THE FLOWER-DECKED TENT
When Socola rose the following morning he determined to throw every
scruple to the winds and devote himself to Jennie Barton with a zeal and
passion that would leave to his Southern rivals no doubt as to the
secret of his stay.
At the first informal reception at the White House of the Confederacy
Jennie had been pronounced the most fascinating daughter of the new
Republic, as modest and unassuming as she was brilliant and beautiful.
After the manner of Southern beaux he addressed a note to her on a sheet
of exquisitely tinted foreign paper, at the top of which was the richly
embossed coat of arms of the Socola family of North Italy.
He asked of her the pleasure of a horseback ride over the hills of
Virginia. He was a superb horseman, and she rode as if born in the
saddle.
He sealed the note with a piece of tinted wax and stamped it with the
die which reproduced his coat of arms. He smiled with satisfaction as he
addressed the envelope in his smooth and perfectly rounded handwriting.
He read the answer with surprise and disappointment. The Senator had
replied for his daughter. A slight accident to her mother had caused her
to leave on the morning train for the South. She would probably remain
at Fairview for two weeks.
There was no help for it. He must await her return. In the meantime
there was work to do. The army of the South was slowly but surely
shaping itself into a formidable engine of war.
The master mind at the helm of the new Government had laid the
foundations of one of the most efficient forces ever sent into the arena
of battle. It was as yet only a foundation but one which inspired in his
mind not only a profound respect for his judgment, but a feeling of deep
foreboding for the future.
Jefferson Davis had received a training of peculiar fitness for his
task. The first work before the South was the organization, equipment
and handling of its army of defense. The President they had called to
the leadership had spent four years at West Point and seven years in the
army on our frontiers, pushing the boundaries of the Republic into the
West. He had led a regiment of volunteers in the conquest of Mexico, and
in the battle of Buena Vista, not only saved the day in the moment of
supreme crisis, but had given evidence of the highest order of military
genius. On his return from the Mexican War he had been appointed a
Brigadier General by the President of the United States but had declined
the honor.
For four years as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce he
had proven himself a master of military administration, had reorganized
and placed on a modern basis of the highest efficiency the army of the
Union and in this work has proven himself a terror to weakness,
tradition and corruption.
He knew personally every officer of the first rank in the United States
Army. His judgment of these men and their ability as commanders was
marvelous in its accuracy. His genius as an army administrator
undoubtedly gave to the South her first advantage in the opening of the
conflict.
From the men who had resigned from the old army to cast their fortunes
with the South his keen eye selected without hesitation the three men
for supreme command whose abilities had no equal in America for the
positions to which they were assigned. And these three men were patriots
of such singleness of purpose, breadth of vision and greatness of soul
that neither of them knew he was being considered for the highest
command until handed his commission.
Samuel Cooper had been Adjutant General of the United States Army since
1852. Davis knew his record of stern discipline and uncompromising
efficiency, and although a man of Northern birth, he appointed him
Adjutant General of the Confederate Army without a moment's hesitation.
Albert Sidney Johnston was his second appointment to the rank of full
General and Robert E. Lee his third--each destined to immortality.
His fourth nomination for the rank of full General he made with
hesitation. Joseph E. Johnston under the terms of the law passed by the
Provisional Congress of the Confederacy was entitled to a position in
the first rank as acting Commissary General of the old army. The keen
intuition of the President had perceived from the first the evidences of
hesitation and of timidity in crisis which was the chief characteristic
of Joseph E. Johnston. His sense of fairness under the terms of the law
required that this man be given his chance. With misgivings but with
high hopes the appointment was made.
Robert E. Lee he made military chieftain of the Government with
headquarters in Richmond.
From four points the Northern forces were threatening the South. From
the West by a flanking movement which might open the Mississippi River;
from the mountains of Western Virginia whose people were in part opposed
to secession; from Washington by a direct movement on Richmond; and
from Fortress Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula.
The first skirmish before Fortress Monroe, led by B. F. Butler, had been
repulsed with such ease no serious danger was felt in that quarter. The
ten thousand men under Holmes and McGruder could hold Butler
indefinitely.
Davis had seen from the first that one of the supreme dangers of the
South lay in the long line of exposed frontier in the West. If a
commander of military genius should succeed in turning his flank here
the heart of the lower South would be pierced.
For this important command he reserved Albert Sidney Johnston.
The Northern army under George B. McClellan and Rosecrans had defeated
the troops in Western Virginia. In a series of small fights they had
lost a thousand men and all their artillery. General Lee was dispatched
from Richmond to repair if possible this disaster.
The first two clashes had been a draw. The South had won first blood on
the Peninsula--the North in Western Virginia. The main army of the South
was now concentrated to oppose the main army of the North from
Washington.
Brigadier General Beauregard, the widely acclaimed hero of Fort Sumter,
was in command of this army near Manassas Station on the road to
Alexandria.
Beauregard's position was in a measure an accident of fortune. The first
shot had been fired by him at Sumter. He was the first paper-made hero
of the war. He had led the first regiment into Virginia to defend her
from invasion.
He was the man of the hour. His training and record, too, gave promise
of high achievements. He had graduated from West Point in 1838, second
in a class of forty-five men. His family was of high French extraction,
having settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. He had entered the
Mexican War a lieutenant and emerged from the campaign a major. He was
now forty-five years old, in the prime of life. His ability had been
recognized by the National Government in the beginning of the year by
his appointment as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point.
His commission had been revoked at the last moment by the vacillating
Buchanan because his brother-in-law, Senator Slidell of Louisiana, had
made a secession speech in Washington.
Jefferson Davis was not enthusiastic in his confidence in the new hero.
He was too much given to outbursts of a public kind to please the
ascetic mind of the Southern leader. He had written some silly letters
to the public deriding the power of the North. No one could know better
than Davis how silly these utterances were. He "hated and despised the
Yankees." Davis feared and recognized their power. Beauregard's
assertion that the South could whip the North even if her only arms were
flintlocks and pitchforks had been often and loudly repeated.
Of the army marshaling in front of him under the command of the
venerable Winfield Scott he wrote with the utmost contempt.
"The enemies of the South," he declared, "are little more than an armed
rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretense and for an unholy
purpose, with an octogenarian at its head!"
In spite of his small stature, Beauregard was a man of striking personal
appearance--small, dark, thin, hair prematurely gray, his manners
distinguished and severe.
It was natural that, with the fame of his first victory, itself the
provoking cause of the conflict, his distinguished foreign name and
courtly manners, he should have become the toast of the ladies in these
early days of the pomp and glory of war. He was the center of an ever
widening circle of fair admirers who lavished their attentions on him in
letters, in flags, and a thousand gay compliments. His camp table was
filled with exquisite flowers which flanked and sometimes covered his
maps and plans. He used his bouquets for paper weights.
It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the cold intellectual
standard by which Davis weighed men should have found Beauregard wanting
in the qualifications of supreme command.
The President turned his eye to the flower-decked tent of his general
with grave misgivings. Yet he was the man of the hour. It was fair that
he should have his chance.