Richmond, which insisted that President Davis would not abuse his power.
The Mercury replied that if he "were a second Washington, or an angel
upon earth, the degradation such a surrender of our rights implies would
still be abhorrent to every freeman." In retort the Enquirer pointed out
that a similar law had been enacted by another Congress with no bad
results. And in point of fact the Enquirer was right, for in October,
1862, after the expiration of the first act suspending the privilege of
the writ of habeas corpus, Congress passed a second giving to the
President the immense power which was now claimed for him again. This
second act was in force several months. Then the Mercury made the
astounding declaration that it had never heard of the second act, and
thereupon proceeded to attack the secrecy of the Administration with
renewed vigor.
On this issue of reviving the expired second Habeas Corpus Act, a battle
royal was fought in the Confederate Congress. The forces of the
Administration defended the new measure on the ground that various
regions were openly seditious and that conscription could not be
enforced without it. This argument gave a new text for the cry of
"despotism." The congressional leader of the opposition was Henry S.
Foote, once the rival of Davis in Mississippi and now a citizen of
Tennessee. Fierce, vindictive, sometimes convincing, always shrewd, he
was a powerful leader of the rough and ready, buccaneering sort. Under
his guidance the debate was diverted into a rancorous discussion of the
conduct of the generals in the execution of martial law. Foote pulled
out all the stops in the organ of political rhetoric and went in for a
chant royal of righteous indignation. The main object of this attack was
General Hindman and his doings in Arkansas. Those were still the days of
pamphleteering. Though General Albert Pike had written a severe pamphlet
condemning Hindman, to this pamphlet the Confederate Government had shut
its eyes. Foote, however, flourished it in the face of the House. He
thundered forth his belief that Hindman was worse even than the man most
detested in the South, than "beast Butler himself, for the latter is
only charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his
Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties
unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein.
Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State.
Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a
recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any
effective form, did not exist in Virginia. He alluded to a riot,
ostensibly for bread, in which an Amazonian woman had led a mob to the
pillaging of the Richmond jewelry shops, a riot which Davis himself had
quelled by meeting the rioters and threatening to fire upon them. But
sarcasm proved powerless against Foote. His climax was a lurid tale of a
soldier who while marching past his own house heard that his wife was
dying, who left the ranks for a last word with her, and who on rejoining
the command, "hoping to get permission to bury her," was shot as a
deserter. And there was no one on the Government benches to anticipate
Kipling and cry out "flat art!" Resolutions condemning martial law were
passed by a vote of 45 to 27.
Two weeks later the Mercury preached a burial sermon over the Barksdale
Bill, which had now been rejected by the House. Congress was about to
adjourn, and before it reassembled elections for the next House would be
held. "The measure is dead for the present," said the Mercury, "but
power is ever restive and prone to accumulate power; and if the war
continues, other efforts will doubtless be made to make the President a
Dictator. Let the people keep their eyes steadily fixed on their
representatives with respect to this vital matter; and should the effort
again be made to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, demand that a recorded
vote should show those who shall strike down their liberties."