THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 973.794 PZ9e cop. 2 ItlMfc ami IIUNOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY ^7 Va^^ JEFFERSON DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Lm TORONTO JEFFERSON DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH BY H. J. ECKENRODE jRrto gortt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Copyright, 1923, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1923. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U S. A. 97* TO ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 544860 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/jeffersondavisprOOecke THE DESIGN Confederate history has been very unevenly written. Lee's campaigns are embodied in a considerable literature, while, on the other hand, the Civil War in the West has never received adequate treatment from the Southern stand- point and the workings of the government have been neglected. The present work is a study of the politico- military history of the Confederacy, practically virgin soil. Professor W. E. Dodd has given an admirable account of the earlier career of Jefferson Davis and Armistead Gordon has written an excellent brief biography from secondary sources; but not until the mass of Confederate correspondence in the Official Records, together with memoirs of participants, had been examined could the interplay of the government and the military leaders be determined. This has been done in the present work. Philosophically, Jefferson Davis, President of the South is an effort to apply anthropological science to American history. Madison Grant, in his great work, The Passing of the Great Race, has indicated the path; this volume makes the application. There is no partisanship. The conclusions are reached largely without reference to political or consti- tutional considerations, but follow inexorably from the scien- tific theory which underlies the book. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Call i II The Tropic Nordics 4 III Jefferson Davis 29 IV Mexico 40 V The Triumph of Industrialism .... 55 VI The Great Adventure 98 VII The First Crisis 156 VIII A Season of Victory 181 IX Dilemma 194 X The Great Crisis 210 XI Downhill 238 XII The Military Gamble 282 XIII Wanted, A Cromwell .310 XIV Catastrophe 331 XV Why the Confederacy Failed 337 XVI The Moral 357 JEFFERSON DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH JEFFERSON DAVIS THE CALL IT is an early spring day in the South in a town on a beautiful river — Montgomery, Alabama. A crowd pushes around a building on an eminence, the state capitol. It is a typically Southern capitol, rather small and dingy but with an imposing front of tall white columns, which, seen from the river, look classic and tasteful. The crowd is of the distant past — women in hoop skirts, many of them beautiful; men in black swallow-tailed coats, light trousers, stocks and broad-brimmed hats; negroes in homespun or tatters. It is an excited, voluble, jubilant crowd, filled with that sense of historic crisis which sometimes comes upon men, lifting them above the present and giving them a glance into the future. Suddenly a rush of men and boys, with a few women, pours from the capitol building. "The convention has gone into secret session," they ex- plain to the waiting crowd. The doors of the capitol are closed. Fifteen, twenty minutes pass while the excitement of the crowd grows in intensity. The people seem pleasantly ex- cited: they laugh and jest. The negroes are quite as much 2 JEFFERSON DAVIS interested as the whites. Indeed, at the moment there is a camaraderie in the air which makes it hard to believe that some of the onlookers are slaves and others masters. Presently the doors open again, creakingly. The crowd rushes into the building and floods up the narrow stairways into the galleries, filling them to overflowing. Narrow, un- comfortable, dirty galleries, but the people, in their intense interest, take no note of discomfort. They have eyes and ears only for what is passing in the legislative chamber below. It is February 9, 1861. The hall is filled with delegates. The presiding officer sits on his dais, a grave, bearded man with a benevolent, in- telligent face. He is Howell Cobb of Georgia, late Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, now a secessionist. Many of the men who sit facing him are likewise distinguished looking. Every type of the South may be seen, but a large proportion of the faces are high-bred and even noble. They are full of character and intellect. In contradistinction to the spectators, they are grave and almost apprehensive. It is evident that the moment is one of unusual importance. The presiding officer speaks out clearly and deliberately: "The next matter before the convention is the election of a provisional President of the Confederate States." The vote is by states — one vote for each state. Two tell- ers are appointed — J. L. M. Curry of Alabama and William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, well-known lesser lights. The tellers rise and visit one group of delegates after an- other, collecting scraps of paper. A single piece of paper is given them by each group: there are six ballots in all. The tellers, after studying the papers a moment, make a brief report to the presiding officer in low tones. A tense silence falls on the hall as Howell Cobb rises to THE CALL 3 his feet and speaks, slowly and with a certain painful em- phasis: "It is my duty to announce that the Honorable Jefferson Davis of Mississippi has been unanimously elected provisional President of the Confederate States of North America." A first handclap comes from the gallery, and then there is a loud burst of applause from spectators and delegates alike. For a moment the hall echoes with the clamor. Only for a moment. The next instant the gavel falls menacingly on the speaker's desk, and silence is restored. The body proceeds to the succeeding business. In such fashion is a new ruler given to the world. II THE TROPIC NORDICS THE South thus severed the marital tie with the North. The separation was called honorable divorce by the South, criminal desertion by the North. In the end the South was forced back in the bonds of holy wedlock, though with certain mental reservations that obtained until lately. It did become bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh with the North in the end, being incorporated and assimilated. The military victory of the North was at length completed by the more enduring victory of ideas. The individualist, non-industrialist, unmodern South has come to think and feel as the group-member, industrialist, ultra-modern North. This is the real Union brought about by the shock of the great schism, the Union looked forward to by the storm- stressed, battered Union of those days, which bore on its banner through the strife the lost stars, the wandering stars, as well as the fixed Northern stars. Wells has awakened the world to a sense of the reality of history: before our literary Columbus history was a tapestry of kings and queens, a gallery of armor, a rack of law books, a set of Meissonier engravings, a file of old newspapers. It was not that which the world used to think of its deity as being — anthropological. Our new history is anatomical, physiological, chemical, bacteriological, pathological, sexual: it has to do with lust, hate, malice, vice, virtue, disease, vigor, 4 THE TROPIC NORDICS 5 guile, simplicity, ambition, indifference, thrift, waste, valor, cowardice, divine, devilish. History is only individual man multiplied a million times. Wells has shown us that. So much for Columbus. What Vespucci will now bring life into the dry bones of American history? What penman will cease rattling the dead arguments of states' rights and nationalism, slavery and abolition, and show us planter and manufacturer, slave-owner and abolitionist "in their habit, as they lived"? Which of our historians will give up plead- ing for picturing? We are the slaves of phrases. More than that, we are the helots of moral ideas, before which we bow down and burn incense. Perhaps we do not care to know that we are wor- shiping images, not realities. But we are. Let us get away from it. Let us give up the old, old business of twisting what has happened in the past into the proof of some pet theory, the justification of some maxim. Let us face things as they are, as if we were putting chemicals into test tubes for reactions. Let us accept the precipitate formed by pour- ing the passion of one side in a contest upon the passion of the other side, mingling the virtues and defects of war- ring parties as if we were dropping acid on metal. What difference does it make to us, grandsons and great-grandsons, whether North or South was right or wrong in the great con- troversy, or half right and half wrong? But it does matter that we shall know the truth, that we shall recognize the precipitate formed in the test tube of history for what it is. There are two outstanding figures in American history — planter and business man. Before these colossi all our individual supermen dwindle into comparative insignificance. Our history is, in a small sense, the work of a number of men we can name; but, in its large sense, it is the creation 6 JEFFERSON DAVIS of many thousands of unknown persons who, indistinguish- able cells, built up the coral frame of our civilization. The planter type claims Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mon- roe, Marshall, Calhoun, Clay, Polk, Lee — and Jefferson Davis. Of the business type are Hamilton, Webster, Sew- ard, Lincoln, Grant, Gould, Pierpont Morgan, Rockefeller, Edison, Roosevelt, Root. From the beginning until 1865, the giants clashed : then business triumphed over agriculture, and the planter passed into history. This is the truth of it, though men make of our history a fight of St. George and the dragon, Ormuzd and Ahriman, light and darkness. Such moralizing is child's play. Like Nietzsche, we should go be- yond good and evil and study the causes of history, which usually may no more bear moral labels than may germ cul- tures and entomological specimens. Republic — who made it? A mob of valiant farmers turned soldier? A crowd of lawyers in a parliament? Two or three immortals? No; the republic was the work of the planters, of proud men who ruled on their own estates and disliked the thought of kings and nobles over them, of book-loving agriculturists struck with the grandeur that was Rome. Hamilton would have had a kingdom. The planters would not: they were for a republic, a Senate, two consuls — we called them President and Vice — and all the other trappings of the antique state to save which Brutus and Cassius died. Indeed, Patrick Henry cried, "Caesar had his Brutus . . . and George the Third may profit by the example. " The American republic was the precipitate formed by classical antiquity working on Southern imagination. But the planters were too experienced and practical to seek to revive the conditions of antiquity: they were Crom- wells, not Rienzis. They grafted on the representative in- THE TROPIC NORDICS 7 stitutions of England the idea of the Roman republic. But they did something more: they invested the antique republic with the spirit of eighteenth century liberalism; they made the republic the antithesis of the European state and the European spirit. They created the democratic republic. They reenforced it with the Calvinism of the North, thus combining the three mightiest forces the world has known — Roman republicanism, English representation and the most militant form of Christianity. The planters were the super type of early America. Sprung from an energetic English strain, relieved by slavery from toil but not from occupation, stimulated by a large freedom from European control and by somewhat exotic surroundings, the planters were peculiarly susceptible to the liberal political philosophy of the eighteenth century. Being practical men, they were able to realize their philosophy. Liberals and yet not doctrinaires, theorists and realists in one, they were well fitted to bring into being the democratic republic. They initiated the convention of 1787, largely framed the Constitution and put the planter-general, Wash- ington, in the presidential chair. The American experiment began to take form and substance. But the republic was still in leading strings to Europe. The merchants and large landowners of the North, who were English in feeling and, therefore, not democratic, looked back toward the motherland. But the planters looked forward toward the unknown future. It was then that they performed their greatest feat, completing in the period be- tween 1794 and 181 5 the cleavage from Europe. They — or their leader, Jefferson — decided that the American re- public was to go its own way in the world. Through the efforts of the planters, and the Northern and 8 JEFFERSON DAVIS Western farmers who followed them, American democracy became established. It was not accomplished without leav- ing scars and without a certain deterioration in the planters themselves. The Tories of the Revolution had been dis- possessed and their lands had fallen to patriotic small farm- ers, who rose from obscurity to be planters themselves. The Federalist planters lost power and in the South the Jeffer- sonian planters ruled — enthusiastic democrats who preached equality and, by way of practicing it, liberated their slaves at death. In 1794, Virginia was almost as Jacobin as France, though, fortunately, the Jacobins were Anglo-Saxons and masters, not Latins and liberated peasants. American democracy was something new because it was a social philosophy and a practical system in one, and it had such exemplars as Jefferson and George Mason, that beauti- ful and harmonious soul. It was the tie that bound together the various parts of the republic, turning an ill-assorted con- federacy into a country with a common consciousness. Be- fore Marshall's decisions and the rise of nationalism, Ameri- cans found in Jeffersonian democracy the bond of union. New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, Carolinians, Ohioans, were Americans less because they were citizens of the United States than because they were fellow members of the Demo- cratic-Republican party. The charm of the later South, the ancien regime of romance, has led us somewhat to forget that the planters were the first successful practitioners of de- mocracy, the first practical upholders of the rights of man. Jeffersonian democracy became the keynote of the re- public: Dickens has satirized it immortally in Martin Chuz- zlewit: "the Palladium of rational Liberty at home, and the dread of Foreign oppression abroad." Nothing is more certain, however, than that the natural man is not a demo- THE TROPIC NORDICS 9 crat. Only by special grace is man a democrat at all. American democracy was the product of an exalted mood. It was the flood tide of the great revolt against the Middle Ages and against medieval faiths — religious, political, social. The American Revolution has never been adequately studied on its social side. Socially, it was a surge upward of small farmers seeking to become planters, of dissenters clamoring to despoil churchmen, of demagogues ambitious to be rulers. The planters — or a large part of them — joined in the attack on the settled order of the world. They did so largely be- cause of their hatred of England, but also partly because they were genuine converts to the gospel of Rousseau. They gave democracy its political success. Contrary to proph- ecies, the country did not tumble down about President Jefferson's head. Government had become the concern of the common man, and, thanks to the planters, it was a good working system. The planters ruled in a democracy by force of merit. But democracy, politically triumphant, was not the moral re-creation it had been claimed to be. Democrats did not differ from those they had dispossessed. Human nature was not a whit less corrupt than before the Declaration of Independence. The brotherhood of man was still far dis- tant. Laborers still worked twelve hours a day for the privilege of a Sunday of glorious intoxication; children died like flies in the factories that were springing up; slaves still sullened under the lash. Furthermore, the rank and file of democrats were not true to democracy, even if the high priests were. The farmers who cursed monarchy in 1776 and derided Chris- tianity in 1793 were comfortable planters in 1800. They had acres and slaves and they wanted aristocracy. In 10 JEFFERSON DAVIS other words, nature was asserting itself. Rousseau had pre- vailed over a natural Nietzschean order, but not for long. The Nordic instinct of mastery was arising out of democ- racy itself. Besides, all the forces of the external world were rally- ing against democracy. Europe, half mad with egalitarian- ism in 1794, had swung far back the other way a decade later. The rights of man perished in 181 5, in the smoke of Waterloo. Europe was caught in the full tide of the reaction from the French Revolution, and the " Altar and the Throne" replaced Rousseau. In the United States, the North did not feel this reaction, because of the economic revolution that was displacing merchant and landowner in favor of manufacturer, but the South came under its full spell. Jacobinism, atheism, egalitarianism withered like Jonah's gourd. From 1794 to 1820 was a far cry indeed. Sir Walter Scott was the interpreter of this change to the South. Medievalism, now that it was dead, had become a beautiful sentiment, since it was no longer an ugly fact. Romance was born out of the sordid horror of the Middle Ages. The South became permeated with Scott. It read Scott; it talked Scott — so the phrase, "Southern chivalry" — it played at the tournament of Ashby de la Zouch. It ceased to be the Cromwellian South of the Revolution and the Robespierrian South of the seventeen-nineties and came to be the Arthurian South of the mid-nineteenth century. Not that democracy in the South was dead; by no means. It lived on and it resisted stoutly; but the fact remains that the body of the planters revived aristocracy despite the new industrial democracy that was rising in the North and the new liberalism which finally flowered in Europe. THE TROPIC NORDICS 11 The planters who were democrats in the nineties were hunt- ing up their coats of arms fifteen years later. The Scottian influence gave the South its peculiar charm, because it gave the South romance. It colored the life of the country. Without Scott there would have been slaves and slaveholders and broad, snowy cotton fields, but with- out Scott the South would have continued to be prosaic and commonplace, as it had been in the eighteenth century. The elements of romance were in the plantation life, but inspiration lacked until Scott wrote. He it was who, by acting on the imagination of the South, made it a dream island in the sea of modernity. He made it Walter-Scott- land — a fairyland where young men saw themselves knights going to a tournament and girls were Queens of Love and Beauty rewarding them. Because the South was re- mote, rural, leisured, exotic, also Nordic, it became, by the grace of Scott, such a country as existed nowhere else in the world or had ever existed. African jungle in part; medieval Europe in part; American democracy in part — it was the strangest imaginable compound of ages and ideas and continents, and for that reason fascinating. Partly for the very reason that the South was beautiful and singular it was in danger. The law of the pack holds for nations as well as individuals: it is perilous to be dif- ferent. The world of the mid-nineteenth century was pre- dominantly industrial and materialistic; and because in- dustrialism was new it was very strong. In the eyes of the world of that day, with its factories and banks and public schools, its dull respectability, its new humanitarian- ism, its unreal rationalism, the South, with its cotton fields and slaves and patriarchs, was monstrous. A world made 12 JEFFERSON DAVIS un-Nordic by democracy and industry looked with hatred on the still Nordic South. The South, strange land of Anglo-Saxon conquerors and negro slaves, had drifted out of the nineteenth century into another epoch all its own. Because of this it was over- come and absorbed by the North. The tragedy of the world is that commonplaceness is always defeating imagina- tion: so Sparta prevailed over Athens, Rome over Carthage, the North over the South. It was the outdoor romanticism of the South and the practicality of the North which, pri- marily, brought about the antagonism that ended in secession and war. The world does not understand the ante-bellum South. The South was, in reality, quite as new as it was old: it represented a certain spiritual change in the Anglo-Saxon race. That race is predominantly and characteristically northern: thus, in India and Egypt, the Anglo-Saxon ever remains a stranger. This is because the Englishman has England to look back to. But the Anglo-Saxon in the South had no other country to look back to from his subtropical environment: he was a law unto himself. Consequently, in the South the Anglo-Saxon was feeling the pull of the tropics; he was beginning to be tropical while remaining, in large part, Nordic. America was mainly settled, in the colonial period, by Nordics. The Nordic race, which once inhabited all of northern and western Europe, is now most numerous in the British Isles. The distinguishing marks of the Nordic race are predominance in war and political capacity, to- gether with the love of adventure. It took adventurous men to cross the sea in the seventeenth century and carve out homes in the forest. For more than a century the THE TROPIC NORDICS 13 Nordic settlers of the various colonies retained most of the racial traits in common. In the Revolutionary period, the South consisted of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina. All of these colonies, with the exception of South Carolina, were really northern, not southern. But when the South expanded into Georgia and Florida and Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana and Texas, it became really southern, subtropical. The Southerners of the border states were halfway abolitionists from 1790 to 1830; they would have abolished slavery but for the insuperable prac- tical obstacle of having a half Anglo-Saxon, half African population with equal rights. They never grasped the mod- ern solution of emasculating democracy, by means of which the Fifteenth Amendment has been nullified — a solution which, despite its hardships, has probably been best both for whites and blacks. The border states were never easy in their minds about slavery. They protested too much ; they treated their slaves so well that many of the latter regretted slavery after emanci- pation ; they seldom plied the lash ; they almost never killed them. It was different in the tropical South. There the Anglo-Saxon was a Nordic towering over inferiors. He worked his chattels; beat them; sometimes, though not often, killed them. He did not, like the border Southerner, who was part Northerner, almost believe in his heart that slavery was wrong. No; slavery was right enough to the Nordics in the tropics — in the rice swamps, the cotton fields, the canebrakes. Slavery was so right to them that sometimes they demanded more slaves from Africa, since there were not enough of them to be drafted from the border states. The Anglo-Saxons in the lower South were becoming 14 JEFFERSON DAVIS tropicized; they were undergoing a transformation which might have had remarkable consequences if the Northern Anglo-Saxons had not abruptly halted the process. In other words, the lower Southerners were becoming adapted to tropical life as no Nordics had been for ages. Being tropicals, not temperates, the lower Southerners thought lit- tle of the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. In the tropics, the natural relationship is that of master and servant. White men in the tropics do not prate of equality in the presence of elemental inequality. Political cajolery is not the method of managing the masses in the tropics, but naked force. Hypocrisy is not a vice of the south, but of the north. It springs from cold, slow blood, not from ardor and passion. Thus, the Anglo-Saxons in the far South, by 1850, had lost some of their race characteristics while retaining others in stronger form: northern respectability and idealism were gone, along with northern sourness, hard- ness, avarice. What was left was Anglo-Saxon pluck, re- sourcefulness, initiative. What had been added was a tower- ing race pride and an inclination to ride over racial groups considered inferior. The Southerner was a type as yet new in history: he was the one real creation of America. New Englander, Yankee, was but English super-shop- keeper; Virginian was but English farmer plus imagination and a sense of humor; but South Carolinian and Missis- sippian represented a distinct phase in human evolution. They were new. The American and French revolutions were built on a dogma more nearly true than those of most religions — the equality of men. The equality of white men, while not absolutely true, has much of the quality of trueness. Change the clothes of the white aristocrat and the white proletarian, THE TROPIC NORDICS 15 and "handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?" Give the son of the successful plowman half a dozen years of cultivation and the son of the ruined country gentleman half a dozen years of poverty and neglect — and clodhopper and quality change places. It is precisely this latent equality that led to the decline of democracy in the South. In 1776, democracy was rail- ing at church and state, primogeniture, pedigrees, Tories: the mob of those on the outside looking in was naturally democratic. Then Tory lands were confiscated and sold for a song, and such an opportunity was offered for swift rising as had never been seen before. The small farmer democrats of 1776 were large farmers in 1786; their sons were planters in 1800. By 181 5 — to name a date — these had become gentlemen. Surely, this rapid development would have been impossible but for the substantial equality of the white people of the period. Presently the new genera- tion of gentlemen looked down on their brethren who had lacked the wit or luck to rise. They had slaves and leisure, and so the new post-Revolutionary aristocracy came into being. This in the northern South — Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky. It was even more so in the lower South. In the lower South were both equality and in- equality in a very high degree: there the bulk of population was not small farmer and planter, but white and black. Race was contrasted, not class — thus, the inequality was funda- mental. Democracy does well enough where distinctions are artificial; it fails when differences are real. Social Contract, Declaration of Independence, rights of man did not alter the fact that a gulf yawned in the lower South between Nordic civilization and black barbarism. Anglo- 16 JEFFERSON DAVIS Saxon could change place with Anglo-Saxon after a few grammar and dancing lessons, but Anglo-Saxon and African could not become the same. Rousseau, Paine, Jefferson might burn incense before the great deity Democracy and whack tom-toms, but this miracle was beyond the power of their god. Thus, while the North and Europe were becoming more and more impregnated with the truth of the utter artificiality of class distinctions, the lower South was learning to the full the terrible inequality between white men from the North Sea and black men from the Niger. Before this stubborn fact, theories withered. There was no question in the lower South of emancipation, but of getting more slaves — of stretching southward into the cotton lands and building up vaster estates. In the economic competition in the lower South, the less shrewd, less enduring, less en- ergetic, less fortunate white men failed, and became cotton workers, not planters; but they had this consolation that they belonged to the superior race and, thus, were masters, if manless. Nordic degenerates they might be, yet they were Nordics among helots and, therefore, in an essential sense, aristocrats. Aristocrats often in rags and hungry, but still proud of their race. In the lower South the equality of the white race was very real. This was the environment that formed Jefferson Davis, who was essentially a tropical Nordic, though modified somewhat by contact with the North. He spent the forma- tive years of his life in the lower South; he imbibed its spirit, sympathized with and sought to further its ambi- tions, wore its crown. He also wore its crown of thorns and became its vicarious sacrifice. It was because the tropic Nordic reached out after new THE TROPIC NORDICS 17 lands on which to work his slaves — or by means of which to earn slaves — that the American republic expanded. The Northern population had no wish to spread into the mysterious Southwest, where Aaron Burr, that eminently tropic Nordic, sought to set up his empire. The Northern spirit was intensive, stay-at-home, narrow, practical, effi~ cient. The Northerner was the Englishman successful enough fo be able to stay at home. The Southerner repre- sented the Englishman who emigrates to other lands where success is easier. The Northerner, after tremendous struggles and by the exertion of such cleverness and energy as have never been shown before or since, overcame the great natural handicaps of America as an industrial center and founded the mightiest prosperity the world has known. The Southerner, emigrating from the worn-out lands of the border states, sought to build up in the far South a Nordic rural civilization. Both Northerner and Southerner had great virtues. New England was the cleanest and sanest community in the world. New Englanders were business men, scholars, athletes, altruists; New England women were cultivated companions. Lower Southerners (when they were not excessively re- ligious) were hot-blooded, genial sportsmen who would lend their last dollar to a friend and kill him for an ill-judged word. They were, in fact, partly mad, because they were Nordics baked in the sun, but it was a wonderful mad- ness and better, in some ways, than sanity. Southern women were charming, if uneducated, and many of them were beautiful. With these divergencies, it is not to be wondered at that a rift appeared between the original Nordic race, as it was in the North, and the tropicized Nordics of the South which led to great consequences. This change in 18 JEFFERSON DAVIS the Nordic race — this new development in the hot lands of America, unhampered by European restraints — is the main cause of the Civil War. Constitutional disagreements were only symptoms, economic differences were but a secondary cause. The first cause was tropicalism, and the next cot- ton; and tropicalism and cotton found expression in states' rights and secession. Without reflection, the lower South might seem to have been in the wrong, but is this so? The North won, or, to put it more plainly, modernism won in our Civil War. This victory seemed a real triumph of progress and en- lightenment. Yet it was a defeat for Nordic tendencies. Industrialism won in the Civil War, and industrialism is as un-Nordic as agriculture is Nordic. The men who won the war for the North were Nordics, but they did not win it for the Nordic race. Ever since the Civil War, the weakening of the Nordic strain in American life has proceeded apace. The American nation is more and more becoming a conglomeration of the alien races of Europe and western Asia: it steadily grows less political, less in- dividual and less masterful — that is, less Nordic. The South has remained the only Nordic part of the nation. It has lost its individuality in being absorbed by the North, but its blood has changed little. If it had won its independence it must have become much more Nordic than it was, for it would have attracted Nordics from every- where. In the ante-bellum Southern life the Nordic virtues were imperatively demanded: personal courage, master- fulness, reckless generosity. Indeed, in the lower South, with its great slave population, the Nordic race was not only developing but growing stronger, because it had found a congenial environment despite the non-Nordic climate. If THE TROPIC NORDICS 19 the South had won, there would have been in the world one thoroughly Nordic country, whereas there is none. Everywhere, in Europe and America alike, the non-Nordic races flourish and prosper while the master race declines. Even before the lower South developed, the Nordic spirit of the planters asserted itself. A Virginia planter, George Rogers Clark, won the Ohio Valley for the United States. Another Virginia planter glorified what would have been, otherwise, a mere rights-of-man presidential term by ac- quiring Louisiana in spite of the protests of the North. Andrew Jackson, a small-farmer Southerner, crushed the Indians in the Gulf region and paved the way for the gain of Florida. Clay and Calhoun, Kentucky and South Caro- lina planters, tried to win Canada in 1812. The attempt to expand northward failed, but there was nothing to prevent a stretch southward into Aaron Burr's dream empire. Here were plains capable of raising ex- cellent cotton that were inhabited only by buffaloes and scattered Indians. Southerners, settling in these unoccupied lands beyond the Sabine, sought to bring the great South- west under American control. These adventurers- from Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana — Nordics beginning to be tropicized — looked first toward the acquisi- tion of Texas, and later toward Cuba, Mexico and Cen- tral America. They dreamed, indeed, of founding a great Anglo-Saxon community in the tropics, supported by the labor of slaves or peons. It was a stirring conception, the aspiration of a dominant race. If they had had their way, Anglo-Saxon America would now extend from Maine to Panama, possibly much farther, and would include the greater Antilles. Such an expansion would have continued the power of the South for another term of years and might 20 JEFFEP JN DAVIS have post**pned the Civil f ^or another decade. But the North, .>nich was unable to prevent the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida and which did not have quite the power to keep Texas out of the Union, finally was strong enough to block the efforts of the South to win Mexico, Cuba and Central America. American expansion was a half-completed work, cut short on the eve of its greatest triumphs. The danger to itself drove the North to limit the ex- tension of the United States, causing it to lose some of the finest lands on earth. The North of the thirties and forties, following in the footsteps of England, was engaged in turning the United States from an agricultural com- munity into a modern industrial state. It was a phase of the mightiest revolution the world has ever known, by means of which the power has passed from the landowners, the squires, the slaveholders, into the hands of the manu- facturers and financiers. In England the revolution pro- ceeded bloodlessly; in the United States it was accom- plished only through war. What stood in the way of the industrial conquest of America was the tropic South. The northern South would not have blocked the game, but the lower South attempted to do so and, failing, sought to leave the Union and follow its own destiny. But the industrial North refused to allow the republic to be disrupted and its market to go glimmer- ing, and so there came about the Civil War. The North, with that shrewd Anglo-Saxon trick of putting an adversary in the wrong, called the lower South the Slave Power and its effort to maintain the supremacy of agriculture the Great Conspiracy. The term " Slave Power" mistakes result for cause. The proper name is the Nordic THE TROPIC NORDICS 21 South. If there had been i flSgro slaves, the < welopment of the South would have been much what u was. A tropicized Anglo-Saxon population in the Gulf region would have preferred planting to mill-owning, would have at- tempted to extend farther southward, and would have de- fied the industrial North Slavery has been too much glori- fied. It was but an incident in the conflict, the two deter- mining factors of which were Nordic blood and hot climate. The Civil War was, in essence, a struggle between that part of the Nordic race which was prepared to renounce its tradition of mastery for equality, modernism and material comfort and that part of the race which was resolved, de- spite modernity, to remain true to its ruling instincts. It was a conflict between a community rapidly becoming un-Nordicized by industry and non-Nordic immigration and a community which had become more thoroughly Nordic than at the settlement by reason of slavery and purely agricultural pursuits. Everywhere else in the world industrialism gained at the expense of agriculture as the non-Nordic race elements pre- vailed over the Nordic. This was not the case in America, even though a vast non-Nordic immigration was swelling the population of the North without aiding the South. In spite of the industrial tendencies of the age, the lower Southerners deliberately went their own way, careless of the censure passed by a wage-earning world on bond slavery. These planters of the lower South were the strongest and most original men that America has ever produced. They and the Westerners are the only Americans that are not part European. So powerful were the planters that the North viewed with profound dismay their efforts to extend the United States 22 JEFFERSON DAVIS into Mexico. The North was waiting as patiently as a dutiful son waits for the demise of a rich father to inherit the political power of the country. Elementary arithmetic demonstrated that within a certain period the population of the North would, thanks to immigration, so far out- number that of the South that political control would pass into Northern hands. For some years the North had^ owned the House of Representatives; it also desired the Senate. To secure the Senate, it had, in 1820, forced the Missouri Compromise on the South, whereby the South was prevented from extending northward by the exclusion of slavery from the Louisiana territory north of a certain geographical line running along the southern border of Missouri, which could not itself be kept from becoming a Southern state because it had been settled by a Southern population. Thus, the South would have only a state or two more from the Louisiana territory while the North would have many. The result would be that the South would be eventually outnumbered in the Senate, as well as in the House of Rep- resentatives, and the North would be able to pass protec- tive measures necessary to its prosperity. Naturally, then, the industrial Northerners were dismayed when the lower Southerners threatened to acquire new lands to be made into new states to keep the North out of its just inheritance. No use to wait for a legatee who will not die. The North abandoned its friendly attitude toward the South, and the conflict over the admission of Texas inaugurated a struggle that did not end until twenty years later in the debacle of 1865. The tariff was only one reason among many why the North desired to gain control of the government and check the South. The North put its faith in modern European theories THE TROPIC NORDICS 28 and practices. It was one with Europe in placing emphasis on material well-being as the great attainable object in life. Humanity had abandoned its religious and political ideals, which distracted it so long, and had come down to an economic basis — an industrial basis. The South was the single exception in the civilized world. It was not material- istic and practical. It was drifting away from equality and the rights of man; from the tepid religion of the times; from Victorian commonplaceness; from the rather dismal civilization of the mid-nineteenth century, with its dull, conventional, ordered life. The South was drifting into the tropics, into a new environment. It was preparing to master and rule the mixed races of Latin America, to set up a great empire based on slavery or peonage — an empire which would have, indeed, a sort of equality, the equality of slave driver with slave driver and slave with slave. It was the most remarkable development of the Nordic race in modern history, but it was a development that ran counter to all the tendencies of the North. For this reason, an intense hatred of slavery arose in New England. Slavery seemed to the North to be an immoral anachro- nism. It was condemned by the public opinion of Europe. Consequently, men argued that it must be wrong. The wrong-headedness of the South in maintaining slavery and the Tightness of the North on the issue have become truisms. But at that time all the world understood the evils of slavery but not the evils of the industrial system. (Did we cast out the seven devils of slavery only that seventy new devils might enter it?) In the mid-century the North wore an air of complacent virtue; it was on high ground. The northern South — particularly Virginia — felt the modern condemna- tion of slavery keenly and was put on the defensive; but 24 JEFFERSON DAVIS the lower South, which saw no reason to apologize for so Nordic an institution, was enraged. As time passed, the modernism of the North and the Nordicism of the South came more and more into conflict, politically and philo- sophically, foreshadowing the military struggle. In a cer- tain sense, the conflict was both offensive and defensive on both sides; but perhaps the North was right in think- ing that the South was largely on the aggressive and itself, on the defensive. In the mid-nineteenth century the South was the most striking and individualist country on earth. It was some- thing new in human life and a threat to Europeanism. If the South had prevailed over the North in the political contest that preceded the Civil War, the North would prob- ably have seceded, just as the South did when it lost. The United States would have been profoundly changed. It would have been individualistic, militaristic, adventurous, given to the great outdoor spaces instead of to skyscrapers and offices. It might have been a much worse country than it is at present, but it would have been infinitely more picturesque. In the forties the North and South were not unevenly balanced. The North opposed greater numbers to greater astuteness. Industrial North and planter South were politi- cally deadlocked, each having one house of Congress, and both looked to the West to cut the knot. The West was agricultural and, thus, economically allied to the South; but it was anti-slavery and democratic and, thus, socially, Northern. Social forces prevailed over economic, as has frequently happened in history. But in the forties the West looked southward because it had no objection to the South- ern scheme of annexing Texas and Oregon. At that time the THE TROPIC NORDICS 25 West stood with the South and brought about the acquisition of Texas. By 1844 Texas had become the great issue in American politics. No more important issue has ever appeared in our political life, for the gain of Texas was but the first step in a plan that looked toward Mexico proper and South America. Texas so stirred the passions of the time that history, even yet, reflects it. Thus the annexation of Texas is still represented as a reprehensible act, and the Mexi- can War that followed as the result of pure aggression on the American part. Our historians have taken great pains to prove their country wrong. Yet the admission of Texas to the Union was one of the most beneficent and most nec- essary measures the country has ever taken. Texas, in the early forties, had become entirely independent of Mexico and was the football of European intrigue. Both England and France wished to annex it; but the Texans, who were mainly emigrants from the Southern states, looked to Amer- ica. It would have been criminal negligence for the re- public to have allowed this magnificent territory, eager to enter the Union, to become a dominion of some trans- Atlantic power. We should never have forgiven our fore- fathers if they had refused to accept the consequences of Southern expansion and declined Texas. Yet so strong was the opposition in the North to this extension of the Ameri- can boundary toward the tropics that there was a distinct danger that Texas would not become a part of the republic. New England was awake to the danger to modern ideas of the rapidly developing lower South. That Texas to-day is a state of the Union is mainly owing to the labors of three men, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun and Robert J. Walker. Tyler, an expansionist of decided views 26 JEFFERSON DAVIS and in full sympathy with the lower South, on becoming President of the United States at the death of William Henry Harrison, appointed Calhoun Secretary of State to bring about annexation. Walker's share was in making annexation a Democratic party measure. Calhoun, the leader of the lower Souths even now seems a great statesman. Alike at home in the Senate and in the cabinet, he reached a height of intellectual and moral preeminence such as few Americans have ever attained. He began his career as a nationalist in the War of 1812, but he changed his attitude when he saw that Northern in- dustrialism threatened the planter South. The main conflict of his life arose over the tariff. He brought about, in 1832, the "nullification" by South Caro- lina of the existing protective tariff act. But President Andrew Jackson refused to recognize the right of a state to void federal acts, and for a time there seemed danger of war. Then Henry Clay came forward to arrange one of his compromises, by which he kept the Union undissolved for thirty years. South Carolina gave up nullification and Congress reduced the tariff. The tariff continued to be re- duced, from time to time, until the eve of the Civil War. This controversy led Calhoun to believe that the South must unite against the North or fall. He had no liking for secession; what he aimed at was to make the South strong enough to hold its own within the Union. He knew that the planter South rested on slavery and that it could not afford to remain quiescent under the anti-slavery propaganda of the North. The South must expand in order to balance the North, which was constantly being reen forced by the non-Nordic immigration from Europe. Consequently, he had long hungered for Texas. THE TROPIC NORDICS 27 Calhoun's expansionist views were eagerly accepted by the younger generation of Southern politicians, who looked up to him much as his own generation had looked up to Jefferson. Yet there was a difference between the two men which measured the failure of planter democracy. Jefferson had fought for liberty and self-expression against the old order of Europe. Calhoun stood on the defensive, struggling to save agrarianism from the consequences of Jefferson's doctrines and the industrial invasion. That he played a losing game seems to have been evident to him, for there is a certain look of defeat in his sad Irish face, as we see it in the pictures. Yet he fought with the utmost tenacity to the last moment of his life. Calhoun, together with Robert J. Walker, that atomy of genius, that expansionist who would not become secessionist, began to plan for the annexation of Texas and of Cuba as well. When Calhoun was called into the cabinet, he made a treaty with Texas for its admission to the Union. To the dismay of the annexationists, however, the Senate re- jected the treaty, just as the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in 191 9. The result was that the admission of Texas became the main issue of the presidential campaign of 1844 in the same way that the League of Nations became the main issue in the cam- paign of 1920. The Democrats nominated James K. Polk on an expansionist platform that called for both Texas and Oregon. South and West joined in an expansionist alliance. Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, attempted to straddle the issue, with the result that he was defeated. The American people preferred the average man who stood for the growth of the republic to the genius who did not know where he stood. Thus, the lower South, with its tropical policy, and 28 JEFFERSON DAVIS the West, with its eagerness for extension on the Pacific, made common cause against the North, the representative of industrialism and European civilization. The North pre- ferred the loss of rich provinces to the extension of slavery — that is, to the Nordic empire in the tropics which the lower Southerners were building up and which threatened the North. It was into this stormy arena, at this inspiring moment, that Jefferson Davis made his entrance. It was a singular coincidence that the leader of the secession cause appeared in politics at the very moment with the issue that made secession inevitable. Ill JEFFERSON DAVIS BY another coincidence, Jefferson Davis, the Southern chief, was born in Kentucky, that meeting place of American currents, in 1808 at no great distance from the home of Abraham Lincoln, who was born in 1809. Davis, in later life, was something of an aristocrat, in obedience to the social law of his section, just as Lincoln, also in obedience to social law, remained a plain man of the peo- ple. It is one of the prime advantages of a republic that it develops an aristocrat or democrat out of the raw ma- terial, as the need is, while monarchies go on reproducing immemorial types with little deviation. Jefferson Davis came of plain but good stock, of "poor but honest" parents. He was of Welsh descent and Penn- sylvania antecedents, for his grandfather, Evan Davis, was a native of Philadelphia. His father, Samuel Davis, was a small farmer in Kentucky who had met with no great success in life when the future head of the Confederacy was born. The child was named after the reigning Presi- dent in precisely the same way in which babies were named after him when he himself became a President. Beyond doubt, his name was originally Thomas Jefferson, but, like Woodrow Wilson, he dropped the Thomas, giving himself a sonorous and distinctive name. It had something to do with his success in life: men with ill-sounding names seldom rise high in politics. 29 30 JEFFERSON DAVIS The guiding force in Jefferson Davis's life, the influence that started him on the road to greatness, was his elder brother. Surely there has seldom been a more admirable elder brother than Joseph Emory Davis. But for him Jeffer- son Davis would have found his prospects in life very differ- ent. Joseph Davis was really the founder of the family, a business man of great ability who made a fortune in cot- ton-planting in a few years and raised the Davises from the small farmer class into the planter aristocracy. It happened, therefore, that Jefferson Davis, though a poor farmer's son, was not a self-made man: he had his path smoothed for him. To his brother he mainly owed his education and settlement in life. The parent Davis was looked on by his family as a per- son of superior wisdom, but actually he was a failure. He wandered from Kentucky into Mississippi and across to the southwest corner of that state, where he found a final home. As schools were few in the Southwest of that day, the boy Jefferson Davis was educated in Kentucky at a private academy and at Transylvania University. Then his whole career was given a definite direction by an appointment to West Point which Joseph Davis secured for him. He was at the military academy with such other notables as Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. Jefferson Davis was not a model student like Lee, hating mathematics and slighting his courses for desultory reading, but he graduated in 1828 with a fair class standing and carried away with him an almost pathetic faith in education. In later life, when the head of a nation, he hesitated to appoint officers to high rank who did not possess diplomas from the school on the Hudson. Davis carried away, too, a fair share of West Point arrogance. Once, years afterward, he was led to utter a JEFFERSON DAVIS 31 sneer at tailors while speaking in Congress, whereupon that very doughty tailor, Andrew Johnson, arose and rebuked him hotly, to the great amusement of the House. The incident was in keeping with Davis's West Point attitude toward life. The young lieutenant, on leaving the military academy, spent some years in the Northwest and had some slight experience of warfare in the Black Hawk War. He showed his characteristics at this early period. On one occasion he was chased in a canoe by a canoe of hostile Indians; he rigged up a sail and escaped. This was a fine example of his high-strung courage and resourcefulness. But the rough life did not suit his sensitive nerves and a constitu- tion enduring but not robust, and he nearly died of pneu- monia in an isolated army post in a terrible winter. At length, weary of the rude frontier of the thirties, he re- signed his commission and went South to become a planter under his brother's tutelage. Love, too, had something to do with this change, for Davis had become engaged to the daughter of his commanding officer, Zachary Taylor. The latter had taken a strong dislike to the lieutenant, not im- probably on account of his preciousness, for Taylor was a rough, uneducated Indian fighter and must have been galled by his would-be son-in-law's probably too obvious attitude of superiority. Davis at length triumphed in his suit and married the girl, but the romance was short-lived, as the young wife died of malaria in Mississippi within a year of the wedding. Fever also laid the husband low for a time. The effect of his wife's death on Jefferson Davis was very marked. Al- ways a little inclined to seclusion, he lived a retired life on his Mississippi plantation for years, spending his leisure 32 JEFFERSON DAVIS hours in reading and in talk with his brother Joseph. The latter had given him Brierfield, a fine tract of land on the Mississippi River and sold him fourteen slaves on credit. The estate was virgin soil. Jefferson Davis cleared the land himself, working side by side with his slaves, and had in a comparatively short time one of the best plantations in the state. It would appear from this that he was a good administrator, though it is difficult to determine the exact extent of his business ability in view of the fact that he was under Joseph's guidance. The brothers lived on adjoining plantations, and Jefferson Davis profited by the advice and support of one of the ablest planters of the period. The rich land he had not won for himself made fine crops of cotton, affording him a good income. He eventually grew to be a man of some wealth, but never showed any great interest in money-making. His tastes and ambition lay in another direction. For the decade from 1835 to 1845, Jefferson Davis lived the life of a planter, though not that of a typical planter. He was much in the open and his health, weak for a long time from malaria, improved from long horseback rides on flower-bordered woodland roads. His nervous system, how- ever, never became strong, and he continued to be neuras- thenic through the whole subsequent period of his life. In fact, he was a good deal of an invalid. His weakness was due, in part, to eyestrain, for he practically lost the sight of one eye by over-use. Going little in the society of the neighborhood and having much time on his hands, he passed whole days in reading, until he developed into a well-educated man. His favorite field was English history, essays and oratory. He also read Latin and Greek easily and browsed in fiction and poetry. Scott, of course, was JEFFERSON DAVIS 33 familiar to him, as were Burns and Moore, but he detested Milton. After the fashion of the time, he made an ex- haustive study of the United States Constitution. In one sense, this prolonged period of reading was an excellent training for his career in politics, but in another way it was not, for he saw too much of books and too little of men and developed his naturally theoretical, idealistic, doc- trinaire mental tendency at the expense of reality. It is the misfortune of men that they follow the line of least resistance unless fate intervenes sharply for their good. In the case of great men this intervention is cus- tomary. They are great simply because they are forced to struggle against and overcome their limitations. Wash- ington would have been merely known as a remarkably suc- cessful and close-fisted planter if a border war had not occurred in time to develop his military tastes and quicken him out of his somber practicalness. The Revolution trans- formed Jefferson from a literary lawyer into a world figure. It was the lot of Jefferson Davis not to be forced by destiny to overcome his faults. What he needed was rough con- tact with life; what he did for too long a period was to live as a recluse. In the decade on the plantation, his character developed so fully that there was no notable change for the rest of his life. He had grown from a nervous, high-strung boy into a sensitive though self-contained man. He had no lack of pluck, but he disliked the army and left it. In his solitary plantation life he was able to indulge his egoism, and his keen responsiveness to suggestion grew into a sort of neuro- sis. In the Senate, and afterward as President, he was a martyr to neuralgic headaches, which completely prostrated him at times. If he had not had a most powerful will, he 34 JEFFERSON DAVIS would have become a valetudinarian idler, since he was not obliged to struggle for a living; but his will redeemed him and made the neurasthenic one of the foremost men of his day. Indeed, Jefferson Davis possessed the genius com- bination — neurosis and will. This is the combination that made Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon. What he lacked that they had was a strong sense of reality. Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon were all an ti- theorists and men of action: Jefferson Davis was a doctrinaire who would never have ventured into the life of action at all but for his overpowering ambition. He was a soldier whose ambition was inspired by war but who did not much like fighting for fighting's sake. The army when he belonged to it was a paradise for adventurers, for the Far West of those days was the enchanted land of Indians and buffaloes of which every boy dreams. But Davis passed from the army and adventure, probably be- cause the army in the thirties seemed to offer little opportu- nity to an ambitious man, and he was very ambitious. In fact, he was almost altogether ambition. Turned from the career of a military conqueror, on which his boyish fancy had fed, by the lack of opportunity — since there must be war before there can be conquerors — Jefferson Davis looked toward the other sphere open to ambition, and always open, that of politics. His line of reading indicates that he de- liberately prepared himself for political life and then, when he felt himself ready, made the plunge. His choice was, in one sense, wise. If he had remained a soldier, he would probably have never risen to greatness. As a poli- tician, he came to be one of the foremost figures in American history. It should be noted that at this time, and in America, JEFFERSON DAVIS 35 literature was not a field for ambition. Although Cooper, Irving and Hawthorne were producing a real literature, they were largely unconsidered pioneers. The imagination of the American of that day was not fired by the thought of a literary career: it dwelt on war and politics. If Davis had lived in our time, he would probably have become a writer instead of a politician, or at least a writer-politician. But living when he did, he chose the road that appealed to his large ambition. Abandoning his quiet life on his rich plantation — a life which for ease, independence and oppor- tunity for happiness has been rarely equaled on earth — he took up the cross of politics, exchanging comfort and leisure for labor, anxiety and detraction. In his long period of seclusion and preparation for politics, Jefferson Davis did one notable thing: he perfected on his own plantation the institution of slavery. That is, he placed the relation of master and bondman on the basis of jus- tice; he was in fact, as well as in theory, the father of his servants. His slaves were exceedingly well-cared for and remarkably trained. Capable negroes were trusted in a high degree. No corporal punishment was allowed on the plantation except by the judgment of a negro jury, which sat on all offenses against the rules of the place. The negroes were happy and remained devoted to Davis through their whole lives; he was on terms of almost intimate friend- ship with some of them. If all slave-owners had employed the methods of Jefferson Davis, slavery would have had just claims to be considered a beneficent institution. No doubt, Davis's exceptional treatment of his chattels was partly due to his sensitiveness, which shrank with more than womanly repulsion from the sight of pain. Yet it is likely that his methods were also due in part to propagandist pur- 36 JEFFERSON DAVIS poses. Davis was a champion of a bitterly assailed institu- tion, and he must have desired to present slavery to the world in the best possible light. He succeeded amazingly. His plantation was a model, and his well-trained negroes re- mained steadily at work amidst the demoralization of war and during the occupation of the country by the enemy. After the close of the war, his ex-slaves were pointed out as examples of what slaves might become when freed: the eulogists did not know that the freedmen merely exemplified the admirable discipline possible under slavery. If Jefferson Davis had remained in the army, his de- velopment would have been very different. But living his solitary life on his little barony, influenced by literature on one hand and by his semi-tropical surroundings on the other, he became the political champion of the lower South and the leader of the tropicalized planters, who looked more and more longingly toward golden Mexico. It is difficult for Northerners to comprehend the influences that molded him: his isolation in the sun-baked country along the Mississippi, amidst cotton fields and negro villages; the free, half -wild life; the utter lack of city contacts and modernity; responsi- bility and the habit of command; tropic barbarism acting on Nordic blood. If Jefferson Davis had not entered politics and spent much of his time in Washington, he would have be- come a typically overbearing, passionate lower South planter. As it was, he left his isolation in time to save himself from provincialism and yet not soon enough to keep the tropics out of his soul. His life for a decade was such as cannot be paralleled on earth nowadays. He rode day after day through his cotton fields, oblivious of the outside world. For relaxation, he went alligator-hunting in backwaters of bayous or dallied in the azalea-perfumed outdoors, dream- JEFFERSON DAVIS 37 ing. Thus the proud, solitary, sensitive, imaginative soul of Jefferson Davis grew to maturity. If he had been less ambitious and resolute, he would have gone on to the end as a student and spectator of life: that was his natural tendency. But ambition and a restless- ness that came from partially restored health stirred him at last out of an existence that might have degenerated into mere lotos-eating. It is difficult for us of the present time, accustomed as we are to the political deadness of the mod- ern South — that stamping ground of politicians without policies — to understand the vigorous public life in the lower South before it was blasted, once for all, by the slavery issue. Mississippi was for some years evenly divided between the Whig and Democratic parties, and in Sargent Prentiss, John A. Quitman, Robert J. Walker, Henry S. Foote, A. G. Brown and Jacob Thompson the state boasted a group of politicians second to none in the country if it did not actually surpass any other. Thus it was a notable company that Jefferson Davis joined. Mississippi, politi- cally, followed the line of division throughout the South: the large slaveholders, the aristocrats, were mostly Whigs; the small farmers, Democrats. Now, Jefferson Davis was a Democrat and at the same time a prosperous planter; moreover, he was a Democrat in a largely Whig section. For these reasons his entry into politics attracted attention. The period was one of recovery after the panic of 1837. Mississippi had sold bonds in large quantities in order to build railroads and presently found itself confronted by the choice of levying heavy taxes to pay interest or of repudi- ating the debt. The Democratic state government took the easier way, in spite of Whig opposition, and Mississippi was dishonored. Jefferson Davis strongly urged payment and 38 JEFFERSON DAVIS recommended himself to the Whigs by his stand for honesty: tnere can be no doubt of his record. Nevertheless, the United States government, years later, sent Robert J. Walker to Europe for the purpose of representing the Presi- dent of the Confederacy in the money marts of the world as a repudiator, much to his injury. Even after the war, the slander was cast in his teeth. Davis met it with proud silence, wisely leaving his vindication to history. That vin- dication has been complete. In 1843, Jefferson Davis made his first stand for office, running for the legislature against Sargent Prentiss, who was probably second only to Webster as an orator. Prentiss beat the newcomer, as was to be expected, and yet Davis made an auspicious beginning, for in a joint debate with Prentiss at Vicksburg he held his own. 1 The next year, 1844, Davis stumped his state as a Polk elector. Already he was a fine speaker — a debater rather than orator, though at first he somewhat affected the florid fashion of the hour. This mood passed; and it is notable that in an age of silver- tongued eloquence he developed into a master of argument. Not particularly ready in extemporaneous discussion, he was admirable when given time for preparation, and on the floor of the Senate he held his own against all comers. Jefferson Davis entered office in 1845 as a member of the House of Representatives: he was elected as a congress- man-at-large. His career in Congress was interrupted by the Mexican War, in which he took part. In this first brief experience as a member of a legislative body he gave considerable promise. The same year, 1845, was notable in the life of Jeffer- son Davis in another way. It seemed that the man, crushed 1 W. E. Dodd, Jefferson Davis, 65. JEFFERSON DAVIS 39 in spirit by the death of his wife and ruined in health by malaria, revived his hopes of happiness at the same moment on which he entered on his career. He married a second wife, Varina Anne Howell, the daughter of a rich Mississippi planter. Like so many other lower Southerners, the Howells had come from the North. They had acquired a fine plantation and ranked with the most cultivated people of a state that did not lack culture, becoming thoroughly assimilated. At the same time, they retained some of their original Northern traits. Thus, the women of the family seem to have been good cooks and housekeepers at a time when Southern ladies usually did not do much work. Varina Anne Howell was attractive in looks and clever. Unlike her husband, who was through life thin and unrobust, she was strong and full-blooded: Pollard calls her "brawny." She was rather handsome, though her features were slightly marred by a thick upper lip which gave her, unjustly, a slight suggestion of cruelty. It was a smooth, proud, comely face. There can be no doubt that Varina Davis was a congenial companion for an intellectual man and that she secured a considerable influence over her husband, even possibly in political matters. Her abounding vitality would have made her predominant over the semi-invalid Davis but for a will which always kept him master of himself. He was not to be put in leading strings by anyone. Jefferson Davis, by his second wife, had a number of children, all but two of whom died before maturity. Both were girls and only one left descendants. As in the case of so many other men who have occupied great positions, Jeffer- son Davis left no one to bear a name immortalized in history. IV MEXICO THAT truly Nordic spirit, James K. Polk, immediately on his inauguration went to work to attempt to redeem his expansionist pledges. Texas had been admitted to the Union, by joint resolution of Congress, before Polk's ad- vent, but the question of the Texan boundary remained unsettled and Oregon loomed up as a vast and threatening problem. There was danger of war with Mexico over the Texan boundary and with England over the division of Oregon. A compromise was made with England in the case of Ore- gon by which the United States renounced "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" and accepted Forty-Nine and Peace. The Mexican question was not compromised. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as the boundary, and when Mexico refused to admit this war resulted. Polk had no desire for war, but he was no diplomatist and Mexico was stupidly truculent, with the truculence of a weaker race laboring under a sense of injustice. Fighting began when American troops advanced to the Rio Grande. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State had la- bored to acquire Texas without war, denounced this forward movement of the government, but for once his disciples de- serted him. His principal lieutenants in Congress were Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina and William L. 40 MEXICO 41 Yancey of Alabama. These younger men favored war in 1846 as ardently as Calhoun himself had in 181 2. So did the Western and many of the Northern Democrats. Stephen A. Douglas, the rising young Western Democratic leader, ad- vocated war along with the Southern fire-eaters. Jefferson Davis, who had strongly favored the annexation of Texas, supported the administration in its war policy. The Whigs, Northern and Southern, joined Calhoun in opposing it. The stand of Calhoun against the Mexican War is note- worthy, for it has been the fashion of historians to ascribe that war to the aggression of the Slave Power on a weaker nation, and Calhoun was the leader of the Slave Power, so called. The Mexican War was really the result of the Nordic thirst for conquest; and Nordics — Northern, Western and Southern — favored it. The adventurous and aspiring portion of the people of all sections except New England demanded expansion into the mysterious and mainly unoccupied South- west. Yet the strongest force, undoubtedly, was that of the lower South reaching out toward the tropics. Calhoun rep- resented the agricultural South battling against the industrial North: he did not represent the new spirit of the lower South, intent on fulfilling its destiny even at the price of separation from the North. For this reason Calhoun found himself isolated in the last years of his career: the lower South had gone beyond him. The historians, in their desire to make out a case against the United States — for the historians represent the Northern fear of the Southern extension into the tropics — have given the impression that Mexico was a civilized nation. It could be called so only by courtesy. The mass of the -inhabitants were Indians not much farther advanced in civilization than their Aztec ancestors. It is true that Mexico had abolished 42 JEFFERSON DAVIS slavery, and this was hailed by the North as a proof of advanced collective morality; but emancipation, so far from benefiting the country, had actually injured it, for a once useful class of workers had become idlers. Peonage took the place of slavery and was, in some respects, worse, as it conferred the name of freedom without the reality. Yet if it had not been for peonage, Mexico would have frankly relapsed into barbarism. It styled itself a republic, save at such times as it happened to be an empire, and it had adopted one admirable paper constitution after another; but in reality it was in a condition of chronic anarchy except for brief periods when some bandit or military adventurer was able to make himself autocrat. There was no particular reason why the United States should hesitate to extend its sway over the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande on account of the claims of sovereignty of a country so disorganized, feeble and distracted as Mexico. Naturally, it preferred to back Texas. To be weak is to be wrong — and justly so: otherwise there would be no virtue in being strong. Yet it is probable that if Calhoun had continued in the State Department under Polk the territory in dis- pute would have been gained without war, for Calhoun was almost the only great diplomat the United States has pro- duced. Polk and Buchanan could not bend his bow, and because they could not the Mexican War occurred. It was inevitable that Jefferson Davis should take part in the war. He had supported Polk's policy in spite of Calhoun, and, besides, his education and ambition called him to the field. His first love, military ambition, had given way to politics in the long interval of peace, but it now revived. Davis, resigning his seat in Congress, went back to Mississippi to offer his services. He was elected colonel MEXICO 43 of the first regiment raised in that state for the war, known as the "Rifles." It was Jefferson Davis's fate to be attached to the army commanded by his father-in-law, Zachary Taylor. The lat- ter was one of the most remarkable of generals. He had been trained in fighting Indians on the frontier and was a practical soldier, not theoretical. Dirty in person, unedu- cated, eccentric, he was yet a great natural leader of men and exceedingly popular with his soldiers. He blundered into victories in an amazing way, and all of his battles were victories. In most respects he was the reverse of Jeffer- son Davis, which possibly explains his objection to the latter as a son-in-law. Rough and practical, Taylor had a natural distaste for West Point fastidiousness and airiness, which Davis exemplified in early life. Now that he had lost some of his West Pointism by planting and politics, Taylor found him much more to his liking and actually grew fond of him. Jefferson Davis showed considerable initiative as a sol- dier in the Mexican War. While the rest of the army con- tinued to rely on "Brown Bess," he put a new rifle in his regiment which increased its efficiency. It was a superb regiment, composed chiefly of well-to-do planters, who were accompanied by their own servants. About September i, 1846, the command reached the front in Mexico and soon saw service. Taylor attacked the town of Monterey, held by a large force of Mexicans. Davis and the Rifles played a conspicuous part in the storming of the enemy's works. The Mexicans at length withdrew from Monterey, leaving the victory with Taylor. For some time afterward he was kept inactive for want of troops. Early in 1847, however, he was reenforced and re- sumed his advance. Santa Anna, the Mexican president and 44 JEFFERSON DAVIS army commander, a rather scatter-brained adventurer in gaudy uniform, suddenly moved northward against Taylor with a considerable army. The two forces met at Buena Vista, where the most spirited action 184 JEFFERSON DAVIS portant mistake. He might have retreated across the Po- tomac River with the fruits of a successful raid. If he re- mained, he would have to fight a battle near the river on a field where defeat meant ruin and where decisive victory was impossible. He had but 35,000 men against McClellan's 90,000, and the Union position was also stronger. Long- street advised withdrawal, and even the fierce Jackson did not urge battle. But retreat in face of the enemy was difficult for a soldier of Lee's fighting proclivities, and he decided to hold his ground. The engagement which followed at Sharpsburg, or An- tietam, was a glorious testimony to American manhood, to the Nordic virtue of North and South alike. For the length of a summer day the Southerners, unsheltered by trenches, endured the frightful fire of the superior Northern artillery and beat off innumerable infantry attacks. They showed a steadiness more than Roman and perished by whole regi- ments. When night fell on the most terrible day in Ameri- can history, they still clung to their position, though in places the dead alone held the Confederate line. As for the Union troops, mowed down by the withering fire of the Southern infantry and artillery at close range, they proved that their morale was not affected by the Second Manassas and that they could stand the most staggering losses without flinching. McClellan did not attack next day, and the honors of a bare defensive victory were with Lee. But he could not assume the offensive in turn for lack of men, and there was no other course for him but to withdraw into Virginia, which he did in safety. Though a tactical victory, Sharpsburg was a strategic and political defeat for the South of great magnitude. In fact, perhaps more than any other single conflict of the war it was the decisive battle. A SEASON OF VICTORY 185 It weakened the fast-growing belief in Europe that Lee could win victories against any odds. After the overthrow of McClellan in the Seven Days and Pope at the Second Manassas, the world had begun to think that anything was possible for the great commander whose star had risen so suddenly, and there was a widespread conviction that the South would win. The North was in the depths of despond- ency at the utter failure of its mighty effort to subdue the seceding states. Lee, knowing this, had suggested to Davis that it would be well to open peace negotiations with Wash- ington when he crossed the Potomac. 1 More important but unknown to both belligerents, the British government was seriously considering intervention. If Lee had won a third great victory, and on Northern soil, the British government would probably have considered the chances of Union suc- cess in the war so slight as to justify interference. But when it became evident, at Sharpsburg, that the South was not strong enough to invade the North, English opinion changed. The London government did not intervene and never came so near intervention again. 2 By a singular fate, the invasion of Kentucky likewise failed. Kirby Smith won a victory at Richmond and Bragg one at Perryville, but the Confederate commanders did not act together and Bragg let himself be outgeneraled. He fell back into Tennessee, and thus a movement that promised the happiest results came to nothing. Kentucky was defi- nitely lost to the Confederacy, and the Southerners were never again on the offensive in the West. Yet the South still possessed a strong army in Tennessee, and the prospects were better in the late autumn than they 1 Official Records, War of the Rebellion, Series i, 19, Part II, 591. 2 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams. 186 JEFFERSON DAVIS had been in the spring. Everything depended on the com- mander, however, and just here Jefferson Davis made a vital mistake. By this time Braxton Bragg had proved that he was not a very competent commander. He was but a passable mediocrity at best, and passable mediocrities seldom win wars. He had not only missed great opportunities but he had lost the confidence and respect of the army. The hour had come for his removal. It was not as if the South had no better soldier to put in his place. Stonewall Jackson, both in independent command and as Lee's principal subordinate, had shown great military qualities. Every consideration urged that he be given the place of Bragg. Yet Davis does not even seem to have thought of him for the Western com- mand. He was content to leave in a secondary position a heaven-sent strategist and to continue in the most vital post in the Confederacy a man who had already shown that nothing much was to be hoped for from him. Still no one else in authority seems to have thought of Jackson, who had shown peculiar genius at the head of a separate army, as anything but Lee's chief lieutenant. The repulse of the South from Maryland and Kentucky was attended by other discouraging symptoms. The South was beginning to feel the pressure of the war acutely. The blockade had largely cut the country off from foreign com- merce, and cotton lay heaped in great piles at wharves and stations. There was a lack of fabrics and metals, while the railroads, unrepaired and unaided by the government, were rapidly deteriorating. The value of the paper currency was steadily falling. Dissatisfaction had become widespread. A number of the newspapers now opposed the government; the trenchant criticisms of John M. Daniel, the famous editor A SEASON OF VICTORY 187 of the Richmond Examiner, and those of the Charleston Mercury were especially influential. There was absolutely no censorship or any other form of restraint on the press of the Confederacy, which, paradoxical as it may sound since it was fighting on the side of slavery, was about the freest country that ever went to war. Jefferson Davis had also lost the support of the politicians. Rhett, Stephens, Yancey and Toombs had been joined by Wigfall. Davis had alienated the influential Texas senator by the same tactlessness that had won him many enemies, that tendency of his to play the master and administer re- buke, that failure to seem to listen to advice. Jefferson Davis was not conciliatory enough for a man in his position ; he constantly forgot that he was not the head of an estab- lished government but a revolutionary chief with his way to make. He needed to grapple men to him, and he alienated them instead. The planter politicians, reduced to impotence by their own act in endowing the executive with supreme power, were none the less humanly resentful at the conse- quences of their act. Davis did nothing to soothe their helplessness: they left his presence enraged by curt refusals or tart rejoinders. Not that he meant to offend. His nerves were awry; people annoyed him, and he was never prudent in speech. He cooled WigfalFs friendship by a sharp reproof for a criticism of one of the presidential favorites, the incompe- tent General Holmes, who was a complete failure in several responsible positions. The alienation was made into a real breach when Davis found it expedient to find a new Secre- tary of War, as he was not satisfied with Randolph. He considered James A. Seddon, Joseph E. Johnston and Gus- tavus W. Smith. Wigfall came to him to offer advice on the 188 , JEFFERSON DAVIS appointment, not knowing that it had already been offered to Seddon. Davis heard Wigfall at length without informing him that the place had been filled. The next day the Texan saw in the paper that Seddon had accepted the portfolio and he was so enraged that he immediately became an enemy of Davis and lost no opportunity to attack him in the Senate for the rest of the war. 1 He was a friend lost by pure inadvertence and perversity. Walker had been a political appointment, Randolph an experiment. Seddon became Secretary of War after a some- what long and intimate acquaintance with the President. It is a mistake to think, as men have thought, that Davis de- sired a mere clerk in his war minister, an agent to carry out orders, and that he was inaccessible to advice. The truth is that he constantly felt the need of advice and sought it, and that a person who had won his confidence had too much influence with him rather than too little. He sometimes allowed his judgment to be clouded by the representations of a favorite. When Lee became an army commander, he was lost to Davis as a resident military adviser. The Presi- dent now looked for a substitute for him in the Secretary of War, and it was for this reason that he weighed the appoint- ment with unusual care. As a matter of fact, Jefferson Davis felt acutely the need of a trusted adviser at the end of 1862. To imagine that Benjamin carried most weight with him at this time, and later in the war, is a common error. Benjamin, indeed, was his chief councilor on all matters from the autumn of 1 86 1 to the late winter of 1862. When Lee, however, be- came military adviser, he supplanted Benjamin in the most important field, that of the conduct of the war. Not that 1 Reagan, 161. A SEASON OF VICTORY 189 Davis ceased to repose trust in Benjamin. Benjamin con- tinued to be his adviser on politics and foreign affairs, but his opinion was not often asked on military matters. Lee was in intimate association with the President from the early spring of 1862 until August, when he went afield. Then, for some little time, Davis was rather at a loss for advice. Randolph did not please him. On the latter 's resig- nation, James A. Seddon occupied the vacant place. This choice has been much criticized, especially since Seddon was chosen in preference to Joseph E. Johnston and Gustavus W. Smith. Seddon was, in reality, an excellent selection. He was not a soldier but a politician and a man of the world, and he got along with Davis better than Johnston or Smith could possibly have done. He was a far abler man than is generally supposed, and he held Davis's confidence until he was forced out of office by congressional opposition early in 1865. Seddon had great influence with the President from the end of 1862 until the summer of 1863. Then he was some- what eclipsed, and for some time Davis was again at a loss. At the beginning of 1864, Braxton Bragg became his con- fidential adviser and held the post for the greater part of a year. He was the last man who influenced Davis's policy and he influenced it to a greater degree than any of his predecessors. These four, then, Benjamin, Lee, Seddon and Bragg, were the intimates whom Jefferson Davis trusted and who had a share in forming his decisions. James A. Seddon was a lawyer by trade, but he showed a natural talent for administration and marked initiative. His appointment as Secretary of War is evidence that Jefferson Davis was a good judge of men when his affections were not involved. It was always difficult for him to sacrifice a friend 190 JEFFERSON DAVIS on the altar of expediency, though he could do this when it became evident to him that the sacrifice was imperative. Seddon's selection shows the influence of Virginia on Davis. On coming to Richmond, he was thrown into close relations with several public men, R. M. T. Hunter, James Lyons and others. But in James A. Seddon he found just what he wanted — a cultivated companion and a clear thinker. For a time, Seddon's influence was so great that he had much to do in dictating the military policy, and in some matters he showed such sound judgment that the course of the war might have been affected by it but for circumstances over which he had no control. Seddon was, like Davis, a valetudinarian. He had served in Congress some years before the war, but at the time of his elevation to the chief post in the Confederacy next to the presidency he was not so well known as he would have been but for his invalid temperament. He was a well- educated man of exact mental processes, a typical Virginia lawyer-planter-politician. He had the appearance of an ex- treme neurotic, "gaunt and emaciated, with long, straggling hair. He looks like a dead man galvanized into muscular animation. His eyes are sunken, and his features have the hue of a man who has been in the grave a full month." * In spite of his looks and health, he had a very considerable degree of vigor and, like his fellow invalid, Davis, lived to old age. In the lull that followed Sharpsburg, Seddon took hold of the War Department. By this time the war had reached such a pitch that winter failed to put a stop to active field operations. Lee was busy in reorganizing his army, which rose to 70,000 men, mostly veterans of high quality. It was 1 Jones, 1, 312. A SEASON OF VICTORY 191 the best army that Lee commanded and somewhat superior to the opposing Army of the Potomac. The Lincoln government, in its anxiety to push matters, now made its worst blunder, a blunder so full of peril that Southern success might have been the price of it. McClellan, the unenterprising but wary commander of the Union army in the East, was removed before a competent successor had been found. He had shown a natural hesitation in attacking Lee, though the Northern press was demanding immediate battle. Ambrose E. Burnside, a frank experiment, was put in his place. Once more the gods fought on the Southern side. It was a risk of the gravest kind to pit an untried general against such opponents as Lee and Jackson, who welcomed the change and prepared to make the most of it. In spite of the winter season, Burnside advanced to the Rappahannock in the hope of being able to cross before Lee could concentrate to oppose him. His was the old plan of attacking Richmond from the north. Jackson proposed to let him cross the Rappahannock and to fight him on the North Anna, not far from Richmond, where a victory might be followed up to good advantage. Lee favored this plan. The objection to fighting at Fredericksburg, in front of which Burnside lay, was that the heights on the north bank of the river, crowned with artillery, made a counter- attack most difficult. The Confederates might win a defensive battle but not the decisive victory they needed. On the other hand, a victory on the North Anna might be followed by the destruction of the Union army. The farther the incompetent Burnside advanced from his base, the greater would be his danger. There was every reason for the Southern generals to lure him on. Davis, however, refused his assent to a battle on the 192 JEFFERSON DAVIS North Anna. It is supposed that he did so mainly for political reasons, that he feared that a retirement to the neighborhood of Richmond would have a bad effect on the opinion of the world. This is unlikely. Jefferson Davis's ideas of strategy were peculiar. He had little taste for the offensive, but he was always willing to fight on his own first defensive line. He seems to have thought that retreat was the same thing as defeat, and a general who showed a pref- erence for retreating always lost his confidence. So this great opportunity was allowed to pass unimproved for eccentric strategic considerations. Lee, as well as Davis, was to blame. The former's weakness was a lack of self- assertion. Time and again he allowed himself to be over- borne by Davis, though he could not but have been con- scious of his superior ability. It is perhaps well for military commanders to have respect for civil rulers, but, as in Lee's case, the virtue can be carried too far. The Southern army took position at Fredericksburg instead of utilizing its heaven-sent opportunity to win a "crowning mercy." The Northern columns, crossing the river on pontoons, attempted to carry the formidable Confederate position just south of the town and were easily repulsed with slaughter. Army and generals alike lacked confidence in Burnside, and as the beaten troops fell back into the town in the afternoon of a bitter December day a condition akin to panic set in. Burnside, ignorant of the situation, wished to attack again next day, but his subordinates practically defied him and by so doing saved the army. Mutiny has its virtues. When Joseph E. Johnston, then in the West, heard of the battle, he said, "What luck some people have! No one will ever attack me in such a position." The Union army was defeated and in considerable dan- A SEASON OF VICTORY 193 ger; it was a question what the Confederates would make of the opportunity. Jackson, unsatisfied with a negative defensive victory, proposed to Lee to strip his men to the waist in the zero cold, in order to distinguish them from the blue coats, and launch them at night in a bayonet attack on the huddled masses of Union soldiery in the town. It would have been a butchery without parallel in American history. Lee refused, for his large humanity shrank from the ultimate horrors of war. The matter well illustrates the difference between the men: Lee fought to do his duty; Jackson fought to win. Burnside was allowed to retreat unmolested to the north bank of the river, supremely fortu- nate to have escaped from the trap with the loss of only 13,000 men. Never again did the South have such an oppor- tunity to gain a decisive victory. IX DILEMMA INDECISIVE success in the East was counterbalanced by disaster in the West. It was in this field that Seddon intervened. He induced Davis to make Joseph E. Johnston commander of the department of Tennessee and Mississippi, the most important in the country. Davis had distrusted Johnston since the spring campaign in Virginia, but Seddon, like a majority of the Southern people, had great faith in his ability. No general was ever more successful in inspiring confidence than Johnston. Nominally, he was to be the com- mander of the department, with the two main armies of the West under him; but Seddon's idea went beyond this. He designed Johnston to have control of the operations on the east bank of the Mississippi, with little interference from Richmond. In fact, Seddon groped toward the solution of the Confederate strategic problem. What was needed in the West was centralization of authority under a com- mander of practically independent powers. The marvel is that Seddon actually succeeded in impres- sing his view on Davis, who was jealous of his prerogative as commander in chief. Davis now consented, though per- haps somewhat reluctantly, to give Johnston a free hand. His position was actually more powerful than Lee's. Lee was a departmental commander, but only one army was under him. Johnston's department embraced the armies 194 DILEMMA 195 of Braxton Bragg in Tennessee and of Pemberton in Missis- sippi. A second opportunity to play a decisive part in the war thus came to him. Johnston began by inspecting his new field, without taking command of either army in person. Already there was much distrust of Bragg and Pemberton, but the departmental com- mander made no suggestions for changes. He left the two generals to follow their own devices. Bragg fought a murderous battle with Rosecrans at Mur- freesboro, or Stone's River, on the last day of the year. As in all of Bragg's battles, the Southern troops were set the task of storming a formidable position held by an army of equal or greater strength. By sheer valor, the Confederates at Murfreesboro drove the Unionists from their cannon- ridged heights, but they failed in an effort two days later to complete the victory; and in the end they retreated from a field made glorious by their futile prowess. Though they had out- fought their opponents, they suffered all the dis- advantages of defeat. Bragg's incompetence as a commander was evident in this battle. It brought to a head the intense dissatisfaction of the army with him. Bragg was of that type of general which always finds a good excuse for failure in the shortcomings of some subordinate. He declared that he would have won a great victory if his generals had obeyed orders and he put one of them under arrest and proposed to court- martial him. Now, Bragg was one of Davis's closest friends, and Davis went all lengths in his friendship; but it is to his credit that at this juncture he seriously thought of removing Bragg from command. The latter was ordered to report to Rich- mond, and Johnston was instructed to take charge of the 196 JEFFERSON DAVIS Tennessee army in his absence. So far did Seddon's in- fluence reach. Indeed, the stage was set for Johnston if he had been a man capable of profiting by opportunity. Johnston conferred with the President at army headquar- ters. Davis was driven in December, 1862, to make his first long trip of the war on account of the threatening situation in the West. Vicksburg and middle Tennessee were both threatened by Union forces: the promising summer had given place to a menacing winter, and the outlook for the coming spring was anything but cheering. Leaving Richmond early in December, Davis went di- rectly to Chattanooga and consulted Johnston. Doubtless Seddon had not altogether dispelled his doubts of Johnston and he wished to see for himself just how matters stood. He also visited Bragg's army at Murfreesboro not long be- fore the battle and went on to Mississippi. It is to be noted how his own military ambition had faded since the summer before. With a great battle pending, he was satisfied to let his generals do the fighting. He now contented himself with the role of military administrator, and at that he allowed Seddon a considerable measure of independence. In his own state the President received a warm reception. He made a notable speech at Jackson and again consulted Johnston, though without result. He journeyed in company with John- ston to Vicksburg, which was threatened. Starting east- ward, he lingered a few days in Mobile and returned to Rich- mond early in the new year, weary and ill. His old enemy neuralgia, aggravated, no doubt, by the discomforts of travel, attacked him severely and he was confined to his house until late in February, 1863. Davis made no move on his return from the West but he had about concluded that Bragg must go. That leader had DILEMMA 197 taken the extraordinary step of convening his generals as a sort of court on himself and asking for their opinions as to his fitness for command. The subordinates replied that he had lost the confidence of his officers. Such a display of weakness should have been followed by Bragg's immediate removal. A general who will debate with his lieutenants the subject of his own qualifications for command is manifestly unfit for command. Davis was un- favorably impressed by Bragg's trial of himself and, on January 22, wrote to Johnston asking him to visit the army at once and confer with Bragg and his officers in order to come to a decision as to what the best interests of the service required. At this time, Jefferson Davis, as much as he liked Bragg, was reconciled to his removal and to Johnston's as- suming command himself. The retention of Bragg was not the political question it afterward became. Johnston visited the army and consulted the generals. He reported to Davis that he had talked with Bragg, Polk and Hardee, the corps commanders, and with Governor Harris of Tennessee, as well as with some others. Polk and Hardee lacked confidence in Bragg. Cheatham, a division com- mander, openly announced that he would never again go into battle under him. Harris thought it best not to remove him. Bragg himself declared that the feeling in the army against him was passing away. Johnston added his own conclusion on the matter, a conclusion that had a good deal to do with deciding the fate of the Confederacy. He said that he was glad that Davis retained his trust in Bragg, that the latter had shown great vigor and skill in his opera- tions and that it would be unfortunate to remove him. Why was it that Johnston took a view diametrically op- posed to that of almost the entire army? If Bragg's opera- 198 JEFFERSON DAVIS tions had been conducted with vigor and skill, it is extremely unlikely that all of his generals would have been against him. It is difficult to see how any one could denominate the blundering movements that preceded the battle of Murfrees- boro as indicating vigor and skill. Johnston was a soldier of great parts. Why did he thus work to keep in command an incompetent officer? Davis had acted fairly, putting Bragg's fate squarely in the hands of the departmental com- mander; and Johnston deliberately gave an opinion that kept at the head of the most important army in the South a mediocre general who had become intensely unpopular with his men. The solution lies in Johnston's own weakness. He was the most highly educated soldier in America and one of the ablest, but the dread of responsibility blasted his talents. His is a very singular case. Utterly without physical fear, he greatly dreaded the burden of command. He was still suffering from the effect of his wound and he felt that if Bragg were superseded he must take the latter 's place. He preferred to have Bragg command the army rather than command it himself. This explains his unfortunate action. Jefferson Davis is hardly to be blamed for retaining an in- efficient officer at the head of the army of Tennessee when the departmental commander so enthusiastically endorsed him. He simply accepted Johnston's decision. Seddon was bitterly disappointed. He had been working to secure Bragg's dismissal and Johnston's definite assign- ment to the army. He had sought to strengthen Johnston in every way and to secure for him complete control of his department. What was the result? Johnston was playing the malcontent. With his usual tactlessness, he had un- bosomed himself to Senator Wigfall. His position, he said, DILEMMA 199 was anomalous and unsatisfactory. The two armies in his department were too far apart to cooperate, and while nomi- nally commanding both he commanded neither. He thus bore the blame for failure without receiving the credit for success. There was some truth in this complaint: the President had not been sufficiently explicit in enumerating Johnston's powers. But now Seddon informed the departmental com- mander that his powers were very large, that there had been no thought of giving him a nominal command. "I feel well assured," he wrote Johnston, "that it was very far from the intention of the President, as it certainly has been mine, to regard your command in this light." He went on to say that because of the remoteness of the Western armies and the difficulty of directing them from Richmond it was the intention of the government to give the departmental com- mander much the same authority that the government itself exerted over the armies nearer the capital. It was expected that Johnston would assume the command in person of the army that needed him most; Seddon was disappointed that he had not gone to Vicksburg, when it was threatened. He would now like him to take command of the army of Ten- nessee, with Bragg as second in command or without Bragg if that suited him better. The Secretary of War ended with a noble expression of friendship: "I should really be pleased to learn candidly from you your own preferences, for while I cannot assure their fulfillment, yet from my appreciation and confidence in you, I should have every disposition to promote and may not be powerless to accomplish them." All in vain. Johnston would not be persuaded that he had the power to control his department: he insisted that he was left without definite directions as to the extent of his author- 200 JEFFERSON DAVIS ity. The government certainly sought to show that it re- garded him as supreme within the limits of his department, but Johnston would not have it so because he did not wish it so. He did not wish to assume the tremendous respon- sibility of conducting the Confederate operations in the main theater of war with inadequate means; and on one score he had a most legitimate subject of complaint. The departmental system was demonstrating its hopeless inade- quacy; Johnston was asked to defend the Mississippi River while having control only of one side of the stream. The troops on the west bank might as well have been in Vir- ginia for all the good they did to the threatened fortress of Vicksburg on the east bank, though it would have been far easier to concentrate the forces on both sides of the river than to draw from the distant army of Tennessee. Johnston's expostulations over this matter were certainly justified. Yet if he had gone vigorously to work with the means at his command, it is not impossible that the gov- ernment would have granted him an extension of his powers or ordered the generals in the trans-Mississippi to support him. He did little but complain. A second time, on March 3, Seddon asked Johnston to express his wishes as to his department. "You think the armies in the West [Mississippi and Tennessee] too remote and distinct to be united, and, yet, if I divine aright, your feeling — your generosity — will not allow you to assume com- mand of either to the temporary displacement of either of the generals commanding there." Such an attitude, Seddon urged, left Johnston no place commensurate with his repu- tation and ability. He therefore frankly requested the gen- eral to take command of the army of Tennessee, with Bragg as his second, assuring him that both the President and the DILEMMA 201 country desired it. "If General Bragg," he went on, "as frankly I would prefer, were recalled altogether, your em- barrassment in assuming his place would be greater than in merely assuming what all acknowledge so cheerfully to be your due, the supreme command." Yet a third time Sed- don pleaded with Johnston to put himself at the head of the Tennessee army, declaring that the public dissatisfac- tion with Bragg was great and that the army could not be relied on to do its full duty under so unpopular a commander. Seddon had brought Davis to the point of sacrificing Bragg, but Johnston refused to do his part. On February 12, he had again written to the President in commendation of Bragg. He stated that though Polk had lost all faith in Bragg the troops were still confident of beating the enemy. "While this feeling exists," he wrote, "and you regard General Bragg as brave and skillful, the fact that some or all of the general officers of the army, and many of the sub- ordinates, think that you might give them a commander with fewer defects cannot, I think, greatly diminish his value." Johnston repeated that the operations of the army had been well conducted. He added that Polk and Hardee had told him that they had advised the President to remove Bragg and put him in command, but that such a result was incon- sistent with his personal honor. The interests of the service, he concluded, required that Bragg be not relieved. Polk and Hardee had done their duty, risking Davis's displeasure, for they felt that it was imperative to get rid of their incompetent chief. Seddon had worked success- fully toward the same end: the President was reconciled to Bragg's going. But Johnston balked them, advising the retention of an officer he damned with faint praise. Davis 202 JEFFERSON DAVIS wrote to Johnston in reply that he regretted that Bragg's officers had lost confidence in him. "It is scarcely possible, in that state of the case, for him to possess the requisite con- fidence of the troops." Thus Davis refuted Johnston's singular statement that the officers were disheartened and the men confident. He expressed gratification, however, at Johnston's belief in Bragg. "It is not given to all men of ability to excite enthusiasm and win the affection of their troops." The question of finding a successor to Bragg was difficult, because Johnston did not think that any of Bragg's subordinates should have the place and yet would not take it himself. Davis declared that he could not see how John- ston's assumption of command would involve his honor. Davis, indeed, was sorely puzzled. Much as he liked Bragg, he thought that Bragg must go and wished Johnston to succeed him. If not Johnston, some one else. But John- ston made Bragg's displacement almost impossible, for he was exhausting all of his resources to find excuses for declining the command of the army of Tennessee and to keep Polk or Hardee from being appointed. Beauregard had been tried and found wanting. Van Dorn or Hindman would not do. Jefferson Davis cannot be well blamed, under the circumstances, for retaining Bragg, unsatisfactory as he was. There was probably no officer competent for the com- mand except Jackson, who, as we remarked before, by the strangest of oversights, was entirely unconsidered. It is only fair to say, however, that Jefferson Davis made still another effort to determine Bragg's fitness for command and the exact sentiment of the army in regard to him. Late in March he sent Colonel William Preston Johnston, an officer of good judgment, to visit the West and report on the situation. Colonel Johnston carefully inspected the DILEMMA 203 army of Tennessee. He talked frankly with the higher officers. Leonidas Polk, the junior corps commander, told him plainly that Bragg would have to go, that he should be transferred to another field. Polk suggested that Bragg's appointment as adjutant-general somewhere else would leave the way open for putting Johnston at the head of the army. Colonel Johnston also conferred with General John- ston. The latter declared that the condition of the army was excellent and that it lacked "no physical element of success." He said nothing of the moral element of con- fidence in its commander. Johnston stated that great credit was due Bragg and Pillow for building it up: Pillow, the chief conscript officer, had sent 10,000 men to it. Colonel Johnston's report on the army of Tennessee is interesting. He stated that there was a great want of bayo- nets and that the cartridges were too large for the Enfield rifles used by the infantry. Transportation was tolerably good. The troops were well supplied with clothing but lacked shoes. Subsistence was difficult to obtain. The posi- tion of the army at Tullahoma was not good and was defended only by slight entrenchments, as Bragg believed that heavy earthworks demoralized troops. This is im- portant as revealing Bragg as a thoroughly old-fashioned soldier, dead to the developments of modern war. The old- fashioned soldier abhorred fieldworks and wanted troops to stand in close order and be shot down en masse. Such archaic ideas were superseded by the new methods of the very next year, when trench warfare became firmly fixed in military science. This report might have disposed of Bragg but for Johnston's continued defense of him. As late as April 10, 1863, he declared that he was unfit for field duty and that 204 JEFFERSON DAVIS Bragg was consequently still needed. This seems to have ended Davis's efforts to find a successor for the command of the army of Tennessee. Its fate was to rest in the hands of Braxton Bragg, though there was a bitter feud between the commander and his subordinate generals and a most intense dislike for him on the part of the rank and file. But Johnston simply would not accept the baton, and Bragg stayed on largely because there seemed to be no one else to put in his place. If Johnston was unwilling to displace Bragg, who had served for some time in important capacities, he need not have felt any such delicacy in the case of John C. Pember- ton, in command of the army of Mississippi. This force was of almost greater importance than the army of Tennessee, for it guarded Vicksburg and the Mississippi Valley. Davis has been much blamed for his appointment of Pemberton, but the officers in the service capable of independent com- mand were few and it was impossible to avoid some experi- menting. Pemberton was a man of mediocre intellect and feeble character, though he seems to have been a good talker and he undoubtedly impressed the President as a soldier of talent. Already, early in 1863, his army and the people of Mississippi had begun to lose faith in him. He was en- tirely incompetent for so difficult a duty as was assigned him — enough to have taxed any one — and Johnston might well have considered relieving him himself or recommending a successor. Both Polk and Hardee were better officers; indeed, it would have been difficult to find a division or corps general of less capacity than Pemberton. Yet in March Johnston wrote to Pemberton complimenting him on the vigor he had shown in his defense of the Mississippi against Grant. Surely, if Davis continued Pemberton in command DILEMMA 205 as well as Bragg, it was not greatly his fault, since the de- partmental commander supported both of these inefficient soldiers. Davis and Seddon had expected Johnston to use the in- terior lines of communication and concentrate troops in Ten- nessee or Mississippi as the need arose. In this way they hoped that the superior forces of the Union might be equal- ized at the point of vital contact. But Johnston declared that communication between Tennessee and Mississippi was too slow to allow of much shifting of troops, though a railroad running parallel with the Mississippi River would seem to have offered facilities for just such strategy. Johnston was in doubt as to Grant's intentions. From time to time reports came that the Union general was send- ing large reinforcements to Rosecrans in Tennessee, where the main attack might be made. Pemberton, however, sent word that Grant was stronger than ever and that Vicksburg appeared to be his objective. Still Johnston feared that Bragg's army was in danger and appealed to Davis to reen- force it. The President sought to draw troops from Beaure- gard in Charleston, but Beauregard sent only a small force. The Union, by having the initiative, enjoyed an advantage over the Confederates. By threatening Tennessee, Arkan- sas and Louisiana simultaneously, the Union strategists were able to secure that dispersal of the Southern forces needed to bring about Grant's success at Vicksburg. There were sufficient bodies of Confederate troops within concentrating range of Vicksburg to have overwhelmed Grant if they had been brought together. The government, however, by mak- ing the Mississippi River the boundary between departments had erected a barrier between its own forces. It had failed to send troops to the trans-Mississippi when they were 206 JEFFERSON DAVIS needed there and might have been spared, and now the trans- Mississippi troops did not wish to cross the river to assist in the defense of Mississippi. Johnston had no power over the troops on the west side of the river, though they were but a short distance from Vicksburg ; he was obliged to draw support for Pemberton's army from Bragg, hundreds of miles away. As for Davis, he would not interfere with the trans-Mis- sissippi, in spite of Vicksburg's danger. He feared raids into Confederate territory from Memphis and New Orleans, and besides the defensive dispersal was his natural strategy. He hated exposing territory by making concentrations. He, therefore, did not give Johnston the troops he so sorely needed. They remained in Arkansas and Louisiana to op- pose the Union feints. Johnston, also, was at fault. By April, 1863, Pember- ton's army had become the more important of the two forces in his department, and he should have gone to Vicksburg and taken command. He was badly needed. But he would not go, and his reluctance to undertake field service was again alienating Davis. Seddon still supported him with all his power, but Seddon was beginning to lose favor as it became more and more evident that Johnston was not the man to be at the head of the department of Tennessee and Missis- sippi. Seddon's partial loss of influence was destined to play no inconsiderable part in the occurrences of the eventful summer of 1863. As April opened the stage was set for the tragedy that brought about the downfall of the Confederacy. Up to this time, the fortune of war had, on the whole, been favorable to the South. The Unionists had not only failed to con- quer Virginia but they had seen Washington threatened. DILEMMA 207 That Lee could hold out indefinitely was almost certain. At any moment he might become an active menace to the North. The Confederates had lost most of Tennessee, but still had a foothold in the center of the state. Missouri had been abandoned to the Union, but Arkansas was not yet gone and Louisiana was held by large forces. Vicksburg was the weakest point in the Confederate chain, because the Union could bring to bear naval strength as well as military against it, and the most notable Union successes had been won by a combination of army and navy. The Confederate forces at Vicksburg were too small and were commanded by one of the least efficient officers in the service. Grant's army, on the other hand, was large and ably commanded. If the unenterprising defensive continued to be the Confederate policy in the West — if no vigorous measures of concentration were taken — the chances were that the Union would succeed in its main strategic aim of securing the Mississippi River from its source to its mouth. It was on this that the success or failure of the war turned. The control of the Mississippi meant more than the sever- ance of the Confederacy into two unconnected fragments: that severance had already been partly effected by the policy of the Confederate government. The Mississippi was the great road of the West; it was the pride of the West, the symbol of greatness. If the South could hold the mighty river, the Union would be foiled everywhere: it must give up the contest. If the Union could take the river from the South, it could, sooner or later, complete the conquest of the seceded states. People sensed, if they did not put in words, the supreme importance of the Mississippi in the struggle. The weakness of the Confederacy in the West was in its 208 JEFFERSON DAVIS leadership. It was successful in the East because of two great men, Lee and Jackson. In the West, with its armies commanded by Bragg, Pemberton, Hindman, Kirby Smith, it was on the down grade. Yet it had splendid troops in the West as well as in Virginia. The victories of the Con- federates in the East and their defeats in the West have led some people to conclude that the Eastern army was better than the Western. This is not the case. If anything, the Western troops of the Confederacy were better than the Eastern. The reports tell us of the magnificent appearance of many of the Western regiments, composed almost entirely of tall and stalwart men. They were Nordics of the finest type, pioneers, soldiers, country builders. They showed their valor on many fields and if they had been led by great gen- erals they would, in all probability, have won victories that would have eclipsed the Second Manassas and Chancellors- ville. Ill led, they almost always gave the Union armies great trouble to defeat them. Sometimes, as at Chicka- mauga, they won battles in spite of the bad generalship from which they suffered continually from Shiloh to Johnston's accession to command in 1864. Leadership was imperatively demanded in the West by the beginning of May, 1863. Reen for cements from the East were also needed, if the trans-Mississippi was not to be drawn on. Johnston was a very able strategist but not a great administrator: as a departmental commander he was wasted. Nobody was in his right place in the West. John- ston should have been at the head of Pemberton's army, Pemberton in command of a division. Bragg would have been a better departmental commander than a general. Above all, a commander in chief was needed for all the armies, to bring about a coordination of effort. As it was, DILEMMA 209 the Confederacy was divided into a number of fields, all in- dependent of the others and all very imperfectly directed from Richmond. There was Lee in Virginia, wholly dis- tinct from the rest of the military forces. There were the armies of Tennessee and Mississippi, which worked together to some extent. Beauregard went his own way as com- mander at Charleston. Mobile was another center. Across the Mississippi were the forces of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, all practically independent of each other. The gov- ernment had no accurate information as to the number of troops in the field and their equipment and temper. It largely groped in the dark. This condition of affairs was not precisely the fault of Jefferson Davis. It was mainly due to the lack of a general staff or of a commander in chief given full power to order the armies as he saw fit. And largely because there was no central military authority, be- cause Jefferson Davis in Richmond could not perform the double functions of head of the nation and director of the armies, the Confederacy fell. X THE GREAT CRISIS IN the spring of 1863 the prospects of the Confederacy were still good, though not so good as in the autumn before. The country had suffered from a winter of dis- content, caused by the valuelessness of cotton that could not be exported and by the dearth of food in some places. Not that there was an actual scarcity in the country, but a sit- uation somewhat suggestive of that of Russia in 191 7. There was grain enough in Georgia and other food-raising districts to support the army and the civilian population, but there was a want of transportation and a general disinclination to sell supplies for Confederate money, now rapidly depreciat- ing. This disinclination to take Confederate currency con- tinued and had much to do with the lack of foodstuffs in the market. Besides, the government had begun to impress provisions at purely nominal prices and to lay taxes on farm products, a policy that irritated the farmers and re- stricted production. Added to this was a want of organiz- ing ability, due in part to the scarcity of real business men in the country and in part to the failure of the government to employ such as there were for economic organization. The government of Jefferson Davis was traditional and un- original: it followed the old administrative routine and ven- tured into few of the activities that modern governments enter in war time. 210 THE GREAT CRISIS 211 It is not certain that the government could have di- rected the resources of the South, even if it had tried. In 191 7-1 8, Woodrow Wilson was able to wield despotic power over the whole energies of the American nation, but the Southerners of 1863 were not the tame Americans of our day, accustomed to the exercise of authority. They were individualists who opposed extensions of governmental juris- diction even in the throes of a struggle for independence. Thus when the government attempted to make the people give up cotton and tobacco culture, in order to raise food, it met with little success. Toombs flew into a royal rage at such an invasion of his rights and continued to plant a full crop of cotton. Other planters followed his bad example. It is possible, nevertheless, that Jefferson Davis might have exerted a large influence over the economic life of the country if he had gone to the people themselves. But he was under the sway of the traditional idea of the presidency — that military direction was his overshadowing duty. He failed to understand, as was quite natural under the cir- cumstances, that the true course for a ruler to pursue in a national crisis is to make himself the national leader. The head of a nation can afford to leave details to others, for to care for details is much easier than to impart confidence to a public drooping under the trials of war. The Southern people were peculiarly susceptible to the personal touch: they could be aroused to any pitch of sacrifice, but they needed to hear a voice and to see a leader in their midst. Jefferson Davis, intensely busy with his war-office duties, showed himself to the people but little. The lower South was largely left to shift for itself, for the President seldom felt at leisure to stir from Richmond. He spent himself un- 212 JEFFERSON DAVIS grudgingly in the performance of technical duties, giving too little care altogether to the matter of inspiring the country. What the South needed, and never found, was a national leader. It needed a combination of demagogue and prac- tical executive such as perhaps Robert Toombs came nearest to being, or else a great soldier: instead, it had a dignified senator who busied himself in the details of his work and was seen little in public. There is nothing surprising, then, in the fact that Davis's popularity steadily waned through 1862 and was at a low ebb in 1863. The masses were intelli- gent enough to realize that the government had been caught unprepared in the early spring of 1862 and that the country had been rescued by the generals; what they failed to see was that Jefferson Davis's quick and resolute action on the draft and his appointment of Lee to command had made victory possible. Naturally, the feats of Lee and Jackson attracted attention while the quieter work of the President was overlooked. At the same time that Grant was preparing to lay siege to Vicksburg, the North was resuming operations in Virginia. Joseph Hooker replaced the unhappy Burnside in command of the army of the Potomac, which in April, 1863, numbered 110,000 men. It was Hooker's part to defeat Lee and cap- ture Richmond while Grant took Vicksburg. Lee had only 50,000 men with which to oppose Hooker, for Longstreet was absent with a part of his corps. Hooker aimed to hold Lee at Fredericksburg with half of his army while the other half crossed the Rappahannock River above the town and encircled the Confederates. It was the pincer strategy, made famous by the German generals in the World War. Lee, whose ability to devine an opponent's plans has THE GREAT CRISIS 213 seldom been surpassed, read Hooker's design and frustrated it. Taking the counter-offensive with great energy, he sent Jackson on a wide flanking march around the Union right wing on May 2. Jackson effected an utter surprise and rolled up the right of the Northern host with complete suc- cess, but he was mortally wounded in the hour of victory. Lee finished the work most brilliantly on the two succeeding days, and Hooker was glad to withdraw his beaten army across the Rappahannock. The Northern spring offensive thus broke down immediately and disastrously. The price of the triumph was the life of a genius. Com- parisons between such soldiers as Lee and Jackson are in- vidious, but it may safely be said that Jackson was one of the foremost strategists of modern history. Still a young man, he was improving every day and he must soon have come to the command of an army and the opportunity for the full exercise of his great talents. Jefferson Davis had never fully understood the taciturn and somewhat eccentric officer, who had once actually threat- ened to resign when overruled by the War Department. As Jackson was dying, however, the President suddenly became appreciative and sat "unable to think of anything but the im- pending calamity until twelve or one o'clock." 1 And when the thunderbolt of war lay in state in Richmond, Davis dropped a tear on his face and stood looking at him for a time, almost overcome. He was beginning to realize the greatness of his loss. Chancellor sville, though saddened by the fall of Jackson, was of great importance to the Confederates in that it gave them the initiative at the moment of supreme crisis. The war had continued for two years: it could not go on forever, 1 A Memoir, 2, 382. 214 JEFFERSON DAVIS and it was evident to thinking men that it had reached its height and that the events of the summer would probably be determinative. The Union army, defeated at Chancellor s- ville, was in no condition to assume the offensive. The tri- umphant Southern army was ready for aggressive action. This was the situation on the right of the long battle line that reached from the ocean to Indian Territory. In the center, at Chattanooga, Bragg confronted Rosecrans: the armies were evenly enough balanced to neutralize each other. In Mississippi Grant was moving against Pemberton, who covered Vicksburg with his field army. West of the river, the Unionists were making a great demonstration against Louisiana. What would the Southern generals do since Chancellorsville gave them the chance to make some bold move? At the beginning of May, Grant was closing in on Pember- ton. Davis made an effort to reenforce him, but on May 6 Pemberton telegraphed that only 5,000 troops had come from Alabama, the main point depended on. A few thousand men had been drawn from Bragg, and thus Pember ton's army had been somewhat enlarged though it was still insufficient. Seddon attempted to get further reinforcements from Beau- regard, but that general could spare no more men. On May 7, Davis telegraphed Pemberton these fateful words: "To hold both Vicksburg and Port Hudson is necessary to a con- nection with the trans-Mississippi. You may expect what- ever is in my power to do." Johnston was uneasy because Pemberton had dispersed his forces in seeking to protect the approaches to Vicksburg. On the first of May, and again two weeks later, he urged Pemberton to concentrate but failed to go to the scene of action and take the reins himself. In fact, he did not go to THE GREAT CRISIS 215 Mississippi until the first of May and then only at the ex- press order of the President, who was alarmed at the situa- tion. Davis, who was making efforts to get troops for Pem- berton from some quarter or another, advised him to call for mounted volunteers. Pemberton sadly replied that no reliance could be put on emergency soldiers. The President was indulging in hope rather than calculating very exactly the available forces at his command. Johnston was at the capital, Jackson, with a small army. Seeing that Pemberton was about to be enclosed, he ordered that general to move eastward and join him. Pemberton, who was somewhat confused by Davis's instruction to hold Vicksburg and the departmental commander's order to aban- don it, acted rather feebly. Still he advanced from the shelter of his fortifications, only to be outgeneraled and beaten by Grant at Baker's Creek and the Big Black and driven back into the city. Johnston, knowing well the issue of a siege, on May 1 7 directed Pemberton to escape from the side of Vicksburg not yet enclosed. But Pemberton was somewhat demoralized by his defeats and did not wish to leave his earthworks again. After a council of war, he decided to disobey his superior and hold the town. He telegraphed Davis that he had been beaten because he had felt obliged to obey Johnston's orders and so had advanced beyond his defenses. This was on May 19. Thus, at this moment, Davis learned that Pemberton had been defeated and shut up in Vicksburg. A situation had been created which the government had not desired but which had to be faced. Both Vicksburg and the army were certainly lost unless measures were taken for their relief. Pemberton has been generally condemned for his de- cision, but there is much to be said in defense of his action. 216 JEFFERSON DAVIS If he had evacuated Vicksburg, the city would have been lost, and the city itself, not Pemberton's small army, was Grant's objective. The last link in the connection with the trans-Mississippi would have fallen into Union hands, for Port Hudson must have been lost with Vicksburg. The Union strategy would have accomplished the great purpose at which it had aimed since the beginning of the war. With Vicksburg in his hands early in the summer, Grant might have completed the conquest of the state of Mississippi be- fore the end of the campaign or have turned against Bragg. Pemberton, by holding on to Vicksburg, committed Grant to a perilous siege and gave the Southern government the chance to capture his army. All in all, then, Pemberton's decision, though not the result of enlightened calculation, seems to have been a wise one in that it saved Mississippi from immediate conquest and put Grant in a dangerous posi- tion. Unfortunately, however, Pemberton showed little energy in his preparations for the siege, leaving the city in- sufficiently provisioned, though large stores had been ac- cumulated in the neighborhood. The army starved when it should have had a sufficiency. The Confederate government ^considered the situation created by the siege of Vicksburg. The city had success- fully stood a siege the preceding summer and was almost impregnable in the hands of a resolute soldier. Thus there would be time enough to evolve a policy for its relief. Not to relieve it meant the loss of the trans-Mississippi and the utter depression of the whole country. A mistake now would probably be decisive of the fate of the war. Davis was accustomed to rely on Seddon for advice in all the theaters of the war but Virginia, where Lee nat- urally dominated. The great general had won the right to THE GREAT CRISIS 217 follow his own judgment in all matters that concerned his army and his terrain. Lee had always considered his opera- tions as totally distinct from those in the West. He gave little thought to the war elsewhere, concentrating his energies on the direction of his own army. It had been possible for him to lose sight of the West without disaster in 1862, when the fall of Richmond impended and the West was no harder pushed than Virginia. That campaign had won compara- tive safety for the Confederacy in the East while the situa- tion in the West constantly grew in threat, but Lee still continued to think of his own problems rather than of the general military situation. It thus happened that when the victory of Chancellors ville freed Lee from all apprehension for Virginia for the immediate future and allowed him to turn his thoughts elsewhere he knew little of the needs of the West. Yet the West could no longer be ignored by the successful commander of the army of Virginia. It was the problem the Confederacy had to solve. Here, as elsewhere, Lee's one fault as a commander ap- peared. Accustomed all his life to serve a firmly established government with rooted precedents, he could not adapt him- self to the conditions of a state waging a revolutionary war for existence. He thought that he could do his duty in his own sphere and leave the government to look out for the other armies and the other fronts. He could not do this and win the war. The inexorable logic of events demanded that he become the military leader of the whole Confederacy, in fact if not in name, and bend his great powers to the task of coordinating the movements of the various armies. He might have become an invaluable adviser to Davis on the entire field of operations. If he had gone West early in 1863, when he could have left his army in safety under 218 JEFFERSON DAVIS Jackson, he would have come to understand the dangers that threatened the country as a whole and he would have altered his own military policy. If he had demanded a concentration at Vicksburg, the concentration would have occurred, for Davis would not have refused to follow his ad- vice on such a matter. Lee did not lack the mental gifts of a strategist of the very first order, but he was destined never to exert those gifts to the full. To the end he re- mained the commander of a single army instead of the generalissimo for which nature intended him. Davis, jealous as he was of tactless interference, would not have resented Lee's advice on the West. Indeed, the President at this time really yearned for an adviser. He had more confidence in Lee than in any one else and late in 1863 he appealed to him to go West and find out what ailed the cause there, but Lee would not go. He was rooted in Virginia. The President actually had no very confidential adviser at this moment, for Seddon's star was waning. Sed- don had advocated Johnston's Western appointment and had constantly supported that general, and now Jefferson Davis had once more become disgruntled with Johnston — this time, permanently. Something had to be done, and nobody saw this more clearly than Davis himself. If Lee stood on the defensive behind the Rappahannock, Vicksburg would be surely lost. Then Bragg might be overwhelmed and the whole forces of the Union would be concentrated on Lee. The war would be won in detail while the Confederates looked on. What would Lee advise and Davis do in the great emergency that confronted the country? That was the question. There were three courses promising large results. Lee might invade the North and seek to win the war at a stroke. THE GREAT CRISIS 219 Or a part of Lee's army might be sent to strengthen Bragg for an advance against Rosecrans. Lastly, Johnston's weak army might be reen forced for an attack on Grant and the relief of Vicksburg. The first plan was the easiest to execute but the most dangerous. An invasion of the North in 1863 by the small Southern army, which must advance in the teeth of the larger Northern army, was a perilous undertaking. Defeat would mean the loss of the West and possibly the speedy end of the struggle. Yet Lee hoped that the threat against Washing- ton would relieve the pressure in the West by drawing troops to the East. There was a chance that this would happen, but not a very good chance. Yet this plan was possibly better than that of sending a detachment from Lee's army to Bragg or Johnston. In Bragg's unskillful hands a larger army might have gained no advantages whatever: there might have been only another fruitless Murfreesboro. Johnston, with more troops, would still, in all probability, have lacked the audacity to attack Grant. Lee would have been reduced to impotence for nothing. The situation called for Lee himself to go West — to en- large his duties and powers beyond the command of the Vir- ginia army — and take the supreme command there. And if he had studied both the Eastern and Western fronts, he must have seen that the necessities and opportunities were far greater in the latter than in the former. Washington, in 1863, was so strongly fortified and garrisoned that to take it was a desperate adventure. Yet to win a victory without taking Washington — to win and retreat into Virginia — would hardly have ended the war. And it would be neces- sary to hazard a battle quickly in the North, because the 220 JEFFERSON DAVIS Union, if given time, could concentrate overwhelming num- bers against Lee's small army. The risks of going West were no greater than the risks of invading Pennsylvania; they were not so great. By taking a corps to other fields, Lee would expose Richmond, but the line of the Rappahannock was difficult to force and the Union army was not fit for an immediate offensive. Longstreet could probably have held the Rappahannock for a month, and in a month many things may happen. Paradoxical as it may sound under the circumstances, the opportunity for the Confederates to win a decisive victory was better in the West than in the East. Grant had given an opening by lay- ing siege to Vicksburg. He was at a great distance from his base of supplies and wholly dependent for his communica- tions on the Mississippi River. Heavy artillery might sink or stop his transports, and then he would be in a precarious position indeed. With the river closed, he must have faced the probability of surrender. If Lee had studied the war as a whole, he would have seen this opportunity not merely to win a battle but to capture an army. Grant's defeat would almost certainly have turned the tide in favor of the South. The expulsion of the Union forces from Tennessee would have followed and Kentucky, which in 1863 was overwhelm- ingly Confederate in sentiment, would have been thrown open to the Southern arms. The Northern people, already showing signs of war weariness, would probably have re- fused to support much longer a losing game. Such were the possibilities that would have attended Lee if he had struck West with one of his corps and his best artillery. Lee might first have united with Bragg, driven Rose- crans back and then cut Grant's river communications, or he might have proceeded directly to Mississippi and joined THE GREAT CRISIS 221 forces with Johnston. In either case, Grant would have been in great danger. He would have been between the garrison and the relieving army and would have been forced to fight at every disadvantage. If Grant were taken, Lee might combine all the forces within reach and advance to- ward the Ohio River at the head of 120,000 men. Such was the opportunity offered by the siege of Vicksburg. Davis and Seddon wished to reenforce Johnston in Mis- sissippi for the relief of Vicksburg. Seddon particularly ad- vocated it. For the week of May 7-13, 1863, Davis was confined to his house by one of his frequent attacks of ill- ness. In this time, Seddon, who was in charge of the war office and who sometimes acted without consulting his chief, wrote to Lee desiring him to send Pickett's division to Mississippi. Lee, ignoring Seddon, replied to Davis that to detach troops from his army meant the loss of Virginia — that it was a choice between losing Virginia and losing Mississippi. The President sent Lee's letter to Seddon with the statement that he approved of it. This was a snub for the Secretary of War, who was much concerned about the West, but Seddon had lost some of his influence with the President while Lee was all-powerful. On May 15, Davis was back in his office, and on this day a council of war was held. Lee, Davis and Seddon were closeted for a long period; for a time Generals Stuart and French were admitted to the conference. Lee's views prevailed. It was decided not to send troops to the West, but to invade Pennsylvania instead, for it was at this time that the invasion of the North was determined upon. Lee was wholly responsible for the decision. Both Davis and Seddon had preferred the relief of Vicksburg, but Lee 222 JEFFERSON DAVIS now won them over to his plan. He had a natural re- luctance to seeing the fine army he had built up dismem- bered and a part transferred to other generals in other fields. In this he was right: he was far abler than any other Southern general to conduct aggressive operations. Only he was wrong in selecting the invasion of Pennsylvania instead of going to the rescue of the collapsing defensive system in the West. Very wrong. The invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863 was so risky a movement that it should never have been tried. Lee's means were too slender for such an effort. The year 1861 had been the time for the Southern offense; now the South did not have the strength for it. Its defensive line was break- ing down; whole states were slipping from its grasp as well as the Mississippi River; and therefore it had no title to such a luxury as the offensive. The movement into the North was unsound strategy; and, curiously enough, on the very day on which it was decided on, May 15, Beauregard wrote condemning it. Longstreet did not like it and made many objections. Lee's reasons for the invasion, as given, are unconvincing. He declared that he wished to relieve Virginia for a time from the burden of the war and find food for his hungry troops in the fertile fields of the North. Besides, a threat against Washington might draw Grant from Vicksburg. Beyond this, Lee seems to have had no definite strategic objective: if he had, it is not on record. Perhaps he thought that another victory, won on Northern soil, would bring about the desired European intervention and the end of the conflict. Such a result might have followed, but it is by no means certain that it would, and a fruitless victory in Pennsylvania would have been more than counterbalanced THE GREAT CRISIS 223 by the fall of Vicksburg. All in all, it would seem that the invasion of Pennsylvania offered few advantages to compensate for the terrible risks it entailed. As a matter of fact, Lee's predilection for the East led him into a serious miscalculation. The case was not, as he put it, one of losing either Virginia or Mississippi: later in the same year, when his army was smaller, Lee sent a part of it West without losing Richmond. What was done in September, 1863, could have been better done in May. The real issue was whether the Confederates would co- operate, East and West, and possibly win, or continue to maintain two separate wars and lose. Lee's plan con- tinued the old system of isolated operations. He had not schooled himself to see the war as a whole but only his own theater of action. Jefferson Davis appears to have consented to the invasion of Pennsylvania with some reluctance. Conversant as he was with conditions on all the fronts, he could not fail to see that the siege of Vicksburg threatened the existence of the Confederacy and might be the determining event of the war. It is certain that he would not have given his con- sent to Lee's plan if the general had not urged it warmly. This seems to have been the one occasion of the war when Lee asserted himself strongly, and it was the one occasion v/hen he happened to be wrong. Davis must have been deeply impressed by Lee's confidence in his ability to win a victory north of the Potomac or he would never have left Vicksburg to its fate. He has been blamed for preferring his own judgment to that of his generals, but in this case when he went against his judgment he made the mistake that decided the outcome of the war. Yet he cannot well be censured for letting Lee's wishes be decisive, because Lee 224 JEFFERSON DAVIS had proved his right to decide the action of his army by winning great battles. In giving way to Lee, the President displayed a patriotism so lofty that it deserves a word of comment. Not only did just strategic considerations urge the relief of Vicksburg rather than the risky Northern offensive, but the claims of sentiment and self-interest as well. In sending Lee to Pennsylvania, Davis turned his back on his own state and .his -own estates. He abandoned his people and his property for the chance of winning a decisive victory elsewhere. The decision was made on May 15. But on May 19, Davis learned that Pemberton had been beaten and shut up in Vicksburg, and in the next few days the dispatches con- firmed the report. He also learned of Pemberton's de- cision to remain in Vicksburg rather than try to retreat. The situation was so serious that Davis determined to bring it before the cabinet for final consideration. The military problem was debated for the whole length of a day, May 26, 1863. All the members of the cabinet seem to have been present, though Lee was not at the council. There were the President, grave and thoughtful, taking little part in the debate; Benjamin, quick, dapper, debonair; Memminger, small, restless, antique looking; Seddon, death- like, calm, convincing; Mallory, heavy and silent; Reagan, tall and bearded, almost dominating the meeting with the fullness and intensity with which he spoke. The cabinet, in general, seems to have felt that the mili- tary directors had already decided on the course of action and that there was no use to advocate a change. One man, however, the Postmaster-General, was unalterably opposed to the invasion of Pennsylvania. He was deeply moved, THE GREAT CRISIS 225 for he was from Texas and he felt that the Eastern offensive was tantamount to an abandonment of the West. He urged, instead, that Lee should feint against the North and then send a part of his army to Mississippi. His eloquent plea for the West fell on dull ears: it was decided to send Lee across the Potomac and to obtain reen for cements for John- ston from the Gulf states, where there were few troops enough already. In truth, the cabinet left Pemberton to his fate and staked everything on the invasion of the North. 1 In such manner did Jefferson Davis turn from the defensive to the offensive, definitely abandoning the strategic concep- tion with which he had begun the war. Reagan could not sleep that night, he tells us, he was so oppressed by the fatality of the decision. Early next morn- ing, which was Sunday, he ventured to disturb the Presi- dent by requesting him to call another cabinet meeting to reconsider the question. Davis good-naturedly consented, but before the meeting was held Reagan learned that the cabinet was irrevocably committed to the invasion plan and he abandoned his opposition in despair. Some time later Seddon wrote Lee that he fully approved of his offensive in the North, that it was high time to give up the defensive. From this it would appear that Jefferson Davis was solely responsible for the cabinet council and that he convened it because he was far from satisfied that Lee's movement was the best policy. The overwhelming support given Lee by the cabinet must have reassured him or perhaps led him to feel that he shared the responsibility for the de- cision with others. He was soon to learn, however, that success was credited to others and failure blamed on him- 1 Reagan, 152. The agreement of Reagan and Jones fixes May 26 as the date of the cabinet meeting. 226 JEFFERSON DAVIS self. The country at large never even knew that the cabinet had passed on the invasion of Pennsylvania. Davis seems to have had misgivings to the last; indeed, he was so torn with anxiety that he was ill for the next few weeks and in bed at the time of the battle of Gettysburg. He vainly sought to reassure himself about Vicksburg, greedily seizing on Pemberton's dispatches announcing the defeat of Grant's assaults on the city. He is said to have written Lee a letter cautioning him not to go too far afield. Lee, for his part, had serious reason to complain of the gov- ernment. He had stipulated as a part of his plan that a skeleton force should be stationed in northern Virginia under Beauregard to feint against Washington from the south while he himself went on into Pennsylvania. In this way he hoped to prevent the concentration of the Union forces against himself. Davis agreed but finally wrote Lee that an army could not be raised for the purpose. As Lee had asked for a demonstration, not a serious movement, it would appear that he was ill-served in this rather im- portant particular. The Unionists were relieved of fear for Washington from the South and were enabled to turn their full force on Lee. Lee moved into Pennsylvania, with Hooker following. At this moment, the last of June, the Union general was super- seded by George Gordon Meade, who assumed the com- mand under all the disadvantages inseparable from such hasty changes. The hostile armies came into collision at Gettysburg in the afternoon of July i, 1863. The meet- ing was somewhat accidental, but Lee had his troops well in hand and knew that a conflict was imminent. It is prob- able that he wished to fight while Meade was still new in the saddle. THE GREAT CRISIS 227 The engagement began with an attack of two of Lee's three corps commanders, A. P. Hill and R. E. Ewell, on a Union force at Gettysburg. The Northerners, overwhelmed by numbers, resisted with desperate valor and merely re- tired to a ridge of steep hills south of the town, where they took position. If the Confederates had followed up their advantage without delay, they might possibly have stormed the heights and won the battle then and there. Rut they had suffered heavy losses and they halted, uncer- tain what to do. Lee, coming on the field about this time, at once realized that fate had put in his way a great opportunity. His force of 65,000 men was on the field or in the vicinity, while only about half of Meade's army of 100,000 was at hand. Meade was caught concentrating but not concentrated, with his hurrying regiments stretched out many miles to the rear. It was Lee's one chance to fight with the advantage of num- bers on his side. Instant action was necessary, however, for in a few hours the whole Union army would be present. The Southern general held a brief council of war with Hill, Ewell and Early, looking over at the purple heights where lay the Union army as they darkened in the sum- mer twilight and directing his subordinates to assault them at dawn. The latter had no stomach for a venture so des- perate and succeeded in persuading Lee to pass on the task to Longstreet, who was absent. They reported that the ground on their right was more favorable to attack than that in front of their two corps. Lee, therefore, decided to have Longstreet make the assault. He is not to blame for this change of plan. A commander is forced to rely on the reports of his subordinates, for in the hour of battle decisions must be made quickly and there is little 228 JEFFERSON DAVIS time to verify information.. Possibly, too, Lee was influenced by the fact that Longstreet was his most experienced corps commander. Longstreet, when given his orders, demurred — almost re- monstrated. He, likewise, flinched from an attack that must be bloody and might be fatal. He advised a move- ment to the rear of the Union army, but Lee impatiently refused, since he desired to fight before the Union army was fully concentrated. He repeated his directions for an attack in the early morning. It was a situation in which everything depended on prompt action. Longstreet most probably would have carried the heights, steep as they were, if he had advanced at dawn, for at that time the position was thinly held. But he dallied through the day, insisting that he could not move until one of his divisions arrived, and did not launch his troops against the Union lines until late in the afternoon. By that time the whole Northern army had come up. Numbers, as well as position, were now against the Confederates. Here, it would appear, Lee made his mistake. He should have spurred Longstreet to prompter action, or, failing in that, have abandoned the attack. A general, however, is forced to take great chances if he would achieve large re- sults. Indeed, the art of war is the game of taking chances — of making a swift guess and then acting on the guess. The end of military education is to enable a commander, in the distraction of battle, to guess correctly from the faulty and misleading information at his disposal, to approximate the truth. Lee had been right in his decision to attack at dawn: he probably calculated that even in the afternoon the Union army was not fully concentrated, and so he let the assault proceed. He had taken desperate chances from THE GREAT CRISIS 229 the moment of assuming command of the army and had es- caped disaster: he now took one more chance. This time he lost. Longstreet's effort was very powerful when, finally, he made it. He handled his men admirably in action, and they were superb veterans, the best soldiers then in the world. They stormed the wooded mountainside, in spite of ob- stacles and of the artillery and musketry fire, and almost carried the crest and won the battle. But exhausted by their exertions and retarded by the valiant Union defense, they were held at the very crest and could go no farther. Darkness then came on. The battle had not been won, but still Lee did not think that it was lost. To withdraw now would be to acknowledge defeat at a moment when victory was no longer a luxury but a necessity. The West had been sacrificed to gain this opportunity. Lee, consequently, determined to take yet another chance. He entrusted Longstreet with a sec- ond attack, to be made the following day — this time on the Union center. Longstreet, now almost at the point of mutiny, misman- aged the enterprise badly. After a furious cannonade the line advanced, but only a small force, Pickett's division from eastern Virginia, with some North Carolina regiments, persisted in the charge. The Southerners, ad- vancing with iron discipline through an unspeakable hell of shrapnel and rifle fire, carried the Union trenches with the bayonet and planted their red flags. For a moment they seemed to have won the battle. The next instant they were engulfed by masses of Union infantry and killed or captured. Lee was now obliged to retreat into Virginia, which he did in safety. The Union army was too shattered to make 230 JEFFERSON DAVIS a vigorous pursuit. When the news of the battle crossed the sea, Europe began to believe in the power of the North to conquer the South. Hope of intervention faded from South- ern minds. Lee's admirers have been hard put to defend Gettysburg. Yet he is not censurable for fighting there, where he had an opportunity to win a victory, but for the invasion of Pennsylvania itself. He is to blame for preferring what was at best a dubious chance to gain a battle to the relief of Vicksburg, a matter of the most extreme importance. He came nearer than might have been expected to suc- cess. He failed at Gettysburg simply because he did not have a subordinate capable unhesitatingly of taking the terrible risks through the taking of which victory was alone possible. The assault on the Union position, an adventure attuned to the brain and nerve of Jackson, was too much for the other generals. Lee, used to Jackson, overrated them: that was his error. Vicksburg fell while Gettysburg was being fought. Even if Lee had won the battle the river fortress would have fallen, a commentary on his calculation that the invasion of Pennsylvania might draw Grant from the siege. The Confederacy had changed its strategic methods without profit. It had remained on the defensive when the offensive promised much: it had taken the offensive when its de- fensive line was crumbling. And now it faced final defeat. Pemberton had waited in patient trust while the gov- ernment decided on the Pennsylvania enterprise instead of relieving him. On May 2 1 , Davis sent this characteristically vague dispatch: "I made every effort to reenforce you promptly, which I am grieved was not successful. Hope that General Johnston will join you with force enough to THE GREAT CRISIS 231 break up the investment and defeat the enemy. Sympathiz- ing with you for the reverses sustained, I pray God will give success to you and the brave troops under your com- mand." Davis was praying instead of calculating, a habit of his. Pemberton understood that he was lost unless Johnston could do something for him. Davis had an idea that Johnston had enough troops to break the investment, if he would only use them. Some- how he had a tendency to evade arithmetic: his imagina- tion did not like the cold logic of figures. Johnston nerved himself to make an effort, informing Pemberton by the intrepid messengers who still made their way through the Union lines that he would proceed against Grant. He had no idea of winning a victory with his small force, but he thought he might be able to create such a diversion that Pemberton could slip through the investing lines. Grant's skill and energy frustrated the plan. The Union army was so fortified against attacks on its rear that Johnston would not advance. So the days went by; June wasted while the besieged army still repulsed assaults and looked for succor and Lee was starting on his fateful march into Pennsylvania. On May 26, Davis had sent Lee the following dispatch: "Our intel- ligence from Mississippi is, on the whole, encouraging. Pemberton is stoutly defending the intrenchments at Vicks- burg, and Johnston has an army outside, which I suppose will be able to raise the siege, and combined with Pember- ton's forces may win a victory." * Doubtless this was the argument used in the cabinet meeting that very day, on which it was finally decided to send Lee across the Potomac. It shows Davis's obvious misgivings, but it also shows that 1 0. R., Series I, 51, Part III, Supplement, 717. 232 JEFFERSON DAVIS he did not fully realize that Pemberton was lost unless help came from the East. This is what he should have understood. There was only one way to get sufficient troops to break Grant's investment and enable Pemberton to escape — by bringing Bragg's forces to Mississippi. The generals west of the river would not help: perhaps they could not help, for their troops were bitterly opposed to serving on the east side of the Mississippi. Nothing was to be hoped for from the East or the far South. Johnston now knew, beyond question, that he could order his forces as he saw fit, for Davis had taken the pains on June 10 to inform him of his powers. Still the departmental commander did not want to use his powers. He did not wish to take the responsibility of ordering Bragg's army to Mississippi, which meant the abandonment of Tennessee. Neither did the President de- sire to give the order for the relinquishment of a state. Con- centration was always hateful to him, for concentration meant inevitable sacrifice. In a letter to Kirby Smith he once said, "The general truth that power is increased by the concentration of an army is, under our peculiar cir- cumstances, subject to modification. The evacuation of any portion of territory involves not only the loss of supplies, but in every instance has been attended by a greater or less loss of troops." Yet the only effective way to save Pemberton was by the use of Bragg's army. The situation admirably illustrates the strategic unsoundness of the in- vasion of Pennsylvania. In the absence of aid from Lee, the rescue of Pemberton was premised on the abandonment of Tennessee and the exposure of Alabama. Johnston would not order Bragg to Mississippi; Davis would not. Between them the catastrophe occurred, just THE GREAT CRISIS 233 as a baseball drops to the ground between two hesitating fielders. Seddon attempted to spur Kirby Smith, in the trans-Mississippi, to action, but Smith did nothing but ex- plain why it was impossible for him to do anything. Late in June, Johnston, driven by the dire necessity of the case, took the extraordinary step of appealing to Joseph Davis, the President's brother, to use his influence to induce the government to order Bragg to Vicksburg. He confessed that he was unwilling himself to issue orders that meant the giving up of entire states. 1 It was a question of losing Tennessee or the whole Mississippi Valley, and the head of the nation should decide it, not a general. No response came to this appeal. Johnston then turned despairingly to Kirby Smith, who advanced toward Vicksburg and then allowed himself to be halted. There was no other resource. Pemberton sur- rendered on July 4, though he might have held out some time longer. Thus the Confederacy, by a dramatic coinci- dence, met overpowering disaster in both East and West on the very same day. Of the two events, Gettysburg was the less important. Vicksburg was a far greater victory. Gettysburg, however, was such a marvelous drama of blood that it overshadowed the less picturesque but more solid accomplishment on the Mississippi. Yet Grant's triumph taught the world that the Union had finished a mighty task and that the reduction of the South was to be expected. Davis, Johnston, Lee — all are responsible for the loss of the river fortress. Lee preferred to risk a campaign in the North to the rescue of Vicksburg. Davis is somewhat to blame for giving up the defensive policy at the most in- auspicious moment, when the country was threatened as 1 0. R., Series I, ji, Part III, 969. 234* JEFFERSON DAVIS never before. A distant counter-offensive is never the way to relieve such a situation as the siege of Vicksburg: Grant did not detach a man from his army on account of the threat against Washington. Neither Davis nor Johnston could make the decision to abandon Tennessee and con- centrate all the Confederate forces in order to save Pember- ton. For lack of a sound strategic plan Grant had triumphed. Gettysburg has been much overrated in the character of a decisive battle. It was, in reality, very indecisive. Even if Lee had won, it would probably not have been decisive. The Union army, driven from its heights, would have fallen back toward Washington and would have been very heavily reenforced. Lee's great losses would have, in all likelihood, forced him to fight another desperate battle in a disadvan- tageous position or to make a retreat. The battle was not felt to be a decisive defeat by the Southern people; indeed, it did not much affect the imagination of the South at the time. The army thought that it had merely failed to ac- complish the impossible. Its morale was but little lowered. The fall of Vicksburg was much more severely felt, for the whole lower South knew what the loss of the Mississippi meant. The cotton states began to despair while the army of Virginia was nearly as confident as ever. If the man power of the South had been sufficient to replace the losses of the summer, Gettysburg would not have been con- sidered much more decisive than Fredericksburg, a battle it rather resembled. On the other hand, the capture of Vicksburg was the greatest success won on either side in the whole war. An army of 30,000 men; a strong fortress, the check to the Union navigation of the Mississippi; and the severance of THE GREAT CRISIS 235 the Confederacy — such were the fruits of Grant's memorable victory, won by audacity and resolution. The whole lower South was now at the mercy of a vigorous offensive. Vicks- burg was the turning point of the struggle. The double catastrophe of July, 1863, came as a bitter blow to Davis. For days he hardly ventured out of the house, so prostrated was he by the overthrow of his high hopes. Seddon was likewise ill from anxiety and chagrin. Both President and Secretary of War had relied on Lee, and Lee had failed them. Mississippi was lost and yet Virginia was not saved. Late in July, Davis, who took care to give no open ex- pression to his disappointment, wrote Lee, "In various quarters there are mutter ings of discontent, and threats of alienation are said to exist, with preparation for organized opposition. There are others, who, faithful but dissatisfied, find an appropriate remedy in the removal of officers who have not succeeded." (Italics ours.) This was not a hint for Lee's resignation but, in reality, a pledge of support. But the general, who had been deeply hurt by his failure, replied, "The general remedy for the want of success in a military commander is his removal. ... I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for the army." Another letter of the same tenor came later. Davis responded with such a generous and touching ex- pression of confidence and friendship that Lee was com- pletely reassured and the always pleasant relations of the two men were strengthened. In one respect Jefferson Davis was noble: he never blamed a general for disaster if he felt that the general had done all in his power to command sue- 236 JEFFERSON DAVIS cess. In fact, want of success sometimes did not move him when it should, when the failure was the general's. fault. Still it is a rather rare trait in rulers — since rulers bear the burden of failure — to sympathize with subordinates who fail. Inevitably, much of the blame for the fall of the Con- federacy rests on Jefferson Davis. Yet it cannot be said to have fallen because of his positive mistakes. In the crucial year of 1863, when the outcome of the war was determined, he was not directing military operations but was mainly engaged in giving support to the two leading generals of the country, who occupied the two most important posts with a wide discretion. They were not hampered by instruc- tions. The government made strenuous efforts to supply Lee's and Johnston's wants. It drafted energetically; man- ufactured munitions busily; seized food ruthlessly. It armed the Western forces with better rifles than were carried by the Union troops. If the incompetent Bragg and Pemberton remained at the head of armies, this was less Davis's fault than Johnston's, for Johnston would not supersede them or recommend successors. Davis has been especially cen- sured for keeping Pemberton in command at Vicksburg; but Pemberton, though he might have saved his army, could not have prevented the loss of Vicksburg and the Mississippi River. The Mississippi could have been saved only by a different strategic policy, and the determination of the strategic policy did not rest with Pemberton. Vicksburg and the trans-Mississippi were really lost on May 26, 1863, when the cabinet decided on the Eastern offensive instead of the Western defensive. That was the fatal move in the game. Bitterness and recrimination were the order of the day in the Confederate camp as the summer waned. Beauregard THE GREAT CRISIS 237 had favored the strengthening of Bragg's army instead of the movement into Pennsylvania; and, on July 21, with Vicksburg fresh in mind, Bragg wrote him that his views were identical. " Failing to impress the idea on others who control, I was put strictly on the defensive, and have strug- gled with insufficient force until at length depleted so far that safety compelled me to fall back." This might seem a reflection on the government, but it was in reality a hit at Johnston. Bragg complained that Johnston was falling back in Mississippi, yielding ground that could not be re- gained. If the army of Tennessee had been ordered to Mississippi, a victory might have been won. About the same time Polk suggested to Davis that Johnston's army be united with Bragg's and the whole force turned on Rosecrans. This was now the only plan worth trying, and before long Polk's suggestion was adopted. Bragg's change of attitude toward Johnston was im- portant. Bragg was close to Davis, and Davis felt that Johnston was largely responsible for Pemberton's capture: he thought that Johnston should have ordered Bragg to Mississippi, just as Johnston thought that the President should have ordered it. In February, 1863, Bragg had lauded Johnston, for the departmental commander had saved him from dismissal. But Bragg was not of a grate- ful disposition and he had come to dislike Johnston and to disbelieve in him. He was soon to become Johnston's bitter personal enemy. Thus to the other misfortunes that weighted the Confederacy in the latter part of the dis- astrous year, 1863, was added a feud between the two prin- cipal commanders in the West. It was not likely, then, that the close of 1863 and 1864 would prove a more prosperous season. XI DOWNHILL THE military situation had now changed definitely for the worse. And with military disaster inevitably came other troubles. The politicians had long since been estranged from Davis and were in opposition or retirement. Toombs himself, leaving the army because unpromoted, entered the Senate. Yancey had passed away soon after Gettysburg. The firebrand of secession died of despondency, for he had lost all hope of the cause. Stephens was busy at work fos- tering dissatisfaction with the government. Congress still bent to the President's will in the belief that dissension was suicidal. The fast-growing opposition to Davis, however, found its opportunity in the state govern- ments. It was one of his weaknesses that he was seldom very close to men, and he had completely fallen out of touch with the various governors, who were important per- sonages. As long as things went well, state opposition to the national government was weak, but with the coming of disaster the states began to show an ominous tendency to act independently. They began to resent the bur- dens put on them, especially the never-ceasing drain of the conscription. Serious disaffection showed itself in North Carolina as early as the end of 1862. The able governor, Zebulon Vance, who had sent many thousands of men to the Con- 238 DOWNHILL 239 federate armies, now proposed to organize a state army for the sole purpose of protecting the community. 1 He further disobeyed the order of the government to burn cot- ton left in the vicinity of the enemy's forces and generally assumed an insubordinate attitude. He made himself a nuisance by forever demanding troops to guard points in North Carolina, regardless of the general military situa- tion. Something like a cleavage appeared in the state be- tween those who were thoroughly loyal to the Confederacy and those who were clamoring for peace at any price. At Raleigh, in September, 1863, a mob sacked the office of the Standard, accused of being a Unionist newspaper, where- upon another mob retaliated by attacking the ardently se- cessionist Journal. 2 This latter incident was indeed an evil omen. Disaffection was only one of many difficulties. Already in 1863 the financial situation was appalling. By the spring of that year paper money had sunk to ten to one for gold, and new issues, forced out by the expenses of the war, continued to depress it. Some cotton was sent out of the blockaded ports and goods still came in from Europe, but not enough for the most pressing needs. Fabrics were hardly obtainable, and luxuries were enormously expensive. An enterprising blockade-runner brought in a cargo of cor- sets and sold it almost overnight to eager women. The pressing need was food. In this land of plenty starva- tion had begun to stalk. The army already in 1863 was living on half rations, while there was also great want among the civilian population of Richmond and other places. The old trouble, lack of organization and transportation, was at 1 Jones, 1, 198. 3 Ibid., 2, 45. 240 JEFFERSON DAVIS bottom to blame. Though Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania was largely prompted by the hope of finding food and though stark hunger was everywhere in the theater of war, in the lower South, particularly Georgia, there was no lack of foodstuffs. But transportation was fatally defective and the people did not willingly surrender grain and meat to requisitioning commissaries and tax gatherers. Nor did they care to sell provisions for money that was steadily declining in value. At the first of April, 1863, a food riot broke out in Rich- mond, which the government had great difficulty in pro- visioning. A crowd of a thousand or so women marched on the food shops, looted them and then took to general pillaging. Troops were called out, and the mayor threatened to fire on the rioters. At this juncture Jefferson Davis ap- peared on the scene, drawn from his seclusion by the ex- citement of the moment. Mounting a dray, he appealed to the women to disperse. He pointed out that the seizure of food without payment would inevitably bring famine on the city. "You say you are hungry and have no money,' ' he went on. "Here is all I have; it is not much, but take it." He threw his money in the crowd. "We do not desire to injure any one, but this lawlessness must stop. I will give you five minutes to disperse; otherwise you will be fired on." 1 His few words had their effect, and the rather feeble riot came to an end. Yet the incident was ominous, for it revealed the extent of the suffering among the poor and the refugees. It was a symptom of the dissatisfaction that was now as widespread as the boundaries of the Confederacy. As the year 1863 wore on, the opposition to the national 1 A Memoir, 2, 375. DOWNHILL 241 government steadily grew and it continued until the end of the war. The North Carolina supreme court defied the Confederate act suspending the writ of habeas corpus, grant- ing writs as it saw fit. 1 The courts of Georgia and of other states acted in the same way. The governor of Mississippi protested against the impressment of slaves, though they were impressed to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Governor Smith of Virginia, like Vance of North Carolina, granted many exemptions from military service. Governor Allen of Louisiana made trouble because Davis ordered the disbandment of the state battalion of home troops. Governor Brown of Georgia lay awake o' nights thinking up projects for the embarrassment of the Presi- dent. Everywhere there was a want of cooperation on the part of the state authorities with the national government. Localism was rending the country. In the cases of Governor Vance of North Carolina and Governor Brown of Georgia, the resistance to the Con- federate authorities was outspoken. It must be said, in justice, that Jefferson Davis was in the right in these un- fortunate controversies. Brown was forever denying the demands of the government. At the last of 1863, Vance urged Davis to open peace negotiations. Davis replied, with entire truth, that he could not treat for peace with Washington on any other basis than surrender, that Wash- ington would listen to nothing else. Later Vance requested that the habeas corpus be not suspended, at the same time alleging that the government was unfair to former anti- secessionists. The charge was false, and Davis made a crushing retort in which he put the North Carolina gov- ernor entirely in the wrong. Though the victory was his, 1 J. E. Schwab, The Confederate States of America, 190. 242 JEFFERSON DAVIS the only thing the President accomplished in this acri- monious controversy was to strengthen the unreasonable Vance in his prejudice against the government. Jefferson Davis was wholly unable to win over an adversary: he knew nothing of the art of conciliation. The states' rights opposition to the Confederate govern- ment inevitably raised against Davis the charge of uncon- stitutionality, which was continually urged from 1862 until the end of the war. According to his opponents, the Presi- dent was an habitual violator of the constitution, hardened in trampling on the states. It was quite natural for con- temporaries to make this charge, for states' rights were the ostensible justification for secession, the pet phrase in every mouth. The strange thing is that the reproach has modern echoers. Writers to-day sometimes criticize Jefferson Davis for the centralizing tendencies of his administration. What would they have, these critics of a man who sought to save his country in the only possible way? Do they imagine that a government can pause in the midst of a struggle for existence to make sure that none of its laws infringe strict construction interpretations of the constitu- tion? The charge is unjust. The fact is that Jefferson Davis was as true to strict construction and states' rights as it was possible for a man in his position to be. But it was not possible for him to regard the South as a con- federacy of sovereign states. The South was a nation fight- ing for independence, and the leading lower South politicians, with the exception of Stephens, looked on it as a nation rather than as a league. The politicians of the border states were the great sticklers for strict construction, for they were real doctrinaires. Jefferson Davis himself might have remained a doctrinaire if he had been out of office, but DOWNHILL 243 practical considerations he could not ignore made him a nationalist. The reasons for the attack on Davis were not theoretical, not political. They were practical. By 1862, the war was crushing the states and they wished relief. They wished to carry on the war as the Revolutionary War had been conducted — to have the national government assign quotas of troops and supplies to the various commonwealths, leav- ing fulfillment entirely with the latter. If the Confederate government had done so, its existence would have termi- nated by the autumn of 1862, for the states would not have acted with the necessary energy. Only by national action was it possible to secure the thousands of recruits needed and needed at once. Consequently, Davis wisely forced the draft on a reluctant Congress. The draft was at once denounced as unconstitutional, as were other measures — the Impressment Act, the Tax in Kind of 1863 and the sus- pension of the habeas corpus. The first of these laws authorized commissaries to seize provisions wherever they might be found on the payment of a nominal price. The Tax in Kind was a tithe on farm products and was probably necessary in view of the fact that the troops were starving. The suspension of the habeas corpus, always for a limited period, enabled the government to defeat the efforts of the state courts to thwart con- scription. Drastic as were these acts, they were seemingly unavoidable: war cannot be made without soldiers and food. Jefferson Davis, however, might have anticipated criticism of nationalist measures in a country of doctrinaires, for the South suffered from constitutional hypochondria. Davis himself had once been much of a doctrinaire. In only one way could opposition have been softened, and that was by 244 JEFFERSON DAVIS personal influence. Anything can be obtained from the Southern people by personal influence, and the South would have troubled little over the "autocracy" of Jefferson Davis if he had been genuinely popular, if he had known how to woo the populace. He did not woo the people ; probably he could not. Tight in his shell, he issued orders to Congress instead of be- guiling it with the hospitality he could dispense on occa- sions, and he made no effort to justify his acts to the country. It was his aloofness, more than his centralizing methods, that alienated the South. He came to be looked on and disliked as a haughty dictator when he was, in reality, only a shy, sensitive egoist. It was this shyness, this scholar's instinctive love of seclusion, that kept him day after day poring over the papers in his office instead of going out and grappling the people to him. This was his true failure: he could not fire the imagination of the masses, make himself a real national leader. He was the monk in a cell rather than the preacher of a crusade. The political situation began to be alarming in the late summer of 1863, after Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The people were greatly depressed by failure in both the Eastern and Western fields after the promise of the spring. Davis, reading the omens aright, saw that something must be done to remedy the situation. Something had to be gained to compensate for the losses of the summer. Lee wished to attack Meade, but he had had his chance ; under the cir- cumstances another invasion of the North was unthinkable and little would be gained by merely driving Meade back on Washington. The South needed a more fruitful victory. Looking over the ground, Davis and Seddon decided to try the other front. They decided to concentrate against DOWNHILL 245 Rosecrans and attempt to drive him out of Tennessee. The redemption of that state would go far toward neutraliz- ing the effect of the fall of Vicksburg; it would reanimate the South. Unfortunately, the President and Secretary of War did not give serious consideration to the question of the capacity of the commander of the army of Tennessee to carry out an offensive campaign. Yet they must have had a certain distrust of Bragg, for they resolved to send Long- street to him with a part of his corps. Longstreet advised this move, and he was the leading officer in the East after Lee. Gettysburg had not much hurt his reputation. Davis and Seddon calculated that Longstreet would strengthen Bragg sufficiently to enable him to win a victory, and in this estimate they were right. They did not foresee that Bragg would throw away the victory when won. They also thought that Lee could hold Meade in check without Longstreet. Again they were right: a daring and important strategic movement was carried out without disaster to the East. Thus late in the war, and on a limited scale, the Confederates devised and attempted the proper strategy. If essayed earlier, with attention to transportation, it might have proved decisive. The West was in urgent need of help. Unless the war was to be fought on the theory that Virginia was the only theater of importance, something had to be done to rescue the trans- Alleghany section. The Confederate cause in the West had resembled a burst bladder since the fall of Vicks- burg. The trans-Mississippi, now cut off, lapsed into a sep- arate existence, while to the east of the great river Tennessee was lost, Mississippi was half lost and Alabama and Georgia were in danger. Halleck and Grant had accomplished great things. 246 JEFFERSON DAVIS Bragg, at Chattanooga, had been neutralized for months by a somewhat larger army under Rosecrans. In August, 1863, Adjutant-General Cooper at Richmond suggested to Bragg that he advance. Bragg took this as a hint from the President, who had sent him troops from Mississippi and was preparing to send him forces from Virginia. Hes- itating for some weeks longer, he finally decided to take the offensive just before Longstreet arrived to his aid. He lost many excellent opportunities to strike Rosecrans in de- tail and eventually attacked the Union army when it was fully concentrated in a strong position. Longstreet had but arrived with a part of his corps. The newcomer from the East, accustomed to criticize even Lee, was dumbfounded by Bragg's methods. He thus characterized them: "To wait till all good opportunities had passed, and then, in des- peration, to seize upon the least favorable one." 1 This is a harsh but not untruthful criticism of Bragg's strategy: he seldom fought a battle except under every possible dis- advantage, as if wishful to see what prodigies of valor his men might accomplish. In the West, the generalship was on the Union side, and that is mainly why the Union won. The control of Bragg's army at Chickamauga was actually in Longstreet's hands, since Bragg was in the rear, and Longstreet was a tactician of great ability. For once the Southern troops in the West were skillfully directed. The result was impressive — a sufficient answer to those who suppose that the Western troops of the Confederacy were not as good as the Eastern. The Confederates simply drove the Unionists before them with irresistible fury, all but a fragment under Thomas, which held out behind heavy en- a O. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 560. DOWNHILL 247 trenchments until night. Then, Thomas, too, retreated into Chattanooga. Chickamauga was the most remarkable victory gained in the whole war. It was won by an ill-jointed force, which had been so mishandled as to lose all confidence in its com- mander, over a well-disciplined and better-equipped Union army holding a fortified position and led by a good sol- dier. It was a triumph due to the desperation of valor and to Longstreet's admirable tactics. Bragg, however, whose nerves had completely broken down under the strain, did nothing to follow up the vic- tory, though Rosecrans was shut up in Chattanooga with- out provisions and in great peril. Longstreet now made no secret of his contempt for Bragg, who let day after day go by without acting. Bragg was at open feud with his gen- erals. He resorted to his old habit, accusing his subordi- nates of misconduct in the battle. He declared that if his orders had been obeyed Rosecrans would have been de- stroyed. This tendency of Bragg's illustrates his funda- mental weakness as a soldier. He seems to have thought that a battle can be arranged with the precision of a peace maneuver. Before an engagement he gave his orders to the corps commanders and then did nothing more until it was over. He made no effort to see that his orders were car- ried out. Instead, he was always far from the firing line, not from fear but from nervous collapse due to responsibility. When things went wrong, and things invariably went wrong, he relieved his feelings by denouncing his generals. After Chickamauga, Bragg suspended Polk, whom he particularly disliked, and D. H. Hill from their commands. He proposed to place Polk under arrest and try him by court martial. Davis, however, at once quashed this, for 248 JEFFERSON DAVIS Polk was a popular officer much respected throughout the West. The President was depressed by the situation in Bragg's army, at the friction between the commander and his subordinates and his widespread and growing unpopu- larity. "The opposition to you, both in the army and out of it, has been a public calamity," Davis wrote him, "in so far that it impairs your capacity for usefulness. I had hoped that the great victory which you have recently achieved would tend to harmonize the army and bring to you a more just appreciation of the country." x Nothing was done with Polk, but D. H. Hill received stern treatment. This able division general who had served under Lee was demoted and sent East. Apparently he had taken the lead in a plot of Bragg's generals to get rid of the commander. Rendered desperate by his incapacity, they had made what was, in reality, a patriotic effort to save the army. They knew that Bragg was Davis's favorite and that they had everything to lose by incurring his enmity. Long- street had lent them aid and encouragement, but Bragg seems to have been afraid to strike at the famous corps general. The latter wrote to Seddon after Chickamauga, "I am convinced that nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander. ... It seems that he cannot adopt or adhere to any plan or course, whether of his own or some one else." 2 Indeed, Longstreet's derision of his superior made it difficult for the two men to act together in the same army. Davis felt that the situation was so serious as to require his personal interposition. Consequently, he went West for the second time, reaching Bragg's camp at Missionary Ridge i O. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 535. 9 0. R., Series I, 30, Part IV, 706. DOWNHILL 249 on October 9. He remained there for four days. Pember- ton accompanied him, hoping to find a command, but gave up the idea when he learned of the hatred with which the soldiers regarded him. 1 Both Davis and Bragg would have been willing to entrust Pemberton with a corps, but they bowed to circumstances. The vanquished general still held the President's confidence. "Pemberton is everything with Davis, the devout," wrote an officer; "his [Davis's] intel- ligence is only equaled by his self-sacrifice in regard for others." Davis had several confidential interviews with Bragg. The latter offered to give up his command, but declared that if he remained he would not countenance disobedience in his subordinates. Davis, who seems to have thought that this fustian indicated strength of character, urged him to stay, promising full support. This was an act of almost inexcusable folly on the President's part, for he was aware of the army's dissatisfaction with Bragg and of the almost mutinous disposition of the higher officers. Officers and men alike might have been wrong, but victory could hardly be hoped for under such circumstances. Yet Davis had put out of his mind the thought of removing Bragg. This de- cision was partly due to the difficulty of finding any one capable of commanding the army, but partly also to the President's rising indignation at Bragg's country-wide un- popularity and to the open criticism of the government for retaining him. The people were attempting to dictate to the President ! It was here that Davis's doctrinaire tendency revealed itself. The leader of a revolution, absolutely de- pendent on the good-will of the people and the faithfulness of the army, he yet conducted himself with something of the *0. R., Series I, 30, Part IV, 734. 250 JEFFERSON DAVIS air of a divine-right ruler. His prerogatives as President were not to be encroached upon, forsooth! Davis's course was infatuated. He might have put Long- street in Bragg's place without loss, for the former was a far better officer than the latter. He never even thought of doing this. He had resolved on retaining Bragg at any cost. Why? Less than a year before he had been willing to sac- rifice Bragg for the good of the service, and then Johnston had balked the scheme, ardently urged by Seddon. Now he was risking the army, the war, everything, in order to keep Bragg. Why? Because the country was demanding Bragg's removal, and Davis wished to teach the country that it could not give him orders. But more, because Bragg had gained a greater hold on him than any other man had had. The great defect in Jefferson Davis's character was his supersensitiveness, his craving for approval. Bragg thoroughly understood this weakness and played on it. He never opposed Davis's suggestions, and usually followed them. He wrote frequently to the President and asked advice, a thing the President loved to give. He even flattered Davis grossly, but to his liking. Flattery had to be very, very gross to fail with Jefferson Davis. The summer of 1863 had been a horrible nightmare to the President; he was depressed, doubtful of himself. Bragg made him once more confident of himself, of his military talent. Bragg was the one officer in high place who did not jar on him, who was sympathetic. Bragg demanded less and complained less than the others, for even Lee had become somewhat querulous. Is it to be so much wondered at, then, that Jefferson Davis committed the fatal mistake of keeping in command an officer whom the country had judged and found wanting? DOWNHILL 251 Davis, in his desire to retain Bragg, now took a step that led to irreparable disaster. It was evident that Longstreet and Bragg could not continue together, and the President suggested to the commander that the lieutenant be detached for duty in east Tennessee, where Knoxville might be taken. Bragg willingly agreed, because he was glad enough to get rid of Longstreet. Longstreet jumped at the chance of having an independent command, for he had always chafed at being a subordinate. Thus the astonishing decision was reached of dividing the small army of Tennessee at the very moment that the Union army opposing it was receiving heavy re- enforcements. Many have wondered at the wild movement, not understanding that it was owing to Davis's wish to keep Bragg. Only by sending Longstreet away could Bragg be retained. Otherwise, there was danger of mutiny. The President returned to Richmond, thinking that he had straightened the tangle. Longstreet, Polk and Hill were gone or going, and apparently Bragg could manage to get on with the other generals. In reality, everything was much worse than before. The country was enraged at Bragg's continuance in command, and the matter was be- coming more than military; it was growing into a political issue. What was more ominous, the army was demoralized by the loss of the able corps general and his efficient troops from the East. The army thought that Longstreet's de- tachment at such a critical moment was only one more illustration of Bragg's generalship and its discontent quick- ened into anger. The stage was rapidly preparing for the greatest tragedy of the war. After leaving the army, Davis went to Selma, the seat of great munitions plants, where he was welcomed by a throng. He made a stirring appeal, warning the people that peace 252 JEFFERSON DAVIS could come only through victory and that it was useless to look to Europe for aid. The way to end the war was to annihilate Rosecrans. Turning eastward, he slowly made his way to Charleston, speaking at many places and showing a cordiality new for him. In fact, he was making an effort to hold the confidence of the public, which the disasters of the summer had sapped. If tried earlier, this attempt to woo the masses would have been most wise, and it might have accomplished something even now if it had been ac- companied by the removal of Bragg. But it was useless to seek to enlist the people's support for a military policy universally condemned: Jefferson Davis could not set his solitary judgment against public opinion with any hope of success. If Bragg had been another Marlborough or Napoleon, he must have failed on account of his intense unpopularity. The President lingered several days at Charleston, trying to reanimate the South Carolinians, who, like the people of all the states, were profoundly discouraged. He returned to Richmond without having accomplished anything helpful by his exhausting journey. He had really done himself more harm than good, for his enemies had seized the occasion to spread rumors that the trip was pre- liminary to a dictatorship. So far as military affairs went, he had thrown away the last chance of the South to win. Grant arrived at Chat- tanooga and took command of the Union forces, an ominous event for the unlucky Bragg. He presently moved against the Confederate lines on Lookout Mountain and Mission- ary Ridge. There could be no question of the outcome of the conflict. A superb army commanded by a master of war confronted a disorganized force which was actually at the point of mutiny. When Longstreet marched away, the DOWNHILL 253 army was ruined. His prowess partly made up for Bragg's incompetence. The soldiers, now left with their hated and despised commander, would probably have deposed him and defied the government if no engagement had occurred. For this reason the Confederate army cannot be judged by its conduct at Missionary Ridge. The position was very strong, and if the troops had fought in their normal way Grant would probably have been repulsed with heavy loss. But it was a peculiar situation, involving much more than the feeling of the army alone. The country as a whole was protesting against Bragg, and the soldiers knew it; they were profoundly affected by it. When Grant's troops clambered up the steep slopes of Missionary Ridge, the Southerners, refusing to fight longer under their detested leader, abandoned the field, except on one wing, where Cleburne, who was in command, held his lines and re- pulsed the Unionists. Here a beloved division general kept his men to their duty. Bragg was greeted with cries and jeers by his fleeing soldiers, who retired into Georgia. The shattered army rallied at Dalton. The victory of Missionary Ridge was not the less im- portant to the Union that it was easy. Hitherto, from Shiloh to Chickamauga, the Confederates in actual conflict had outfought their opponents. At Chickamauga, they had simply driven the Unionists from the field by the fury of their onslaught. But now, at Chattanooga, they fled from the face of the foe. Their morale was shaken, and they never entirely regained it. For the rest of the war, the Union troops in the West were definitely better than the Confederate. Grant was, indeed, lucky that he fought the army of Tennessee in the hour of its demoralization, but 254 JEFFERSON DAVIS his is the luck that usually attends genius. The same luck played its part at Vicksburg — the luck of audacity. Jefferson Davis was to blame for this great disaster to the South. He was not, primarily, responsible for Gettys- burg and Vicksburg. But for Missionary Ridge, which, coming on top of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, settled the fate of the war, he was responsible. He had deliberately closed his eyes to the intense discontent of the army and the coun- try with Braxton Bragg, keeping that officer in command in spite of every warning and at all costs. The bitter dis- satisfaction of all the subordinate generals, which had lasted for more than a year ; the almost mutinous conduct of Long- street and Hill; Bragg's constant accusations of everybody —surely these things should have shown any man of sound judgment that catastrophe was at hand. But the President had ignored the omens. And now, for the first time in the war, a Southern army had behaved badly in the face of the enemy. Defeat had become debacle. A storm of criticism swept the country. The people had condemned the President for retaining Bragg, and the judg- ment of the people seemed confirmed by the terrible de- feat. Men did not reflect that the defeat was due to the public mood in this instance, and not to Bragg. He had been beaten before a gun was fired at Missionary Ridge. All that they knew was that the unpopular general had been routed, and that the President had kept the unpopular gen- eral in command. The result was that the confidence of the Southern people in Jefferson Davis, already greatly im- paired, was completely wrecked. From this time on the country was really in opposition to the government. Jefferson Davis had brought this on himself. In some ways the head of a republic wields much greater power than DOWNHILL 255 a king: he can venture on more extreme and arbitrary action than any king; he can override the constitution at will if he has public opinion behind him. But he may not with- out great danger attempt to carry out his legitimate func- tions against a definite popular conception. Davis, of course, had the right to make and retain generals; but he very stupidly thought that he could exercise this right in de- fiance of the country. Missionary Ridge points the moral. His proper course was clear: he should have transferred Bragg after the battle of Chickamauga, in the winning of which Bragg had really no part. In such a critical moment as the autumn of 1863, he should have courted popularity by every means in his power. Instead of doing this, he committed the unpardonable super-sin of supporting the most unpopular soldier in the country after Pemberton. He may, indeed, have been right in thinking that Bragg was an abler general than any other man who could have been put in his place. This is beside the question : public opinion had condemned Bragg, and Davis was dependent on public opinion for success. There was absolutely no hope for the Confederacy if the people, who had to bear the burdens and make the sacrifices, lost faith in it. After Missionary Ridge, the dissatisfaction and depres- sion flowing from defeat crystallized into the personal un- popularity of Jefferson Davis. He bore the blame for the whole series of catastrophes which had wrecked Southern hopes and turned victory into disaster. People did not reflect that the Pennsylvania invasion and the defeat of Gettysburg had much to do with the unhappy situation; in fact, they thought little of Gettysburg. Johnston's failure to do anything to relieve Pemberton escaped their atten- tion entirely. What occupied their minds at the close of 256 JEFFERSON DAVIS 1863 was the remembrance that Jefferson Davis had ap- pointed Pemberton to high command and that Vicksburg had fallen, with an army, and that he had retained Bragg and Missionary Ridge had followed. He was looked on as the ultimate author of Southern woes. Thus, the net result of the campaign of 1863 was the ruin of Davis's prestige. He had never been popular with the masses because he was dignified and austere. He had long since fallen out with the politicians because he con- sidered them too little. But until the autumn of 1863, the Southern people looked on him as a great man. Their con- fidence, first disturbed by the invasions of 1862, had more or less revived with the victories of that summer. They still trusted Davis, though Lee and Jackson overshadowed him. They gave the government loyal support, making great sacrifices for it. Until the end of 1863, the number of malingerers, except in a few mountain districts, was sur- prisingly small; in many sections of the country every able- bodied man was in the army. But in 1863 the people, as a whole, lost confidence in the government and never regained it. From this time, desertion grew and flourished; criticism was rife; despair replaced hope. The shadow of failure lay across the country — of failure due no less to psychological causes than to physical. The people did not look with trust and love to the head of the nation. As 1863 closed, Jefferson Davis had an excellent oppor- tunity to moralize on the immutable fact that the ruler of a country must bear the responsibility for failure, no matter where lies the actual fault. He had not committed any great errors of commission in the disastrous summer that wrecked the Confederacy. So far from interfering with the commanders in the field, he had given them wide discretion. DOWNHILL 257 He had concurred in Lee's invasion of the North against his own judgment — a pledge of confidence not to be sur- passed. He had intrusted Johnston with large powers, even if Johnston had not seen fit to use them. That was not the President's fault. It is true that he had kept Bragg in command, but he had done so partly because of Johnston's support of that officer. In spite of his policy of noninter- ference with the generals, which had called for great self- control and even a measure of self-abnegation, disaster had been the portion of the Southern arms both in the East and the West. The cause that seemed so promising in May was withered in November like the flowers of May. The catastrophe had not occurred through any positive fault of the President's. It was due to the inability of the Confederate leaders to read their problem aright, and Davis's inability in this respect was no greater than that of the generals. Disaster came because of two things — divided command and lack of cooperation. It would have been bet- ter, indeed, for Davis to have kept in his own hands the direction of all the armies than to have adopted the sys- tem actually employed, or rather the want of system. A mediocre strategic scheme calling for the cooperation of all the armies and directed by a single mind would have been superior to the isolated movements of the armies in 1863 under several commanders. Lee and Johnston might have conducted campaigns in different continents so far as any common action was concerned; they do not seem to have dreamed of coordination. Seddon did, but he was overruled. The result of the control of several men was that the South in 1863 was, actually invading the enemy's country in the East while unable to defend itself in the West. 258 JEFFERSON DAVIS Jefferson Davis, who understood the strategic situation pretty well, made the mistake of allowing himself to be persuaded by Lee into invading Pennsylvania. Lee's au- dacity here ran away with him because Lee was not think- ing of the West; he was a general who never remained on the defensive except by the exercise of great self-control. His strategy was essentially the offensive-defensive. Davis had interfered with Lee's plans at the time of the battle of Fredericksburg, but he now let Lee have his way under infinitely graver circumstances. Yet he could not indorse the invasion of the North heartily, and his lukewarmness had important consequences. When Davis, at the cabinet meeting in May, finally de- cided to send Lee across the Potomac, thus definitely taking the offensive, he should have made a decision without res- ervations. He should have counted the cost of the offensive and bent every nerve to make the new strategic policy suc- cessful. Vicksburg should have been counted lost and the whole country should have been stripped of troops in order to give Lee a large army. When the weaker side takes the offensive, it should strike with its utmost strength because it must act quickly. Lee's army was far too small for invasion; if he had declined battle at Gettysburg, as Longstreet urged, he would soon have been hopelessly out- numbered and forced to retreat. Lee knew that perfectly well, and that is why he fought at Gettysburg. Jefferson Davis, however, was essentially a defensive sol- dier: he was naturally overcautious. He could not bring himself to put all of his eggs in one basket. Consequently he let Lee go to Pennsylvania with an insufficient force, hoping to be able to maintain the defense in the rest of the country while taking the offensive in the Northeast. Com- DOWNHILL 259 bining his old defensive system with the new offensive, he still kept garrisons and forces at various points instead of giving Lee everything. Charleston and Mobile should have been stripped, and Lee should have had 100,000 men in- stead of 65,000. With the larger force, Lee would either have refused to fight at Gettysburg or would have over- whelmed Meade by weight of numbers. He would not have been forced to fight immediately and at a disadvantage, the penalty of his numerical weakness. And, again, if he had won at Gettysburg, the victory would probably have been decisive. On the other hand, if he had met de- feat at the head of a larger army, the war would have ended sooner. But the end would have been only what it was anyway, after a longer period. Since the terrible risks of the offensive were taken, they should have been accepted in entirety. An effort should have been made to capture Washington and end the war at a blow. But Davis would not do this. Davis's cardinal error was in accepting Lee's plan with- out a conviction of its value. He would have done much bet- ter not to sanction it. He would have done better to remain on the defensive in the East and to shift Longstreet to the West — in case Lee could not have been induced to go — in May, 1863, instead of in September. Nothing decisive would probably have occurred; but if Lee were not weakened too much he would have been able to conduct a campaign in Virginia while Bragg and Longstreet attacked Rosecrans or Johnston and Longstreet rescued Pemberton. Vicksburg would have fallen, but without great loss. Such a campaign, of course, would have been a small affair in comparison with a general concentra- tion of the Southern forces under Lee against Grant; but 260 JEFFERSON DAVIS it would have minimized the loss and made recovery possible. As it was, Davis allowed Lee to dictate the strategy in the East while the great general did not have the order- ing of the forces elsewhere to make the strategy effective. Control was divided between Davis and Lee, when either one or the other should have been in supreme command. If Davis had directed the war according to his own ideas, Pennsylvania would not have been invaded. If Lee had been commander in chief, he would have strengthened his army sufficiently to increase the chance of success in the invasion. But neither Davis nor Lee ordered things wholly, and so the offensive was undertaken without sufficient means for decisive victory. Thus the insufficient and ill-timed offensive in the East and the insufficient and badly-handled defensive in the West ended in a coincident disaster that brought on the downfall of the Confederacy, which, at the time of the battle of Chancellorsville, seemed on the way to victory. Divided command and lack of cooperation did their accustomed work. Missionary Ridge did not immediately unseat Bragg. The discredited commander, after his retreat to Dalton, actually seems to have thought that he could wheedle Davis into continuing him at the head of the army. "Let us concen- trate our available men," he wrote the President, "unite them with this gallant little army . . . and with our great- est and best leader at the head, yourself, if practicable, march the whole upon the enemy and crush him in his power and glory." 1 But Davis, partial as he was to Bragg, knew that the lat- ter had to go. The matter was brought up in the cabinet, x O. R. t Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 567. DOWNHILL 261 which, for once ignoring the President's predilections, voted for Bragg's removal. 1 The general relieved an unpleasant situation by tending his resignation, which was immediately accepted. Thus Jefferson Davis bowed to the inevitable. He managed, however, to make the sacrifice in such a manner as to outrage public sentiment afresh. His pride was fully aroused by now and he was beginning to show that fatal obstinacy for which he has been too widely famed, for earlier in the war it did not appear. He was resolved that Bragg should not be disgraced in his removal. Con- sequently, the general was ordered to Richmond and made military adviser, the post which Lee had held in 1862. The country knew what this meant, that Bragg would enjoy the President's favor more than ever, even if he could not command an army. He would have great weight in dictating the military policy. At once, Davis's enemies were up in arms, so that any benefit that might have accrued from Bragg's removal was lost. The Richmond Examiner, which now assailed the administration continually, sarcastically voiced the current opinion of Bragg's new appointment: "From Lookout Mountain, a step to the highest honor and power is natural and inevitable." There was much truth in the bitter jest: Bragg was, indeed, to have much power in the events that preceded the downfall of the Confederacy. Davis's fondness for Bragg has been often mentioned in connection with his extreme partiality for West Pointers. He has been blamed too much in this latter particular. It should be noted that nearly all of the officers of great dis- tinction on both sides were graduates of West Point. Hal- leck, Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Meade, Hooker, Buell, Rosecrans, Thomas, Sheridan, Hancock, Warren — all were 1 Jones, 2, 106. 262 JEFFERSON DAVIS West Pointers. More nongraduates rose to fame in the Confederate service than in the Union. Likewise, many in- competent West Pointers were appointed to high command on both sides. When the war ended, the unprofessional sol- diers in the Confederate armies were rapidly pushing to the front and they would largely have superseded the West Pointers if the war had lasted two years longer. Jefferson Davis's preference for trained men was per- fectly right. He appointed a few politicians to high rank, and nearly all of them disappointed him. The successes of the Southern forces were largely due to the professional sol- diers who commanded them. Yet it would have been far better if Davis had recognized the fact that training is much less important in the case of soldiers than aptitude for war: soldiers are always born, never made. The number of first-rate West Pointers in the Southern service was small: one reason why Bragg was kept was that soldiers capable of commanding armies were so few. But Jefferson Davis did not look far enough for talent. After two years of bitter fighting, a number of officers, developed in the school of actual war, were coming to the front. Such men as Forrest, Cleburne and Walthall were forcing recognition by their feats of arms; they were practical soldiers of great ability, and Forrest has never been surpassed as a cavalry general. Davis did promote these officers to important places, but he seems to have thought that no one but a West Point graduate was fit to command an army. As a matter of fact, either Forrest or Cleburne was much fitter to head an army than Bragg for the one reason, if no other, that they were strong and resolute men while Brag:] was weak and hesitating. It is a pity that the President did not rise above professional prejudice and advance these DOWNHILL 263 excellent soldiers to still higher posts. The service would have gained by their elevation. But he continued to reserve army leadership for professional soldiers, with disastrous consequences. On Bragg's removal, the command of the army of Tennes- see passed automatically to Hardee, the senior corps com- mander. Hardee was a good though not brilliant soldier who shrank from responsibility. He requested to be re- lieved, and Johnston was asked to take the position. Beauregard had been once more considered and again passed over. This time Johnston consented. He was highly popu- lar with officers and men, and his appointment was hailed with delight. Davis gave Johnston the command only with great re- luctance, for he had completely lost confidence in that officer in the Vicksburg campaign. He had attempted to induce Lee to go West and temporarily take charge of the battered army of Tennessee. 1 The idea was a good one, for Lee's presence in the West at the beginning of 1864 would have been most inspiring. Lee, however, who had no wish to enlarge the circle of his already great duties, refused with a touch of asperity. Absorbed continually with the press- ing problem of finding food for his own army, he expected the government to look out for the other forces. The gov- ernment was no longer able to do this, as Davis practically admitted when he appealed to Lee. It was a very significant move on his part. It shows that he was willing for Lee to become commander in chief in fact if not in name. The pity is that he sought to do this informally, nominally remaining commander himself. If he had requested Con- gress to make Lee the head of all the armies, the nation 1 Lee's Dispatches (Freeman), 131. 264 JEFFERSON DAVIS would have been delighted. But Jefferson Davis would have endured anything rather than confess his military fail- ure and his abdication of war direction. Lee's refusal to go West left him no alternative, as he saw it, but to continue the ordering of forces for whom no satisfactory leader could be found. Johnston was in command in the West, but the President distrusted him and Bragg had come to hate him. Again the stage was set for tragedy. Johnston and Davis had now nearly reached the status of personal enemies. The fault was at least as much Johnston's as Davis's. Johnston had been worse than tactless; he had openly and harshly criticized the President, putting all the blame for the Western disaster of 1863 on him. He himself, of course, was not at all culpable. Recrimination was the foremost Confederate habit. Davis felt the in- justice of being saddled with the responsibility for the fall of Vicksburg, the more that the country sided with John- ston because Johnston was popular and Davis unpopular. Lee, in his magnificent magnanimity, had assumed the full blame of Gettysburg; his report spoke only of the glorious deeds of his men. But such an example is hard to follow, and the Confederate generals, harassed by failure, were merely human in giving way to the desire to shift the blame to others. The hostility between Davis and Johnston, which later involved Bragg, assumed political importance as well as military significance: it was, in reality, the issue in poli- tics in 1864. It led to the broadening of the division be- tween President and nation which had arisen at the time of the battle of Chickamauga, and it resulted in the fall of the Confederacy at an earlier date than would otherwise have been the case. In the end, the nation repudiated the President. DOWNHILL 265 The political storm which broke as soon as it was known that Missionary Ridge was a great disaster and which was reflected by the cabinet vote for the removal of Bragg took on larger proportions when Congress met, on December 7, 1863. It assembled under the most disheartening circum- stances. The members came to Richmond from a country depressed and malcontent in every section. Some of them belonged to territory already occupied by the Union troops and lost to the South. With but few exceptions, they came with feelings of savage animosity against the administration, which they blamed for the disasters of the year. They came prepared to attack the executive in any way short of an actual breach between the legislative and executive branches. They found themselves in a crowded city of starving refu- gees — despondency, poverty, despair on every side. Jefferson Davis had never commanded the affection of Congress; he had never even had the confidence of the Senate. He had expended little time in winning the poli- ticians to his side. He issued his orders and he so overawed Congress that his orders had been obeyed, though not with- out much bickering. His power over the congressmen was that of a strong nature over average men. To continue such an influence, however, the continuance of success was necessary; for, in the absence of personal popularity or of anything in the nature of a political machine, built on the use of patronage, a revolt was certain in the event of misfortune. Congress reflected public opinion: in 1861 and 1862, it had felt that there was something of greatness about Davis; but in December, 1863, after Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge, it completely ceased to believe in him. The jackals turned on the sick lion. The attack on the President began in the House of Rep- 266 JEFFERSON DAVIS resentatives. Henry S. Foote of Tennessee, once of Mis- sissippi, whose lifelong antagonism for Jefferson Davis reminds one of Borgo's hatred of Napoleon, at the very open- ing of the session poured out a scorching denunciation of the head of the government as the fountain of the country's woes. He declared that incompetent men in high military positions had led to defeat and would lead to still further disaster. Since Bragg was no longer in a definite official position, Foote assailed the man who, next to Bragg, was looked on as the especial favorite — Commissary- General Northrop. At intervals of several days, Foote continued his attacks until the President's supporters rallied to his defense. As the year 1863 closed, with Davis's popularity gone, he realized that something should be done to soothe the people. In spite of all his labors and anxieties, he held a public reception at the "White House" on New Year's Day of 1864, and another one some weeks later. At these functions he marvelously unbent. His cold courtesy was put aside for a warm handshake and a cordial, "I am very glad to see you here to-night." He even talked at some length with quite obscure guests and charmed every one, for he could be pleasing when he worked himself up to the point of throwing off his habitual nervous depression. The public receptions had little effect on Congress or even on the hungry swarm of refugees and government clerks. Foote offered a resolution calling for Northrop's removal, and, though it was defeated, the audacious proposal showed how the President's enemies had strengthened since the last meeting of Congress. The attitude of the Senate was even more ominous, for it became apparent that the President would not be able to DOWNHILL 267 command a majority in that body much longer. On Janu- ary 4, the Senate passed resolutions complimenting Lee. This seems innocent enough on its face, for such resolu- tions were passed in the case of other officers, but in this particular instance the resolutions marked the first move in a long game for superseding Davis with Lee. The President now had an admirable opportunity to confound his enemies and critics, who looked on him as alone responsible for the defeats of 1863. If he had recommended Congress to make Lee commander in chief, the responsibility for the further conduct of the war would have rested with the great gen- eral, not the head of the nation. Lee would have won glory, but he would also have incurred the blame for failure. As it was, Jefferson Davis received no recognition for the part he had played in the successes of the army while he bore the responsibility for disaster, which, as we have seen, was no more attributable to him than to others. The appointment of Lee as generalissimo was Davis's best chance. It would have been a highly politic move and, at the same time, one actually in accord with his own inclina- tions. Bragg had definitely failed and was utterly dis- credited; the President did not trust Johnston and was deeply worried about the West; he would have been glad to turn over the control of the Western army and the set- tlement of the Western problem to Lee. He was not blindly self-confident, as has been so often asserted. He frequently did not know what to do and hesitated for a long period over a course of action, as, for instance, the retention or removal of Bragg. He was exceedingly jealous of encroach- ments on his authority, but he constantly sought advice. In fact, it seems probable that he did little except on the advice of trusted councilors. He had leaned on Lee and 268 JEFFERSON DAVIS Seddon; for the rest of the war he was to depend on Bragg. But he had prided himself on performing the functions of a war President — of being the actual commander in chief — and he would have gone to the stake before he would vol- untarily have relinquished authority. So he continued to tinker at the Western problem until the breakdown came. What he really wished was for Lee to become commander in chief in fact, though not in name. Lee, however, would not accept an indefinite command of the other armies; prob- ably he did not wish to be generalissimo on any terms. His refusal forced Davis back on his own resources. Congress concentrated its attack on Northrop. Senator Orr of South Carolina sought, in a private interview, to induce Davis to get rid of the target of criticism. Northrop was intensely unpopular because of the oppressive acts of his agents in impressing food. But Davis realized that food could not be obtained except by taking it from an unwilling populace, and he supported Northrop. Again, he bitterly resented criticism of his action in retaining a hated subordinate; he had learned nothing from his championship of Bragg. He would have done much better to remove the commissary-general and let the country see that Northrop's successor would necessarily follow Northrop's methods. The judiciary committee of the Senate presently struck at the cabinet, now highly unpopular. It reported a bill requiring the vacating of cabinet offices at the end of two years. The ministers whose heads were desired were Ben- jamin, Memminger and Mallory, and afterward Seddon. The bill did not pass; it was undoubtedly unconstitutional, an attempt to negative the President's authority. The at- tack on the cabinet was only temporarily defeated: it was later renewed and was partially successful; Memmin- DOWNHILL 269 ger and Seddon resigned and Benjamin and Mallory remained. The Senate committee on military affairs now took a hand. It actually declared that Quartermaster-General Myers, who had been removed from his position in August, 1863, was still in office at the end of January, 1864. As Lawton, his successor, had not been confirmed by the Senate, the committee did not recognize him as Quartermaster-General, though he was exercising control over his department. This was an almost ludicrous measure of resistance to the Presi- dent. Myers was not more competent than Northrop, and there was no other reason for this championship of his cause than that he had been deposed by Davis while Nor- throp was supported. Yet in spite of the growing opposition to the President and of the tendency to limit his power, Congress passed a new conscription bill, urged by Davis, that greatly enlarged the scope of the draft. Congress saw that an increase of the army was imperative. This was the proper hour for the introduction of negroes in the service — a measure that would have postponed the end of the war. Davis, however, thought that victory might be won without resort to so desperate an expedient. He realized the crisis that was at hand, yet not fully. He dreaded a drastic action, certain to arouse a storm and not unlikely to overthrow the govern- ment. Thus, when Patrick Cleburne, the brilliant corps commander of the Western army, chose this time to bring forward a plan for the enlistment of the blacks in the army, he met with a severe rebuke. The government decided to attempt to find enough white men to fill the depleted ranks. In the winter of 1864, the conscription officers, fortified by the new law, worked with great industry and success. 270 JEFFERSON DAVIS The draft service maintained two bureaus: one for Tennes- see, Mississippi and Alabama, under General Pillow; the other for the East under Colonel Preston. In December, 1863, the Confederate armies, East and West, were worn to the bone. During the late winter, the conscript officers pursued draft evaders through all the backwoods and moun- tain sections of the South, securing thousands of recruits. They seized men everywhere, and anybody. They even laid hands on Postmaster- General Reagan in the streets of Rich- mond. Often they worked at the risk of their lives, for the country was full of armed deserters who would not be forced back in service under any circumstances. The bulk of the new levies were boys sixteen and eighteen years old. Many more men would have been caught in the dragnet but for the exemptions granted by the national and state governments and the action of some of the state courts in taking men away from the draft officers. In Georgia, thou- sands of men were kept out of the Confederate army for home defense in the militia. In other states, the militia like- wise took from active field service many able-bodied men. The government's great difficulty was the waning man power. It is true that the food shortage was acute and that Lee was led to invade Pennsylvania by the hope of securing provisions, yet by the spring of 1864 the food problem had been partly solved and there were more rations in the supply depots than for some time before. The reason why the armies were constantly on the verge of starvation was bad transportation, which was almost paralyzing by the beginning of 1864. Yet transportation might have been greatly improved by energetic measures: that was not an insuperable difficulty. As for arms and munitions, the Con- federacy had never been so well supplied as at the opening DOWNHILL 271 of the campaign of 1864. In 1861 and 1862, there had been an actual shortage of arms and in 1863 of ammunition: Lee's men had been forced to fire scrap iron from their guns at Gettysburg. But now the government had large chemical and munitions plants, under the management of eminent ex- perts, and improved shells and good powder were being made. Small arms were manufactured in quantities, as well as excellent field pieces and siege artillery of the largest bores. But soldiers could not be secured in sufficient num- bers to face the armies of the North. The recruits were immature boys and there were not enough of them. It is true that the Union was also hard pressed to find men, but its resources were vastly greater than those of the Confederacy. The South's one existing source of supply — the blacks — was not touched. As the Union was enlisting many regi- ments of negroes, the Confederacy now faced the problem of having them fight for or against it. A sentiment small but growing favored their enrollment in the army. As early as 1862, at a secret conference of Bragg's generals, Cleburne and Breckinridge declared for the enlistment of slaves. A recommendation was sent to the government, which considered it in cabinet session and tabled it. At this time the hopes of the South were high and negroes did not seem needed. The losses of 1863 inevitably revived the topic: there was an acute shortage of cannon food. Yet to fill the army with blacks was nothing less than a revolution. It must have meant the doom of slavery, for the negroes could not be expected to risk their lives as bondmen. It would have awakened intense opposition and Stephens would have outdone himself in denunciations of the government. Still 272 JEFFERSON DAVIS in 1864 the employment of negroes in the army was possible, because the South was no longer fighting for states' rights but for national independence, and the more intelligent part of the populace would have made any sacrifices to attain it. The opposition to negro soldiers would have come far less from slaveholders than from the rank and file of the army, the non-slaveholders. The Southern masses sup- ported the Confederate government partly from a knowledge that the Confederacy stood squarely for white rule, for the principle of racial domination. If, then, the govern- ment had put the blacks on a parity with the white private soldiers, by enlisting them under the colors, a protest would have followed that might have swept the government out of power. Beyond a doubt, Jefferson Davis knew this and feared it. Yet the need of soldiers was so great in the early months of 1864 that he would have done well to study the matter. The presence of 200,000 new troops in the army at this time would have immensely altered the situation. Garri- sons might have been replaced by these negro soldiers and Lee's army could have been increased to 100,000 men: he would have met Grant on almost equal terms. Likewise, the Western army would have been raised to the same size, and Sherman's march would have been impossible. The mili- tary advantages would seem to have outweighed the risk of revolution. It was a choice of risks, anyway, and often what seems the least risk is the greatest. Cleburne, clearly seeing the need, took the initiative in approaching the government. A meeting of the corps and division commanders of Johnston's army was held on the first of January, and Cleburne presented his proposal. Most of the officers present favored it, though Johnston himself DOWNHILL 273 expressed no opinion. One or two, however, protested to the government, and the government sent word to Johnston not to let news of the meeting get out. Davis seems to have been in some trepidation. Johnston, finding the gov- ernment adverse, declared himself to be opposed, and noth- ing more was heard of a plan which might have accomplished much. A year later Davis gave the scheme his approval, but that was a year too late. The whole matter illustrates one of Jefferson Davis's cardinal defects as a revolutionary leader: he was too much inclined to take the course of immediate safety. Revolu- tion is, in its nature, a gamble, and great risks must be run. Washington continually took great risks, and be- cause he did he succeeded in the end. If he had remained on the passive defensive he would have lost. Lee took great risks, and because he took them he nearly carried the cause to success. Jefferson Davis, however, contrary to the re- ceived opinion, was a man of slow and cautious disposition. So far from being precipitate, he was not precipitate enough. His natural tendency was to temporize in the hope that something would a turn up." He waited in the autumn of 1 86 1 with disastrous results. He failed to act with great energy in the early winter of 1862, dreaming of foreign intervention. But he could act when absolutely neces- sary — act with swiftness and resolution — and his quick action in 1862 had a good deal to do with saving the Con- federacy for the time. Now, however, he put off the evil day, trusting that it would never come. He would not take the risk of enlisting negroes, and a few months later he took an infinitely greater risk. His caution, his conservatism, his disinclination to act radically hastened the end of the Confederacy and cost it its last chance. 274 JEFFERSON DAVIS Cleburne's project was dismissed with these words from Davis: "Deeming it to be injurious to the public service that such a subject should be mooted, or even known to be entertained by persons possessed of the confidence and respect of the people, I have concluded that the best policy under the circumstances will be to avoid all publicity." * Johnston replied that the idea was Cleburne's alone. We may add: let the credit be Cleburne's alone. He alone had the insight to see and the courage to urge a meas- ure which, if adopted early enough, might have saved the country. As a matter of fact, Jefferson Davis, when he hushed up Cleburne's proposal, was under the compulsion of a new military idea, an idea far rasher than Cleburne's though not revolutionary. He had decided on an offensive campaign in the West. This decision was the first fruit of Bragg's influence. The evil genius of the Confederacy was now in Richmond, in greater favor than ever. It was Bragg's proposal that Johnston should make an offensive campaign. Davis quickly agreed to so agreeable a plan, and even Lee seems to have thought that it was possible. Davis had tele- graphed Bragg at the end of January to come to Richmond, adding, "I want to confer with you." 2 Bragg went, and the month of February, 1864, was spent in working out a plan for a campaign in Tennessee in the spring. Johnston was told what was expected of him. He did not like it, but Davis offered to enlarge his army if he would make the effort. Longstreet, who was still in Tennes- see and who was to join Johnston as the latter advanced, also disapproved the plan. He wrote Johnston that if the x O. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 596. 2 0. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 607. DOWNHILL 275 Confederate army moved north its communications would be in great danger of being cut. These practical soldiers had every reason to shy from a scheme so impossible as a Confederate offensive in the West in 1864. Bragg had been unable to maintain himself at Chattanooga in 1863 when not greatly outnumbered by the enemy. Now, after Missionary Ridge and the com- plete defeat of the Western army, he was demanding that Johnston, with the army that had been routed, should in- vade Tennessee in the face of the victorious army, larger and stronger than before and under the command of one of the best of Union generals, Sherman. The principal strategic points in Tennessee were forts held by strong garrisons. The Confederates must advance northward, leaving these forts behind them or on their flanks as a constant menace. What, if any, rational hope of success Bragg entertained it is difficult to say, but it is certain that he misrepresented to Davis the conditions in the West, and largely through his misrepresentations he induced the President to favor his desperate scheme. The truth is that Jefferson Davis was undergoing a trans- formation that comes to many prudent, conservative men whose prudence and conservatism fail to save them from dis- aster — he was becoming a gambler. He knew now that nothing was to be expected from Europe, that the South must work out its salvation unaided. He also realized that the condition of affairs was desperate and that something had to be done. He had taken risks at Chickamauga and had nearly saved Tennessee. He was prepared to take greater risks in the hope that a victory would change the whole aspect of the war. But when a man whose nature is opposed to taking risks 276 JEFFERSON DAVIS turns gambler he is likely to go too far. His judgment is likely to be overborne by the frenzy of desperation; he is likely to plunge ahead, defying the chances. We see this tendency in men who seek to recoup themselves for losses by speculating in the stock market. They usually only damn themselves the deeper. It was so with Jefferson Davis. His cautious defensive had broken down; every- where the enemy were pressing forward, the Confederates falling back. He felt that some action of a decisive nature was imperative, and Bragg was ever at his side telling him that the thing that would save the country was an offensive campaign in the West. Bragg himself had not saved the West, but that was another matter. He would have done so, he explained, but for his incapable subordinates and his lack of troops. He now urged the concentration of all avail- able troops in the Western army and a forward movement. It was probable that Bragg was moved by two motives: he naturally preferred the offensive, though incapable of executing offensive movements himself. In the second place, he had come to dislike Johnston intensely; and if Johnston declined to take the offensive the new commander would be finally discredited and might be removed. In fact, there is every reason to believe that Johnston's replacement by Hood in July, 1864, was a measure toward which Bragg moved from the very moment he arrived in Richmond and became the President's military adviser. It was the culmination of a carefully worked out plot. Bragg sent Johnston an outline of the plan of the offensive campaign. Johnston replied but did not commit hirnself. He wanted more troops for an aggressive movement. Bragg telegraphed him on March 21: "Your dispatch does not indicate an acceptance of the plan proposed. The 7 troops DOWNHILL 277 can only be drawn from other points for an advance. Upon your decision on that point further action must depend." * Bragg was skillfully maneuvering Johnston into a position where he would be made to appear either timid or a shirker. A forward movement into Tennessee, with Longst r eet added to Johnston's force, would have resulted in a battle with Sherman in which the Confederates might have had a chance to win. But Lee was calling for Longstreet to return to Virginia, and without Longstreet the offensive campaign was wholly impossible. John B. Hood, late of Lee's army but who had been re- cently made a lieutenant general and given command of a corps in Johnston's army, largely because he was Bragg's protege and in full sympathy with his plans, wrote from the West on March 17, declaring that the troops were "eager for the fray." He urged the junction of Polk's and other troops in the West with the army of Tennessee, which would be raised to 60,000 men, and then the union with Longstreet in Tennessee, which he fancied would increase the army to 90,000 men. Longstreet, however, had only 10,000 men, and he pres- ently marched away to join Lee in Virginia. This should have put an end to the project of a Western invasion. But Bragg refused to abandon a scheme that had rooted itself in his flighty mind and that might result in Johnston's fall. Davis was foolish enough to continue to put confidence in Bragg, even after the latter had given this plain evidence of aberration. In the middle of April, an official in Rich- mond informed Johnston that he could not have Longstreet, but added: "Can I tell the President you will assume the a O. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 664. 278 JEFFERSON DAVIS offensive with 15,000 additional troops? It is important that I receive your reply immediately. " * Johnston did not refuse outright but he temporized, mak- ing conditions. The government ordered Polk's command in Mississippi and some other troops to join him, some- what increasing his army but still leaving him greatly in- ferior to Sherman. Bragg now wrote to Johnston that his conditions had been fulfilled, though the army of Ten- nessee was not strong. A month later, when the troops had joined Johnston and no more seemed available, Bragg sent him word: "Every disposable man now sent, and from the high condition in which your army is reported we rely on brilliant success." 2 Bragg had now made out his case with the President. He had represented the Western army as being large enough and in good enough condition to make a forward movement into Tennessee. If the army did not advance, it would be Johnston's fault. In that case, Johnston, whose great popu- larity galled the unpopular Bragg almost beyond endurance, would have to make way for Bragg's appointee. The mili- tary adviser had put the commander of the army of Ten- nessee in a position from which he could not extricate him- self save by some action of a rash and dangerous nature, and Bragg knew that Johnston would not act in that fashion. It is more than probable that he counted on Johnston's speedy resignation. He already had his own candidate for the place. By this time Bragg was completely in the ascendant at Richmond. He did not attempt to interfere with Lee, who managed his own army to suit himself, but everything else *0. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 657. *0. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 671. DOWNHILL 279 came under his control. He replaced Seddon in Davis's confidence and largely replaced Seddon as Secretary of War, writing to the various army leaders much as the head of a general staff might do. Jefferson Davis was more under his influence than he had ever been under that of Benjamin, Lee or Seddon. Bragg commanded his unlimited confidence. The hold gained by the discredited general may well seem singular. He had few friends anywhere, being disliked by soldiers, detested by politicians, derided by the country. Yet, total failure that he was, he exercised a wider in- fluence over the strong mind of Jefferson Davis than any other man. A year before the President had not believed in him as much as he did now after a year darkened by al- most irretrievable disaster. But Bragg was continually with Davis and he was a very insinuating man; he talked authoritatively on military affairs, being as admirable a general on paper as he was poor in the field. He completely convinced Davis of the soundness of his deductions, partly, no doubt, because Davis wished to be convinced. Davis wished to believe that the Confederacy was still strong enough for a forward movement; he did not like to face the reality that it was fast weakening toward its end. Besides, Bragg flattered him. Jefferson Davis had, in an excessive degree, the weaknesses of sensitiveness. Tortured with self-doubts and melancholy, he was peculiarly open to the seductions of flattery. In Davis's case the temptation was doubly great at this time because he was almost over- borne by the labors and responsibility of his position. He knew that his popularity was gone and he felt that the cause was failing. He was bitterly hurt by the attacks of press and politicians. Bragg still talked confidently of the future, 280 JEFFERSON DAVIS still deferred to him, still credited him with great military talent. His devotion to Bragg became unbounded. Bragg did not establish himself in Richmond without opposition. The public did not want him in an official capacity. When a bill was introduced in the Senate to give him the rank and pay of a commanding general, Orr and Wigfall attacked it bitterly. The Richmond newspapers poured ridicule on him, and the city was full of absurd rumors of his extravagant acts. About the same time, Foote in the House of Representatives assailed Memminger and proposed to make Lee dictator. The Senate finally gave Bragg his pay as general, but Memminger was so moved by the assaults on him that he resigned, on June 20, 1864. His going was greeted with joy, but the financial condition of the Confederacy was too desperate now to be remedied by the greatest money juggler that ever lived. Davis had sustained Memminger through more than three years of in- cessant criticism, and the Secretary's passing marked the first distinct victory of the congressional opposition. Meanwhile the campaign had opened with an advance of Sherman's army. It was not only evident that the offensive in the West was a dream but it was highly doubtful that the Confederacy would hold its own on the defensive. Bragg had harped for three months on the theme that the Confed- erates must concentrate at the beginning of the campaign and take the initiative before the Union forces could unite to crush them. Theoretically, this sounded well enough; but the Union facilities for concentration were now so much bet- ter than those of the South that an advance into Tennessee would have been followed by a quick junction of the North- ern forces by means of the railroads, which in Tennessee had been extensively repaired and were in good running order. DOWNHILL 281 Bragg's plan had been the hopeless vision of a man who had done little on the offensive himself under far more favor- able circumstances. He demanded of Johnston what he himself would never have thought of attempting. Sherman's forward movement into Georgia at once dispelled the dream. Yet this still influenced the mind of Jefferson Davis, in that it led him to believe that Johnston had been at fault in not assuming the offensive and in letting Sherman take the initia- tive. Jefferson Davis was unacquainted with the grim realities of the situation. XII THE MILITARY GAMBLE IN the spring of 1864 the Union Government began a concerted series of military movements intended to complete the work of the year before and bring about the overthrow of the Confederacy by autumn. The Union was far stronger than at the beginning of the war. Its remark- able government had succeeded in establishing a nation out of the chaos of factions existing in 1861 and in creating a great army and a great navy. It had been accused of tramp- ling on the Constitution, and, no doubt, with truth, for the Constitution hampered a vigorous government in an emer- gency. It represented the triumphant industrial democracy, just as the Confederate government did not represent the planter class. It was an enormous energy guided by shrewd- ness, a junto of geniuses who did not love each other but who worked together for a common object. Seward, that master of craft, had the hardest task of all, for he had to beguile and subsidize Europe into permitting the continuance of a doubtfully legal blockade that was contrary to its interests and to persuade it not to sanction a separation of the repub- lic vastly to its advantage. His success stamps him as a great diplomat. Chase, too, had shown rare judgment in juggling the finances of a distracted country on the verge of bankruptcy, with its business temporarily ruined. In spite of its oppressive load of debt, the credit of the government 282 THE MILITARY GAMBLE 283 was good. Stanton, as war minister, had put forth immense efforts, raising huge numbers of troops and finding generals to lead them to victory. Lincoln, the tyro of 1861, had de- veloped into a wonderful ruler. He drove his team of Titans well: unlike a small man, he gave them a free rein and did not attempt to conduct their departments for them; he soothed politicians, united factions and grew in the popu- lar imagination with the passing months. When at last a general of the first order appeared in Grant, the President made him commander of all the armies and permitted him to win the war in his own way. In the rare combination of practical wisdom, undaunted courage, and noble aspiration, Lincoln stands as one of the great figures of history. Against his government of business men and masterly poli- ticians were contrasted the councilors of Davis, who did not measure up to their opponents. Grant was an originator of great plans. He devised the second American essay in grand strategy. By the first, Washington had formed a combination of his army at New York with the French fleet in the West Indies which won Yorktown and secured independence. Grant now began to put in operation a plan for simultaneously overwhelming the army of Tennessee and defeating and driving from Rich- mond the army of Virginia. If these two main Confederate forces were destroyed, the subjugation of the country would follow. But it is easy to dream of grand strategy, hard to carry it out. Grant, by his strong practical sense and his powerful will, did carry out his plan and thereby brought the war to an end. But for it the South might have resisted a year or two longer, with a chance of winning in the end. The enormous gain of Grant's system of coordinating the movements of the main Union armies in the East and West 284 JEFFERSON DAVIS was not immediately evident, for Grant found a formidable obstacle in his path. Lee was now at his ripe best, and there have been few better commanders of a single army. He had always succeeded except at Gettysburg, and he had failed there because he had used tactics practicable for Jackson but not for Jackson's successors. Taught by that failure, Lee adapted his methods to his means and rose to his greatest heights in the Wilderness. In May, 1864, Grant crossed the Rappahannock into a dense jungle of pines and small oaks that stood across his line of march to the south. He was trying the overland route to Richmond, but his main object was to defeat Lee's in- domitable army, which he hoped to fight in the open coun- try. That army had become the single great obstacle in the path of Union victory: the primary objective of the Mis- sissippi had been gained; the secondary objective, Virginia, was now the first. For this reason Grant had left the West, where Sherman succeeded him, and had come to Virginia to overthrow Lee. Since Gettysburg the North had under- rated Lee, and government and people alike anticipated that the general who had won such triumphs in the West would soon end the war. The expected did not happen. Grant's army of 120,000 men was assailed in the jungle by Lee, with the 60,000 men he mustered. The difference in numbers hardly measures the disadvantages under which Lee labored. The Union army was not only twice as large as his, with twice as many pieces of artillery and equipped according to the latest ideas of military science, but the Union rank and file were now better than his own: the superiority of the Confederate infantry was about gone. Lee had lost thousands of his veterans in battle and by desertion and their places were THE MILITARY GAMBLE 285 filled by raw recruits, for the most part immature boys who remind one of Napoleon's levies in 1814. These valiant children did marvelously well, but they were hardly equal, individually, to the maturer men in the Northern ranks. Lee's decision to fight in the thicket was a stroke of genius 2 because he thereby rendered ineffective the stronger Union artillery. He also counted on the possibility of surprise. Indeed, he so skillfully neutralized the advantages of the Union army that he very nearly won a great victory. The battle of the Wilderness raged for two days, May 5 and 6, 1864. In that frightful conflict in the bush, that wholesale assassination in the dark, where men fought breast to breast and yet unseeing and unseen and the wounded roasted in the flaming brush, Lee had much the better of it. On the second day the Union army was hurled back with terrific slaughter, outflanked and weakening, when Longstreet, who was in immediate command, was wounded by the fire of his own men and the hard-pressed Northerners gained a respite to entrench themselves. The victory remained uncompleted. Grant now attempted to move around Lee to the east, but was checkmated and repulsed in an even more awful struggle at Spotsylvania, where for once, in literal fact, the dead lay in piles and the trenches were muddy with blood. Again and again he attempted to flank Lee, only to fail each time. Finally at Cold Harbor, on the old battlefield of the Seven Days, the Union commander, weary of attempting to out- maneuver Lee, made a frontal assault on the Confederate trenches which failed with frightful butchery. The attempt to crush Lee and bring the war to an end speedily had completely miscarried. In this struggle, the most terrible ever fought on American soil, in which the two armies together lost nearly 100,000 men, Grant had put 286 JEFFERSON DAVIS forth his utmost exertions in vain. At the cost of some 65,000 of his troops he had approached Richmond, but Lee was still in front, undefeated, and the Confederate morale was rising in proportion as the Union morale fell. It was a critical moment and might have proved fatal to the Union cause had a weaker spirit been the leader of the army. But Grant was the most rugged man of action in American history. Although outgeneraled by Lee and brought to a standstill by the Southern army, he had no thought of accepting defeat so long as the government con- tinued to send him the myriads of recruits needed to fill the gaps in his lines. It was impossible to storm Lee's trenches or to get at Richmond north of the James River, but it might be possible to cut the city's communications with the South. Grant now made his greatest move, a move that is the best evidence of his military genius and tenacity of purpose. On the morrow of his dreadful repulse at Cold Harbor, he threw his army across the James with masterly skill and advanced on Petersburg, the key of Richmond. Petersburg was saved by Beauregard, who had come to Virginia to take a small command. He was admirable on the defensive and now foiled the Union attacks until Lee sent aid. The two main armies soon appeared before Petersburg and confronted each other behind interminable lines of earthworks that were the ancestors of those on the Aisne. The war in Virginia had now reached the stage of deadlock. It was Grant's plan to hold Lee fast at Peters- burg until the Western army, under Sherman, could come up behind and envelop him. The Northern commander had given up the hope of winning the war by the immediate defeat of Lee. So far Grant, indeed, had failed in Virginia. It was the THE MILITARY GAMBLE 287 present failure, not the future prospect, that the Northern public saw. It fell into the deepest depression of the whole war. The campaign had been widely advertised as the coup de grace. The newspapers had prophesied the end of the Confederacy with even more than customary journalistic fatuousness; the people believed that the end was surely approaching. Instead of this, Lee was as terrible as ever and the Union losses surpassed anything known before. Grant, with his great army, had not repeated Donelson and Vicksburg, The psychology of depression is a curious study, for de- pression is one of the most vital factors in war as it is in ordinary life. If other things are in the remotest degree equal, the nation that bears depression best will win. For this reason it is the most important function of national leaders to blind the people to the odds against them. Makers of nations, such as William the Silent, have succeeded in this. Conversely, revolutionary movements have often failed for just the lack of this: the truth has been seen too clearly. In the summer of 1864 both the North and the South were depressed, but the Northern depression was the more dan- gerous because it followed a season of prosperity. Vicks- burg and Gettysburg had led the North to think that the resisting power of the South was gone, that the war was almost over. The Wilderness rudely shook this idea by showing the world that Lee was practically unbeatable in Virginia, even by the best general and the largest army of the North. Once more the North began to wonder whether the South could ever be brought to submission, and a senti- ment for peace even at the price of Southern independence made itself felt. The Southern morale had fallen low in December, 1863, 288 JEFFERSON DAVIS after Missionary Ridge. But as the terrible fighting in Vir- ginia in May, 1864, continued and it was seen that Lee more than held his own, the confidence of the Southern people began to revive. The hope was reflected in com- modity prices, which fell sharply in August, 1864; for in- stance, flour from $500 a barrel to $200. In Europe, the brightening of Confederate prospects was evident in the rise of the cotton bonds, which had fallen as low as 37 in December, 1863, but which advanced to 80 in 1864, on the news of McClellan's nomination for the presidency. 1 - Another campaign in Virginia had ended in nothing, just as had the efforts of McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and Meade before; and in June, 1864, the war-weary and the pacifists asserted themselves as they had not done in the previous two years. It was the perilous moment of an opening presidential campaign. We might almost smile now to think that Lincoln ever doubted his reelection; but the doubt did not seem absurd to men of his time. The govern- ment had been fighting the South for three years and had not been able to prevail: to superficial minds, always greatly in the majority, it appeared that the war might go on for many more years before victory declared itself. To many men not superficial the South seemed to have grown into a separate nation in the long period of estrangement; and they thought the recognition of the fact would be best. Still others thought that the South might be brought back into the Union by a suspension of fighting and the calling of a convention of states empowered to arrange a compromise. It is possible, though not probable, that if November, 1864, had arrived with the Confederacy still apparently strong Lincoln might not have been reelected. The Demo- 1 Schwab, The Confederate States of America, 36. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 289 cratic party, which favored the plan of bringing the South back to the Union by a compromise, would have appealed strongly to the thousands who were tired of the war and its increasing sacrifices. This situation, which seemed to offer some hope to the Confederacy, was watched by Jefferson Davis with close attention. Indeed, the Democratic party had come to be his main reliance for the termination of the war, for he had abandoned the dream of foreign interven- tion. In March, 1864, he was heard to say, "We have no friends abroad." x Davis's direct interest in military operations revived as the war once more drew near Richmond. He kept in close touch with Lee and rode out daily to see him while he held the lines at Cold Harbor. Richmond was once more thrilled with alarms. These had begun in March, 1864, when Union raiders reached the outskirts of the city and Jefferson Davis in his office heard the sound of their guns. Again, in May, the Union cavalry penetrated to the outer fortifications and a skirmish took place in which the dashing Stuart fell. Davis was present at this action and prepared to take command when Stuart fell, but the raiders were driven off quickly. The President was filled with a longing for battle, for the physical joy of combat, for an excitement that would make him momentarily forget his cares and depression. He con- tinually chafed under the restriction that kept the chief magistrate of the nation from participating in fighting. He still retained something of his faith in his military ability. He still gave Lee advice, though less and less of it, largely leaving the general to his own devices, to the management of his own command, long since known as "Lee's army." In 1864, Jefferson Davis still hoped for success, though 1 Jones, 2, 175. 290 JEFFERSON DAVIS only after the greatest privations and sacrifices. Sometimes he showed what was in his mind. Once when walking in the capitol grounds with several girls, he pointed to some small boys playing near. "Even those boys," he said, "will have their trial." A girl asked him, "But how shall the army be fed?" He replied, "I don't see why rats, if fat, are not as good as squirrels. Our men did eat mule meat at Vicksburg; but it would be an expensive luxury now." 1 Private sorrow was added to Davis's public burdens in this terrible year of 1864. On the last day of April a sad accident occurred. The President at that time was much exhausted from worry and loss of sleep, though he insisted on keeping his office hours. His wife fell into the habit of carrying him a lunch at midday. One noontide she left her children playing as usual while she went about her daily errand. Presently, as she chatted with her husband, a terrified servant came hurrying to tell her that her little son, Joseph Emory, had fallen from a balcony to the pave- ment below. The child died just as the parents reached his side. Jefferson Davis was utterly prostrated for some hours. At intervals, he was heard to ejaculate, "Not mine, O Lord, but thine!" A courier came with a dispatch, but he would not read it. "I must have this day with my little child," he said. The next morning he went to work at his usual hour. The Christian resignation with which he took this blow was in keeping with his deeply religious nature. In the ambitions of his earlier life he had found little time for formal religion, but the Civil War brought to a nature almost always somberly serious a new sense of responsibility, and 1 Jones, 2, 175. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 291 in 1862 Jefferson Davis joined St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond. He had been born a Hard-Shell Baptist. There can be no doubt of the genuineness of his faith, and he seems to have spent much time in praying for the success of the cause in which all his hopes were engaged. In fact, he was credited with being superstitious, with leaving the outcome to Providence when he frankly did not know what to do. A famous sentence in the Examiner illustrates this tendency: "We find the President standing in a corner telling his beads, and relying on a miracle to save the country." x Jefferson Davis, in his religiousness, was thoroughly rep- resentative of the South. One of the popular misconceptions of American history is that the old South was cavalier. It is true that there was always a cavalier element in the South, but at the time of the Civil War it was overshadowed by puritanism. The slave states formed one of the most Christian communities in the world — that is, one wherein orthodox Christianity was sincerely believed in by an over- whelming majority of the inhabitants. Perhaps nowhere in the world were there so many people who believed that dancing and theater-going were cardinal sins as in the South. Lee's army was made up of Baptists, Methodists and Pres- byterians; it was the most religious army since Cromwell's time. Revivals were its favorite recreation. It swarmed with preachers serving as chaplains, private soldiers and officers. The influence of religion was almost universal. Lee himself was anything but a cavalier, being a precisian and a churchwarden. Jackson was a deacon of the straitest sect. Nearly all of the other Confederate leaders were earnest church members. Some of them, like Ewell, were converted during the war. Lee's artillery chief, Pendleton, was a West a May 19, 1862. 292 JEFFERSON DAVIS Pointer who had turned parson. Polk was a bishop. One might expect to find a cavalier spirit, if anywhere, in Stuart, the strident cavalryman with the long boots and the waving plume. No such thing. Stuart was pious and a prohibitionist. In fact, such is the monotony of Confederate virtue that one is rather relieved to run across that open and avowed sinner, Jubal A. Early, whose venerable bald head and patriarchal beard did not keep him from scandalizing the army by curs- ing with great force and fluency. He was the "horrible ex- ample" of the Confederate host. Jefferson Davis had prayed in 1862; he had much more occasion to pray in 1864. For the time being Lee had stopped the Union advance in the East, but the outlook was most menacing in the West, though somewhat improved over December, 1863. The army of Tennessee had begun to better from the time Johnston took command. Recruits came in, absent soldiers trooped back to the colors, and gradually the army that had been hopelessly broken at Mis- sionary Ridge once again became an efficient fighting force. But it faced a much more efficient force in Sherman's army. This army put an end to Bragg's vision of a Con- federate offensive by slowly and cautiously advancing south- ward. Johnston had no natural inclination for attack, and as Sherman had a larger army than his own and always moved behind the protection of trenches he found no op- portunity to attack. Nor could he foil Sherman by stand- ing on the defensive, for Sherman moved continually around his right flank, much after the fashion of a mole going around an obstruction. Thus Johnston was forced to retreat slowly to keep from being flanked by the Union general; he fell back from Sherman's advance skillfully and with little loss. Jefferson Davis, however, could not understand the reason THE MILITARY GAMBLE 293 for his retreat. For months he had heard Bragg talking of an offensive in the West; and now Johnston, instead of mov- ing into Tennessee, was retiring into Georgia. It began to wear on his nerves. All his dislike and distrust of John- ston flared up into sudden life. He thought that Johnston was once more showing lack of enterprise, throwing away new opportunities. He detested retrograde movements under any circumstances. Now, Johnston was a natural retreater. He had retreated from Manassas to Yorktown and from Yorktown to Rich- mond, and he might have continued to retreat if Lee had not insisted on battle. Davis had lost confidence in him then and had never fully regained it, just as he had lost con- fidence in Beauregard for retreating from Shiloh to Corinth and from Corinth to Tupelo. Although he had appointed Johnston to the Tennessee-Mississippi command, he had done so with a mental reservation. His lingering distrust of Johnston had been confirmed by the Vicksburg campaign, the unfortunate outcome of which he attributed to John- ston rather than to Pemberton. He believed that Johnston might have rescued Pemberton by a vigorous effort, that he had not done his full duty. The fact that Johnston and Beauregard, cautious souls, had never lost armies or met with serious reverses made little difference to him. He pre- ferred commanders such as Pemberton and Bragg who stood their ground and were routed or captured to generals who saved themselves by retirements. Johnston, at Dalton, Georgia, at the beginning of the campaign, commanded about 60,000 men against the 110,000 of Sherman. The difference between the Union and Con- federate armies in the West was much more marked than in the East. Lee's victories had filled his army with a belief 294 JEFFERSON DAVIS in its superiority, but the army of Tennessee had been so mishandled that its confidence was lowered. The Union army was not only larger, but it was better equipped, better officered, better moraled. In fact, Sherman's army was the best seen on the Union side in the war and at this particular moment the best in the world. It was a magnificent mili- tary machine commanded by one of the greatest generals of modern times. The chances of war, therefore, altogether favored Sherman. Nevertheless, the Confederate commander conducted a campaign that for scientific thrust and parry has seldom been equaled. Acting purely on the defensive, Johnston was all that could be desired — cool, resourceful, careful of his men, impossible to outmaneuver. The situation exactly suited his talents and brought out his great qualities. He retreated, but so skillfully that Sherman gained no ad- vantage. The rank and file, accustomed to Bragg's blunder- ing butcheries, reacted to a generalship that threw away no lives. Presently, the Western army began to exhibit one of the strangest of military phenomena, that of an army in a prolonged retreat giving evidence of a steadily rising morale. There was constant skirmishing and occasionally an en- gagement approaching the magnitude of a battle. At Ken- nesaw Mountain, Sherman suffered a sharp repulse, with considerable loss. Yet he went forward slowly, outflanking Johnston from position to position. Johnston had either to retreat or assault Sherman's trenches. Very properly, he continued to fall back. His slow and uninterrupted retreat now seriously alarmed Davis. If Georgia were occupied by the enemy the Confed- eracy would fall. On May 18, he telegraphed Johnston that a dispatch announcing a further retirement had been "read THE MILITARY GAMBLE 295 with disappointment." Johnston replied, "I know that my dispatch must of necessity create the feeling you express. I have earnestly sought an opportunity to strike the enemy." * By this time Johnston had wisely concluded that a battle with Sherman was out of the question and that the only way to defeat him was by strategy. Forrest had hit upon the proper method early in April, when he suggested to John- ston the advisability of throwing a large force of cavalry in Sherman's rear, in order to capture Nashville and cut the Union communications. Johnston now began to urge the government to take this step — to concentrate the cavalry in the West for the purpose of breaking Sherman's communica- tions and forcing him to retreat. He not only asked this himself; he sought to enlist political support. In the latter part of May, Senator Henry of Georgia wrote to Seddon inquiring if it would not be a good move to send Forrest to cut the enemy's communications. Seddon indorsed the project, but unfortunately he no longer had much influence. The request was referred to Bragg, the arbiter. Bragg announced, with pedantic vague- ness, that the movement had not escaped attention and it was hoped that good results would soon be heard of. Nothing was done, however. Bragg had no intention of accepting Johnston's strategy. He patriotically thirsted for the over- throw of the enemy but malevolently desired the fall of Johnston. As the government would not strike at Sherman's supply railway, the retreat went on, as it was inevitable that it should. Mid- June came, with the retirement steadily con- tinuing, and Davis, who was ignorant of the realities, was a O. R., Series I, 38, Part IV, 736. 296 JEFFERSON DAVIS losing all patience with Johnston. Bragg was satisfied, for he knew that Johnston must soon forfeit his command. On June 17, the military adviser took his first open step against Johnston. All the spring he had been proclaiming that the only hope for the Confederacy was an offensive cam- paign before the enemy could unite his various armies. Now he sent Davis a formal note enumerating the troops at Sherman's disposal, with this commentary, "Should all these troops concentrate on the army of Tennessee, we may well apprehend disaster. As the entire available force of the Confederacy is now concentrated with the two main armies, I see no solution of the difficulty but in victory over one of the enemy's armies before the combination can be fully perfected." * At this very time, Johnston was urging in dispatch after dispatch that Forrest be sent with all the cavalry in the West to break the railroad along which Sherman was advanc- ing, the only practicable way to defeat a raid that was de- veloping into a formidable invasion. If Sherman's com- munications were broken he would have to retreat or as- sault Johnston's trenches, with every probability of meeting with disaster. The general managed to impress his views on the leading men of Georgia; and Howell Cobb, Davis's friend, now joined in the request that Forrest's cavalry be employed in Sherman's rear. Cobb carried some weight with the President, but unhap- pily Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia added his appeal to the others. Davis detested Brown, and with very good reason, for the Georgia governor had opposed and thwarted him in every way. Brown's interference strengthened the President's determination not to give Johnston the desired x O. R., Series I, 38, Part IV, 762. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 297 assistance. He replied to Brown that the disparity between the opposing armies in Georgia was less than elsewhere. (This is almost exactly the language used by Bragg.) For- rest's command was already operating on one of Sherman's lines, he added, and was needed for the defense of Mississippi. 1 This shows that at the end of June, 1864, Jefferson Davis was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. He thought that Sherman's army was weaker than it was and that Johnston's was stronger. For this belief Braxton Bragg was responsible, for he had deliberately cultivated it for months; and yet Davis himself is much to blame for ac- cepting at their face value the statements of a man who had hopelessly failed, and who had thus every reason to dis- credit his successor. We forgive crimes in great men, but not stupidity; and in the extent in which Jefferson Davis relied on Bragg there was sheer, crass stupidity. Johnston made numerous appeals to Bragg, as well as to Davis, for Forrest's aid, repeating that he was not strong enough to hold back Sherman. He was appealing to the man who was determined on his overthrow. On June 27, Bragg tartly replied that there was no cavalry to send him, that it was all needed elsewhere. To Davis the military adviser wrote that there was no way to reen force Johnston — at least from Mississippi, where Johnston had better return some of the troops he had drawn rather than to attempt to draw others. This message confirmed Davis in his opinion that Johnston was making unreasonable demands, that he had force enough to win a victory if he would only use it. By this time Bragg was thinking more of overthrowing John- ston than of defeating the enemy, or he would never have 1 0. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 681. 298 JEFFERSON DAVIS advanced the absurd suggestion that the general ought to send back a part of his small army to Mississippi. Another plea from Governor Brown for Forrest's cavalry brought a stinging rebuke from Davis. "Your telegram re- ceived. Your dicta cannot control the distribution of troops in different parts of the Confederate states. Most men in your position would not assume to decide on the value of the services to be rendered by troops in distant positions." 1 Was this not a message of evil augury to send to a poli- tician already disaffected to the government and capable of doing great harm? It is an instance of Jefferson Davis's essentially passionate, impolitic nature. Brown replied, and scored in his reply, "I venture to predict that your official estimates of Sherman's numbers are as incorrect as your official calculations of Missionary Ridge were erroneous." 2 The Georgia governor, however, sought to find a more effective means of awakening the President to a sense of reality than appeals to deaf ears. At that time Senator B. H. Hill happened to be in Georgia, and Hill was a con- sistent supporter of Davis and as close to him as any other politician. Knowing this, Brown sent for him on the last day of June and impressed him with the gravity of the situa- tion and the absolute necessity of having Forrest assail the Union communications. The next day the senator saw Johnston, who confirmed all that Brown had said and de- clared that Sherman could not be beaten except by an at- tack on his line of supply. Hill consented to go to Richmond and make a direct appeal to the President. When he arrived in Richmond, he found Davis raging at Johnston's continuous retreat and 1 0. R., Series I, 38, Part IV, 762. a O. R., Series I, 52, Part II, Supplement, 687. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 299 the requests for more troops and he did not have the nerve to attempt to undeceive him. He telegraphed Johnston what was, in effect, a plea for him to fight in order to satisfy the government: "You must do your work with your present force. For God's sake do it." Bragg had fully indoctrinated Davis with the idea that Johnston had troops enough for his task. As day after day went by without news of a battle, the President's anger grew into intense irritability and obstinacy. On June 23, he informed Bragg that Johnston must be notified that he could have no more troops from Alabama and Mississippi. In fact, the President was still attempting to keep up his system of garrisons and dispersed forces when it was evident that only by immediate and general concentration could the main armies of the Union be met. Johnston was absolutely right. The move against Sher- man's communications offered the one reasonable hope of success. If the communications were broken, Sherman would have to retreat and the lower South would be tem- porarily saved. If they were not broken, he could advance indefinitely. The trouble was that his supply railway was so strongly guarded that it could not be cut by less than 8,000 or 10,000 cavalry. The troops were available, and Forrest was an incomparable leader for such a feat, but to concentrate the cavalry in the West meant the final aban- donment of Davis's defensive system and the opening of Alabama and Mississippi to Union raids. The President, who was very loath to take this step, demanded of Johnston why he did not cut the railroad with the cavalry of his army. Johnston replied that his cavalry was not able to cope with Sherman's, much less make raids. But Davis, bitterly angry with Johnston and convinced that he did not fight simply be- 300 JEFFERSON DAVIS cause he lacked the courage, refused to send the cavalry and, as it turned out, threw away the one last chance of the South to win. In this tragedy, Braxton Bragg was the prin- cipal, Davis the unhappy second. The President, who would not take the risk of laying open territory to the enemy, was considering taking the far greater risk of attacking Sherman's superior army. It was evidently necessary to do something. With every mile of Sherman's advance the peril of a complete breakdown grew. Brown, now wholly at odds with Davis, ventured on a degree of op- position to the government that bordered on treason. He was both angry and disheartened. He hampered the gov- ernment at every turn, refusing food, declining to allow the use of the state railroads, returning a negative to all requests. At the moment of supreme need he kept thousands of able- bodied men out of the army in order to form his state force for home defense. Some of this militia he sent on a short- term loan to Johnston when Atlanta was endangered, but the recruits, though plucky, were of no great value. First and last, he may have robbed the service of 10,000 men, of whom it stood in desperate need. Sherman was so encouraged by Brown's defiance of Davis that he invited the governor and Alexander H. Stephens to a conference with a view of getting Georgia to secede from secessia. Brown and Stephens, however, were not traitors and they declined. Stephens was constitution crazy. Brown was not without patriotism, but he was a popularity hunter and imbued with a hatred for Davis. He thought that Georgia had made enough sacrifices for a doomed cause and he refused to make others. Johnston still had the entire confidence of the army, but as he fell back toward middle Georgia the farmers began to THE MILITARY GAMBLE 301 clamor for his removal; they were terrified by the specter of plunder and ruin that the continued advance of the Union army brought them. This mistaken outcry strengthened Davis in his dawning determination to remove Johnston and replace him with a man who would fight, because it made him believe that such a move would not be altogether un- popular. It was the end toward which Bragg had labored ever since Johnston succeeded to the command of the army. On July 14, Davis returned a final answer to Johnston's demands for Forrest's assistance. He refused, and gave petty reasons for his refusal. If cavalry were withdrawn from Alabama the Tombigbee Valley would be laid open; and if from Mississippi, Selma and the arsenals. On that very day the President was preparing for the final step, for he sent an inquiry to the adjutant-general as to the original size of Johnston's army, the number of reen for cements sent him, and the size of the army at its last return. This was done in order to verify Bragg's assertion that Johnston had had a large army at the opening of the campaign and that his losses, even without battle, had been large. Hood, one of Johnston's corps commanders, had sent Bragg this in- formation. There were no very accurate reports as to the size of the army at Dal ton, but Davis was satisfied that Bragg was right and that the losses had been considerable. Johnston had now no friend at court. Bragg hated him, and Davis and Bragg together had convinced Seddon, his original supporter, that he was no general. Seddon's letters show this. Not a voice was raised in his behalf except that of the newspapers, for it was already bruited that Johnston was to be relieved and the newspapers exhibited great un- easiness. They thoroughly distrusted Davis's judgment. Davis had made up his mind to remove Johnston, but he 302 JEFFERSON DAVIS had not decided on his successor. That most difficult prob- lem gave him sleepless nights and nervous headaches. He need not have troubled himself, however. Bragg had long before made the decision for him, though the military adviser played out the comedy of a pretended examination of the military situation. Bragg went to Atlanta to get firsthand information for the President, arriving there on July 13, a coincidence that almost seems to justify superstition. His real errand was to make arrangements for the transfer of the army to another. He was not wholly moved by per- sonal animus, but partly by the retreat itself. His intelli- gence was not sufficient to enable him to appreciate John- ston's strategy. He was essentially a fighting soldier who hated trenches, withdrawals and all other methods of avoid- ing shock. In a way, indeed, he was a heroic soul, for he was a fighter who did not like to fight. It always took him agonizing efforts to screw his nerve up to fight, and yet he fought. Fearing the enemy greatly, he stood his ground — usually, with unfortunate results. Yet his main motive was hatred of Johnston, who had succeeded him and who was as popular as he was unpopular. He designated Hood for the command of the army since he could not hope to have it himself. Bragg had become thick with Hood while the latter was at Richmond con- valescing from a desperate wound received at Chicka- mauga. The fierce soldier, albeit minus a leg, was an object of interest to the girls of the capital, who greatly petted him. Hood saw much of the President, too, and rode out with him. He learned from Bragg how to ap- proach Davis acceptably. Once Davis, in a fit of anger, denounced some officers to Hood, who turned suddenly and said, "Mr. President, why don't you come and lead us your- THE MILITARY GAMBLE 303 self? I would follow you to the death." This was so exactly in Bragg's style that it must have been pleasing to the harassed Davis, who still liked to fancy himself a great soldier. At all events, Hood left Richmond a lieutenant general and it was rumored at the time that he was con- sidered for the command of the Western army. Davis would not make such a move without consulting Lee. On July 12, he told the latter, "General Johnston has failed, and there are strong indications that he will abandon Atlanta. Seems necessary to relieve him. What think you of Hood?" The next day Davis sent a second message stating that Johnston had an ample cavalry force and that he was able to stop Sherman but would not. Unhappily, Lee did not give an outright answer. He so feared doing Hood an injustice that he refrained from say- ing that his former subordinate was unfit to command an army, though he implied it. He wrote, "It is a bad time to release the commander of an army situated as that of Ten- nessee. We may lose Atlanta, and the army too. [An ex- cellent forecast.] Hood is a bold fighter. I am doubtful as to other qualifications necessary." And again, "Hood is a good fighter, very industrious on the battlefield, careless off, and I have no opportunity of judging of his action when the whole responsibility rested upon him. I have a high opinion of his gallantry, earnestness and zeal." * This un- satisfactory opinion did not turn Davis from his determina- tion, though he might have seen, if he had read between the lines, that Lee credited Hood with all the qualifications of a general but brains. But possibly Davis believed that Bragg at Atlanta would supply the brains. What he wanted was a man of action to carry out Bragg's plans. There are strong 1 Lee's Dispatches (Freeman), 282, 284. 304 JEFFERSON DAVIS indications that both he and Bragg expected the latter to be the real commander, with Hood as figurehead. Thus, Bragg would be restored malgre the nation and the nation's will. Bragg, on his arrival at Atlanta, telegraphed Davis that the signs pointed to the evacuation of that city. It was on this point that Davis took his stand; in fact, he had ar- ranged with Bragg before his departure that this was to be the test demanded of Johnston. The President had asked assurances of the commander that he would fight to keep Atlanta, the most important railway junction in the lower South. Johnston returned no definite reply. Now Bragg reported that Atlanta was to be given up, later adding, "Our army depleted. 10,000 less than the return of June 10. I find but little to encourage." The military adviser had not gone to Atlanta to find anything encouraging, and naturally he found what he sought. Bragg was constantly with Hood, but saw little of John- ston. Hood declared that Johnston had lost several chances to fight battles at an advantage and that the army had diminished by 20,000 men. He, Hood, had urged battle so often that he had gained the reputation of being reckless. 1 Bragg informed Davis that the situation could be im- proved in only one way, by offensive action. He had been saying the same thing ever since February. He was candid enough, however, to add a premise which, to a cooler mind, would have condemned his conclusion: "Position, numbers and morale are now with the enemy." Yet, in spite of that terrible trinity of disadvantages, he counseled attack, and Hood agreed. "The morale," Bragg went on, "though dam- aged, of course [by the retreat from Dalton] is still good." 1 O. R., Series I, 38, Part V, 879. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 305 One might infer from Bragg's tone that the morale when he himself resigned soon after Missionary Ridge was high, and that it had been lowered by Johnston's cautious methods. He underestimated Sherman's strength and gave the impres- sion that there was a reasonable chance of defeating the Union army in battle. He suggested Hood if a new com- mander was to be appointed, which was a mere formality. His postscript is instructive, as it shows his rancor against Johnston: "As General J. has not sought my advice, nor even afforded me a fair opportunity of giving my opinion, I have obtruded neither upon him. Such will continue to be my course." i Altogether, Davis was ill-served by his agent. It would hardly be the truth to say that Bragg intentionally misled him, because Bragg himself was probably misled by Hood, who was in turn overcome by ambition and impatience to fight. The net result was that Jefferson Davis conceived a wholly misleading view of the situation and serenely plunged down into Avernus. The President himself was very blame- worthy in the matter. He had put Bragg in a false position by sending him on such a mission, for it is too severe a test of human nature to set up a derided failure as the judge of a beloved successor. It was natural for Bragg to wish to visit on Johnston the bitter humiliation he himself had suffered. Davis should never have given such an oppor- tunity to so interested a party. He should have sent an unbiased investigator to Atlanta. The result of Davis's confidence in his military adviser, wedded to Bragg's fundamentally unsound judgment and his animosity against Johnston, was a decision to stake the future of the country on the chance of winning a victory 1 0. R., Series I, 38, Part V, 880. 306 JEFFERSON DAVIS by hurling an inferior force on a superior army protected by trenches. It was simply throwing dice with Fate, and with Fate's loaded dice. There was no rational hope of success, but the actors in the tragedy were all irrational. Davis was warped by Bragg's long-continued insinuations against Johnston and by his own distrust of the officer; Bragg was daft with rancor; and Hood was beside him- self with the ambition of showing himself another Jackson. Yet Davis was assailed by misgivings at the last moment and he asked Bragg if it would not be best, after all, to put For- rest on Sherman's communications. Bragg's reply, on July 15, is a model of fatuousness: "I am decidedly opposed, as it would perpetuate the past and present policy which he [Johnston] has advised and now sustains. Any change will be attended with some objections. This one could do no good." x This message decided the matter. One mission with which Bragg was charged was to sound Hood on his willingness to attack Sherman: Davis wished to make certain on this score. Hood informed Bragg of his entire confidence in his ability to defeat Sherman, which assurance settled the last doubt. What more impressive lesson could there be of the value of self-confidence! When Bragg telegraphed Davis that Hood was unafraid, the President resolved to give him the command. The consummation toward which Bragg and Hood had worked so long had been reached. On July 17, Adjutant-General Cooper telegraphed John- ston that as he had failed to stop the advance of the enemy and expressed no confidence in his ability to defeat them he was relieved and Hood was appointed in his place. Johnston wept tears of mortification in secret, but he was x O. R., Series I, 52, Part IV, 707. THE MILITARY GAMBLE 307 too patriotic to find consolation in reflecting on the certain doom of his successor. The news of the change was heard through the country with dismay, though there was a faint hope in some quarters that a genius had come to light in the person of Hood. The newspapers that did not condemn the President's action were non committal. The atmosphere of the Confederacy was tense with anxiety, as the people recognized that a step had been taken which would be fol- lowed by decisive victory or decisive defeat. Fear out- weighed hope. For the first time in the war, Jefferson Davis had ven- tured to make a radical appointment. His former selec- tions for high places had been soldiers of reputation, such as. Lee, the two Johnstons, and Beauregard, or personal friends, such as Bragg and Pemberton. Now he picked out a young man he had known but slightly. He had de- cided to discover talent. John B. Hood was an officer of rising reputation. He had, of course, the one thing needful — a diploma from West Point. Fame had come to him as the head of a Texas brigade, the best in the service. He had risen as far as division general under Lee, had then been so lucky as to win Bragg's friendship, and was successively made corps general and army commander. His chief exploit as leader of a corps had been to criticize Johnston's strategy: he was now to have an opportunity to prove Johnston wrong. A born fighter, a perfect animal organism without knowledge of fear, he was little affected by wounds that would have killed men of less superabundant vitality. In appearance, as in character, he was the typical Nordic fighting man, with his stalwart presence, his blue eyes and his long golden beard. He might have been Cceur de Lion reincarnated. It shows 308 JEFFERSON DAVIS how unerringly race tells that in the last crisis of the Con- federacy, when a fighter was demanded, the choice fell on this pure-blooded Nordic, this descendant of the viking past. The corps and* division generals received the new com- mander with silent dismay; he had not impressed them as a genius. Hardee, who had been considered a second time for the command, felt the indignity of serving under a young and inexperienced man. Having no confidence in Hood and Hood's — or Bragg's — aggressive policy, the gen- erals could not lend hearty cooperation to the butchery they saw was pending. Indeed, the corps generals, including Hood, asked the President not to make a change of com- manders in such a crisis, but Davis. replied that the act could not be undone. Then Hood accepted the charge. It was Bragg's theory that Johnston had injured the morale of the army by keeping it behind trenches. Ap- parently, he did not reflect that Sherman had not lowered the Union morale by using trenches; Sherman was one of the first great masters of trench warfare. Bragg was of the impression that the tone of the army of Tennessee would be improved by another bleeding; he did not consider that it was an army that had suffered all things because of bad generalship and had hoped for nothing until Johnston came to command it. Bragg and Hood now arranged for an attack on the enemy, which took place on July 22. The Union troops were driven from some rows of trenches, but the Confederate losses, as might have been foreseen, were much the greater. Hood claimed a victory and Bragg wrote Davis that the moral effect of the battle had been admirable and that the enemy had suffered more than the Southerners. "He was badly defeated and completely failed in one of his bold THE MILITARY GAMBLE 309 flanking movements, heretofore so successful." But the fiction that a victory had been gained could not be kept up, for Sherman was closing in on Atlanta from all sides. Bragg now went away to Alabama, possibly repelled by Hood, possibly prophetic of coming events. He had succeeded in his design: he had overthrown Johnston. Only the Con- federacy was to fall with Johnston. Sherman continued his flanking movements, and Hood, after several more engagements, found himself unable to check them. At the beginning of September, Sherman reached the railroads behind Atlanta, and Hood was forced to give up the town after another fruitless fight. He sent word to Davis that the loss of Atlanta was immaterial, but the news flashed through the South and the world that the great Confederate strategic point had fallen. The country was raving. The press and the public had witnessed Hood's substitution for Johnston with grave mis- givings. Dumbfounded consternation passed into wild de- nunciation over the defeat of the army and the loss of Atlanta. In that moment of national agony, Jefferson Davis was really repudiated by the Southern people. XIII WANTED A CROMWELL JEFFERSON DAVIS had failed. It is beside the question to argue whether he had failed well or ignobly, whether another in his place would have done better or worse. As a matter of fact, he had made a great and cred- itable effort, even though it had been in vain. Still he had failed and could not be expected to do aught but go on failing to the end. But for the Constitution of the United States, with which the Confederacy had burdened itself, there can be no doubt that Davis would have been superseded after the fall of Atlanta — a referendum would have retired him overwhelmingly — but the constitution kept him in power despite his mistakes and the will of the people. If the South was to be saved, Davis must be set aside for some one whom the people trusted sufficiently to follow. There was but one possible hope, and that was a military dictatorship. Yet for this a revolution would be necessary, a radical revo- lution within the conservative secession revolution. The sole question was whether this last-hope revolution would occur, or whether the country would quietly perish under its con- stitutional authorities. Jefferson Davis had done his best, and that had been a great deal. He had not been able, however, to seize those chances on which the success of the South depended. He had not invaded the North when invasion promised much; 310 WANTED A CROMWELL 311 on the defensive he had not employed the interior lines of communication to advantage; he had not bought up cotton and exported it in the early period; he had not approached Eu r ope with tempting offers; he had not mobilized the negroes to recruit his waning armies; he had made disastrous appointments to high command. Such is the indictment of Davis: it has been often made and is familiar. What is less known is the much that he laboriously and bravely accomplished. It is the story of a national patching-out seldom equaled; of turning a mob into an army; of raking a country without gunneries for arms and equipment; of building homemade warships out of scrap iron and of buying a navy in Europe sub rosa; of making some sort of transportation system out of a series of one-horse railroads; of improvising administrative depart- ments without buildings and officials; of conducting a great war on fiat currency; of getting food and clothing for sol- diers by impressment and taxes in kind; of manufacturing munitions without chemicals; of so juggling as to have effi- cient rule without fatally violating states' rights; of making bricks without straw. Such are some of the counts to the credit of Jefferson Davis. In the autumn of 1864, the Southern people thought only of the mistakes, not the accomplishments. The country was perishing; the cause was visibly failing. Jefferson Davis, still at the head of the government, if discredited, had to think of something to do. He had again to take up his weary burden. The situation had to be faced. What would he do? With all his dislike of Johnston, the President could not fail to see that Hood had not bettered matters by losing several battles and 10,000 men. Accordingly, he made his 312 JEFFERSON DAVIS third important trip of the war in September, 1864, visiting Hood's camp in Georgia and consulting the general. The visit was marked by a disquieting incident. Once while the President was reviewing the troops, he was greeted with cries of "Give us General Johnston I" 1 The tumult did not last long, but it revealed the temper of the army. Hood offered to resign, but Davis would not accede. Beaure- gard was made head of the department, and Hood was con- tinued in command of the army. Davis no longer believed in him, but he was too obstinate to remove a man whom he had elevated against the will of the country. New plans had to be devised. By this time Hood had had enough of attacking Sherman; and, much too late, John- ston's despised strategy was adopted. It was decided that Hood should march northward and destroy Sherman's com- munications. Most imprudently, the President advertised the plan in a speech at Macon, Georgia, made by him in an effort to rally the ebbing spirits of the people. He went on to Montgomery, speaking along the way to unenthusiastic crowds thoroughly weary of the war. Sherman was troubled for only a moment by the threat against his rear. He advanced toward Hood, who declined to give battle and withdrew to the north. Hood believed that the destruction of the Union communications might force a retreat. Unfortunately, the supply railroad, so all-important while Sherman was in the mountains, no longer mattered now that he had reached the great grainfields and had only to march to the seacoast to meet a provisioning fleet. So when Hood began to tear up the railway, Sherman began, undisturbed, his descent to the sea. Hood's conduct was that of distraction. He who so *J. B. Hood, Advance and Retreat, 253. WANTED A CROMWELL 313 shortly before had been confident of his ability to beat Sher- man now thought that resistance to the latter was hopeless. His only plan was to push into Tennessee and attack the Union garrisons there on the chance that Sherman would be forced to return north to protect them. It was the old plan of the spring — an invasion of Tennessee — essayed un- der conditions seldom paralleled in war. A defeated gen- eral was moving away from the enemy, leaving them un- opposed, in order to invade the enemy country. The movement was comic-opera generalship. Nothing could be accomplished by driving the Union garrisons out of Tennessee, for they would immediately return on the in- evitable Confederate retreat. To hold the state permanently was now unthinkable. Davis's enemies charged him with concocting this scheme. The charge has this much probability, that Hood's move- ment was the offensive that Bragg had urged in the spring and that the President desired to have attempted. Yet Hood specifically declares that the plan was his and that Davis neither suggested it nor approved of it. He states that Davis wanted a battle fought on the edge of Tennessee, thinking that the army was still strong enough to oppose Sherman. If this statement is true, Hood moved into Ten- nessee in order to avoid the battle and to do something, since he had to do something. He was probably right in leaving Sherman, for the wreck of an army he now commanded could have accomplished little by merely dogging the footsteps of the Union host. The one thing that promised anything at all was a feint against Tennessee, to be followed by a rapid shifting of the army to Richmond in concert with a general concentration of all available troops at that point. Lee then might have 314 JEFFERSON DAVIS been able to attack Grant with a hope of success. This was the South's only possibility of victory in the autumn of 1864. But it was a forlorn hope. Lee, however, was too much occupied with his own army to formulate such a plan and Hood was left to his devices. With Forrest's efficient aid — for Forrest, much too late, had been ordered to join the main army — Hood advanced toward Nashville. But the Confederates marched with a prevision of doom and only out of a devoted sense of duty; and the corps generals threw away an opportunity to win a victory over a Union detachment moving to Nashville. The Unionists took up a strong position at Franklin, and the unhappy Southern leader could think of nothing but one of his costly assaults on trenches. This attack was more costly than any before. The unfortunate Confederates, sent by wretched generalship up a steep hill against entrenched troops armed with modern artillery and repeating rifles, were mowed down by thousands; among those who fell was the brilliant and devoted Cleburne. Seldom have sol- diers shown greater bravery and discipline than the South- erners at Franklin, for they were without hope and knew that they were commanded by one now little better than an imbecile. They even won a victory, since they succeeded in driving off the Unionists in the end, but it was the hollow- est of victories. Hood continued his insanity by advancing to Nashville and taking up a position confronting a larger army under Thomas. Here he remained for some time, though he had no intention of making an attack. It is probable that he had ceased to think at all. Thomas made his preparations with deliberation and then proceeded to destroy his ad- versary. The Confederates were utterly routed and were in WANTED A CROMWELL 315 a desperate position, north of the Tennessee River and desti- tute of supplies and clothing. The cavalry pursuing them was alone as numerous as the fugitive Southerners. Never- theless, the remnant escaped and persisted as an army by an exhibition of gameness that commands all admiration. The story of Hood's retreat is one of honor: hopeless, starv- ing, freezing, trampling barefoot through the slush, the thin line that was the rear guard formed time and again across the snowy fields and drove back the blue masses of cavalry with sheets of flame. The line of ragamuffins could not be broken, and the pitiful handful of survivors recrossed the Tennessee with colors still flying. Here Hood closed a career of disaster by resigning. The gamble had turned out in favor of the bank. In December, 1864, with catastrophe crowding on catastrophe, Davis's health utterly failed for a time. For days he remained in his house, and the rumor spread in Richmond that he was at the point of death. In fact his nerves had completely collapsed. He was shattered, wracked with neuralgia, unable to work. But his will soon rallied, and by Christmas he was back in his office, haggard and thinner than ever but master of himself. It was observed, however, that he shunned all business except appointments. With the inevitable staring him in the face, he found a cer- tain respite from thought in plunging into routine details, which had always given him pleasure. Plans and policies were nothing now but hopeless dreams. The people were demanding a new leader in place of the President who had failed. It is the worst of fallacies to think that the Southerners were less ardent in their desire for independence at the close of 1864 than in 1862. Early in the war there was still a strong feeling of attachment to 316 JEFFERSON DAVIS the old Union among the people, a certain desire for recon- struction. By 1864 the Southern people looked on them- selves as a nation and on the Unionists as foreign invaders. The loose confederacy of slave states had grown into a real nationality which continued until 1898 and another war, when the United States may be said to have merged into the American nation. If anything was needed to stimulate the last passions of patriotism in the South, it was supplied by the ravages of Sheridan in Virginia and Sherman in Georgia. The Southern people were not conquered by this severity: on the contrary they were so stimulated by fury that the war would have burst out with renewed energy if a national leader had come forward. National leader there was in the person of Robert E. Lee. The great general commanded the love and confidence of the South. His nobility of character had something to do with his immense popularity, but his success much more, for almost to the last the colors of his army waved in triumph. There might be defeat and surrender every- where else, but the army of Virginia under his leadership remained proud and confident. His troops still calmly be- lieved in their superiority to the Union foe. Yet the time had come when Lee could do nothing more as a mere army commander. He was the subordinate of a government that had lost the trust of the people. Davis still held the reins, still directed affairs. The people be- lieved in Lee as fully as they disbelieved in Davis. But Lee as a subordinate was somewhat aloof from them: the government stood between. It was a situation which offered much to an ambitious man who was also a man of action, for an ambitious man would not have been troubled by con- stitutional scruples in such a crisis. War is a relentless test WANTED A CROMWELL 317 and has no respect for duly-constituted authority: its sole criterion is efficiency. Davis had failed and it made no difference that he was the constitutional ruler. Lee had succeeded to a large extent in his individual sphere and the hour had come for him to be the head of the nation. If he had demanded the dictatorship, there can be no question but what the act would have been rapturously ap- plauded by the people. Two years before a dictatorship had been talked of in the newspapers, and the suggestion was familiar to all. The talk quickened into a demand for a dictator in the last days of 1864 as it became increasingly evident that Jefferson Davis, whatever his merits, v/as wholly unable to meet the situation that was arising from the con- quest of the lower South by Sherman. It was a situation somewhat similar to the crises in which Julius Caesar, Crom- well and Napoleon had made themselves the head of the state. A dictatorship would be illegal, of course — but why consider legality with the invader at the door! Everything hinged on Lee's attitude. If he was willing, the coup d'etat would be easily effected. Indeed, Congress might be enlisted to give an appearance of legality to it: Con- gress would have gone to great lengths to get rid of the President. There is a tradition that William C. Rives, earlier a supporter of Davis, actually offered Lee the dicta- torship in the name of a congressional junta and that Lee refused it. If this is true, Congress was right. A dictator might have done many things impossible for a constitu- tional government: seized the railroads, impressed food wherever found, drafted thousands of negroes, sacrificed everything to put troops in the field by early spring. It was necessary, however, for Lee to strike for himself, and in no uncertain terms. He could not inspire the nation 318 JEFFERSON DAVIS to the supreme effort demanded as the subordinate of the derided President, whom the nation had repudiated. Lee would not raise his hand against the Lord's anointed, and whatever chance the South had passed swiftly. There are two gods worshiped by the great spirits of this world, the God of Success and the God of Virtue. It would be a mistake to imagine that the God of Success is not an exacting master; in fact, he demands every surrender from his devotees, including that of honor. But he gives victory, great and glorious. His votaries are such as Csesar, Crom- well and Napoleon. Those who bow down before the God of Virtue are the kind of Washington and Lee — men who play the game with all their strength but strictly by the rules. If they cannot win by the rules, they lose. Often they lose, but so honorably that they almost make failure seem better than success. Lee could not have brought himself to over- throw the government and seize the dictatorship because to do that would have been against his nature, all sincerity and loyalty. Within what he considered the exact limits of his authority and his duty he did all that was in his power to win. He would not overstep those limits an inch. If the cause could not succeed under its authorized government, it must fail. His life was his country's; his honor was his own. To a less scrupulous man the temptation must have been great. Congress was in open opposition to the hard-driven President. It was a body much reviled at the time and neglected since, but it was in the main genuinely patriotic and well-meaning. In the early period of the war it followed Davis's recommendations closely, but as the war began to go against the South its attitude changed. It was long in asserting itself, for it had no historical position comparable to that of the United States Congress, of which it was but a WANTED A CROMWELL 319 feeble wraith. The Southern body was the creature of a day, condemned to occupy lodgings in the Virginia statehouse, where the Senate was poorly accommodated: it was separated from the spectators merely by a railing. Thus the dignity that tradition and proper externals supply was wanting. Davis held a clear majority in the First Congress. But the military disasters of 1863 and the growing dissatisfaction of the people were reflected in the election of the Second Congress in the year of Vicksburg. Many opponents of Davis were chosen, and Davis's majority vanished. From the beginning of 1864 until the end of the war he faced a steadily rising opposition that might well have culminated in a revolution if a leader had appeared. The foremost men in Congress were Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb and Robert Barnwell; and next to them, Wig- fall of Texas, "fierce, impatient, incandescent; Orr, of South Carolina, an excellent man in the committee-room, but as heavy and blundering as a school-boy in his speeches; and Hill, of Georgia, the very picture of smooth and plausible mediocrity, inclining to the administration of the President, but at an angle nice and variable." 1 In the House of Representatives were "Foote, a voluble debater, but afflicted with extravagance and a colicky deliv- ery; William Porcher Miles, of South Carolina, smooth, scrupulously dressed, a master of deportment, and a type in- deed of the truest cultivation; Barksdale, of Mississippi, the especial friend and champion of Mr. Davis, the leader of the administration party in the House, a small, dark-featured man who spoke vehemently; James Lyons, of Virginia, who was satisfied with the shallow reputation of the 'handsome member.' " 1 Pollard, 311. 320 JEFFERSON DAVIS Davis was not very close to Congress. Cobb, Barnwell and Hill were in his confidence to some extent and saw him frequently; but the ablest men, Toombs and Wigfall, were in opposition and the minor members were not kept well in hand. Opponents were not conciliated. The most galling adversary was Wigfall, who constituted himself the especial champion of Joseph E. Johnston and directed a bitter criti- cism of the government's military policy. In the final period, the controversy of Davis and Johnston over the operations in Georgia in the summer of 1864 came to be the great issue in Southern politics. Davis's most dangerous enemy was Stephens, the Vice President, who openly denounced the administration in speeches that did much to spread dis- satisfaction and who was echoed in the House of Represen- tatives by Foote, the President's lifelong enemy. Stephens, like Lee, was a worshiper of the God of Virtue, but, unlike Lee, he was an insane votary. Lee's attitude was simply that of absolute loyalty to the government in whose service he drew his sword. Stephens went back of the government to the constitution, of which he made himself the especial guardian. His was the monomania of consti- tutional liberty. In his devotion to the letter of liberty he was willing to sacrifice liberty itself, preferring to see the cause go down in ruin rather than sanction an unconstitu- tional enlargement of the executive power. Or, rather, in his doctrinaire infatuation, he believed that strict constitu- tionalism had some traumaturgic virtue by means of which success could be miraculously compelled. Was the cause languishing, disaster impending? It was all due to the autocracy of Jefferson Davis, the illegal conscription, the Tax in Kind, this and that infraction of the constitution; and Stephens had a witch doctor's nose for smelling out infrac- WANTED A CROMWELL 321 tions of the constitution. If the President would only be strictly constitutional, the people would rally to him and the cause would flourish! Needless to say, this was insanity. It was a noble mad- ness, however — one sadly needed now — and it would not have been without its value but for its desperate unseason- ableness. As it was, Stephens caused the government more trouble than all the traitors combined: every form 'of resistance and malingering drew encouragement from him. He began his active opposition in 1862 with the conscription. He declared that this measure was both illegal and un- necessary. He seems to have believed that a simple appeal to the people would have immediately brought forward an abundance of volunteers, a gross fallacy. In fact, the fragile, embittered Georgian, like many other men of intelligence in civil affairs, was totally destitute of military understanding. He continued to go about making speeches against the draft — one before the Georgia legislature in March, 1864 — and seriously embarrassed the authorities in executing the law. The government would have been justified in imprisoning him, his activities were so mischievous. So much for the wisdom of attempting to reconcile Unionists to secession by electing one of them Vice President! Policy, in thy name what idiocies are committed! In Congress and out, Stephens continued his opposition to the government. 1 Any effort at strong government en- raged him, for he could not understand why a state engaged in a struggle for existence should depart in the least from peace methods. In a speech in April, 1864, against the suspension of the habeas corpus, he declared that independ- ence was of no value without liberty and that if he must 1 Louis Pendleton, Alexander H. Stephens, 296. 322 JEFFERSON DAVIS have a master he cared little whether that master was North- ern or Southern. 1 The habeas corpus was suspended for the sufficient reason that it was being used to defeat conscrip- tion and rescue dangerous military offenders. Stephens's accusations of tyranny injured the government and en- couraged malcontents everywhere. Worst of all was his continual wailing for peace, as if peace were to be had for wailing. He believed, in his in- fatuation, that the South could have peace whenever it desired it, if only the obstinate and perverse Davis would make overtures. Wearied with his unending demands to open negotiations, the President permitted him to men- tion peace in a mission he was sent on in 1863 about the exchange of prisoners. The effort was a complete failure, as the Northern government made no response. Worse, Stephens's eager babbling revealed to the astute politicians in Washington the deep despondency prevailing in the South. 2 This miscarriage had no effect on the Vice Presi- dent: he continued to propagate the belief that only Davis's obstinacy stood between the country and peace, an idea as false as it was mischievous. Lastly, his black pessimism, openly displayed, disheartened every one who came within his influence. He seems never to have had much hope of success and completely to have given up the fight early in the war. What kind of peace he hoped for it is impossible to say, for he was incoherent, but it appears to have been nothing but a return to the Union under some kind of vague compromise agreement, as if the subject of slavery could be still compromised on! So untrue was it that Jefferson Davis stood in the way 1 Jones, 2, 187. 2 Pendleton, 311. WANTED A CROMWELL 323 of peace that in July, 1864, he incurred the wrath of the Richmond newspapers by an undignified and undiplomatic grasping at the possibility of opening negotiations. He re- ceived two obscure Northerners who came to Richmond and let them know of his entire willingness to treat with Washington. "Here come two ignorant, impudent Yankee characters," said the Examiner y "picked up at the first street corner, without credentials or character, who got in one day a complete anterior view of the dispositions and opinions of the Confederate government." 1 This move was so unlike Davis that it may have been advised by Benjamin, who understood the urgent need of doing something and would have liked to get in touch with the Northern government. Peace talk continued, and peace discussions occupied the time of Congress. Foote demanded the opening of negotia- tions on the plain basis of surrender. Early in 1865, Stephens in the Senate moved for the appointment of com- missioners to confer with the Union government. About this time, the prominent Francis P. Blair was permitted to come to Richmond on a confidential mission to suggest a way of ending the war by the joint action of the opposing armies in Mexico. The proposal was a mere pretext, a scheme for laying bare the depression of the Southern leaders. The peace party, however, hailed Blair's coming with delight. Davis was not deceived, but he was persuaded by Benjamin to open negotiations. The President probably wished to hoist Stephens with his own petard. Stephens had proclaimed that peace was to be had for the asking: Davis now sent him to procure it. The President himself would not be a party to the farce, declining to meet Lincoln, as Blair suggested. He appointed 1 January 6, 1865. 324 JEFFERSON DAVIS Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter and former Supreme Court jus- tice James A. Campbell to represent him. Stephens actually seems to have set off with hope, a fact that illustrates his fundamental absurdity better than words. The futility of negotiations at once appeared when put to the test. Lincoln and Seward met the three Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads and offered no concessions whatever. They had but played, through Blair, with the Southern leaders, who frankly revealed their utter hopelessness. The Presi- dent and Secretary of State went back to Washington with the comfortable assurance that the war was over. If the Confederacy had had any further vitality, the Hampton Roads Conference would have been damaging; but, as it was, the expiring patient was beyond injury. The incident closed the malapropos career of Stephens as a Confederate — a career in which he had done nothing for the cause and much against it, not from want of pa- triotism but from lack of common sense. Stephens was a very high man, above personal considerations. Indeed, alone in American history, he recalls the character of Cato. But an idealism incurable by fact, grief over the separation of the South from the Union and the horrors of war distracted his impressionable mind and made him a liability to his country and one of the causes of its overthrow. He is an excellent illustration of the evil a good man may do when he becomes divorced from sanity. The fiasco of the peace mission strengthened Davis for a moment, though only for a moment. A mass meeting of citizens in the African church in Richmond in March, 1865, listened to the greatest speech of his life as he strove to arouse the people to a new determination to conquer. He spoke with such power that the audience was carried away WANTED A CROMWELL 325 and cheered wildly. Eleventh hour speeches, however, could not change the course of events. At another meeting, Benjamin boldly announced the government's intention to make negro soldiers a large factor in the war. Yes, with his back to the wall, Jefferson Davis had come to this! More, on Benjamin's persuasion, France was secretly in- formed that the Confederacy was willing to abandon slavery. Indeed, Davis was prepared to adopt any course, make any sacrifice that would avert the doom of the falling state. All too late! The government had been inevitably driven to tap the one source of man power left. Cleburne's plan, completely squelched at the beginning of 1864, now bore fruit. 1 The idea spread and was generally approved. Jefferson Davis, however, in his conservatism would probably have hesitated still longer but for the advice of Benjamin and the urgings of Lee, who wanted negro soldiers. In his message to Con- gress of November, 1864, the President actually, though not openly, asked for the enlistment of blacks. On account of the desperate condition of affairs, Congress did not op- pose the request, as it would otherwise doubtless have done. It dallied instead. The two sets of weary lawyers that made up Congress fiddled while Rome burned, after the im- memorial custom of lawyers. They ineptly debated and amended while the nation swiftly perished. Whatever merit Davis's proposal might have had in the first place was dis- sipated by the feeble and dilatory conduct of Congress, which finally, in the last weeks of the Confederacy, actually got a slave-soldier bill passed. This slowness was due in part to the public distrust of the idea and partly to the President's unpopularity. If the measure had been in- *J. A. Buck, Cleburne and his Command, 212. 326 JEFFERSON DAVIS troduced by Davis's opponents, it would have fared better. There was a pet Southern theory, slowly yielding to hard fact, that negroes would not make soldiers, and Congress continually dwelt on it. Why enlist men, it was argued, who would be of no service? Besides, the little politicians were not prepared to emancipate slaves in order to provide soldiers, though Davis, Benjamin and Lee were completely reconciled to it. Chambers of Mississippi said in Congress: "The negroes will not fight. All history shows that." Simson of South Carolina (sotto voce): "The Yankees make them fight." Lester of Georgia: "Not much." Marshall, of course of Kentucky: "Fill them with whiskey and they will fight." * The interminable deliberations of Congress were hurried by Lee. He, practical man, wanted soldiers — black, if white were no longer available. In January, 1865, he urged the state of Virginia to enroll negroes, admitting that slavery must be given up. Congress dallied a month longer, when, at last, a bill for enlisting 200,000 blacks was introduced in the Senate. It was voted down by a large majority: R. M. T. Hunter was pronounced in his opposition. 2 Lee, desperate for men, reiterated his request. Barksdale, the administration leader, thereupon offered in the House a bill for raising 300,000 negro troops which threw on the states the duty of supplying them and the onus of deciding whether they were to be free or not. Virginia had already decided to enlist negroes, and Congress followed its example. 1 Eocmniner, November n, 1864. 2 American Historical Review, 18, 298. WANTED A CROMWELL 327 Barksdale's bill became law on March 9, precisely a month before Lee's surrender. At that late date it was, of course, quite useless. The effort to reen force the army with blacks failed partly because it became involved with the congressional revolt against Davis. Congress was outraged because Hood re- mained in command of the Western army. A less thin- skinned man than Jefferson Davis would have removed Hood after the fall of Atlanta and replaced Johnston in com- mand. But writhing under the public condemnation and maddened by the horrible results of his meddling, the Presi- dent stubbornly clung to Hood with a king-can-do-no-wrong gesture. It was not loyalty to an incapable ; it was not mere obstinacy aroused to fury by opposition; but it was the set purpose of pain, the resolution of the victim on the rack who sets his teeth and refuses to give way. Davis was, indeed, stretched on the rack of a tough world. His credit was long since gone; he was assailed, denounced, or ignored. Gladstone made no more speeches hailing him the founder of a nation; his name was no longer coupled with Washington's. Nothing fails like failure. Malice domestic was added to the foreign levy of the enemy by the constant attacks made on him in Congress. Foote in the House and Wigfall in the Senate were his ever-active enemies. An action of the Virginia legislature quickened the congressional insurgency against the President. In Janu- ary, 1865, the legislature ventured to ask Davis to appoint a commander in chief of the armies. This was a direct attack on the executive as military director. Davis met it with admirable self-control, replying that Lee had once been commander in chief (i.e., military adviser) and that he would be glad to appoint Lee to the position once more when prac- 328 JEFFERSON DAVIS ticable. The legislature, which aimed to have the military control taken from Davis's hands, not to have Lee made a sort of chief of staff, was nonplused. Congress, however, now took up the gage. It passed a bill creating the office of commander in chief and called for the reinstatement of Johnston to the Western command. The Johnston resolution passed the Senate by a vote of 20 to 2 ; and the fact that the only two men voting against it were the dyed-in-the-wool administration supporters, Barn- well and Hill, shows how little strength the President had in Congress. The measure was nothing less than an effort to supersede him for all practical purposes, for military affairs were all that he had to handle now. Diplomacy, finance, everything else had gone by the board. Davis parried the blow with great dexterity. He ap- pointed Lee commander in chief and allowed him, in that capacity, to appoint Johnston to the Western army. Thus the President was spared the mortification of proclaiming his mistake to the world and reelevating the man he hated. Moreover, he was still in control of the armies. Lee con- tinued to act under him. The nation saw that the President had not been displaced. The revolution, from which for a moment much was expected, thus came to nothing. Lee refused to play his part in the comedy. With the failure of Congress to overthrow Davis, the last hope of the Confederacy swiftly faded. The people would no longer support the government; the armies were wasting away and there were no recruits. A parliamentary system would have brought in a new government; but the rigid American system, which, in this case, imposed on the country a six-year executive, offered no relief. The ship of state was WANTED A CROMWELL 329 sinking, but Jefferson Davis would walk the deck as captain until it took the final plunge. Lee did not respond to the will of the people when Con- gress made him commander in chief. He insisted on re- maining a subordinate, replying to Davis's message of ap- pointment as follows: "I received your telegram announcing my confirmation by the Senate as general-in-chief of the Confederate States. I am indebted alone to the kindness of his Excellency the President for my nomination to this high and arduous office, and I wish I had the ability to fill it to advantage. As I have received no instructions as to my duties, I do not know what he desires me to undertake. " * These are not the words of a Caesarian state-saver. It is possible that Lee made no effort to exercise his new powers because he felt it would be useless, though there are indications that he had a ray of hope as late as the opening weeks of 1865. He thought of abandoning Richmond and retreating southward to join forces with Johnston for an attack on Sherman. But the roads were very bad and Davis did not approve, and the plan was abandoned. It would have led to nothing, for Sherman was too strong to have been beaten by the combined wrecks of the two armies. A result of the little revolution that saw Lee made gen- eralissimo was the passing of Seddon. The valetudinarian had made an able war minister, but he had incurred great unpopularity in consenting to Johnston's removal and the Johnston party hated him. He fell as a result of a direct demand of Congress for the dismissal of all the cabinet members except Trenholm, Memminger's successor. Seddon resigned; the rest of the cabinet remained. 2 *J. W. Jones, Life and Letters of Lee, 351. 3 Schwab, 210. 330 JEFFERSON DAVIS The controversy between President and Congress con- tinued through the remainder of the session. Bills were passed and freely vetoed. Haynes of Tennessee and Wig fall on the floor of the Senate charged Davis with being the cause of the national misfortunes: they called him "mediocre and malicious." The President responded by denouncing the action of Congress which had driven Seddon to resign as unconstitutional. Unconstitutional! Surely he had little sense of humor or he would not have echoed this cry which Stephens had worn out against himself! This talk of the constitution with the government literally tumbling down about his ears makes Davis seem almost as doctrinaire as the Vice President. The cause was, indeed, at the last gasp. The Richmond of this period was interesting as the capital of a nation in process of dissolution. It was a City of Darkest Night. The crowded populace of maimed soldiers, refugees and hungry clerks passed wanly through the streets, seeking distraction from the misery of the situation. Food was scarce and sold for enormous sums of joke currency — $1,000 for a barrel of flour. Men wore faded clothes from the attic and women clad themselves in any makeshift that came handy. Yet with true Southern light-heartedness merriment continued, and girls in dresses made out of window curtains danced with lean and ragged officers and were happy in spite of every- thing. The men could not kill care so easily. They loafed in the numerous saloons and played in the gaudy faro palaces, where light and comfort and food were to be had in exchange for money so nearly worthless as to make the hospitality of the gambling hells seem a kind of charity. Such was the Confederacy in the last months of its existence. XIV CATASTROPHE JEFFERSON DAVIS had shown that he was not a genius, but he was proving that he was a very brave man. Indeed, it is easy to see that he owed his preeminence to certain moral excellencies which often counterbalance a lack of great intellectual power. His was a high-strung, nervous courage that could not be daunted. He had a resolution that quailed at nothing; a self-confidence that seldom faltered; a dignity that rang true in spite of hatred and ridicule and disaster. Nature had played a trick on him, mingling with the scholar's fatal temperament the moral equipment of a hero. There was something very fine in his calm courage in that February and March of 1865 as he went out on his long daily rides with only an aide or two, seemingly as serene and confident as in the springtime of success, though his world was crumbling about him and he knew that he was ringed around with hate. Once an assassin had fired at him, but he scorned precautions — perhaps would have been relieved if death had found him. If perishing were the order of the day, he would perish like a gentleman, quietly and with a certain proud detachment. It had come to this that the Confederacy was now a shattered hull about to dissolve into nothingness: the Nordic empire in the tropics was only a fading dreamland. The great experiment was at an end. Those final weeks of hope- 331 332 JEFFERSON DAVIS less waiting were terrible to Jefferson Davis, for he had nothing to do but deliberate on the past. Opportunities lost forever haunted him; the worm within tormented him while the external world frowned on him. It was a far cry from 1861, when men called him a genius, to 1865, when they sneered at him as "mediocre." This was the hardest thing to bear, this disesteem that was scarcely even ridicule. Death would have meant little to him, for he had no physical fear, but it tortured him to stand before the world as an intel- lectual failure — as a man who could not succeed in a mighty enterprise. In this last period he spent his time fumbling over papers, busy about nothing, seeking to kill thought. The final act of the tragedy was at hand. Seddon had been succeeded by John C. Breckinridge, who worked with great energy and success to collect provisions. Contrary to popular conceptions, the South was far from having ex- hausted the food supply, and the stations on the railroad from North Carolina to Virginia were piled with tons of pro- visions. Actually, the Confederate army had more food in its depots at the last than at almost any other period of the war. The troops starved in the trenches at Petersburg and on the way to Appomattox, but mainly because of lack of transportation, certainly not from lack of supplies. In February and March, 1865, Lee's army gradually broke up. The men deserted by hundreds and there were no new- comers to take their places. A few thousand heroic souls re- mained with the colors and contemplated cheerfully the be- ginning of a new campaign against an overwhelming enemy. But for Lee's vast popularity the end would have come sooner than it did. Lee himself could not change the logic of the hopeless situation or give popularity and strength to a crumbling government. CATASTROPHE 333 Springtime, time of resurrection, saw the death of the Confederacy. On the first of April, Grant broke Lee's attenuated lines at Five Forks, and the long defense of Rich- mond ended. Lee retreated westward after notifying Davis that the city must fall. The President was in church on the morning of Sunday, April 2, when the messenger came with Lee's telegram. Ashy pale but composed, the fallen ruler left the church in order to prepare for flight. Anticipating the calamity, he had shipped off his family some days before. Late that afternoon a train bumped its way southward over the decaying road- bed, carrying the Confederate government and archives. The warehouses, full of clothing never issued to the naked troops, were set on fire, and in the confusion a great part of the town burned. On April 9, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Lee went to meet Grant clothed in his best uniform and wearing his dress sword — tall, handsome, immaculate. Grant was small, shy, rusty, unimpressive. Grant must have thought of their very different lives as he talked with his great opponent. He had had no place in the sun like Lee: life had given him little and had almost taken that away. He had been a man of imagination in an alien environment; he had sought to break the monotony with drink; he had left the army for civilian life, for which a nature guilelessly honest and singularly unpretending un- fitted him. He had brooded and dreamed, little thinking that the dreams would come true. Then the war had given him his chance, and the proclaimed failure — as if in mockery on men's judgments — had overthrown the Confederacy and saved the Union. The great Illinoisian has been much writ- ten about but little understood. He was in reality an in- 334 JEFFERSON DAVIS articulate imaginer, a poet who wrote epics in blood. Action was his sphere, not words; and in mighty action he has been surpassed by no one in our history. The four great steps in his career were the four acts of the South 's downfall. At Fort Donelson he gained the first great victory for the Union. At Vicksburg he won the whole Mississippi Valley and divided the Confederacy. At Mis- sionary Ridge he decided the war in the West and paved the way for Sherman's march. At Appomattox he brought the war itself to an end. All of his enterprises were attended with that completeness of success which is the mark of great- ness. While Grant was not the master of the art of com- manding a single army that Lee was, since with an enormous superiority of force he held his own against Lee only with great difficulty, yet in that field in which wars are won and lost — that of grand strategy — no American general ap- proaches him. He had the vast imagination that surveys a whole country and combines the movements of many armies for some great common object, together with the practical judgment that crowns imagination with success. It is not too much to say that he won the war for the Union. We cannot imagine McClellan or Rosecrans or even Sherman as ever breaking down the powerful re- sistance of the South. The task demanded the keen insight and the immense will of Grant. But for him the Confederacy would probably have succeeded in spite of every handicap. Even yet, after Lee's surrender, Jefferson Davis did not absolutely despair. He was not the kind of man that yields to circumstances while the remotest possibility of resistance remains. He would have gone on with the war if he had found men willing to follow him. He dreamed of reaching Texas, still unconquered, and holding out in that distant CATASTROPHE 335 region. But the dream faded before the unmistakable reality that the war was over since the people had accepted Lee's surrender as conclusive. Presently Johnston, in North Carolina, surrendered the shadow of the Western army. Davis, now abandoning the thought of further resistance, wandered into Georgia in the hope of escape abroad. At one wayside cabin where he received hospitality he gave his last money, a gold piece, to a child named after him just as he had been named after Jefferson. He had nothing left: he was ruined. Brierfield had been devastated long before by Union patriots. Yet penniless, a fugitive with a price on him, the epic failure of the age, he lost none of his courage or dignity. The worst blows of fortune could not break his spirit or diminish his manhood. In spite of all his faults, he was a great man. At length he was captured by a force of cavalry and brought to Fort Monroe by water. On the same steamer with him was Alexander H. Stephens, who had tried him as sorely as one man may try another. He held no parley with the ex- Vice President but met him with a quiet courtesy worthy of a king fallen on evil days. Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe with some circum- stances of severity. He was kept in a damp casemate and actually manacled. This martyrdom worked to his benefit. The irons he wore for the South restored his popularity or, rather, gave him a popularity he had never had before. Men forgot his failure in sympathy for his in some part vicarious sufferings. Furthermore, the United States government eased the feelings of the mob that was clamoring for blood with the picture of the fallen President in chains. At the first moment practicable he was released. The government made a show of bringing him to trial, but it was only a 336 JEFFERSON DAVIS gesture, and the proceedings against him were finally dis- missed, to the general relief. It was well. There would have been a blot on our history if the Southern chieftain had been tried for being faithful to the South. The government acted moderately in its treatment of Jefferson Davis. It could not have well done less than it did, considering the terrible passions that had been aroused by the war; it was supremely wise in that it did not do more. XV WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED THE fall of the Confederacy has been attributed to many causes, all of them having some measure of truth. But nearly all of these are contributing and not de- termining causes; and when a great political movement fails it usually does so for some one outstanding reason. A difference in one important factor often spells the differ- ence between victory and defeat. The failure of the South has been frequently set down to the blockade. This is negatively true, in so much that the South would have won if there had been no blockade, be- cause then it would have had wealth and, with wealth, ample supplies and recruits. The Confederacy could never have been conquered if its ports had remained open to the world. Still as the South might have won in spite of the blockade — as the blockade was, to a certain extent, eluded — this can- not be considered as the predominating influence that turned the war one way instead of the other. The dearth of food has been thought by some to be the main cause of the breakdown. The Southern armies suffered from a shortage of provisions almost through the entire war. At times they were practically without meat rations and reduced to corn meal. Yet as the health of the troops was good and they were able to perform great feats of ex- ertion in marching and fighting, it is not likely that food 337 338 JEFFERSON DAVIS shortage was a decisive factor except in so far as it led Lee to make the invasion of Pennsylvania. Food did not win or lose the war. Inferior military equipment has been assigned as a prin- cipal cause of failure. If the Confederacy had ended in 1862, this diagnosis would have been right. But in 1863 the Southern troops were relatively well armed and in 1864 much more so. In arms and ammunition, they were not, after the first period, much inferior to the Unionists and were actually sometimes superior. So this explanation can be set aside. The failure of the government to secure its currency and lay up a credit abroad by exporting cotton early in the war is frequently advanced as the main reason for defeat. There is more truth in this than in the foregoing allegations. The Confederate government was terribly hampered by lack of money through the entire war, both at home and abroad. If it had had money, it might have bought a navy at the beginning of the struggle, obtained arms and ammuni- tion in any quantity and procured friends. Yet without money the Confederacy managed to do so much that it is not likely that finance was the determining factor. Some men have believed that the lack of mechanical equip- ment — of railways and railway repairs, factories, mines and mills — led to the downfall of the South. It is true that the agricultural Confederacy was terribly handicapped by its industrial poverty, especially its want of metal works. The railroads deteriorated year after year, and there was a pain- ful scarcity of iron. Yet even this great deficiency was partly overcome, and might have been remedied in a far larger degree if the government had been more enterprising. The South was manufacturing many things by 1863 — cloth- WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 339 ing, 1 shoes, munitions, rifles, cannon, leather goods — and iron and coal mines were worked on a considerable scale. The railroads, while always on the point of breaking down, never broke down, and under better governmental direction might have done much more. They were capable of trans- porting quantities of supplies and large bodies of troops through the entire war. Thus, while the mechanical equip- ment of the South was deficient, transportation continued and might have gone on for some time longer. Fewness of soldiers is one of the most popular reasons advanced for the defeat of the South. The Southern armies were nearly always outnumbered, sometimes decisively so. They contained in all about 800,000 men ; the Union armies three times as many. At the end of 1864, there were not many more than 100,000 men in all the Confederate armies. If the South had had larger forces in 1863 and 1864, the outcome of events would probably have been very different. Insufficient cannon food was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Confederacy. Yet it was not absolutely determining. The Southern troops were nearly all Americans; many of the Unionists were foreigners. And if the South was so heavily outnum- bered, this was partly the fault of the government, which feared to utilize negroes for military purposes. With blacks, the South might have put into the field more than a million men: it actually had about 800,000. The Union found such difficulty in breaking down the resistance of the Confederacy and was in such straits for recruits in 1864 that it seems probable that the Southern forces, if properly handled, would have been sufficient to win the war. It takes far greater numbers to invade than to defend, and the North was called 1 The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 8, 231-249. 340 JEFFERSON DAVIS on to invade a country subtropical in character, abounding in streams and swamps and offering many advantages to the defense. If it had not been for the great rivers, which gave easy access to the interior at many points, it is not likely that the North would ever have conquered. The Southern forces were large enough to support the war for four years. Were they large enough to have won the war? Probably, if handled as a unit. Handled piece- meal and waste fully, they were insufficient, and that is why the Confederacy fell. The main cause of the disaster was strategic, though there were a number of powerful contribut- ing causes. The armies were not directed with a common purpose: no strategic system was ever devised by the South. The North had two great strategic ideas — the one originated by Halleck, the other by Grant. Halleck is a man to whom history has not done justice; he had much to do with the Union success. The North, in making the Mississippi Valley the main front of the struggle, was strategically right. Not by winning battles but by taking New Orleans and Vicks- burg, the Union won the war. It could afford to lose battles in Virginia while conquering the West. Then, when the main conflict had been won, the Union armies, East and West, concentrated on Lee and brought the struggle to a close. The South was frequently better in the strategy of single campaigns than the North — thus Lee was notably abler than the generals who opposed him — but it had no grand strategy, and wars are more often won by grand strategy than single battles. In the last analysis, the Union triumphed less because of large numbers, more food, money and equipment and its navy than because it had a strategic system it was able to carry out. WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 341 The South had two strategic opportunities. At the begin- ning of the war, having better raw troops than the adversary, the South might have invaded the North after the First Manassas with excellent prospects of success. The fall of Washington would probably have been followed by the secession of all the border states. In that case, the South would have triumphed. Jefferson Davis's caution and his mingling of political calculations with military plans lost this opportunity. He would not take the risk of invad- ing the North when it seemed likely that Europe would intervene in favor of the Confederacy. He thought that the cotton shortage would make military aggression needless. This opportunity for the offensive was based on the North's unreadiness for war in 1861. By the spring of 1862, the Union had adapted its industrial system to war and was prepared for the struggle. Consequently, the strategic op- portunity of the South passed from the offensive to the de- fensive: its hope of success lay in wearing out the North in a protracted struggle. If the armies of the Union were de- feated in their efforts to penetrate the South, the time must come when the Northern public would refuse to continue to support the necessary sacrifices or Europe might really intervene. This was the chance of the South after the be- ginning of 1862, and it was a good chance. The Confederate defense in the East was successfully maintained by Lee's victories in the summer of 1862, though the moment that he ventured on the offensive with his small army he was foiled at Sharpsburg. All he could reasonably hope to do was to hold the line of the Rappahannock River, a terrible obstacle for the Union army to pass. Lee's vic- tories had the result of making the outcome of the war, 342 JEFFERSON DAVIS which in February, 1862, seemed dark for the South, doubt- ful, with the chances favoring the Confederacy. If the Confederates had been able to do as well in the West, the war would have been won by 1864 or 1865 — 1866 at the latest. But from the first things went badly for the Confederacy in the Mississippi Valley. Fort Donelson, Shiloh and New Orleans gave the North an ascendency in the West that was never lost. By the midsummer of 1862, the South had lost the whole Mississippi River with the exception of the segment between Vicksburg and Port Hud- son. Then came the battle of Murfreesboro, and by the beginning of 1863 the Union had almost won the war on the most important front. Yet Lee's brilliant triumph at Chancellorsville imperiled the Union anew, because it gave the Confederacy the means to bolster the defense in the West and, by striking at Grant, the chance to win a decisive victory. However, because the South had no strategic system, because all its operations were separate and unrelated, Lee saw the problem only in the light of his own situation. He decided on the offensive with means too small at the very moment that the Western defense was breaking down, and Gettysburg and Vicksburg followed. Then came the long last agony, which Davis and Bragg, perhaps mercifully, shortened by gambling away the army of Tennessee in attacking Sherman. Such in brief is the sad story of the Confederacy. Why was it that the South had no adequate strategic system? Mainly because there was no unity of control and no central military body corresponding to a general staff. This disunity of control was due to the fact that Jefferson Davis directed the war and yet did not direct it fully. He left large powers to the generals and yet wished to hold the WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 343 reins. The best military movement of the government was made at the close of 1862, when Joseph E. Johnston was assigned to the headship of the main Western department with large powers. Lee exercised somewhat similar control in the East. Yet this system failed, partly because there was no cooperation between East and West. If any one man had been in control of all the Confederate forces in 1863, the Pennsylvania campaign would never have occurred. Vicksburg would have been relieved. A fatal strategic mis- take would have been avoided. In this matter of military direction, Jefferson Davis com- mitted his greatest error. He was a man of much more military talent than he has been given credit for, but he was not a great staff officer and in no position to become one. The successful conduct of the war called for all the ability and all the energy of some one directing mind. That mind could not, by any chance, be Jefferson Davis, because he was President. As President, he had engrossing political and administrative concerns. His cares and distractions were legion. Yet Davis thought that he could be President and still direct the war, and because he made this mistake he failed. Since the constitution gave him the powers of commander in chief, he thought that he must exercise them. Educated a soldier, he felt that he must play a soldier's part in the war. He was not prepared to delegate the control of the armies to another. Yet that was the thing needed. A heaven-sent man appeared in Lee ; Congress would gladly have made him commander in chief. Here was the soldier to win the war. If Lee had been made head of all the armies in the autumn of 1862, he would have shaken himself out of the semi- lethargy that claimed him, the result of years of service as 344 JEFFERSON DAVIS a routine officer. He would have exerted his great powers, never fully tested until 1864, at a much earlier period of the struggle and probably with very important results. His eminent strategic gifts would have bloomed in the full light of responsibility. He would have seen the war as a whole instead of in part. He would have looked out for the West as much as for the East. Finally, he would have carried out the true strategic policy of the South — the maintenance of the defense along the interior lines of communication. Troops would have been shifted East or West along the rail- roads as they were needed, instead of having superfluity in one place and scarcity in another. Vicksburg would have been saved, and the campaign of 1863 would probably have ended in Union failure instead of Union success. There would have been a vast difference between Lee, the com- mander in chief, with Jackson at the head of one of the armies, and Lee, the commander of the army of Virginia, brilliantly successful in his own field but unable to help elsewhere. The prospects of the Confederacy would have been immeasurably improved. What would Jefferson Davis have done if he had dele- gated the management of the armies to another? The proper work of a President, which is not military detail. Surely he had burdens enough without saddling himself with the conducting of military movements! The revolutionary and experimental character of the Confederate government threw unusual responsibilities on its head. Old governments run partly by mere momentum; people obey them from habit. A new government makes special demands on the ruler's qualities of leadership. A revolutionary ruler must inspire and persuade his people. But Jefferson Davis had a feeling that he was the head of a long-established government WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 345 and so he made no effort until late in the war to win the people. Jefferson Davis chose military administration as his par- ticular province, though he gave much attention to other matters, too. Foreign affairs, the control of Congress, de- partmental concerns took up much of his time and attention. The result was that important duties were frequently left to subordinates, often not with happy results. Sometimes the choice of subordinates was unfortunate, though Jefferson Davis was, ordinarily, a good judge of men. Out of many candidates, Lee was selected as the head of the army of Virginia, the best possible selection. No better choice could have been made than that of Benjamin for foreign affairs — only Benjamin was not sent abroad. Seddon was probably the best Secretary of War Davis could have named from the limited field of possibilities. Johnston was a soldier of great ability if of small enterprise. True, Bragg and Pemberton were failures, but, contrary to the general impression, Hood was not such a mistake as he seems. Davis deliberately took Hood because he wanted a fight, and Hood fought. The error lay in the impression, created and fostered by Bragg for months, that the army of Tennessee was strong enough to beat Sherman. It was not, and any general who essayed Hood's task, under the conditions imposed on him, would have failed in much the same way. As an envoy, Slidell was an admirable choice, as was Raphael Semmes as a commerce destroyer. The most criticized of Davis's appointments, not even excepting Pemberton and Hood, was Colonel L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General or Chief of the Bureau of Sub- sistence. It must be admitted that Northrop was anything but a success, but the difficulties under which he labored 346 JEFFERSON DAVIS were very great. It was a position that would have taxed the peculiar talents of Herbert Hoover. Northrop was an old army officer, a rather crusty routine executive. He be- came intensely unpopular because his agents, under the law and the necessity of the hour, seized food on purely nominal payments. Better men might have been found for the place, and worse. Northrop had some energy and collected large quantities of supplies according to a fairly good system. Early in the war, however, the Bureau of Subsistence was embarrassed by coming into conflict with the chief commis- saries of the various armies. Bureau agents and army com- missaries bid against each other to obtain foodstuffs. Such rivalry created bad feeling and made cooperation of the agencies employed in obtaining provisions impossible. This unfortunate situation was partly remedied by an en- tire change in commissary methods. The country was di- vided into eleven districts, including Kentucky, usually fol- lowing state lines. A head commissary was appointed for each district, with full power over his subordinates. The army commissaries were forbidden to compete with the state commissaries, which had right of way. The result of this more efficient regulation was that supplies were more easily collected in the latter part of the war than at first. But for the failure of the railways, food would have been more abundant in 1864 than in 1862. Farmers in the lower South were planting grain on a larger scale at the close of the war. The lower South, in 1861 as in 191 7, raised cotton and almost nothing else. The Confederate armies in 1861 and 1862 relied for food on Virginia, Kentucky and Ten- nessee. But as the war continued and the blockade made cotton-raising useless, less cotton was raised and more corn WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 347 and meat. In 1863, Mississippi had a surplus of food, and indeed the South generally, for the crops that year were good. In 1864, Sherman found such abundance in Georgia that his men lived on the country and destroyed enormous quantities of farm products besides. At the beginning of the campaign of 1865, the magazines held more food prob- ably than at any previous period of the war. All through the struggle, large quantities of provisions were captured by the enemy or destroyed to prevent capture. It was recognized at the opening of 1863 that the food problem was really one of transportation. Much food was being gathered in the depots, but these were scattered over the country at long distances apart. The railways had diffi- culty in bringing provisions hundreds of miles to the armies. There was never enough food (and enough transportation to carry sufficient supplies to the armies) to last any length of time; and, besides, the armies were often on the move. The Union forces usually relied on water transportation to a large extent and thus had a great advantage over the Confederates, who were frequently forced to carry foodstuffs for long distances by wagon. Thus the base of supplies for the Union armies operating in Virginia was the Potomac, York or Rappahannock River, as the case might be, while Lee's base, when he invaded Pennsylvania, was Staunton, in the Valley of Virginia, which meant that his line of communications was long and open to attack. The limitation to inland bases and wagon transportation in many instances kept the South- ern forces insufficiently provisioned. Yet that in a country so large and fertile as the South, with such a population of laborers, the armies starved all through the war demands some further explanation. The truth is that the government's lack of money was one reason 348 JEFFERSON DAVIS of the food shortage. Foodstuffs were impressed, either by means of the tax on farm products or by simple seizure on payment in paper money. As the prices in paper money were so small as to be negligible, it came to this that the Southern people practically supported the armies without recompense. The people were exceedingly patriotic, but it is not in human nature to exert one's self strenuously for no return. Thus many plantations lay fallow and numbers of slaves idled. Jefferson Davis paid very little attention to the question of food. He left it at the beginning almost entirely to Nor- throp. Seddon, when he became Secretary of War, gave much thought to the commissary and to the related transpor- tation problem. In March, 1863, and again later in the year, he summoned the railroad presidents of the country to Rich- mond to confer with him. It was his idea to put all the railways under the control of a single official, who would have corresponded to William McAdoo in 191 7. A mili- tary officer did exercise a sort of supervision of the railroads, but he lacked the power to do much: Seddon aimed at effi- cient control. The plan was eminently wise, and if it had been carried out the food supply of the army must have been greatly enlarged. Davis, however, refused to support the Secretary of War in the measure, which accordingly came to nothing. The result was that transportation remained in a state of confusion until the end of the war. Ordinarily, the railways were run as nearly as possible in normal peace fashion, with little care for the military service. At intervals, dependent on military operations, the army leaders interfered drasti- cally, upsetting all system. Cars and engines were taken from one road to another, often without the knowledge of WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 349 the owners, and never returned. As railways received little aid from the government, they were all in a bankrupt con- dition. Dividends were unheard of. There was no money to maintain roadbeds and equipment and there were no mechanics to hire. The railroads should have been one of Jefferson Davis's prime concerns. It was not from ignorance of the impor- tance of railways that he neglected them, because they were his particular hobby, but from lack of time. Absorbed in military and political affairs, he could not give himself to great administrative questions; and these matters had much to do with breaking down the Confederacy, even if they were not decisive. Seddon seems to have considered the general supervision of the commissary and of transportation as within his province, and the President did not oppose him though often he failed to give him proper support. Davis seems to have left the navy largely to Mallory, in spite of the fact that he was interested in it and gave it more time than many other matters. Mallory was one of the most generally disliked officials in the government, but he was, in reality, a man of ability and initiative. Without navy yards, without materials and without seamen, the South showed wonderful resourcefulness on the water, and some of the credit certainly attaches to Mallory. In spite of every disadvantage under which it is possible to labor, the Confederates had an ironclad ready before the Union- ists, and the Merrimac played havoc with the wooden sail- ing ships of the North. In the West, the Confederates built rams which were usually burned before completion but which on several occasions won impressive victories over Union fleets. The Southerners launched the first workable sub- marine and blew up the first ship sunk by a torpedo. In 350 JEFFERSON DAVIS fact, they made the torpedo an instrument of marine war- fare. This is a very creditable list of achievements. The ordnance department was under Josiah Gorgas, the best selection that could have been made. The man was a genius, as his son was after him. He manufactured excellent cannon. The Confederate chemists showed great ingenuity in securing explosive materials. Davis, as a soldier, took much interest in ordnance and rifle manufacture. The coun- try was terribly handicapped by the lack of small arms in 1 86 1 and 1862; but this deficiency was overcome by energy and resourcefulness. Large quantities of Enfield rifles were imported and manufactured, and Pemberton's infantry was better armed at Vicksburg than Grant's. Indeed, when we consider the difference between the resources of the Union and those of the Confederacy — the world-wide opportunities of the one and the narrow limitations of the other — we must concede that in some respects the Southern government was more alert than the Northern. All this goes to show that the Confederate government would have been immeasurably more efficient if Jefferson Davis had left troop movements and military operations to the generals and devoted himself strictly to administration. Much doubt has been cast on his executive ability, but largely because of the many things he was forced to neglect in order to devote himself to the conduct of the war. As a matter of fact, he seems not to have been wanting in capacity as an administrator. His plantation was a model and he made a great record as a Secretary of War. But nothing is more exacting than administra- tion, and Davis was hampered by his various inter- ests and his ill health, the result of overwork and worry. He was in a state of nerve depletion through the entire WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 351 war. His efficiency was much lessened by this condition of nervous prostration. Yet in spite of weak nerves he managed to do a great deal of work. Hardly a detail of army administration, outside of the commissary and quar- termaster departments, escaped his notice. He seems to have passed personally on every commission issued. He was in constant correspondence with all the departmental command- ers and with other officers. He carefully scrutinized the de- tails of every campaign and seems to have known the dis- position of all the military forces in the country. The pity is that he did all this. Spending his hours in industri- ously supervising the military routine, he neglected those other factors that no revolutionary leader can afford to overlook. In fact, the greatest of Jefferson Davis's sins of omission was his failure to realize that he was a revolutionary chief. He looked on himself as a constitutional ruler, forgetful of the fact that the government had first to win independence. He was careful to obey the laws himself and he bitterly resented any invasion of his prerogatives. He was jealous of his authority. His pride led him to imagine that he could deal on equal terms with foreign nations; he did not realize that he was a suppliant kneeling at the feet of thrones. Suppliants bring propitiatory gifts, but Jefferson Davis had no definite offers to make. He impatiently awaited recog- nition, feeling that he was suffering an injustice; he counted on the cotton famine to force intervention. He might pos- sibly have obtained recognition and intervention if he had paid the price and subordinated the Confederacy to Eng- land; but he was too proud or too patriotic to do this. Maybe Davis preferred to risk conquest by the Union to making an American country a European vassal. At least, he made 352 JEFFERSON DAVIS no effort to gain support in the one way in which it might have been secured. Under these circumstances, it is not likely that Jefferson Davis could have accomplished anything more in the field of diplomacy than he did. He had two very able diplomats in Benjamin and Slidell, and they failed. Mason, who was less able, also failed, but he would have done little more if he had been abler. Without the means of making advan- tageous proposals to Europe and with little money, the Southern envoys did about as much as they could have been expected to do. In domestic politics the situation was different. There much was to be gained by skill and address. Yet Davis made no serious effort in the field of home politics because he thought that his position was secure, when, in reality, it was to be made. A mere election to the presidency could not insure him the support of the public. He had to win it, but he did not win it. What the South longed for and never found — what would have gone a long way toward the win- ning of the war — was a national leader. Lincoln was such a leader in the North, but Davis was not in the South. He was a President, a ruler, a director of armies and generals, but not the real head of a country — not a beloved and heroic figure. At first he had some hold on the popular imagination, when he seemed to be the man of destiny and the organizer of victory. This passed in 1863, with defeat. He was never really popular at any time; he was never close to any class in the country. He successively alienated every class. The planter politicians early turned against him because they disliked his masterful ways. His ways were masterful, partly because he was too busy and too nervous to play WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 353 the courtier. Toombs, Stephens, Wigfall, Rhett, Yancey — all hated him. They accordingly tended, especially Stephens, to play the part of tribunes opposing an attempted dictator. Cobb, Barnwell, Hunter and Hill were on his side, but love is a feeble passion compared with hate. And, indeed, of these friends, Cobb and Barnwell were the only disinterested ones. Hill was a politician instinctively deferential to the fountain of patronage; Hunter was an aspirant for the presidency in that next election that never came. The rank and file of congressmen were overawed by Davis, whose strength of will and grim tongue daunted them, but they never liked him. They were never his friends. They unwillingly followed him so long as he was successful and readily turned against him when his mistakes became scandals. They warred with him through the last days of the Confederacy. The masses admired Davis as a strong man and a great orator, but they did not love him. Few politicians have ever risen so high with so little public favor. The people do not like a politician the less for being proud, but they want him to unbend to them. It tickles them to be courted by the great. Jefferson Davis expended no time and effort on court- ing the people until the military situation became ominous. But then the people understood too well why he relaxed his ramrod spine. Jefferson Davis might have won some favor if he had seemed to bow to the popular will. But with the perversity of a believer in the divine right of constitutions, with nerves exasperated almost beyond control by labor and anxiety, he actually appeared to go out of his way to defy public opinion. It was insanity for a man in his position to stand on consti- tutional rights: what were they to the enemy? He ventured 354 JEFFERSON DAVIS to retain Bragg at the head of the Western army when the soldiers and the populace demanded in no uncertain terms his removal. Not until it became evident that the army would no longer fight under Bragg was that officer relieved, and he was then nominally promoted. This question of the leadership of the armies became the one political issue in the Confederacy. Davis accepted it as such. The public backed Johnston and Johnston's military policy. Davis's mind was clouded with passion as he saw civilians request him to put Forrest on Sherman's com- munications — that is, presume to dictate to him, the Presi- dent, in regard to military matters ! His dislike and distrust of Johnston, who was eagerly upheld by Bragg's enemies and critics, together with Bragg's continual misrepresentations, led him to remove the former and stake everything on the issue of battle. If victory had resulted, Davis would have been vindicated. But defeat followed defeat without inter- mission until the army was destroyed; and with the ruin of the army of Tennessee, the last of Jefferson Davis's credit with the public disappeared. In the final months of the Con- federacy, the Johnston party forced the restoration to com- mand of their idol, though Lee took the step, not Davis. Johnston's return to the shattered hull of the Army of Tennessee was a defeat for Davis of the first magnitude; it was the beginning of a movement intended to eliminate the President. The next step was to make Lee commander in chief and take the management of the armies entirely out of Davis's hands. Lee's refusal to make use of the power that Congress intended him to exert wrecked the revolution and brought the Confederacy to a somewhat premature end. The South had soldiers and means enough to have resisted considerably longer if the people had still willed to resist. WHY THE CONFEDERACY FAILED 355 But the public had utterly lost confidence in the government, which Congress did not have the courage to overthrow. Davis was deeply and generally disliked. The soldiers, re- sentful at the government and fearful for their families, de- serted in such numbers that Lee could no longer hold his lines. This need not be regretted: it was, indeed, a for- tunate circumstance. If Jefferson Davis had been beloved, if he had issued a call that would have gone to the popular heart, a guerrilla warfare might have followed that would have devastated the South far more than any regular military operations. As it was, the people were so weary of the gov- ernment that, when it appeared that the war was lost, they ceased all resistance. Peace came suddenly and completely. Jefferson Davis was a great man who made great mis- takes. His mistakes ruined him, but they could not keep him from being great. He put up an astonishing fight against heavy odds; he showed much energy and resourcefulness in a situation of extreme difficulty. Under him a purely agri- cultural community held out long, and almost successfully, in the game of modern war against one of the greatest in- dustrial countries of the world. In daring to draft the popu- lation of the free South for the army he showed initiative and true courage: it was the act of a strong man. He made war honorably, and his integrity and manhood cast credit on the South. His failure was more that of temperament than of brain. The spirit, indeed, was strong but the flesh weak. His in- telligence and courage were largely neutralized by his sensi- tive scholar's nature; he had the faults of hypochondria highly developed. He was jealous of his prerogatives, not self-effacing. Thus he missed the way to win the war. Censure was torment to him. It tended to develop in him 356 JEFFERSON DAVIS the vice of obstinacy. He was resolved not to be dictated to, forgetful that the head of a republic cannot openly oppose the popular will: for him, vox populi must be vox Dei. Above all^ Jefferson Davis could not conquer his aversions. His likes and dislikes were too pronounced. A straightfor- ward, honorable, courageous gentleman, he battled with a task that was too mighty for him because it demanded qual- ities he did not have. He lacked tact, policy, understanding of the man in the street, good humor amid annoyances, the power to win and hold men. But his greatest lack was that of self-renunciation. He could not bring himself to step aside and put the conduct of military operations in the hands of a single soldier, reserving for himself the role of lending support. If he had done so, and if Lee had been the chosen generalissimo, it is probable that the Confederacy would have succeeded. It failed, but it came so near suc- cess as to make evident the fine qualities and high resolu- tion of the man into whose hands were committed the desti- nies of the South on that February day of 1861. Jefferson Davis was a great man, even if he was not great enough to triumph. XVI THE MORAL WHAT boots it to speak of what Jefferson Davis did or did not do after 1865? That was the death of his soul: does it matter that, more unconscionable than Charles II, he was a quarter of a century in physically dying? Like most neurotics, he had a strong constitution, and four years of intense anxiety hurt him but little. Always sick, he did not die, and he might have lived many years longer if an inconvenient cold had not carried him off at last at a mod- erate old age. He altered greatly in his last years. The hawklike face of the Nordic leader became venerable and benevolent, making him resemble a meditative clergyman. It bore no trace of the earlier fires. Having no money at the close of the war, Jefferson Davis went into business. He managed to get along — little more. It was not to be expected that a man who had endured the fierce light that beats more strongly even on Presidents than kings would make a good routine business man, and he did not. Some of his enterprises failed sadly. Yet great historic figures seldom starve, and Jefferson Davis was no exception. His last years were fairly free from financial worry. Davis spent two years, from 1865 to 1867, in prison, a part of the time in chains. This was a fortunate indignity for him. Intensely unpopular in the South when the Con- federacy collapsed, he gained sympathy as a post-war suf- 357 358 JEFFERSON DAVIS ferer for the cause. The South forgot his faults and his mistakes and only remembered that though he was not pri- marily responsible for secession he was a martyr for the principle of secession. The Union government could not have let him go at large immediately. It would have pre- ferred his escape abroad, but it could not rebuke the over- zealous cavalrymen who captured him. It did not try him: it did not want to try him. He was no longer dangerous; his blood would do nobody any good. Besides, a trial must have aired constitutional principles, and in court the Union might not have come off so well as on the battlefield. Davis's lawyers were ready, and they might have come uncomfortably near proving that secession was legal, whatever it might be otherwise. So Jefferson Davis was released on bond and was never molested again by the United States government. His principal achievement in later life was his memoir of the war, which, as Gama- liel Bradford points out, tells us everything we are not interested in and carefully avoids the things we wish to know. It is the book of a man who has put off writing too long. Before he died Jefferson Davis had the satisfaction of seeing the South well started on the road to material re- covery. The Reconstruction was over, and out of that epic struggle the white race had emerged scarred but victorious. Perhaps Davis, in his inmost soul, may have believed that it was better that he failed. He was not bitter or depressed: what was far better, he was not resigned. He seems to have been rather happy. His conscience was perfectly clear and he was gratified to find that the popularity which had been denied him in his active life was abundantly his. Every- where he went in the South he was greeted with marks of THE MORAL 359 affection. He was the President of the South. It was by no means a forlorn glory. What shall we say of him now after this long time? The South respects him but it is almost glad that he was not quite great enough to succeed. The South is well satisfied to be a part of the Union. It still differs politically from the North, but this difference is more the result of habit and tradition than of thought. The South maintains, as it should, that secession was justified and that Jefferson Davis was right, but it feels that out of the evil of defeat and political overthrow Providence has brought good. What happened happened for the best. The Southern mood is wholly optimistic. Yet we are just beginning to see the significance of the Civil War. Our mood has been, perhaps, too optimistic. The defeat of disunion and the overthrow of slavery seemed unmitigated benefits. Davis and Lee have been pictured as noble — as they were — but as mistaken, as possibly they were not. The Civil War is coming under the ken of the New History, and Madison Grant's tonens not one altogether of congratulation. He plainly doubts. The truth is that the Confederacy was a milestone on the progress of the Nordic race to nothingness. It was a Nordic protest against a leveling age, against the principle of level- ing. There was democracy in the South, but it was the democracy of conquerors. There was no brotherhood with the weak. The South discovered democracy and repudiated it. The inequality of races was its creed, though it wor- shiped the Moses who proclaimed equality. Democracy withered in the South, not so much because the South was slaveholding as because it was Nordic. This is the fact the world does not understand. If the South had not been Nor- 360 JEFFERSON DAVIS die, democracy would have made it free the slaves. If de- mocracy had suited the genius of the South, slavery would not have lasted. Because slavery suited the genius of the South it lasted. The South is responsible for slavery rather than slavery for the South. Slavery was a result, not a cause. Slavery endured because it was the natural relation be- tween Nordic master and African man. Slavery de facto survived the war, though slavery de lege expired. Slavery outlasted the war a generation, only the slaves were rebel- lious, seeking to put themselves on top. The blacks were slaves, in that they looked on themselves as slaves and on the whites as masters. Slavery survived war, reconstruc- tion, humanitarianism, democratic propaganda — everything, until industrialism came to the South. Then it died. Economic forces accomplished what Christian religion and rationalistic philosophy, working together, could not do. When the blacks became factory hands and mill workers alongside white men, they ceased to be slaves and became a part of the great industrial class. It is because Nordicism is dying and non-Nordicism tri- umphant that slavery is dead. The Civil War, as has been said before, was in essence a conflict between Nordic and non-Nordic principles: between individualism and com- munism; between agriculture and industrialism; between democracy and aristocracy; between the world order of the past and that of the future. All this should be taken into consideration in passing moral judgments on the Civil War. At first sight it might seem that the North was right, at least that it had the better side. The Northern idealists were splendid men: liberty, equality, fraternity — without distinction of races — are high THE MORAL 361 and generous things. Against them stands the race instinct for which the South fought. The South fought for the race which has made the world what it is, for the agricultural or- ganization of life, for political conservatism, for social order. And it is fair to ask the question whether, in the last analysis, such things may not be better than the championship of humanity and the propagation of democracy. Between the two groups of Nordics fighting a mighty fight was this differ- ence — that one fought for the Nordic race, the other against it. The victory of the North meant the predominance of the non-Nordic elements in American life. It meant the freeing of the slave, the trampling of agriculture by industrialism, the rise of labor to be a great power, the overthrow of in- dividualism. This consideration should teach us the good and evil on both sides in the Civil War. We should no longer look on Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee as good but mistaken men: we should see that they may not have been mistaken at all — that the mistake may have been on the other side. But this is a question that cannot be an- swered even now, but in the future. The chief result of the Civil War was the ruin it brought on the Nordic race in America. The Nordic empire of the tropics was now a vanished bubble. The Nordic population of the South was decimated: the best of a generation were destroyed. The war also took a terrible toll of the Northern Nordics, who filled the armies while the non-Nordics mainly stayed at home and prospered. The North, which was still largely Nordic before the war, had altogether altered by its close. In the more than half century since the great struggle, immigration has swamped the Nordic race in America. The New England of to-day, for instance, contains a thin Nordic 362 JEFFERSON DAVIS upper class and a mass of factory workers of almost wholly non-Nordic stock. There are cities of non-Nordics sur- rounded by Nordic farmers. The Nordic element in our population is constantly decreasing in proportion to the non- Nordic, and if it were not for the still mainly Nordic South the United States would represent a racial revolution. It would be the story of the supplanting of one race by another. But so long as the South remains Nordic the old America is still with us. Yet the South is changing, and the time must come when it, like the rest of the country, will be largely non-Nordic. This transformation will be attended by tremendous conse- quences. The Nordic race is that which is preeminent in war, law, politics, exploration, adventure. Spain fell be- cause it wasted its small Nordic population in the wars and conquests of the sixteenth century: this, not the Inquisition, ruined it. Europe to-day is relatively feeble because it has spent its Nordic population in the wars of the past few cen- turies: everywhere the non-Nordics gain at the expense of the Nordics. It was because the United States was chiefly settled by Nordics from Great Britain, Holland, Germany and France that it was and is still great. In early times only brave and enterprising men crossed the seas: the mass of people stayed at home. But quick travel and easy condi- tions changed all this, and for two generations a vast non- Nordic population, from central, southern, and eastern Europe and western Asia, has poured into this country. A few years ago we thought, in our optimism, that we could Nordicize — or Americanize — these aliens by getting them to wave the flag and sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." We thought that reading the Declaration of Independence made Nordics of non-Nordics. We no longer think so, and THE MORAL 363 the menace of a population unappreciative of Nordic ideals and incapable of working Nordic institutions fills us with grave alarm. The American people of to-day are no longer adapted to American institutions. Representative government is the su- preme fruit of the Nordic race. Because England was the most Nordic of countries, representative government grew to perfection there. We inherited it. But only Ulysses can draw the bow of Ulysses. Our political institutions worked well enough so long as the American people were mainly of one race and had a political class such as the Southern planters to direct them. The government of the United States between 1789 and 1861 was the best the world has ever seen: it was clean, efficient, economical. But when the political class was overthrown, when business men came into the saddle instead of agriculture and the power of the non- Nordic industrial classes began to be felt, the United States declined politically, and the decline has steadily continued. Occasional flurries of reform should not blind us to the fact that we are weaker politically than we were a genera- tion ago and that we grow weaker. The institutions which suited an agricultural community are not fitted to meet the conditions of a great industrial empire. We no longer func- tion properly. The planters justified their rule by ruling. If they reaped the rewards of government, they did its work. Generally, they did it well. But the men who succeeded them, the financiers and manufacturers, were too busy to govern. They ruled, but through instruments. So the new species of order-taking politicians rose in the land — representatives and employees of special industries. For a time America was governed by these deputies of big business. 364 JEFFERSON DAVIS But nothing is truer than that in order to govern it is necessary to take the trouble to govern: government is not the realm of absentee landlords. The methods of the busi- ness men were crude, their instruments often vile. The land was filled with discontent and scandal, with denunciations of the trusts. Then other politicians arose: demagogues, propagandists, protagonists of salvation by special formulas. These passed, and there came the organized groups, seeking to accomplish particular ends regardless of the will of the people at large and of their welfare. In a country becoming more and more docile and less and less individualistic be- cause ceasing to be Nordic, anything can be accomplished by propaganda and intimidation. Our representatives in Congress really represent little more than special interests of the narrowest sorts: the general principles of government are trampled on in order to attain ends curiously small. In this political chaos we call modern government one fact stands out in plainest threat — the purpose of the indus- trial workers, the labor unionists, to control the country politically and economically. These non-Nordics oppose to our outworn Nordic institutions their own naturally com- munistic organization. They continually grow in power and in boldness. They are the main menace of the future. The prosperity of the United States is colossal, awe-inspiring. But what good will wealth do if we become politically bankrupt? Not money but sound politics is the key of national happiness. By the whirligig of time, it has come about that the Re- publican party, industrialist though it be, is the bulwark of Nordic rule in America. It represents the control of the Nordic breed; it occupies the position of defender of con- servative institutions that was held by the Democratic party THE MORAL 365 in i860. While it predominates, the old republic will con- tinue to exist. Its fall will mean the beginning of revolution. The modern Democratic party, dominated by labor and non- Nordic (except in the South), has become an instrument of economic transformation. Social revolution is the only end to the conditions under which we live. The Nordics cannot put back the clock — do away with democracy and restore the old natural relation of master and man. The non-Nordics must go on prevailing to the end. They will overthrow the last vestiges of individ- ualism and make some form of communism the order of the nation and probably of the world. We shall follow Russia afar. This does not mean that we shall have the experiences of Russia; it is probable that we shall not. Our social revolu- tion is likely to be gradual, with only incidental violence. And it is possible that, in the final outcome, the condition of America and of the world will not be worse than at present. It may be better because more stable. Since Nordic institu- tions are not adapted to modern populations and modern economic conditions, they will go. Our archaic Constitution will be replaced by one more in conformity with modern needs. We must reconcile ourselves to a dull level of population. There will be no heroes and no miserables. All men will be tolerably efficient. The happiness of the masses may be greater than at any time in the past. Life will be strictly ordered, but men will be compensated by greater security for the loss of individual initiative and personal liberty. War may come to an end because of stable equilibrium. The future of the world may be better than the past. When the great gulf of non-Nordic humanity swallows up the 366 JEFFERSON DAVIS Nordics, it may be because the master race has done its civilizing work. But what has Jefferson Davis to do with all this? Much. The Southern Confederacy was, essentially, a protest against modernity. It was an attempt to disregard altruistic ideals and find reality again. It was, above all, the effort of the Nordic race to save itself. If it had succeeded, there would have been a new chapter in history. There would have been a great Nordic empire which might have reached from the Potomac to Cape Horn. All this lay in the womb of the Confederacy. Success depended, in the last analysis, on Jefferson Davis. He failed. Not from lack of brains, for he had a good mind, and not from want of character, for he was a strong man. But from temperament. He did not have the faculty of success: the power to grapple men to him, absolute self- forgetfulness. So he failed, and with him faded the last hope of the Nordic race. INDEX Atchison, David A., urges Douglas to organize territories, 70 Atlanta, fall of, 309 Barnwell, Robert, leader in Nash- ville convention, 58; works for Davis, no; declines cabinet post, 124 Bell, John, nominated for President, 93 Benjamin, Judah P., supports Bu- chanan, 83 ; Attorney-General, 125-126; sketch of, 136; Secre- tary of War, 152; Secretary of State, 168 Beauregard, G. P. T., appointed general, 145; plans to attack McDowell, 147 ; removed from command, 181; blockade, sketch of, 131 Bragg, Braxton, made army com- mander, 181 ; invades Kentucky, 183, 185; incompetent for com- mand, 186; fights battle of Mur- freesboro, 195 ; army dissatisfied with, 195; tries himself before officers, 197; supported by John- ston, 198-203; dislikes Johnston, 237; attacks Rosecrans, 246; at feud with his generals, 247 ; sug- gests offensive command in order to discredit Johnston, 247-248; in ascendent at Richmond, 279; goes to Atlanta, 302-304 Breckinridge, John C, nominated for President, 93 ; Secretary of War, 332 Brown, John, raid of, 89 Brown, Governor Joseph, secession leader, 102 ; opposes Davis, 241 ; asks for Forrest's cavalry, 296; approached by Sherman, 300 Buchanan, James, cannot take Cal- houn's place, 42 ; won over to annexation of Mexico, 47; minis- ter to England, 66, 67; elected President, 77 ; policy of in Kan- sas, 83; leader of Democratic party, 92 Buell, Don Carlos, in Kentucky, 167 Burnside, Ambrose A., defeated at Fredericksburg, 192 Calhoun, John C, aims of, 25; makes treaty with Texas, 27; op- poses Mexican War, 41 California, admitted to the Union, 59 Cass, Lewis, originates squatter sovereignty, 52 ; defeated for President, 54 Chancellorsville, battle of, 213 Charleston, Democratic convention meets at, 92 Chickamauga, battle of, 246 Clay, Henry, arranges Compromise of 1850, 57; genius of, 59 Cleburne, Patrick, suggests enlist- ment of blacks, 269, 272; at Mis- sionary Ridge, 253; death of, 314 Cobb, Howell, president of secession convention, 2 ; influence of with Buchanan, 83; secession leader, 102 ; elected Dresident of conven- tion, 105 Cooper, A. S., appointed general, MS Cushing, Caleb, confers with Davis, 88; leader in Democratic party, 92 Davis, Jefferson, elected by seces- sion convention, 3; birth of, 29; early education of, 30; goes through West Point, 31; first marriage of, 31; acquires Brier- 367 368 INDEX field, 32; reading of, 35; manage- ment of slaves by, 35 ; enters pol- itics, 37; second marriage of, 39, leaves Congress for Mexican War, 42; at Monterey, 43; at Buena Vista, 45; enters United States Senate, 46; a nationalist in 1848, 50; seeks to extend Missouri Compromise line to Pacific, 51 ; becomes a Southern extremist, 55; opposes Compromise of 1850, 58, 61; becomes candidate for gov- ernor, 62 ; becomes a Unionist, 63; Secretary of War, 64, 65; plans Southern expansion, 66; no intriguer, 69; aids Douglas, 73; makes blunder on Kansas-Ne- braska bill, 75 ; on Dred Scott opinion, 80; reenters Senate, 81; sends free-soil soldier to Kansas, 83 ; Southern leader in Senate, 84, 85; becomes a moderate, 87; tours the North, 88; hatred of for Douglas, 90; works to defeat Douglas for presidency, 92 ; reso- lutions of adopted by Charleston platform committee, 93 ; seeks to induce Douglas to withdraw, 94; counsels delay in secession, 95; resigns from Senate, 97 ; dis- trusted by Rhett, no; why elect- ed President of South, in; char- acteristics of, 1 1 6-1 19; reaches Montgomery, 120; selects a cab- inet, 123-127; as President in Montgomery, 127; foreign policy of, 134, 135; begins to lose con- fidence of politicians, 141; influ- ence of Virginia on 144; at First Manassas, 148; decides not to in- vade North, 153; makes mistakes in 1861, 160; advisers of, 164, 189; inauguration of, 169; social relaxations of, 171; secures draft act, 175; in Seven Days' battle, 179; loses support of politicians, 187; goes West in 1862, 196; puz- zled over Bragg, 202 ; too busy with military details, 211; popu- larity of wanes, 212; at Jackson's bier, 213; urges Pemberton to hold Vicksburg, 214; wishes to reinforce West, 221; calls cabinet conference on Pennsylvania in- vasion, 224; fails to help Lee, 226; writes Lee, 235; in a food riot, 240; criticized as unconsti- tutional, 242; sends aid to West, 245; goes West in 1863, 249; up- holds Bragg, 250; to blame for Missionary Ridge, 254; mistaken in Pennsylvania campaign, 258; preference of for trained soldiers, 262; gives Johnston command of Western army, 264; refuses to enlist blacks, 273; abandons hope of foreign aid, 289; loses a son, 290; religion of, 291; failure of, 310; accomplishment of, 311; makes his greatest speech, 325; seeks to enlist blacks, 325; op- posed by Congress, 327; makes Lee commander in chief, 328; flees from Richmond, 333; im- prisonment of, 335; supreme mis- take of, 343; good judge of men, 345; last political defeat of, 354; qualities of, 355; released from prison, 358 Davis, Joseph Emory, helps Jeffer- son Davis, 30 Davis, Varina Anne Howell, mar- ries Jefferson Davis, 39; helps her husband, 128 Douglas, Stephen A., introduces Kansas-Nebraska bill, 71; wins over Pierce, 73 ; becomes unpop- ular, 77; regains popularity, 82; denounces Buchanan, 83 ; leader in Senate, 84; only man able to avert secession, 90; nominated for presidency by Baltimore con- ventionj 93; denounces Davis, 94 Dred Scott opinion, announced by Supreme Court, 79; of little value, 90 Early, Jubal A., at Gettysburg, 227 ; cursing of, 292 Ewell, R. E., at Gettysburg, 227 Foote, Henry S., elected governor of Mississippi, 62; attacks Ben- INDEX 369 jamin in Congress, 168; attacks Davis in Congress, 266; demands surrender, 323 Fort Donelson, surrender of, 167 Fort Sumter, fired on, 138 Franklin, battle of, 314 Fredericksburg, battle of, 192 Fugitive Slave law, passed by Con- gress, 60; no measure of lower South, 61 Gadsden, James, acquires Gadsden Purchase, 68 Gadsden Purchase, made, 68 Gettysburg, battle of, 227-230; im- portance of overrated, 234 Gorgas, Josiah, a ^enius, 350 Grant, U. S., threatens Tennessee, 167; threatens Vicksburg, 204- 207; defeats Pemberton, 215; captures Vicksburg, 233; at Mis- sionary Ridge, 253; grand strat- egy of, 283; in Virginia, 284-288; attacks Petersburg, 286; career of, 333, 334 Hardee, W. J., distrusts Bragg, 107; refuses army command, 263 Hill, A. P., at Gettysburg, 227 Hill, Benjamin H., Unionist leader in Georgia, 102 ; goes to Rich- mond for Johnston, 298 Hill, D. H., suspended from his command, 247 Hood, John B., urges Western of- fensive, 277; Lee's opinion of, 393; becomes army commander, 307; defeated by Sherman, 309; invades Tennessee, 313; retreat of, 3i5 Hooker, Joseph, attacks Lee, 212 Hunter, R. M. T., leader in Nash- ville convention, 58; supports Buchanan, 83 ; member of Senate compromise committee, 96; heads Virginia delegation to Montgom- ery, 140 ; friend of Davis, 143 ; peace commissioner, 324 Jackson, Andrew, refuses to recog- nize nullification, 26 Jackson, Stonewall, in Valley cam- paign, 179; at Second Manassas, 182 ; captures Harper's Ferry, 183 ; wishes to fight on North Anna, 191 ; at Fredericksburg, 193; mortally wounded, 213 Johnston, Albert Sidney, appointed general, 145; unpopularity of, 172; death of, 173 Johnston, Herschel V., Unionist leader in Georgia, 102 Johnston, Joseph E., appointed gen- eral, 145 ; fails to pursue McDow- ell, 150; wounded, 178; made Western departmental command- er, 194; supports Bragg, 198-203; in Mississippi, 214; seeks to save Pemberton, 231-233; commander of Western army, 263; fails to invade Tennessee, 277; improves Western army, 292 ; defensive soldier, 293; retreat of, 294-304; asks for Forrest's cavalry, 296, 297; relieved of command, 306; reappointed to command, 328 Kansas, bill for organization of, 71; South no reason to hope to gain, 75 ; a country for poor im- migrants, 76; struggle for, 78; lost to South, 82 Kennesaw Mountain, fight at, 294 Lee, Robert E., engineer officer in Mexico, 45; appointed general, 145; opposes evacuation of pen- insula, 175; made military ad- viser, 177; army commander, 178; attacks McClellan, 179; at Second Manassas, 182; invades Maryland, 183; at Fredericks- burg, 193; frustrates Hooker, 213; fails to read general mili- tary problem, 217; should have gone West, 219, 220; persuades Davis to invade North, 221; in- vades Pennsylvania, 226; why he failed at Gettysburg, 230; offers to resign, 235; in the Wilderness, 284, 285; consulted by Davis, 303; national leader of South, 316; demands negro soldiers, 325, 370 INDEX 326; made commander in chief, 328; surrender of, 333 Lincoln, Abraham, elected Presi- dent, 94; opposes compromise, 96; sketch of, 283; at Hampton Roads Conference, 324 Longstreet, James, at council of war, 175; at Second Manassas, 182; at Gettysburg, 227-229; sent West, 246; criticizes Bragg, 248; detached from Western army, 251 Lyons, James, friend of Davis, 143 ; confers with Count Mercier, 174 McClellan, George B., advances to Richmond, 177, 178; defeat of in Seven Days' battle, 179 McDowell, Irvin, attacks Beaure- gard, 148 Mallory, Stephen B., Secretary of Navy, 125; ability of, 349 Marcy, William L., settles with Spain Black Warrior matter, 67 Manassas, First battle of, 148 Manassas, Second battle of, 182 Mason, James M., sent as envoy to England, 157-159 Mason, John Y., minister to France, 66, 67 Meade, George Gordon, commands Union army, 226; at Gettysburg, 227 Memminger, Christopher, Secretary of Treasury, 124; financial policy of, 129-132; resigns, 280 Mercier, Count, comes to Rich- mond, 173 Merrimac, built, 161 Miles, William Porcher, at seces- sion convention, 2 Missionary Ridge, battle of, 253 Missouri Compromise, what it was, 22 ; Davis seeks to extend to Pa- cific, 51 ; repeal of, 72 Montgomery, secession convention at, 1 ; deputies meet at, 103 ; Davis's reception at, 127 Murfreesboro (Stone's River), bat- tle of, 195 Myers, Quartermaster-General, up- held by Congress, 269 Napoleon III embarrasses England, 133; brought over to Southern side, 159 Nashville, battle of, 315 Nebraska, bill for organization of, 71; not contested by South, 74 New Mexico, in Compromise of 1850, 60 Northrop, Commissary-General, 266, 268; ability of, 346 Oregon, struggle over organization of, 51; contest over weakens alli- ance of West and South, 53 Ostend Manifesto, what was, 67 Pemberton, John C, sketch of, 204; defeated, 215; resolves to hold Vicksburg, 216; surrenders, 233 Pierce, Franklin, makes Davis a cabinet officer, 64 Polk, James K., elected President, 27; seeks to gain Texas and Ore- gon, 40; accepts treaty with Mex- ico, 49 Polk, Leonidas, distrusts Bragg, 197; suspended from his com- mand, 247 Pope, John, defeated in Virginia, 182 Prentiss, Sargent, beats Davis for legislature, 38; eulogizes Davis, 45 Price, Sterling, in Missouri, 156 Quitman, John A., opposes Com- promise of 1850, 58; runs for governor of Mississippi, 62 ; fili- busters in Cuba, 68 Randolph, George Washington, Sec- retary of War, 174 Reagan, John H., Postmaster-Gen- eral, 125; opposes invasion of North, 225 Rhett, Robert Barnwell, Calhoun's lieutenant, 40; on slavery in ter- ritories, 52 ; hails Davis a com- rade, 55 ; sketch of, 56 ; leader in Nashville convention, 58; char- acter of, 59; prevision of, 87; foreign policy of, 134 INDEX 371 Richmond, view of, 141 ; at end of Confederacy, 330 Scott, Sir Walter, influence of on South, n Seddon, James A., Secretary of War, 188; sketch of, 190; induces Davis to send Johnston West, 194; correspondence with John- ston, 199-201 ; seeks to reinforce West, 221; sends aid to West, 245; resigns, 330 Seven Days, battle of, 179 Seven Pines, battle of, 178 Seward, William H., leader in Sen- ate, 84; defeats Confederate di- plomacy, 160 Sharpsburg (Antietam), battle of, 184 Sherman, William T., advances, 292-294; sends message to Brown and Stephens, 300; takes Atlanta, 309; marches to sea, 312 Shiloh, battle of, 172 Slidell, John, leader in Democratic party, 92 ; sent as envoy to France, I57-I59 Smith, Gustavus W., at council of war, 153 Smith, Kirby, invades Kentucky, 183, 185; does not aid Pember- ton, 233 Soule, Pierre, minister to Spain, 66, 67 Spotsylvania, battle of, 285 Stephens, Alexander H., leader in Congress, 57 ; Unionist leader in Georgia, 102 ; unfortunate influ- ence of, 105 ; secures Confederate constitution, 107 ; elected Vice President, 114; approached by Sherman, 300; vagaries of, 320- 324; imprisonment of, 325 Taylor, Zachary, father-in-law of Davis, 31 ; reconciled to Davis, 43 ; elected President, 54 Texas, great issue in politics, 25; claims Rio Grande as boundary, 40 Thomas, G. H., defeats Hood, 314 Toombs, Robert W., absent from Congress in crisis, 75 ; supports Buchanan, 83 ; member of Senate compromise committee, 96; seces- sion leader, 102 ; fails to rise to occasion, 105 ; presidential candi- date, 109; hears of Davis's elec- tion, in; sketch of, 112; .Secre- tary of State, 124; opposes firing on Sumter, 139; criticizes Davis, 142 Trist, Nicholas, makes peace treaty with Mexico, 49 Tyler, John, part of in acquiring Texas, 25 Utah, in Compromise of 1850, 59 Vance, Governor Zebulon, opposes Davis, 239 Vicksburg, campaign of, 214-216; surrender of, 233-235 Walker, Leroy Pope, Secretary of War, 123 Walker, Robert J., part of in ac- quiring Texas, 25, 27; slanders Davis, 38 ; urges annexation of Mexico, 47; aims of disappointed, 49 Walker, William, in Nicaragua, 68 Webster, Daniel, assists Compromise of 1850, 57 Wigfall, Louis A., opposes Davis, 187; Davis's enemy in Congress, 320 Wilderness, battle of, 285 Wilmot Proviso, launched in Con- gress, 47; what it was, 48; North holds to, 57; abandoned by North, 60 Yancey, William L., Calhoun's lieu- tenant, 41 ; hails Davis a com- rade, 55 ; leader of tropic Nor- dics, 56; leader in Nashville con- vention, 58; withdraws from Charleston convention, 93; ab- sence of felt in Confederate con- vention, 105; presidential candi- date, 109; sent to Europe, 123; death of, 238