The Turning Of The Tide
The buoyancy of the Southern temper withstood the shock of Gettysburg
and was not overcome by the fall of Vicksburg. Of the far-reaching
significance of the latter catastrophe in particular there was little
immediate recognition. Even Seddon, the Secretary of War, in November,
reported that "the communication with the Trans-Mississippi, while
rendered somewhat precarious and insecure, is found by no means cut off
or even seriously endangered." His report was the same sort of thing as
those announcements of "strategic retreats" with which the world has
since become familiar. He even went so far as to argue that on the whole
the South had gained rather than lost; that the control of the river was
of no real value to the North; that the loss of Vicksburg "has on our
side liberated for general operations in the field a large army, while
it requires the enemy to maintain cooped up, inactive, in positions
insalubrious to their soldiers, considerable detachments of their
forces."
Seddon attempted to reverse the facts, to show that the importance of
the Mississippi in commerce was a Northern not a Southern concern. He
threw light upon the tactics of the time by his description of the
future action of Confederate sharpshooters who were to terrorize such
commercial crews as might attempt to navigate the river; he also told
how light batteries might move swiftly along the banks and, at points
commanding the channel, rain on the passing steamer unheralded
destruction. He was silent upon the really serious matter, the patrol of
the river by Federal gunboats which rendered commerce with the
Trans-Mississippi all but impossible.
This report, dated the 26th of November, gives a roseate view of the war
in Tennessee and enlarges upon that dreadful battle of Chickamauga which
"ranks as one of the grandest victories of the war." But even as the
report was signed, Bragg was in full retreat after his great disaster at
Chattanooga. On the 30th of November the Administration at Richmond
received from him a dispatch that closed with these words: "I deem it
due to the cause and to myself to ask for relief from command and an
investigation into the causes of the defeat." In the middle of December,
Joseph E. Johnston was appointed to succeed him.
Whatever had been the illusions of the Government, they were now at an
end. There was no denying that the war had entered a new stage and that
the odds were grimly against the South. Davis recognized the gravity of
the situation, and in his message to Congress in December, 1863, he
admitted that the Trans-Mississippi was practically isolated. This was
indeed a great catastrophe, for hereafter neither men nor supplies could
be drawn from the far Southwest. Furthermore, the Confederacy had now
lost its former precious advantage of using Mexico as a means of secret
trade with Europe.
These distressing events of the four months between Vicksburg and
Chattanooga established also the semi-isolation of the middle region of
the lower South. The two States of Mississippi and Alabama entered upon
the most desperate chapter of their history. Neither in nor out of the
Confederacy, neither protected by the Confederate lines nor policed by
the enemy, they were subject at once to the full rigor of the financial
and military demands of the Administration of Richmond and to the full
ruthlessness of plundering raids from the North. Nowhere can the
contrast between the warfare of that day and the best methods of our own
time be observed more clearly than in this unhappy region. At the
opening of 1864 the effective Confederate lines drew an irregular zigzag
across the map from a point in northern Georgia not far below
Chattanooga to Mobile. Though small Confederate commands still operated
bravely west of this line, the whole of Mississippi and a large part of
Alabama were beyond aid from Richmond. But the average man did not grasp
the situation. When a region is dominated by mobile armies the
appearance of things to the civilian is deceptive. Because the powerful
Federal armies of the Southwest, at the opening of 1864, were massed at
strategic points from Tennessee to the Gulf, and were not extended along
an obvious trench line, every brave civilian would still keep up his
hope and would still insist that the middle Gulf country was far from
subjugation, that its defense against the invader had not become
hopeless.
Under such conditions, when the Government at Richmond called upon the
men of the Southwest to regard themselves as mere sources of supply,
human and otherwise, mere feeders to a theater of war that did not
include their homes, it was altogether natural that they should resent
the demand. All the tragic confusion that was destined in the course of
the fateful year 1864 to paralyze the Government at Richmond was already
apparent in the middle Gulf country when the year began. Chief among
these was the inability of the State and Confederate Governments to
coöperate adequately in the business of conscription. The two powers
were determined rivals struggling each to seize the major part of the
manhood of the community. While Richmond, looking on the situation with
the eye of pure strategy, wished to draw together the full man-power of
the South in one great unit, the local authorities were bent on
retaining a large part of it for home defense.
In the Alabama newspapers of the latter half of 1863 strange incidents
are to be found throwing light on the administrative duel. The writ of
habeas corpus, as was so often the case in Confederate history, was the
bone of contention. We have seen that the second statute empowering the
President to proclaim martial law and to suspend the operation of the
writ had expired by limitation in February, 1863. The Alabama courts
were theoretically in full operation, but while the law was in force the
military authorities had acquired a habit of arbitrary control. Though
warned from Richmond in general orders that they must not take unto
themselves a power vested in the President alone, they continued their
previous course of action. It thereupon became necessary to issue
further general orders annulling "all proclamations of martial law by
general officers and others" not invested by law with adequate
authority.
Neither general orders nor the expiration of the statute, however,
seemed able to put an end to the interference with the local courts on
the part of local commanders. The evil apparently grew during 1863. A
picturesque instance is recorded with extreme fullness by the Southern
Advertiser in the autumn of the year. In the minutely circumstantial
account, we catch glimpses of one Rhodes moving heaven and earth to
prove himself exempt from military service. After Rhodes is enrolled by
the officers of the local military rendezvous, the sheriff attempts to
turn the tables by arresting the Colonel in command. The soldiers rush
to defend their Colonel, who is ill in bed at a house some distance
away. The judge who had issued the writ is hot with anger at this
military interference in civil affairs. Thereupon the soldiers seize
him, but later, recognizing for some unexplained reason the majesty of
the civil law, they release him. And the hot-tempered incident closes
with the Colonel's determination to carry the case to the Supreme Court
of the State.
The much harassed people of Alabama had still other causes of complaint
during this same year. Again the newspapers illumine the situation. In
the troubled autumn, Joseph Wheeler swept across the northern counties
of Alabama and in a daring ride, with Federal cavalry hot on his trail,
reached safety beyond the Tennessee River. Here his pursuers turned back
and, as their horses had been broken by the swiftness of the pursuit,
returning slowly, they "gleaned the country" to replace their supplies.
Incidentally they pounced upon the town of Huntsville. "Their appearance
here," writes a local correspondent, "was so sudden and ... the
contradictory reports of their whereabouts" had been so baffling that
the townspeople had found no time to secrete things. The whole
neighborhood was swept clean of cattle and almost clean of provision.
"We have not enough left," the report continues, "to haul and plow with
... and milch cows are non est." Including "Stanley's big raid in July,"
this was the twenty-first raid which Huntsville had endured that year.
The report closes with a bitter denunciation of the people of southern
Alabama who as yet do not know what war means, who are accused of
complete hardness of heart towards their suffering fellowcountrymen and
of caring only to make money out of war prices.
When Davis sent his message to the Southern Congress at the opening of
the session of 1864, the desperate plight of the middle Gulf country was
at once a warning and a menace to the Government. If the conditions of
that debatable land should extend eastward, there could be little doubt
that the day of the Confederacy was nearing its close. To remedy the
situation west of the main Confederate line, to prevent the growth of a
similar condition east of it, Davis urged Congress to revive the statute
permitting martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
The President told Congress that in parts of the Confederacy "public
meetings have been held, in some of which a treasonable design is masked
by a pretense of devotion of state sovereignty, and in others is openly
avowed ... a strong suspicion is entertained that secret leagues and
associations are being formed. In certain localities men of no mean
position do not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to our
cause, and their advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and the
abolition of slavery."
This suspicion on the part of the Confederate Government that it was
being opposed by organized secret societies takes us back to debatable
land and to the previous year. The Bureau of Conscription submitted to
the Secretary of War a report from its Alabama branch relative to "a
sworn secret organization known to exist and believed to have for its
object the encouragement of desertion, the protection of deserters from
arrest, resistance to conscription, and perhaps other designs of a still
more dangerous character." To the operations of this insidious foe were
attributed the shifting of the vote in the Alabama elections, the defeat
of certain candidates favored by the Government, and the return in their
stead of new men "not publicly known." The suspicions of the Government
were destined to further verification in the course of 1864 by the
unearthing of a treasonable secret society in southwestern Virginia, the
members of which were "bound to each other for the prosecution of their
nefarious designs by the most solemn oaths. They were under obligation
to encourage desertions from the army, and to pass and harbor all
deserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give information to the enemy
of the movements of our troops, of exposed or weakened positions, of
inviting opportunities of attack, and to guide and assist the enemy
either in advance or retreat." This society bore the grandiloquent name
"Heroes of America" and had extended its operations into Tennessee and
North Carolina.
In the course of the year further evidence was collected which satisfied
the secret service of the existence of a mysterious and nameless society
which had ramifications throughout Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. A
detective who joined this "Peace Society," as it was called, for the
purpose of betraying its secrets, had marvelous tales to tell of
confidential information given to him by members, of how Missionary
Ridge had been lost and Vicksburg had surrendered through the
machinations of this society. ¹
¹ What classes were represented in these organizations it is difficult
if not impossible to determine. They seem to have been involved in the
singular "peace movement" which is yet to be considered. This fact gives
a possible clue to the problem of their membership. A suspiciously large
number of the "peace" men were original anti-secessionists, and though
many, perhaps most, of these who opposed secession became loyal servants
of the Confederacy, historians may have jumped too quickly to the
assumption that the sincerity of all of these men was above reproach.
In spite of its repugnance to the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus, Congress was so impressed by the gravity of the situation that
early in 1864 it passed another act "to suspend the privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus in certain cases." This was not quite the same as
that sweeping act of 1862 which had set the Mercury irrevocably in
opposition. Though this act of 1864 gave the President the power to
order the arrest of any person suspected of treasonable practices, and
though it released military officers from all obligation to obey the
order of any civil court to surrender a prisoner charged with treason,
the new legislation carefully defined a list of cases in which alone
this power could be lawfully used. This was the last act of the sort
passed by the Confederate Congress, and when it expired by limitation
ninety days after the next meeting of Congress it was not renewed.
With regard to the administration of the army, Congress can hardly be
said to have met the President more than half way. The age of military
service was lowered to seventeen and was raised to fifty. But the
President was not given--though he had asked for it--general control
over exemptions. Certain groups, such as ministers, editors, physicians,
were in the main exempted; one overseer was exempted on each plantation
where there were fifteen slaves, provided he gave bond to sell to the
Government at official prices each year one hundred pounds of either
beef or bacon for each slave employed and provided he would sell all his
surplus produce either to the Government or to the families of soldiers.
Certain civil servants of the Confederacy were also exempted as well as
those whom the governors of States should "certify to be necessary for
the proper administration of the State Government." The President was
authorized to detail for nonmilitary service any members of the
Confederate forces "when in his judgment, justice, equity, and
necessity, require such details."
This statute retained two features that had already given rise to much
friction, and that were destined to be the cause of much more. It was
still within the power of state governors to impede conscription very
seriously. By certifying that a man was necessary to the civil
administration of a State, a Governor could place him beyond the legal
reach of the conscripting officers. This provision was a concession to
those who looked on Davis's request for authority over exemption as the
first step toward absolutism. On the other hand the statute allowed the
President a free hand in the scarcely less important matter of
"details." Among the imperative problems of the Confederacy, where the
whole male population was needed in the public service, was the most
economical separation of the two groups, the fighters and the producers.
On the one hand there was the constant demand for recruits to fill up
the wasted armies; on the other, the need for workers to keep the shops
going and to secure the harvest. The two interests were never fully
coördinated. Under the act of 1864, no farmer, mechanic, tradesman,
between the ages of seventeen and fifty, if fit for military service,
could remain at his work except as a "detail" under orders of the
President: he might be called to the colors at a moment's notice. We
shall see, presently, how the revoking of details, toward the end of
what may truly be called the terrible year, was one of the major
incidents of Confederate history.
Together with the new conscription act, the President approved on
February 17, 1864, a reenactment of the tax in kind, with some slight
concessions to the convenience of the farmers. The President's appeal
for a law directly taxing slaves and land had been ignored by Congress,
but another of his suggestions had been incorporated in the Funding Act.
The state of the currency was now so grave that Davis attributed to it
all the evils growing out of the attempts to enforce impressment. As the
value of the paper dollar had by this time shrunk to six cents in specie
and the volume of Confederate paper was upward of seven hundred
millions, Congress undertook to reduce the volume and raise the value by
compelling holders of notes to exchange them for bonds. By way of
driving the note-holders to consent to the exchange, provision was made
for the speedy taxation of notes for one-third their face value.
Such were the main items of the government program for 1864. Armed with
this, Davis braced himself for the great task of making head against the
enemies that now surrounded the Confederacy. It is an axiom of military
science that when one combatant possesses the interior line, the other
can offset this advantage only by exerting coincident pressure all
round, thus preventing him from shifting his forces from one front to
another. On this principle, the Northern strategists had at last
completed their gigantic plan for a general envelopment of the whole
Confederate defense both by land and sea. Grant opened operations by
crossing the Rapidan and telegraphing Sherman to advance into Georgia.
The stern events of the spring of 1864 form such a famous page in
military history that the sober civil story of those months appears by
comparison lame and impotent. Nevertheless, the Confederate Government
during those months was at least equal to its chief obligation: it
supplied and recruited the armies. With Grant checked at Cold Harbor, in
June, and Sherman still unable to pierce the western line, the hopes of
the Confederates were high.
In the North there was corresponding gloom. This was the moment when all
Northern opponents of the war drew together in their last attempt to
shatter the Lincoln Government and make peace with the Confederacy. The
value to the Southern cause of this Northern movement for peace at any
price was keenly appreciated at Richmond. Trusted agents of the
Confederacy were even then in Canada working deftly to influence
Northern sentiment. The negotiations with those Northern secret
societies which befriended the South belong properly in the story of
Northern politics and the presidential election of 1864. They were
skillfully conducted chiefly by Jacob Thompson and C. C. Clay. The
reports of these agents throughout the spring and summer were all
hopeful and told of "many intelligent men from the United States" who
sought them out in Canada for political consultations. They discussed
"our true friends from the Chicago (Democratic) convention" and even
gave names of those who, they were assured, would have seats in
McClellan's Cabinet. They were really not well informed upon Northern
affairs, and even after the tide had turned against the Democrats in
September, they were still priding themselves on their diplomatic
achievement, still confident they had helped organize a great political
power, had "given a stronger impetus to the peace party of the North
than all other causes combined, and had greatly reduced the strength of
the war party."
While Clay and Thompson built their house of cards in Canada, the
Richmond Government bent anxious eyes on the western battlefront.
Sherman, though repulsed in his one frontal attack at Kenesaw Mountain,
had steadily worked his way by the left flank of the Confederate army,
until in early July he was within six miles of Atlanta. All the lower
South was a-tremble with apprehension. Deputations were sent to Richmond
imploring the removal of Johnston from the western command. What had he
done since his appointment in December but retreat? Such was the tenor
of public opinion. "It is all very well to talk of Fabian policy," said
one of his detractors long afterward, "and now we can see we were rash
to say the least. But at the time, all of us went wrong together.
Everybody clamored for Johnston's removal." Johnston and Davis were not
friends; but the President hesitated long before acting. And yet, with
each day, political as well as military necessity grew more imperative.
Both at Washington and Richmond the effect that the fighting in Georgia
had on Northern opinion was seen to be of the first importance. Sherman
was staking everything to break the Confederate line and take Atlanta.
He knew that a great victory would have incalculable effect on the
Northern election. Davis knew equally well that the defeat of Sherman
would greatly encourage the peace party in the North. But he had no
general of undoubted genius whom he could put in Johnston's place.
However, the necessity for a bold stroke was so undeniable, and Johnston
appeared so resolute to continue his Fabian policy, that Davis
reluctantly took a desperate chance and superseded him by Hood.
During August, though the Democratic convention at Chicago drew up its
platform favoring peace at any price, the anxiety of the Southern
President did not abate his activities. The safety of the western line
was now his absorbing concern. And in mid-August that line was turned,
in a way, by Farragut's capture of Mobile Bay. As the month closed,
Sherman, despite the furious blows delivered by Hood, was plainly
getting the upper hand. North and South, men watched that tremendous
duel with the feeling that the foundations of things were rocking. At
last, on the 2d of September, Sherman, victorious, entered Atlanta.
CHAPTER VII.
A Game Of Chance
With dramatic completeness in the summer and autumn of 1864, the
foundations of the Confederate hope one after another gave way. Among
the causes of this catastrophe was the failure of the second great
attempt on the part of the Confederacy to secure recognition abroad. The
subject takes us back to the latter days of 1862, when the center of
gravity in foreign affairs had shifted from London to Paris. Napoleon
III, at the height of his strange career, playing half a dozen dubious
games at once, took up a new pastime and played at intrigue with the
Confederacy. In October he accorded a most gracious interview to
Slidell. He remarked that his sympathies were entirely with the South
but added that, if he acted alone, England might trip him up. He spoke
of his scheme for joint intervention by England, France, and Russia.
Then he asked why we had not created a navy. Slidell snapped at the
bait. He said that the Confederates would be glad to build ships in
France, that "if the Emperor would give only some kind of verbal
assurance that the police would not observe too closely when we wished
to put on guns and men we would gladly avail ourselves of it." To this,
the imperial trickster replied, "Why could you not have them built as
for the Italian Government? I do not think it would be difficult but
will consult the Minister of Marine about it."
Slidell left the Emperor's presence confident that things would happen.
And they did. First came Napoleon's proposal of intervention, which was
declined before the end of the year by England and Russia. Then came his
futile overtures to the Government at Washington, his offer of
mediation--which was rejected early in 1863. But Slidell remained
confident that something else would happen. And in this expectation also
he was not disappointed. The Emperor was deeply involved in Mexico and
was busily intriguing throughout Europe. This was the time when
Erlanger, standing high in the favor of the Emperor, made his gambler's
proposal to the Confederate authorities about cotton. Another of the
Emperor's friends now enters the play. On January 7, 1863, M. Arman, of
Bordeaux, "the largest shipbuilder in France," had called on the
Confederate commissioner: M. Arman would be happy to build ironclad
ships for the Confederacy, and as to paying for them, cotton bonds might
do the trick.
No wonder Slidell was elated, so much so that he seems to have given
little heed to the Emperor's sinister intimation that the whole affair
must be subterranean. But the wily Bonaparte had not forgotten that six
months earlier he had issued a decree of neutrality forbidding Frenchmen
to take commissions from either belligerent "for the armament of vessels
of war or to accept letters of marque, or to coöperate in any way
whatsoever in the equipment or arming of any vessel of war or corsair of
either belligerent." He did not intend to abandon publicly this cautious
attitude--at least, not for the present. And while Slidell at Paris was
completely taken in, the cooler head of A. Dudley Mann, Confederate
commissioner at Brussels, saw what an international quicksand was the
favor of Napoleon. It was about this time that Napoleon, having
dispatched General Forey with a fresh army to Mexico, wrote the famous
letter which gave notice to the world of what he was about. Mann wrote
home in alarm that the Emperor might be expected to attempt recovering
Mexico's ancient areas including Texas. Slidell saw in the Forey letter
only "views ... which will not be gratifying to the Washington
Government."
The adroit Arman, acting on hints from high officers of the Government,
applied for permission to build and arm ships of war, alleging that he
intended to send them to the Pacific and sell them to either China or
Japan. To such a laudable expression of commercial enterprise, one of
his fellows in the imperial ring, equipped with proper authority under
Bonaparte, hastened to give official approbation, and Erlanger came
forward by way of financial backer. There were conferences of
Confederate agents; contracts were signed; plans were agreed upon; and
the work was begun.
There was no more hopeful man in the Confederate service than Slidell
when, in the full flush of pride after Chancellorsville, he appealed to
the Emperor to cease waiting on other powers and recognize the
Confederacy. Napoleon accorded another gracious interview but still
insisted that it was impossible for him to act alone. He said that he
was "more fully convinced than ever of the propriety of a general
recognition by the European powers of the Confederate States but that
the commerce of France and the interests of the Mexican expedition would
be jeopardized by a rupture with the United States" and unless England
would stand by him he dared not risk such an eventuality. In point of
fact, he was like a speculator who is "hedging" on the stock exchange,
both buying and selling, and trying to make up his mind on which cast to
stake his fortune. At the same time he threw out once more the sinister
caution about the ships. He said that the ships might be built in France
but that their destination must be concealed.
That Napoleon's choice just then, if England had supported him, would
have been recognition of the Confederacy, cannot be doubted. The tangle
of intrigue which he called his foreign policy was not encouraging. He
was deeply involved in Italian politics, where the daring of Garibaldi
had reopened the struggle between clericals and liberals. In France
itself the struggle between parties was keen. Here, as in the American
imbroglio, he found it hard to decide with which party to break. The
chimerical scheme of a Latin empire in Mexico was his spectacular device
to catch the imagination, and incidentally the pocketbook, of everybody.
But in order to carry out this enterprise he must be able to avert or
withstand the certain hostility of the United States. Therefore, as he
told Slidell, "no other power than England possessed a sufficient navy"
to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. The moment was auspicious, for
there was a revival of the "Southern party" in England. The sailing of
the Alabama from Liverpool during the previous summer had encouraged the
Confederate agents and their British friends to undertake further
shipbuilding.
While M. Arman was at work in France, the Laird Brothers were at work in
England and their dockyards contained two ironclad rams supposed to
outclass any vessels of the United States navy. Though every effort had
been made to keep secret the ultimate destination of these rams, the
vigilance of the United States minister, reinforced by the zeal of the
"Northern party," detected strong circumstantial evidence pointing
toward a Confederate contract with the Lairds. A popular agitation
ensued along with demands upon the Government to investigate. To mask
the purposes of the Lairds, Captain James Bullock, the able special
agent of the Confederate navy, was forced to fall back upon the same
tactics that were being used across the Channel, and to sell the rams,
on paper, to a firm in France. Neither he nor Slidell yet appreciated
what a doubtful refuge was the shadow of Napoleon's wing.
Nevertheless the British Government, by this time practically alined
with the North, continued its search for the real owner of the Laird
rams. The "Southern party," however, had not quite given up hope, and
the agitation to prevent the sailing of the rams was a keen spur to its
flagging zeal. Furthermore the prestige of Lee never was higher than it
was in June, 1863, when the news of Chancellorsville was still fresh and
resounding in every mind. It had given new life to the Confederate hope:
Lee would take Washington before the end of the summer; the Laird rams
would go to sea; the Union would be driven to the wall. So reasoned the
ardent friends of the South. But one thing was lacking--a European
alliance. What a time for England to intervene!
While Slidell was talking with the Emperor, he had in his pocket a
letter from J. A. Roebuck, an English politician who wished to force the
issue in the House of Commons. As a preliminary to moving the
recognition of the Confederacy, he wanted authority to deny a rumor
going the rounds in London, to the effect that Napoleon had taken
position against intervention. Napoleon, when he had seen the letter,
began a negotiation of some sort with this politician. It is needless to
enter into the complications that ensued, the subsequent recriminations,
and the question as to just what Napoleon promised at this time and how
many of his promises he broke. He was a diplomat of the old school, the
school of lying as a fine art. He permitted Roebuck to come over to
Paris for an audience, and Roebuck went away with the impression that
Napoleon could be relied upon to back up a new movement for recognition.
When, however, Roebuck brought the matter before the Commons at the end
of the month and encountered an opposition from the Government that
seemed to imply an understanding with Napoleon which was different from
his own, he withdrew his motion (in July). Once more the scale turned
against the Confederacy, and Gettysburg was supplemented by the seizure
of the Laird rams by the British authorities. These events explain the
bitter turn given to Confederate feeling toward England in the latter
part of 1863. On the 4th of August Benjamin wrote to Mason that "the
perusal of the recent debates in Parliament satisfies the President"
that Mason's "continued residence in London is neither conducive to the
interests nor consistent with the dignity of this government," and
directed him to withdraw to Paris.
Confederate feeling, as it cooled toward England, warmed toward France.
Napoleon's Mexican scheme, including the offer of a ready-made imperial
crown to Maximilian, the brother of the Emperor of Austria, was fully
understood at Richmond; and with Napoleon's need of an American ally,
Southern hope revived. It was further strengthened by a pamphlet which
was translated and distributed in the South as a newspaper article under
the title France, Mexico, and the Confederate States. The reputed
author, Michel Chevalier, was an imperial senator, another member of the
Napoleon ring, and highly trusted by his shifty master. The pamphlet,
which emphasized the importance of Southern independence as a condition
of Napoleon's "beneficent aims" in Mexico, was held to have been
inspired, and the imperial denial was regarded as a mere matter of form.
What appeared to be significant of the temper of the Imperial Government
was a decree of a French court in the case of certain merchants who
sought to recover insurance on wine dispatched to America and destroyed
in a ship taken by the Alabama. Their plea was that they were insured
against loss by "pirates." The court dismissed their suit and assessed
costs against them. Further evidence of Napoleon's favor was the
permission given to the Confederate cruiser Florida to repair at Brest
and even to make use of the imperial dockyard. The very general faith in
Napoleon's promises was expressed by Davis in his message to Congress in
December: "Although preferring our own government and institutions to
those of other countries, we can have no disposition to contest the
exercise by them of the same right of self-government which we assert
for ourselves. If the Mexican people prefer a monarchy to a republic, it
is our plain duty cheerfully to acquiesce in their decision and to
evince a sincere and friendly interest in their prosperity.... The
Emperor of the French has solemnly disclaimed any purpose to impose on
Mexico a form of government not acceptable to the nation...." In
January, 1864, hope of recognition through support of Napoleon's Mexican
policy moved the Confederate Congress to adopt resolutions providing for
a Minister to the Mexican Empire and giving him instructions with regard
to a presumptive treaty. To the new post Davis appointed General William
Preston.
But what, while hope was springing high in America, was taking place in
France? So far as the world could say, there was little if anything to
disturb the Confederates; and yet, on the horizon, a cloud the size of a
man's hand had appeared. M. Arman had turned to another member of the
Legislative Assembly, a sound Bonapartist like himself, M. Voruz, of
Nantes, to whom he had sublet a part of the Confederate contract. The
truth about the ships and their destination thus became part of the
archives of the Voruz firm. No phase of Napoleonic intrigue could go
very far without encountering dishonesty, and to the confidential clerk
of M. Voruz there occurred the bright idea of doing something for
himself with this valuable diplomatic information. One fine day the
clerk was missing and with him certain papers. Then there ensued a
period of months during which the firm and their employers could only
conjecture the full extent of their loss.
In reality, from the Confederate point of view, everything was lost.
Again the episode becomes too complex to be followed in detail. Suffice
it to say that the papers were sold to the United States; that the
secret was exposed; that the United States made a determined assault
upon the Imperial Government. In the midst of this entanglement, Slidell
lost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its end
is a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sent
to the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could not
have appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinates might
play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire by
speaking of the ships as "now being constructed at Bordeaux and Nantes
for the government of the Confederate States" and virtually claimed of
Napoleon a promise to let them go to sea. Three days later the Minister
of Foreign Affairs took him sharply to task because of this note,
reminding him that "what had passed with the Emperor was confidential"
and dropping the significant hint that France could not be forced into
war by "indirection." According to Slidell's version of the interview
"the Minister's tone changed completely" when Slidell replied with "a
detailed history of the affair showing that the idea originated with the
Emperor." Perhaps the Minister knew more than he chose to betray.
From this hour the game was up. Napoleon's purpose all along seems to
have been quite plain. He meant to help the South to win by itself, and,
after it had won, to use it for his own advantage. So precarious was his
position in Europe that he dared not risk an American war without
England's aid, and England had cast the die. In this way, secrecy was
the condition necessary to continued building of the ships. Now that the
secret was out, Napoleon began to shift his ground. He sounded the
Washington Government and found it suspiciously equivocal as to Mexico.
To silence the French republicans, to whom the American minister had
supplied information about the ships, Napoleon tried at first muzzling
the press. But as late as February, 1864, he was still carrying water on
both shoulders. His Minister of Marine notified the builders that they
must get the ships out of France, unarmed, under fictitious sale to some
neutral country. The next month, reports which the Confederate
commissioners sent home became distinctly alarming. Mann wrote from
Brussels: "Napoleon has enjoined upon Maximilian to hold no official
relations with our commissioners in Mexico." Shortly after this Slidell
received a shock that was the beginning of the end: Maximilian, on
passing through Paris on his way to Mexico, refused to receive him.
The Mexican project was now being condemned by all classes in France.
Nevertheless, the Government was trying to float a Mexican loan, and it
is hardly fanciful to think that on this loan the last hope of the
Confederacy turned. Despite the popular attitude toward Mexico, the loan
was going well when the House of Representatives of the United States
dealt the Confederacy a staggering blow. It passed unanimous resolutions
in the most grim terms, denouncing the substitution of monarchical for
republican government in Mexico under European auspices. When this
action was reported in France, the Mexican loan collapsed.
Napoleon's Italian policy was now moving rapidly toward the crisis which
it reached during the following summer when he surrendered to the
opposition and promised to withdraw the French troops from Rome. In May,
when the loan collapsed, there was nothing for it but to throw over his
dear friends of the Confederacy. Presently he had summoned Arman before
him, "rated him severely," and ordered him to make bona fide sales of
the ships to neutral powers. The Minister of Marine professed surprise
and indignation at Arman's trifling with the neutrality of the Imperial
Government. And that practically was the end of the episode.
Equally complete was the breakdown of the Confederate negotiations with
Mexico. General Preston was refused recognition. In those fierce days of
July when the fate of Atlanta was in the balance, the pride and despair
of the Confederate Government flared up in a haughty letter to Preston
reminding him that "it had never been the intention of this Government
to offer any arguments to the new Government of Mexico ... nor to place
itself in any attitude other than that of complete equality," and
directing him to make no further overtures to the Mexican Emperor.
And then came the débâcle in Georgia. On that same 20th of September
when Benjamin poured out in a letter to Slidell his stored-up bitterness
denouncing Napoleon, Davis, feeling the last crisis was upon him, left
Richmond to join the army in Georgia. His frame of mind he had already
expressed when he said, "We have no friends abroad."
CHAPTER IX.
Desperate Remedies
The loss of Atlanta was the signal for another conflict of authority
within the Confederacy. Georgia was now in the condition in which
Alabama had found herself in the previous year. A great mobile army of
invaders lay encamped on her soil. And yet there was still a state
Government established at the capital. Inevitably the man who thought of
the situation from the point of view of what we should now call the
general staff, and the man who thought of it from the point of view of a
citizen of the invaded State, suffered each an intensification of
feeling, and each became determined to solve the problem in his own way.
The President of the Confederacy and the Governor of Georgia represented
these incompatible points of view.
The Governor, Joseph E. Brown, is one of the puzzling figures of
Confederate history. We have already encountered him as a dogged
opponent of the Administration. With the whole fabric of Southern life
toppling about his ears, Brown argued, quibbled, evaded, and became a
rallying-point of disaffection. That more eminent Georgian, Howell Cobb,
applied to him very severe language, and they became engaged in a
controversy over that provision of the Conscription Act which exempted
state officials from military service. While the Governor of Virginia
was refusing certificates of exemption to the minor civil officers such
as justices of the peace, Brown by proclamation promised his
"protection" to the most insignificant civil servants. "Will even your
Excellency," demanded Cobb, "certify that in any county of Georgia
twenty justices of the peace and an equal number of constables are
necessary for the proper administration of the state government?" The
Bureau of Conscription estimated that Brown kept out of the army
approximately 8000 eligible men. The truth seems to be that neither by
education nor heredity was this Governor equipped to conceive large
ideas. He never seemed conscious of the war as a whole, or of the
Confederacy as a whole. To defend Georgia and, if that could not be
done, to make peace for Georgia--such in the mind of Brown was the aim
of the war. His restless jealousy of the Administration finds its
explanation in his fear that it would denude his State of men. The
seriousness of Governor Brown's opposition became apparent within a week
of the fall of Atlanta. Among Hood's forces were some 10,000 Georgia
militia. Brown notified Hood that these troops had been called out
solely with a view to the defense of Atlanta, that since Atlanta had
been lost they must now be permitted "to return to their homes and look
for a time after important interests," and that therefore he did
"withdraw said organizations" from Hood's command. In other words, Brown
was afraid that they might be taken out of the State. By proclamation he
therefore gave the militia a furlough of thirty days. Previous to the
issue of this proclamation, Seddon had written to Brown making
requisition for his 10,000 militia to assist in a pending campaign
against Sherman. Two days after his proclamation had appeared, Brown, in
a voluminous letter full of blustering rhetoric and abounding in sneers
at the President, demanded immediate reinforcements by order of the
President and threatened that, if they were not sent, he would recall
the Georgia troops from the army of Lee and would command "all the sons
of Georgia to return to their own State and within their own limits to
rally round her glorious flag."
So threatening was the situation in Georgia that Davis attempted to take
it into his own hands. In a grim frame of mind he left Richmond for the
front. The resulting military arrangements do not of course belong
strictly to the subject-matter of this volume; but the brief tour of
speechmaking which Davis made in Georgia and the interior of South
Carolina must be noticed; for his purpose seems to have been to put the
military point of view squarely before the people. He meant them to see
how the soldier looked at the situation, ignoring all demands of
locality, of affiliation, of hardship, and considering only how to meet
and beat the enemy. In his tense mood he was not always fortunate in his
expressions. At Augusta, for example, he described Beauregard, whom he
had recently placed in general command over Georgia and South Carolina,
as one who would do whatever the President told him to do. But this idea
of military self-effacement was not happily worded, and the enemies of
Davis seized on his phraseology as further evidence of his instinctive
autocracy. The Mercury compared him to the Emperor of Russia and
declared the tactless remark to be "as insulting to General Beauregard
as it is false and presumptuous in the President."
Meanwhile Beauregard was negotiating with Brown. Though they came to an
understanding about the disposition of the militia, Brown still tried to
keep control of the state troops. When Sherman was burning Atlanta
preparatory to the March to the Sea, Brown addressed to the Secretary of
War another interminable epistle, denouncing the Confederate authorities
and asserting his willingness to fight both the South and the North if
they did not both cease invading his rights. But the people of Georgia
were better balanced than their Governor. Under the leadership of such
men as Cobb they rose to the occasion and did their part in what proved
a vain attempt to conduct a "people's war." Their delegation at Richmond
sent out a stirring appeal assuring them that Davis was doing for them
all it was possible to do. "Let every man fly to arms," said the appeal.
"Remove your negroes, horses, cattle, and provisions from before
Sherman's army, and burn what you cannot carry. Burn all bridges and
block up the roads in his route. Assail the invader in front, flank, and
rear, by night and by day. Let him have no rest."
The Richmond Government was unable to detach any considerable force from
the northern front. Its contribution to the forces in Georgia was
accomplished by such pathetic means as a general order calling to the
colors all soldiers furloughed or in hospital, "except those unable to
travel"; by revoking all exemptions to farmers, planters, and mechanics,
except munitions workers; and by placing one-fifth of the ordnance and
mining bureau in the battle service.
All the world knows how futile were these endeavors to stop the
whirlwind of desolation that was Sherman's march. He spent his Christmas
Day in Savannah. Then the center of gravity shifted from Georgia to
South Carolina. Throughout the two desperate months that closed 1864 the
authorities of South Carolina had vainly sought for help from Richmond.
Twice the Governor made official request for the return to South
Carolina of some of her own troops who were at the front in Virginia.
Davis first evaded and then refused the request. Lee had informed him
that if the forces on the northern front were reduced, the evacuation of
Richmond would become inevitable.
The South Carolina Government, in December, 1864, seems to have
concluded that the State must save itself. A State Conscription Act was
passed placing all white males between the ages of sixteen and sixty at
the disposal of the state authorities for emergency duty. An Exemption
Act set forth a long list of persons who should not be liable to
conscription by the Confederate Government. Still a third act regulated
the impressment of slaves for work on fortifications so as to enable the
state authorities to hold a check upon the Confederate authorities. The
significance of the three statutes was interpreted by a South Carolina
soldier, General John S. Preston, in a letter to the Secretary of War
that was a wail of despair. "This legislation is an explicit declaration
that this State does not intend to contribute another soldier or slave
to the public defense, except on such terms as may be dictated by her
authorities. The example will speedily be followed by North Carolina and
Georgia, the Executives of those States having already assumed the
position."
The division between the two parties in South Carolina had now become
bitter. To Preston the men behind the State Exemption Act appeared as
"designing knaves." The Mercury, on the other hand, was never more
relentless toward Davis than in the winter of 1864-1865. However, none
or almost none of the anti-Davis men in South Carolina made the least
suggestion of giving up the struggle. To fight to the end but also to
act as a check upon the central Government--as the new Governor, Andrew
G. Magrath, said in his inaugural address in December, 1864,--was the
aim of the dominant party in South Carolina. How far the State
Government and the Confederate Government had drifted apart is shown by
two comments which were made in January, 1865. Lee complained that the
South Carolina regiments, "much reduced by hard service," were not being
recruited up to their proper strength because of the measures adopted in
the southeastern States to retain conscripts at home. About the same
date the Mercury arraigned Davis for leaving South Carolina defenseless
in the face of Sherman's coming offensive, and asked whether Davis
intended to surrender the Confederacy.
And in the midst of this critical period, the labor problem pushed to
the fore again. The revocation of industrial details, necessary as it
was, had put almost the whole male population--in theory, at least--in
the general Confederate army. How far-reaching was the effect of this
order may be judged from the experience of the Columbia and Augusta
Railroad Company. This road was building through the interior of the
State a new line which was rendered imperatively necessary by Sherman's
seizure of the lines terminating at Savannah. The effect of the
revocation order on the work in progress was described by the president
of the road in a letter to the Secretary of War:
In July and August I made a fair beginning and by October we had about
600 hands. General Order No. 77 took off many of our contractors and
hands. We still had increased the number of hands to about 400 when
Sherman started from Atlanta. The military authorities of Augusta took
about 300 of them to fortify that city. These contractors being from
Georgia returned with their slaves to their homes after being discharged
at Augusta. We still have between 500 and 600 hands at work and are
adding to the force every week.
The great difficulty has been in getting contractors exempt or
definitely detailed since Order No. 77. I have not exceeded eight or
nine contractors now detailed. The rest are exempt from other causes or
over age.
It was against such a background of economic confusion that Magrath
wrote to the Governor of North Carolina making a revolutionary proposal.
Virtually admitting that the Confederacy had been shattered, and knowing
the disposition of those in authority to see only the military aspects
of any given situation, he prophesied two things: that the generals
would soon attempt to withdraw Lee's army south of Virginia, and that
the Virginia troops in that army would refuse to go. "It is natural
under the circumstances," said he, "that they would not." He would
prepare for this emergency by an agreement among the Southeastern and
Gulf States to act together irrespective of Richmond, and would thus
weld the military power of these States into "a compact and organized
mass."
Governor Vance, with unconscious subtlety, etched a portrait of his own
mind when he replied that the crisis demanded "particularly the skill of
the politician perhaps more than that of the great general." He adroitly
evaded saying what he really thought of the situation but he made two
explicit counter-proposals. He suggested that a demand should be made
for the restoration of General Johnston and for the appointment of
General Lee to "full and absolute command of all the forces of the
Confederacy." On the day on which Vance wrote to Magrath, the Mercury
lifted up its voice and cried out for a Lee to take charge of the
Government and save the Confederacy. About the same time Cobb wrote to
Davis in the most friendly way, warning him that he had scarcely a
supporter left in Georgia, and that, in view of the great popular
reaction in favor of Johnston, concessions to the opposition were an
imperative necessity. "By accident," said he, "I have become possessed
of the facts in connection with the proposed action of the Governors of
certain States." He disavowed any sympathy with the movement but warned
Davis that it was a serious menace.
Two other intrigues added to the general political confusion. One of
these, the "Peace Movement," will be considered in the next chapter. The
other was closely connected with the alleged conspiracy to depose Davis
and set up Lee as dictator. If the traditional story, accepted by able
historians, may be believed, William C. Rives, of the Confederate
Congress, carried in January, 1865, to Lee from a congressional cabal an
invitation to accept the rôle of Cromwell. The greatest difficulty in
the way of accepting the tradition is the extreme improbability that any
one who knew anything of Lee would have been so foolish as to make such
a proposal. Needless to add, the tradition includes Lee's refusal to
overturn the Government.
There can be no doubt, however, that all the enemies of Davis in
Congress and out of it, in the opening months of 1865, made a determined
series of attacks upon his Administration. Nor can there be any doubt
that the popular faith in Lee was used as their trump card. To that end,
a bill was introduced to create the office of commanding general of the
Confederate armies. The bill was generally applauded, and every one
assumed that the new office was to be given to Lee. On the day after the
bill had passed the Senate the Virginia Legislature resolved that the
appointment of General Lee to supreme command would "reanimate the
spirit of the armies as well as the people of the several States and ...
inspire increased confidence in the final success of the cause." When
the bill was sent to the President, it was accompanied by a resolution
asking him to restore Johnston. While Davis was considering this bill,
the Virginia delegation in the House, headed by the Speaker, Thomas S.
Bocock, waited upon the President, informed him what was really wanted
was a change of Cabinet, and told him that three-fourths of the House
would support a resolution of want of confidence in the Cabinet. The
next day Bocock repeated the demand in a note which Davis described as a
"warning if not a threat."
The situation of both President and country was now desperate. The
program with which the Government had entered so hopefully upon this
fated year had broken down at almost every point. In addition to the
military and administrative disasters, the financial and economic
situation was as bad as possible. So complete was the financial
breakdown that Secretary Memminger, utterly disheartened, had resigned
his office, and the Treasury was now administered by a Charleston
merchant, George A. Trenholm. But the financial chaos was wholly beyond
his control. The government notes reckoned in gold were worth about
three cents on the dollar. The Government itself avoided accepting them.
It even bought up United States currency and used it in transacting the
business of the army. The extent of the financial collapse was to be
measured by such incidents as the following which is recounted in a
report that had passed under Davis's eye only a few weeks before the
"threat" of Bocock was uttered: "Those holding the four per cent
certificates complain that the Government as far as possible discredits
them. Fractions of hundreds cannot be paid with them. I saw a widow
lady, a few days since, offer to pay her taxes of $1,271.31 with a
certificate of $1,300. The tax-gatherer refused to give her the change
of $28.69. She then offered the whole certificate for the taxes. This
was refused. This apparent injustice touched her far more than the
amount of the taxes."
A letter addressed to the President from Griffin, Georgia, contained
this dreary picture:
Unless something is done and that speedily, there will be thousands of
the best citizens of the State and heretofore as loyal as any in the
Confederacy, that will not care one cent which army is victorious in
Georgia.... Since August last there have been thousands of cavalry and
wagon trains feeding upon our cornfields and for which our
quartermasters and officers in command of trains, regiments, battalions,
companies, and squads, have been giving the farmers receipts, and we
were all told these receipts would pay our government taxes and tithing;
and yet not one of them will be taken by our collector.... And yet we
are threatened with having our lands sold for taxes. Our scrip for corn
used by our generals will not be taken.... How is it that we have
certified claims upon our Government, past due ten months, and when we
enter the quartermaster's office we see placed up conspicuously in large
letters "no funds." Some of these said quartermasters [who] four years
ago were not worth the clothes upon their backs, are now large dealers
in lands, negroes, and real estate.
There was almost universal complaint that government contractors were
speculating in supplies and that the Impressment Law was used by
officials to cover their robbery of both the Government and the people.
Allowing for all the panic of the moment, one is forced to conclude that
the smoke is too dense not to cover a good deal of fire. In a word, at
the very time when local patriotism everywhere was drifting into
opposition to the general military command and when Congress was
reflecting this widespread loss of confidence, the Government was loudly
charged with inability to restrain graft. In all these accusations there
was much injustice. Conditions that the Government was powerless to
control were cruelly exaggerated, and the motives of the Government were
falsified. For all this exaggeration and falsification the press was
largely to blame. Moreover, the press, at least in dangerously large
proportion, was schooling the people to hold Davis personally
responsible for all their suffering. General Bragg was informed in a
letter from a correspondent in Mobile that "men have been taught to look
upon the President as an inexorably self-willed man who will see the
country to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose."
This deliberate fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less
malicious if the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis
because of his desire to abolish the exemption of editors from
conscription. Their ignoble course brings to mind one of the few
sarcasms recorded of Lee--the remark that the great mistake of the South
was in making all its best military geniuses editors of newspapers. But
it must be added in all fairness that the great opposition journals,
such as the Mercury, took up this new issue with the President because
they professed to see in his attitude toward the press a determination
to suppress freedom of speech, so obsessed was the opposition with the
idea that Davis was a monster! Whatever explanations may be offered for
the prevalence of graft, the impotence of the Government at Richmond
contributed to the general demoralization. In regions like Georgia and
Alabama, the Confederacy was now powerless to control its agents.
Furthermore, in every effort to assume adequate control of the food
situation the Government met the continuous opposition of two groups of
opponents--the unscrupulous parasites and the bigots of economic and
constitutional theory. Of the activities of the first group, one
incident is sufficient to tell the whole story. At Richmond, in the
autumn of 1864, the grocers were selling rice at two dollars and a half
a pound. It happened that the Governor of Virginia was William Smith,
one of the strong men of the Confederacy who has not had his due from
the historians. He saw that even under the intolerable conditions of the
moment this price was shockingly exorbitant. To remedy matters, the
Governor took the State of Virginia into business, bought rice where it
was grown, imported it, and sold it in Richmond at fifty cents a pound,
with sufficient profit to cover all costs of handling.
Nevertheless, when Smith urged the Virginia Legislature to assume
control of business as a temporary measure, he was at once assailed by
the second group--those martinets of constitutionalism who would not
give up their cherished Anglo-Saxon tradition of complete individualism
in government. The Administration lost some of its staunchest supporters
the moment its later organ, the Sentinel, began advocating the general
regulation of prices. With ruin staring them in the face, these devotees
of tradition could only reiterate their ancient formulas, nail their
colors to the mast, end go down, satisfied that, if they failed with
these principles, they would have failed still more terribly without
them. Confronting the practical question how to prevent speculators from
charging 400 per cent profit, these men turned grim but did not abandon
their theory. In the latter part of 1864 they aligned themselves with
the opposition when the government commissioners of impressment fixed an
official schedule that boldly and ruthlessly cut under market prices.
The attitude of many such people was expressed by the Montgomery Mail
when it said:
"The tendency of the age, the march of the American people, is toward
monarchy, and unless the tide is stopped we shall reach something worse
than monarchy.
"Every step we have taken during the past four years has been in the
direction of military despotism.
"Half our laws are unconstitutional."
Another danger of the hour was the melting away of the Confederate army
under the very eyes of its commanders. The records showed that there
were 100,000 absentees. And though the wrathful officials of the Bureau
of Conscription labeled them all "deserters," the term covered great
numbers who had gone home to share the sufferings of their families.
Such in brief was the fateful background of the congressional attack
upon the Administration in January, 1865. Secretary Seddon, himself a
Virginian, believing that he was the main target of the hostility of the
Virginia delegation, insisted upon resigning. Davis met this
determination with firmness, not to say infatuation, and in spite of the
congressional crisis, exhausted every argument to persuade Seddon to
remain in office. He denied the right of Congress to control his
Cabinet, but he was finally constrained to allow Seddon to retire. The
bitterness inspired by these attempts to coerce the President may be
gauged by a remark attributed to Mrs. Davis. Speaking of the action of
Congress in forcing upon him the new plan for a single commanding
general of all the armies, she is said to have exclaimed, "I think I am
the proper person to advise Mr. Davis and if I were he, I would die or
be hung before I would submit to the humiliation."
Nevertheless the President surrendered to Congress. On January 26, 1865,
he signed the bill creating the office of commanding general and at once
bestowed the office upon Lee. It must not be supposed, however, that Lee
himself had the slightest sympathy with the congressional cabal which
had forced upon the President this reorganization of the army. In
accepting his new position he pointedly ignored Congress by remarking,
"I am indebted alone to the kindness of His Excellency, the President,
for my nomination to this high and arduous office."
The popular clamor for the restoration of Johnston had still to be
appeased. Disliking Johnston and knowing that the opposition was using a
popular general as a club with which to beat himself, Davis hesitated
long but in the end yielded to the inevitable. To make the reappointment
himself, however, was too humiliating. He left it to the new
commander-in-chief, who speedily restored Johnston to command.
CHAPTER X.
Disintegration
While these factions, despite their disagreements, were making valiant
efforts to carry on the war, other factions were stealthily cutting the
ground from under them. There were two groups of men ripe for
disaffection--original Unionists unreconciled to the Confederacy and
indifferentists conscripted against their will.
History has been unduly silent about these disaffected men. At the time
so real was the belief in state rights that contemporaries were
reluctant to admit that any Southerner, once his State had seceded,
could fail to be loyal to its commands. Nevertheless in considerable
areas--such, for example, as East Tennessee--the majority remained to
the end openly for the Union, and there were large regions in the South
to which until quite recently the eye of the student had not been
turned. They were like deep shadows under mighty trees on the face of a
brilliant landscape. When the peasant Unionist who had been forced into
the army deserted, however, he found in these shadows a nucleus of
desperate men ready to combine with him in opposition to the local
authorities.
Thus were formed local bands of free companions who pillaged the
civilian population. The desperadoes whom the deserters joined have been
described by Professor Dodd as the "neglected by-products" of the old
régime. They were broken white men, or the children of such, of the sort
that under other circumstances have congregated in the slums of great
cities. Though the South lacked great cities, nevertheless it had its
slum--a widespread slum, scattered among its swamps and forests. In
these fastnesses were the lowest of the poor whites, in whom hatred of
the dominant whites and vengeful malice against the negro burned like
slow fires. When almost everywhere the countryside was stripped of its
fighting men, these wretches emerged from their swamps and forests, like
the Paris rabble emerging from its dens at the opening of the
Revolution. But unlike the Frenchmen, they were too sodden to be capable
of ideas. Like predatory wild beasts they revenged themselves upon the
society that had cast them off, and with utter heartlessness they smote
the now defenseless negro. In the old days, with the country well
policed, the slaves had been protected against their fury, but war now
changed all. The negro villages--or "streets," as the term was--were
without arms and without white police within call. They were ravaged by
these marauders night after night, and negroes were not the only
victims, for in remote districts even murder of the whites became a
familiar horror.
The antiwar factions were not necessarily, however, users of violence.
There were some men who cherished a dream which they labeled
"reconstruction"; and there were certain others who believed in separate
state action, still clinging to the illusion that any State had it in
its power to escape from war by concluding a separate peace with the
United States.
Yet neither of these illusions made much headway in the States that had
borne the strain of intellectual leadership. Virginia and South
Carolina, though seldom seeing things eye to eye and finally drifting in
opposite directions, put but little faith in either "reconstruction" or
separate peace. Their leaders had learned the truth about men and
nations; they knew that life is a grim business; they knew that war had
unloosed passions that had to spend themselves and that could not be
talked away.
But there was scattered over the Confederacy a population which lacked
experience of the world and which included in the main those small
farmers and semipeasants who under the old régime were released from the
burden of taxation and at the same time excluded from the benefits of
education. Among these people the illusions of the higher classes were
reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any
provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding
life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions,
these people were as prone as children to confuse the world of their own
desire with the world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fell
upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated
imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these
people with childlike simplicity immediately became panic-stricken. Like
the similar class in the North, they had measureless faith in talk.
Hence for them, as for Horace Greeley and many another, sprang up the
notion that if only all their sort could be brought together for talk
and talk and yet more talk, the Union could be "reconstructed" just as
it used to be, and the cruel war would end. Before their eyes, as before
Greeley in 1864, danced the fata morgana of a convention of all the
States, talking, talking, talking.
The peace illusion centered in North Carolina, where the people were as
enthusiastic for state sovereignty as were any Southerners. They had
seceded mainly because they felt that this principle had been attacked.
Having themselves little if any intention to promote slavery, they
nevertheless were prompt to resent interference with the system or with
any other Southern institution. Jonathan Worth said that they looked on
both abolition and secession as children of the devil, and he put the
responsibility for the secession of his State wholly upon Lincoln and
his attempt to coerce the lower South. This attitude was probably
characteristic of all classes in North Carolina. There also an unusually
large percentage of men lacked education and knowledge of the world. We
have seen how the first experience with taxation produced instant and
violent reaction. The peasant farmers of the western counties and the
general mass of the people began to distrust the planter class. They
began asking if their allies, the other States, were controlled by that
same class which seemed to be crushing them by the exaction of tithes.
And then the popular cry was raised: Was there after all anything in the
war for the masses in North Carolina? Had they left the frying-pan for
the fire? Could they better things by withdrawing from association with
their present allies and going back alone into the Union? The delusion
that they could do so whenever they pleased and on the old footing seems
to have been widespread. One of their catch phrases was "the
Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." Throughout 1863, when
the agitation against tithes was growing every day, the "conservatives"
of North Carolina, as their leaders named them, were drawing together in
a definite movement for peace. This project came to a head during the
next year in those grim days when Sherman was before Atlanta. Holden,
that champion of the opposition to tithes, became a candidate for
Governor against Vance, who was standing for reëlection. Holden stated
his platform in the organ of his party: "If the people of North Carolina
are for perpetual conscriptions, impressments and seizures to keep up a
perpetual, devastating and exhausting war, let them vote for Governor
Vance, for he is for 'fighting it out now'; but if they believe, from
the bitter experience of the last three years, that the sword can never
end it, and are in favor of steps being taken by the State to urge
negotiations by the general government for an honorable and speedy
peace, they must vote for Mr. Holden."
As Holden, however, was beaten by a vote that stood about three to one,
Governor Vance continued in power, but just what he stood for and just
what his supporters understood to be his policy would be hard to say. A
year earlier he was for attempting to negotiate peace, but though
professing to have come over to the war party he was never a cordial
supporter of the Confederacy. In a hundred ways he played upon the
strong local distrust of Richmond, and upon the feeling that North
Carolina was being exploited in the interests of the remainder of the
South. To cripple the efficiency of Confederate conscription was one of
his constant aims. Whatever his views of the struggle in which he was
engaged, they did not include either an appreciation of Southern
nationalism or the strategist's conception of war. Granted that the
other States were merely his allies, Vance pursued a course that might
justly have aroused their suspicion, for so far as he was able he
devoted the resources of the State wholly to the use of its own
citizens. The food and the manufactures of North Carolina were to be
used solely by its own troops, not by troops of the Confederacy raised
in other States. And yet, subsequent to his reëlection, he was not a
figure in the movement to negotiate peace.