genius was that of the soldier was responsible for the most unfortunate
acts of his life. What his real merits as a soldier were we can only
conjecture. In the Mexican War he demonstrated first-rate ability, but his
highest command was that of a regiment. Although he constantly interfered
with some of his generals with suggestions, sometimes tantamount to
commands, he never exercised the military prerogative in directing troops
in the field. We know that those suggestions were often wrong, but before
concluding that his capacity as an active commander must be determined by
them, we must remember that they were given usually at a great distance,
and that they might have been otherwise had he understood the situation as
thoroughly as he supposed he did. There is probably no doubt that he would
have proved a splendid brigade commander, but it is more than doubtful if
he could ever have understood the science of war as Lee or Johnston or
Jackson knew it.
[Illustration: The Site of the Prison Camp on the James Below Richmond]
In Virginia, where President Davis did not attempt to interfere with his
generals, the most brilliant triumphs of the South were won, and while
this is not assigned as the only reason, the fact is nevertheless
significant. From second Manassas, where the vain, boastful General Pope,
who had won notoriety at Shiloh by reporting the capture of 10,000
Confederates whom he must also have eaten as they never figured in parol,
prison or exchange lists--was annihilated by Jackson, to the brilliant
victory of Chancellorsville where the great soldier sealed his faith with
his life-blood, the army of Northern Virginia was handled with that
consummate generalship and displayed a degree of heroism which must ever
challenge the admiration of mankind as the most perfect fighting machine
in the world's history.
XXIII. Blunders of the Western Army
During this time the Western army suffered one disaster after another in
such rapid succession that the warmest friends of the Confederacy began to
despair of its future. Thoroughly alarmed. President Davis overcame his
animosity sufficiently to send General Johnston to the rescue, but instead
of giving him full authority over one or both of the armies he designated
him as the commander of a geographical department with little more than
the power usually invested in an inspector general.
Bragg, the most unfortunate of all the Southern generals, commanded in
Tennessee, where he was out-generaled and defeated at Murfreesboro when he
held all of the winning cards in his own hands. His blunders upon that
field so enraged his officers that they were almost in revolt against him.
However, in his fidelity to his old friend and comrade, Mr. Davis failed
to discover what was evident to every intelligent lieutenant in the army,
and Bragg was continued in command to perpetrate other blunders still more
costly and unpardonable.
The Southern corps of the Western army was still worse handled. The
Mississippi River, after the fall of New Orleans and Memphis, was of
little or no use to the Confederacy, but Mr. Davis conceived the idea that
it must be defended although that course, necessarily would weaken Bragg
and render success impossible to either corps.
To the command of the Southern corps, Mr. Davis appointed General
Pemberton, a theoretical soldier who it was alleged had never witnessed
any considerable engagement. However this may be, his conduct fully
sustained the allegation, for, from start to finish, he seems to have
been mystified by the tactics of Grant and Sherman, and after a series of
marches and countermarches in which he lost much and gained nothing he
fell back on Vicksburg, perhaps the most indefensible city in America, and
prepared to sustain a siege, the outcome of which could not be doubtful
for a moment.
[Illustration: On the Field of Cold Harbor Today]
Being safely driven into a position from which there was but one line of
retreat, Pemberton appealed to the President for aid, and General Johnston
was instructed to furnish it. His soldierly mind saw at a glance that the
proper thing to do was to abandon Vicksburg, and he accordingly ordered
Pemberton to do so. That officer protested and appealed to Mr. Davis, who
sustained him and notified Johnston that under no circumstances must
Vicksburg be abandoned. That decision sealed the fate of Pemberton's army,
and on the day General Grant invested it he telegraphed to Washington
that its fall was only a question of time. How that prediction was
verified by the surrender of Pemberton's army of 30,000 men, thus leaving
Grant and Sherman free to double back on Bragg, are too well known to need
any discussion at this time. All thinking men realized that it sealed the
doom of the Confederacy unless the Northern campaign of General Lee should
prove successful.
XXIV. Davis and Gettysburg
The conception of the Gettysburg campaign has been properly attributed to
Mr. Davis, but much of the criticism that it has evoked is unfair being
based upon a misconception of the object sought to be attained. If one
will consider the moral effect that the victory of Chancellorsville
produced throughout the North, that many influential leaders and a large
part of the press openly declared that another such calamity must be
followed by the recognition of the Confederacy, the idea of this Northern
campaign, it must be conceded, was founded upon sound military principles.
Military critics are very generally agreed that Gettysburg would have been
a Confederate instead of a Union victory had the Southern troops occupied
Little Round Top on the evening of the first day. That they did not is a
fortuitous circumstance, which can militate nothing against the soundness
of the idea involved in the campaign, while the fact that a victory so
great as to have been decisive lay within easy grasp of the Confederates
would seem to amply justify the hazard on the part of President Davis.
The last reasonable hope of success was over when Lee retreated from
Pennsylvania, but if Mr. Davis recognized that fact he gave no indication
of it. On the other hand, adversity had begun to develop that real
strength of character which a little later was destined to win the respect
of his enemies and the admiration of the rest of the world.
Confederate finances had now sunk to so low an ebb that a collapse seemed
inevitable. Congress passed one futile piece of legislation after another,
each worse than its predecessor, and matters went from bad to worse with
startling rapidity. Mr. Davis was not a financier, but he brought forward
a plan which, while it laid perhaps the heaviest burden of taxation ever
placed upon a people, nevertheless served for a time to stem the fast
rising tide of national bankruptcy.
About the same time, deeply impressed with the suffering of Federal
prisoners caused by the cruel policy of refusing exchanges, he attempted
to send Vice-President Stephens to Washington to negotiate a general
cartel with President Lincoln, but Stephens was allowed to proceed no
farther than Fortress Monroe, and nothing came of the mission which was
conceived by Mr. Davis purely in the interest of humanity.
As the fall drew on, Bragg was being pressed steadily back by an
overwhelming force under Rosecrans, and it became apparent that another
disaster was impending over the Confederacy. To avert it President Davis
hurried Longstreet's corps forward as reinforcements, a policy the
soundness of which was demonstrated a little later by the great victory of
Chickamauga.
But again Bragg failed to measure up to the situation, and instead of
capturing or destroying his antagonist, which a prompt pursuit must have
insured, he actually refused to understand that he had won a victory until
its fruits were beyond his reach. Not even that costly piece of stupidity
could quite shake the confidence of the President in his old friend, and
it was not until Bragg had insured and received his own disastrous defeat
at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, by sending Longstreet's whole
corps away on a wild-goose chase against Knoxville, that his resignation
was accepted; and even then he was taken to Richmond and duly installed as
the military adviser of the Chief Executive.
[Illustration: The Battle of the Crater]
The fortunes of the Confederacy were now at a low ebb. The Western army
was demoralized and so hopeless seemed the task of reorganization that one
general after another refused to undertake it, until in his dilemma the
President turned once more to General Johnston. That splendid soldier,
forgetting past injuries, accepted the command and soon succeeded in
creating an army whose very existence infused new courage throughout the
Confederacy. In the meantime, Mr. Davis' resolution rose superior over the
reverses that were everywhere overwhelming his government, and our
admiration for the man vastly increases as we see him steering, wisely
now, his foundering nation into that dark year 1864, destined to reveal to
us a great man growing greater, better and more lovable under the heavy
accumulation of terrible misfortune.
XXV. The Chief of a Heroic People
The world has never witnessed a more sublime spectacle than that presented
by the Southern people at the beginning of 1864. The finances of the
government had gone from bad to worse until it required a bursting purse
to purchase a dinner. Or, rather it would have done so had the dinner been
procurable at all, which in most cases it was not. Gaunt famine stalked
through a desolate land scarred by the remains of destroyed homes and
drenched in the blood of its best manhood. Scarcely a home had escaped the
besom of death and destruction, and, on the lordly domains where once a
prodigal and princely hospitality had been daily dispensed, children cried
in vain for the bread that the broken-hearted mother could no longer give.
That such terrific desolation should have failed to force submission is
almost beyond understanding, but it produced exactly the opposite result.
Delicately nurtured women, reared in ease and luxury, cheerfully chose to
starve in thread-bare garments while they sent their silver and jewels to
the government to enable it to continue the struggle. They bade their
husbands and sons and brothers to remain at the front and never sheathe
their swords unless in an honorable peace; and forthwith the stripling of
tender years and the gray-bearded grandsire, bowed with the infirmities of
time, went forth to perform prodigies of valor upon the last sanguinary
fields of the dying Confederacy.
The President of the Confederacy was too wise a man not to realize the
significance of the situation at that time. He fully realized the awful
suffering of his people. He saw his armies driven from the West, the
lines of the Confederacy daily contracting. He saw the last hope of
foreign intervention die and he witnessed the birth, even in the
government, of a strong spirit of hostility to himself. What this must
have meant to a man of his sensitive, kindly nature we may readily guess,
but to the world his attitude was most admirable. Calm, resolute, majestic
he stood at the helm, steering the foundering craft of state through the
last storm as steadily, as resolutely as though he knew a haven of safety
instead of destruction to lie just beyond.
[Illustration: Mr. and Mrs. Davis in 1863]
Early in 1864 it became apparent that such an effort as had never been
made before to crush the Confederacy was impending. General Grant was
transferred to the East, and early in the spring with a magnificent army
of 162,000 began his advance upon Richmond. The great Confederate
chieftain, Lee, with a force one-third as great confronted him, and then
began that mighty duel which must always remain the wonder and admiration
of the world. In the Wilderness Lee struck a staggering blow, which halted
the advance and doubled up the Federal army. Grant announced that he
proposed to fight it out on that line if it took all summer, straightened
his lines and began the campaign, which one may more readily understand if
he will imagine some Titan armed with a ponderous hammer, confronting a
wily, agile antagonist, who must rely upon a rapier sharp, indeed, but
slender to a dangerous degree. Incessantly through those spring days the
forests rang with the clamor of blows. At Culpepper and Spottsylvania and
North Anna the hammer fell and was parried by the rapier, Grant always
moving by the flank and seeking to out-maneuver his antagonist and always
failing to do so. By June, the two armies in their side-stepping tactics
had reached Cold Harbor, where Grant in a great frontal attack lost 13,000
men in a few moments, which must have convinced him that it would take
longer than all summer to fight it out on that line, as he then and there
abandoned it and adopted a new one. In three months he had lost 150,000
men and was not so near Richmond as McClellan had been in 1862.
XXVI. Sherman and Johnston
In the meantime that campaign which was destined to place Sherman and
Johnston in the very front rank of the world's great commanders, was in
progress. Both were masters of military strategy and each fully
appreciated the ability of the other. Sherman ever seeking to draw
Johnston into a pitched battle was constantly thwarted. At Dalton, Resaca
and Marietta Johnston delivered hard blows, falling back before his
antagonist could use his superior numbers to any advantage.
By this means he reached Atlanta with a larger army than he had in the
beginning of the campaign, while that of Sherman had decreased from one
hundred to little more than fifty thousand. Johnston's tactics of wearing
out the enemy by drawing him through a hostile country away from his base
of supplies is now admitted by military critics to have been a piece of
masterly strategy. It is also generally conceded that Sherman could not
have captured Atlanta by siege with three times his force. But although
Johnston had repulsed every assault upon his works and was daily growing
stronger, President Davis was greatly displeased with this defensive
policy and constantly importuned him to give battle. This Johnston refused
to do and was relieved of the command by the President, who appointed
General Hood, whom he declared "would at least deliver one manly blow for
the South."
In so far as the delivery of the blow was concerned he was destined not to
be disappointed, but very greatly so in the result.
[Illustration: The Davis Children in 1863]
The very day that he took command, Hood, a brave, impetuous man of slight
ability and poor judgment, left his works, furiously assaulted Sherman,
and was promptly cut to pieces. The Confederate army was practically
annihilated, and the fall of Atlanta made certain the success of that
famous march to the sea which alone would have doomed the Confederacy.
General Johnston, too great to cherish resentment, once more yielded to
the appeals of the President and took command of the shattered army. But
the time had passed when he might have accomplished any substantial
results and henceforth even his genius could not serve to postpone the
end.
XXVII. Mr. Davis' Humanity
In the meantime, amidst these disasters and the gloomy forebodings that
were settling over the South, Mr. Davis did not forget the sufferings of
the army of captives that languished in Southern prisons. Time and again
he had sought to establish a cartel for the exchange of all prisoners but
it had never been faithfully observed by the Federal government, and at
last General Grant had refused to exchange upon any terms, declaring that
to do so would ensue the defeat of Sherman's army. The result was that the
Southern prisons were rapidly filled, and as supplies and medicines
failed, the sufferings in some places, notably Andersonville, became
intense. The prisoners were placed upon the same rations as the
Confederate soldiers, but they had never been used to such fare and it
meant starvation to them. The ravages of malaria among them was appalling,
and yet as the Federal government had made quinine contraband of war not
an ounce of it could be procured for their use.
Mr. Davis, whose strongest trait of character was gentleness and humanity,
felt keenly this state of affairs, and sought by every power at his
command to ameliorate it. When the proposition to exchange was rejected,
he asked that medicines and supplies be sent for the exclusive use of
Northern prisoners. When that was refused, he asked that doctors and
nurses be furnished from the Federal army. That also failing, and the
condition of the sufferers at Andersonville growing worse he finally
offered to liberate them provided the government would take them out of
the South--a proposition which was not accepted until after many months of
useless delay which cost thousands of lives.
[Illustration: The Famous Libby Prison as It Appeared at the Close of the
War]
Thus it will be seen how baseless was that calumny which yet survives in
some quarters that Jefferson Davis was responsible for the sufferings of
those poor unfortunates who in reality were sacrificed by an indifferent
government, which feared to recruit the ranks of the Confederate army by
the exchange of prisoners although such a course was dictated by the laws
of civilized warfare no less than by motives of humanity. In reality Mr.
Davis did far more than required by the laws of nations, and the verdict
of history not only acquits him of any share in that great iniquity, but
places him in marked contrast to his antagonists who chose to sacrifice
their soldiers rather than jeopardize the prospects of an early final
victory.
The brilliant victory of Colquitt at Ocean Pond, of Forest at Fort Pillow,
and other minor successes gained by the Confederate leaders added scarcely
a transient ray of hope. Clouds of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by
night, marked the advance of Sherman through Georgia. The most fruitful
region of the South was left a charred and desolate ruin. Tilly, the Duke
of Alva, nor Wallenstein ever left destruction so complete and
irremediable as that which marked the path of that great soldier who
declared war was hell and fully lived up to that harsh conviction.
After the fall of Savannah, the blue legions now irresistible, turned
northward, and it became apparent that the vitals of the Confederacy lay
between the two huge iron jaws of Grant's and Sherman's armies which were
closing with a steady force that nothing could resist.
Day and night Grant rained his mighty sledge-hammer blows upon the
defenses of the devoted capital, which Lee met and parried with the skill
of consummate military genius. But the blade of the rapier was growing
thinner and the time must come when it would break. Holding works forty
miles in length with less than a thousand soldiers to the mile, he
inflicted repulse after repulse until the Southern people came to regard
him as invincible.
Even Mr. Davis, who was now almost constantly with his great Captain,
seems to have shared the delusion, and despite his warnings that the end
must soon come delayed his departure from Richmond.
At last on Sunday, April 2, 1865, a courier entered old St. John's in the
midst of services and handed the President a telegram. It was General
Lee's notice that he could no longer hold his lines. Mr. Davis quietly
left the church, but all understood and soon a panic reigned in the quiet
old city. This was increased by the terrific explosions that came from the
river and arsenals where warships and military supplies were being
destroyed. That night the fires from burning warehouses lighted the train
that bore out of the doomed city the President and his cabinet and the
archives of the fugitive government. Whether from the sparks of the
burning arsenals or from the torches of incendiaries will never be known,
but that night a fierce conflagration swept over the city, and when in the
gray dawn of the next morning General Godfrey Weitzel's cavalry rode
through the smoldering streets and raised the stars and stripes over
Virginia's ancient and the Confederates' recent capital, it floated over a
scene of desolation only a little less complete than Napoleon beheld when
he looked for the last time from the ancient Krimlin upon destroyed
Moscow.
XXVIII. General Lee's Surrender
History has fully recorded the last scenes of the heroic effort of the
peerless Lee to fall back upon Danville and effect a junction with General
Johnston and it is unnecessary here to relate how surrounded by
overwhelming numbers and reduced to starvation he finally at Appomattox
surrendered the remaining 7,500 of that superb army which, without doubt,
had been the most magnificent fighting machine in the world's history.
In the meantime the fugitive government reached Danville in a pouring
rain. There were no accommodations for the officials, no place to install
the executive machinery. General Breckenridge, sitting upon a camp stool
in front of the damp dingy little station, studied a map and drew the
lines along which Johnston and Lee should advance. The Secretary of
State, reclining upon a knapsack, talked hopefully of the recognition that
was certain to arrive from England and France in a few days. Mr. Reagan
chewed a straw and said nothing. It was a dull day in the department of
justice, and the Attorney-General paced the platform and looked
thoughtfully toward Canada. At last it was decided to begin work and the
clerks seated themselves around tables in the cars, and the government was
soon once more issuing all kinds of orders. Mr. Davis, calm and tranquil
as usual, had made up his mind never to surrender as long as resistance
was possible unless he could secure favorable terms for his people. For
himself he asked nothing, but he believed it his duty to continue the
struggle until the fundamental principles of a free people should be
secured for the South. This he did not doubt could be accomplished by the
junction of Lee and Johnston. It was, of course, a great blow to his
hopes when the news of Lee's surrender reached him, but he belonged to
that rare type of man whose courage and resolution grow stronger in the
face of adversity. His only hope now lay in Johnston's army, but with it
he declared the South could conquer an honorable peace against the world
in arms.
[Illustration: The Surrender of Lee]
With this idea in view the wandering government moved on to Greensboro.
There, the President was informed by General Johnston of the utter
hopelessness of longer continuing the struggle. That the old veteran was
right now admits of no doubt, but Mr. Davis combated the idea most
vigorously. Johnston assured him that while a surrender was a matter of
days in any event that Sherman would sign an agreement guaranteeing the
political rights of the people in the subjugated states. This Mr. Davis
rightfully believed the Federal government would repudiate, but left his
general full discretion in the matter, moving on southward, intending to
cross the Mississippi, join the army of Kirby Smith and continue the war
in Texas.
Just as he was leaving Greensboro he received the news of President
Lincoln's assassination. None who ever really knew Mr. Davis can doubt
what his feelings were upon that occasion. General Reagan, who was with
him, says his face expressed surprise and horror in the most unmistakable
manner. "It is too bad, it is shocking, it is horrible!" he declared, and
then after a moment's reflection added, "This is bad for the South. Mr.
Lincoln understood us and at least was not an ungenerous foe."