THE FATAL DEED
The battle of Gettysburg and the disaster of the fall of Vicksburg once
more gave to the Johnston junta in the Confederate Congress their
opportunity to harass the President.
Their power for evil had been greatly diminished by the pressure of the
swiftly moving tragedy of the war.
The appearance of this Congress was curiously plain and uninteresting.
With the exception of J. L. M. Curry of Alabama and Barksdale of
Mississippi there was not a man among them of constructive ability as a
statesman. Foote of Tennessee was noted for his high-flown English, his
endless harangues and his elaborate historical illustrations. Had his
ability been equal to the intensity of his hatred for Davis he would
have been a dangerous man to the administration. James Lyons of Virginia
stood six feet three in his stockings, had fine, even, white teeth, and
was considered the handsomest man in the assembly.
Yancey, the fierce, uncompromising agitator of secession, was too
violent to command the influence to which his genius entitled him.
Senator Barton, fierce, impatient, bombastic, had long ago exhausted the
vocabulary of invective and could only repeat himself in descending
anti-climax.
Hill of Georgia was a young man of ability who gave promise of greater
things under more favorable conditions.
The real business of this Congress was transacted in secret executive
sessions. When the public was admitted, the people of Richmond generally
looked on with contempt. They sneeringly referred to them as "the
College Debating Society, on Capitol Hill."
The surroundings of their halls added to the impression of
inefficiency--dingy, dirty and utterly lacking in the luxuries which the
mind associates with the exercise of sovereign power.
The Senate was forced to find quarters in the third story of the "State
House." There was no gallery and the spectators were separated from the
members by an improvised railing. The only difference noticeable between
the Senators and the spectators was that the members had seats and the
listeners and loafers had standing room only behind the rail.
The House of Representatives had a better chamber. But its walls were
bare of ornament or paintings, its chairs were uncushioned, its desks
dingy and slashed with pocket knives. Its members sat with their heels
in the air and their bodies sprawled in every conceivable attitude of
ugly indifference.
The heart and brains of the South were on the field of battle--her
noblest sons destined to sleep in unmarked graves.
The scenes of personal violence which disgraced the sittings of this
nondescript body of law makers did much to relieve the President of the
burden of their hostility.
Foote of Tennessee provoked an encounter with Judge Dargan of Alabama
which came near a tragic ending. The Judge was an old man of eccentric
dress, much given to talking to himself--particularly as he wandered
about the streets of Richmond. The gallery of the House loved him from
the first for his funny habit of scratching his arm when the itch of
eloquence attacked him. And he always addressed the Speaker as "Mr.
Cheerman." They loved him particularly for that. The eccentric Judge had
a peculiarly fierce antipathy to Foote. Words of defiance had passed
between them on more than one occasion. The House was in secret night
session. The Judge was speaking.
Foote sitting near, glanced up at his enemy and muttered:
"Damned old scoundrel--"
The Judge's gray head suddenly lifted, he snatched a bowie knife from
his pocket and dashed for the man who had insulted him.
From every direction rose the shouts and cries of the excited House.
"Stop him!"
"Hold him!"
"Great God!"
"Judge--Judge!"
The wildest uproar followed. Half a dozen members threw themselves on
the old man, dragged him to the floor, pinned him down and wrested the
knife from his grasp.
When the eloquent gentleman from Tennessee saw that his assailant was
disarmed and safely guarded by six stalwart men he struck an attitude,
expanded his chest, smote it with both hands and exclaimed with
melodramatic gusto:
"I defy the steel of the assassin!"
The House burst into shouts of uncontrollable laughter, and adjourned
for the night.
Another scene of more tragic violence occurred in the Senate--a hand to
hand fight between William L. Yancey and Ben Hill. The Senator from
Georgia threw his antagonist across a desk, held him there in a grip of
steel and pounded his face until dragged away by friends. Yancey's spine
was wrenched in the struggle, and it was rumored that this injury caused
his death. It possibly hastened the end already sure from age, disease
and careless living.
Committees from this assembly of law makers who attempted to instruct
the conscientious, hard-working man of genius the Southern people had
made their President found little comfort in their efforts.
Davis received them with punctilious ceremony. His manners were always
those of a gentleman--but he never allowed them to return to their
onerous work in the Debating Society without a clear idea of his views.
They were never expressed with violence. But the ice sometimes formed on
the window panes if he stood near while talking.
A Congressional Committee were demanding the restoration of Beauregard
to command.
"General Beauregard asked me to relieve him, gentlemen--"
"Only on furlough for illness," interrupted the Chairman.
"And you have forced him into retirement!" added a member.
The President rose, walked to the window, gazed out on the crowded
street for a moment and turned, suddenly confronting his tormentors. He
spoke with quiet dignity, weighing each word with cold precision:
"If the whole world asked me to restore General Beauregard to the
command which I have given to Braxton Bragg, I would refuse." He resumed
his seat and the Committee retired to Senator Barton's house where they
found a sympathetic ear.
Bragg was preparing to fight one of the greatest battles of the war. At
Chickamauga, the "River of Death," he encountered Rosecrans. At the end
of two days of carnage the Union army was totally routed, right, left,
and center and hurled back from Georgia into Chattanooga. Polk's wing
captured twenty-eight pieces of artillery and Longstreet's twenty-one.
Eight thousand prisoners of war were taken, fifteen thousand stand of
arms and forty regimental colors.
Rosecrans' army of eighty thousand men was literally cut to pieces by
Bragg's fifty thousand Southerners. No more brilliant achievement of
military genius illumines history. Chickamauga was in every way as
desperate a battle as Arcola--and in all Napoleon's Italian campaigns
nothing more daring and wonderful was accomplished by the Man of
Destiny.
Bragg had justified the faith of Davis. Rosecrans was hemmed in in
Chattanooga, his supplies cut off and his army facing starvation when he
was relieved of his command, Thomas succeeding him. Grant was hurried to
Chattanooga with two army corps to raise the siege.
With his reënforcements Grant raised the siege, surprised and defeated
Bragg's army which had been weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's
corps for a movement on Knoxville.
Bragg withdrew his army again into Georgia and resigned his command. The
stern, irritable Confederate fighter was disgusted with the constant
attacks on him by peanut politicians and refused to hear Davis' plea
that he remain at the head of the Western army. The President called him
to Richmond and made him his Chief of Staff.
The disaster to the Confederacy at Chattanooga which gave General Grant
supreme command of the Union forces, brought to the Johnston junta at
Richmond its opportunity to once more press their favorite to the front.
Since his Vicksburg fiasco the President had isolated him. Davis
resisted this appointment with deep foreboding of its possible disaster
to the South.
In the midst of this bitter struggle over the selection of a Western
Field Commander, the President of the Confederacy received the first
and only recognition of his Government accorded by any European power.
His early education at the St. Thomas Monastery had given the Southern
leader a lofty opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. Davis had always
seen in the members of this faith in America friends who could not be
alienated from the oppressed.
Failing to receive recognition from the great powers of Europe, he
dispatched his diplomatic representative to Rome with a carefully worded
letter to the Pope in which he expressed his gratitude to Pius IX for
his efforts in behalf of peace. The Pope had urged his bishops in New
Orleans and New York to strive to end the war.
The Vatican received the Confederate diplomat with every mark of
courtesy and every expression of respect accorded the most powerful
nations of the world. The Dominican friars had not forgotten the
wistful, eager boy they had taught, and loved in Kentucky.
The Pope replied to this communication in an official letter which
virtually recognized the Confederacy--both in his capacity as a temporal
sovereign and as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
The President read this letter with renewed hope of favorable action
abroad.
"ILLUSTRIOUS AND HONORABLE PRESIDENT:
"Salutation:
"We have just received with all suitable welcome the persons sent by
you to place in our hands your letter dated twenty-third of September
last.
"Not slight was the pleasure we experienced when we learned from
those persons and the letter, with what feelings of joy and gratitude
you were animated, illustrious and honorable President, as soon as
you were informed of our letters to our venerable brother John,
Archbishop of New York, and John, Archbishop of New Orleans, dated
the eighteenth of October of last year, and in which we have with all
our strength excited and exhorted these venerable brothers, that in
their episcopal piety and solicitude, they should endeavor, with the
most ardent zeal, and in our name, to bring about the end of the
fatal civil war which has broken out in those countries, in order
that the American people may obtain peace and concord, and dwell
charitably together.
"It is particularly agreeable to us to see that you, illustrious and
honorable President, and your good people, are animated with the
same desire of peace and tranquillity which we have in our letters
inculcated upon our venerable brothers. May it please God at the same
time to make the other people of America and their ruler, reflecting
seriously how terrible is civil war, and what calamities it engenders,
listen to the inspiration of a calm spirit, and adopt resolutely the
part of peace.
"As for us, we shall not cease to offer up the most fervent prayers
to God Almighty that He may pour out upon all the people of America
the Spirit and peace and charity, and that He will stop the great
evils which afflict them. We at the same time beseech the God of pity
to shed abroad upon you the light of His countenance and attach you
to us by a perfect friendship.
"Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, the third of December, 1863, of our
Pontificate 18.
"(Signed) Pius IX."
The dark hour was swiftly approaching when the South and her leader
would need the prayers of all God's saints.
Failing to persuade Bragg to reconsider his resignation, Davis appointed
General Hardee as his successor to command the Western army. Hardee
declared the responsibility was more than he could assume.
Under the urgent necessity of driving the Union army back from its
position at Chattanooga and heartsick with eternal wrangling of the
opposition, Davis reluctantly ordered Joseph E. Johnston personally to
assume command of the Army of Tennessee--and the fatal deed was done.