"THE AWAKENING OF THE LION."
When tidings came of the fall of Fort Sumter, there was wild rejoicing
throughout the South and it culminated at her Capital. All the great,
and many of the little men of the Government were serenaded by bands of
the most patriotic musical persuasion. Bonfires blazed in every street
and, by their red glare, crowds met and exchanged congratulations, amid
the wildest enthusiasm; while the beverage dear to the cis-Atlantic
heart was poured out in libations wonderful to see!
One-half of the country thought that this victory of a few untrained
gunners would prevent further progress of the war; that the Federal
Government, seeing how determined was the stand the South had
taken--how ready she was to defend her principles--would recede and
grant the concessions demanded. The other half felt that, however fair
an augury for the future the great and bloodless victory might be--and
it will be recollected that the only loss was the death of a few United
States soldiers, in the salute Beauregard permitted them to give their
flag--the real tug of the struggle was not yet commenced; that the
whole power of a government, never yet overstrained, or even fully
tested, would be hurled on the new confederation, to crush ere it could
concentrate its strength.
The Confederate Government was on the side of this opinion; and now,
for the first time, preparations for war began in earnest. Though the
people of Montgomery still murmured, as they had done from the
beginning, at the influx of corrupting social influences from Sodom on
the Potomac, and still held the hordes of unintroduced strangers aloof
from their firesides, they continued most strenuous exertions and made
most selfless sacrifices to serve the beloved cause. Storehouses were
freely offered for the public use; and merchants moved from their
places of business, on shortest notice, to turn them over to the
Government.
A great, red brick pile, originally built for warehouses and
counting-rooms, had early been converted into public offices and
popularly named the "Government House." Here the departments were all
crowded together; and now, under the pressure of close necessity, the
War office was organized into bureaux, at the heads of which were
placed the most competent officers of the old service at the disposal
of the Executive. Bureaux of Adjutant-General, Ordnance, Engineers and
Medicine were soon put in as perfect a state as the condition of the
South allowed; and their respective chiefs were tireless in endeavor to
collect the very best assistants and material, in their various
branches, from every quarter.
Commissioners were sent to all the states that had not already joined
the Confederacy, to urge them to speedy action; and the dispatches they
sent back were so full of cheer, that day after day a salute of cannon
from the street in front of the Government House announced to the
roused Montgomerans that another ally had enlisted under the flag; or,
that a fresh levy of troops, from some unexpected quarter, had been
voted to the cause.
Officers, carefully selected from those who left the United States
Army, or who had received military education elsewhere, were promptly
sent to all points in the South, to urge and hasten the organization of
troops; to forward those already raised to points where they might be
most needed; and to establish recruiting stations and camps of
instruction. The captured arsenals were put in working order, new ones
were started, depots for clothes, ordnance and medicines were prepared;
and from one boundary of the Confederacy to the other, the hum of
preparation told that the leaders of the nation had at last awakened to
its real demands.
The mass of the people--who, from the first, had been willing and
anxious, but doubtful what to do--now sprang to their places; moneyed
men made large and generous donations of cash; the banks offered loans
of any amount, on most liberal terms; planters from every section made
proffers of provisions and stock, in any quantities needed; and the
managers of all the railroads in the South held a convention at
Montgomery and proffered the use of their roads to the Government;
volunteering to charge only half-rates, and to receive payment in the
bonds of the Confederate States.
Especially did the women go heart and soul into the work; urging the
laggards, encouraging the zealous, and laboring with sacrificial zeal
upon rough uniforms for the most unprepared of the new troops.
The best blood of the South went cheerfully into the ranks, as the post
of honor; and the new regiments endeavored to be perfectly impartial in
selecting the best men for their officers, irrespective of any other
claim. That they failed signally in their object was the fault, not of
their intention, but of human nature in many cases--of circumstance in
all.
At this time the plan of filling up the regular army was abandoned.
Officers coming from the United States service were, by law, entitled
to at least as high rank in it as they had there held; but volunteers
were asked for and accepted by companies, or regiments, with the
privilege of choosing their own leaders; and these regulars were only
given commands where vacancies, or the exigencies of the service,
seemed to demand it imperatively.
Every hour of the day could be heard the tap of the drum, as the new
troops from depot, or steamer, marched through the town to their camps
in the suburbs; or as the better drilled volunteer companies passed
through to Pensacola, where Brigadier-General Braxton Bragg already had
a considerable force. And toward that point every eye was strained as
the next great theater of action.
All day long the churches were open, and crowds of ladies, from town
and country, assembled in them and sewed on the tough, ungainly pants
and jackets; while their negro maids, collected on the porches, or
under the trees, worked as steadily as their mistresses, many a ringing
guffaw and not unmusical song rising above them.
Great numbers of the interested and the curious visited the camps,
carrying substantial tokens of sympathy for the cause and its defenders
in the shape of hams, loaves and sometimes bottles. Nor was such
testimony often irrelevant; for as yet the quartermaster and
commissary--those much-erring and more-cursed adjuncts to all
armies--were not fully aware of what they were to do, or how to do it,
even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake!
And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or
Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong
hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order.
Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from
Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed
shape as clear and legible statutes. It was generally said that Mr.
Davis had reduced Congress to a pliable texture that his iron fingers
could twist at will into any form they pleased. Newspaper
correspondents wrote strange stories of the length to which that
dignified body allowed him to carry his prerogative. They declared that
frequently, the framing of a bill not suiting him, it was simply
returned by his private secretary, with verbal instructions as to
emendations and corrections, which were obediently carried out.
Some even went to the length of asserting that, before any bill of
importance was framed, a rough draft was sent down from the President's
office and simply put into form and voted a law by the ductile
legislators.
However much of this one may allow for exaggeration of "our
correspondent," it is certain that Mr. Davis was the heart and brains
of the government; and his popularity with the people was, at this
time, unbounded. They were perfectly content to think that the
government was in the hollow of his hand; and pronounced any of his
measures good before they were tried. His energy, too, was untiring;
and it was wonderful to look on the frail body and believe that it
endured the terrible physical and mental strain he imposed upon it.
At this time the President and his family, having left their temporary
quarters at the hotel, were living at a plain mansion provided for
them, but a few steps from the Government House. In the latter building
were the executive office and the Cabinet room, connected by an always
open door; and in one or the other of these Mr. Davis spent some
fifteen hours out of every twenty-four. Here he received the thousands
of visitors whom curiosity, or business, brought; consulted with his
secretaries, revised bills, or framed new projects for strengthening
the defenses of the open and wide frontier. It was said that he managed
the War Department, in all its various details, in addition to other
manifold labors; finding time not only to give it a general
supervision, but to go into all the minutiae of the working of its
bureaux, the choice of all its officers, or agents, and the very
disbursement of its appropriations.
His habits were as simple as laborious. He rose early, worked at home
until breakfast, then to a long and wearing day at the Government
House. Often, long after midnight, the red glow from his office lamp,
shining over the mock-orange hedge in front of his dwelling, told of
unremitting strain. Thus early in the drama, Mr. Benjamin had become
one of its leading actors; having more real weight and influence with
Mr. Davis than any, or all, of his other advisers. The President did
not believe there was "safety in a multitude of counsellors;" and he
certainly chose the subtlest, if not the safest, head of the half-dozen
to aid him. With Mr. Mallory, too, he seemed on very friendly and
confidential terms. These two he met as friends and advisers; but
beside them, the Cabinet--as such--had scarcely a practical existence.
Mr. Davis very naturally considered that the War Department had become
the government, and he managed it accordingly. The secretaries were, of
course, useful to arrange matters formally in their respective
branches; but they had scarcely higher duties left them than those of
their clerks; while Congress remained a formal body to pass bills and
ratify acts, the inspiration for which it derived from the clearest and
coolest brain in the South.
The crisis had called in plain terms that it was time for the leading
spirit of the revolution to take its management; and he had risen to
the occasion and faced the responsibilities, before which the chosen of
the new nation had hitherto cowered.
And naturally, under the iron hand, things began to work more smoothly
than they had under the King-Log reign of a few weeks previous; and the
country felt the change from the Potomac to the Gulf. True, politicians
still grumbled, but less loudly; for even they found something to do,
where everybody began to be busy. The great crowd that at first
collected had thinned greatly, from assignments to duty in divers
quarters; and that portion of it left in Montgomery began to settle
into a regular routine.
The ladies of the executive mansion held occasional receptions, after
the Washington custom, at which were collected the most brilliant, the
most gallant and most honored of the South. But the citizens still held
aloof from general connection with the alien crowd. They could not get
rid of their idea that Sodom had come to be imposed on them; and to
their prejudiced nostrils there was an odor of sulphur in everything
that savored of Washington society. And yet, while they grumbled--these
older people of Montgomery--they wrought, heart and soul for the cause;
yielded their warerooms for government use, contributed freely in money
and stores, let their wives and daughters work on the soldiers'
clothing like seamstresses, and put their first-born into the ranks,
musket on shoulder.
Early on the morning of the 18th of April, a salute of seven guns rang
out from the street before the public building. The telegraph had
brought the most welcome news that, on the evening before, Virginia had
passed the ordinance of secession.
Wild was the rejoicing at the southern Capital that day!
The Old Dominion had long and sedately debated the question; had
carefully considered the principles involved and canvassed the pros and
cons, heedless alike of jeers from without and hot-headed counsels
within her borders.
She had trembled long in the balance so tenderly adjusted, that the
straining eyes of the South could form no notion how it would lean; but
now she turned deliberately and poured the vast wealth of her
influence, of her mineral stores and her stalwart and chivalric sons
into the lap of the Confederacy.
The victory of the week before paled before this; and men looked at
each other with a hope in their eyes that spoke more than the braying
of a thousand bands.
And the triumph was a double one; for great as was the accession to the
South in boundary, in men and means, greater far was the blow to the
Union, when its eldest and most honored daughter divorced herself from
the parent hearth and told the world, that looked on with deep
suspense, that the cause of her sisters must in future be her own!