Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

  In any event, several considerations governed the adoption of the dispersed defense in 1861. The need to protect slavery seemed to require the defense of every foot of slave territory from the presence of Union soldiers, who would attract slaves from the surrounding countryside like a magnet. This attraction began at Fort Monroe in the first weeks of the war, and continued to escalate wherever Union armies set foot on Southern soil and Union navy ships moved up Southern rivers. Confederate diplomats hoped to achieve foreign recognition of their new nation, but to yield any part of it to enemy occupation in order to concentrate forces elsewhere might undermine that hope. The loss of territory also meant the loss of its resources and perhaps the desertion of soldiers from those areas. As Davis noted later in the war, “the general truth that power is increased by the concentration of an army is under our peculiar circumstances 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.”17

  The main reason for dispersal in 1861, however, was political—and politics was an essential part of national strategy. Southern states had seceded individually on the principle that the sovereignty of each state was superior to that of any other entity. The very name of the new nation, the Confederate States of America, implied an association of still-sovereign entities. This principle was recognized in the Confederate Constitution, which was ratified by “each State acting in its sovereign and independent character.” The governor of each state also insisted that its borders must be defended against invasion. If Davis had pursued a strategy of concentrating Confederate armies at two or three key points, leaving other areas open to enemy incursion, the political consequences could have been disastrous. Popular and political pressures therefore compelled him to scatter small armies around the perimeter at a couple of dozen places.

  Davis’s correspondence reflected these pressures. As the Confederate government prepared to move from Montgomery to Richmond and soldiers from various states began to concentrate in Virginia, telegrams and letters of protest cascaded across the president’s desk. “The Gulf States expect your care, you were elected President of them, not of Virginia,” complained an Alabamian. From the prominent Mississippian Jacob Thompson came a report that “the fear [here] is that [the] eye of the Administration is so exclusively fixed upon [Virginia] that we may be neglected & stripped of the means of defence.” The Committee of Public Safety in Corpus Christi, Texas, pleaded for men and arms to repel a rumored Yankee invasion.18 The son-in-law of Davis’s brother Joseph wrote from his plantation in Louisiana that “there is great fear at present in this Country of an invasion down the river.” The governor of Louisiana echoed this fear, and asked also for greater attention to the defense of Bayou Atchafalaya and Bayou Teche. “Much uneasiness felt here in consequence of our condition,” declared the governor. “I am I may [say] constantly harassed on this subject. . . . Great opposition here to another man leaving the state, & I must say to a certain extent I participate in the feeling.” Claiming to apprehend an attack on the Georgia coast, Governor Joseph Brown of that state expressed reluctance to send any more Georgia troops “to go glory hunting in Virginia. . . . While I still recognize the authority of the President . . . I demand the exercise of that authority in behalf of the defenseless and unprotected citizens of the State.”19

  Davis did his best to respond to those demands he considered reasonable, but there were not enough men and arms to satisfy all needs. To the governor of Tennessee he wrote that “your suggestion with regard to the distribution of the troops, in the several sections of Tennessee, is approved, and shall be observed, so far as possible.”20 Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, the senior commander in Virginia, lamented the shortages of men and weapons to defend western Virginia. The governor backed Johnston’s complaints. “I wish I could send additional force to occupy Loudon,” Davis told them, “but my means are short of the wants of each division of the wide frontier I am laboring to protect. . . . Our line of defence is a long one, and my duty embraces all its parts. . . . Missouri and Kentucky demand our attention, and the Southern coast needs additional defense.”21

  • • •

  IN MAY 1861 THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT ACCEPTED an invitation from Virginia to transfer the capital to Richmond. The accommodations at Montgomery were woefully inadequate, and moving the capital to Virginia would cement the vital allegiance of that state to the Confederacy. This action ensured that the most crucial operations of the war were likely to take place between the two capitals only one hundred miles apart. It presented Davis with the delicate task of balancing the defense of points distant from Richmond with the preeminent need to protect the capital. When the governors of South Carolina and Georgia petitioned for the return of their states’ regiments from Virginia after the Union capture of the coastal islands of those states in the fall of 1861, Davis refused. “The threatening power before us [here] renders it out of the question that the troops specified should be withdrawn,” he wrote. Davis instructed Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin (who had replaced the hapless Leroy P. Walker) to reject the governors’ entreaties. Benjamin bluntly told Brown that it would be “suicidal to comply with your request.” Other governors were making similar demands, and if the administration gave in to Brown it would have to give in to all of them. Confederate forces could not be broken into fragments “at the request of each Governor who may be alarmed for the safety of his people.”22

  The Confederate executive mansion in Richmond

  Both the Union and Confederate governments organized their largest armies under what they presumed to be their best commanders to attack or defend the new Confederate capital. Twenty thousand Confederate troops under General Beauregard were stationed at Manassas Junction protecting this key railroad connection with Richmond to the south and the Shenandoah Valley to the west, where General Joseph Johnston commanded another twelve thousand defending the valley. Each Confederate force confronted a larger Union army, but interior lines utilizing the rail connection gave Southern armies the ability to reinforce one another more quickly than their adversaries could combine. Beauregard proposed to use this advantage by having Johnston join him at Manassas for an offensive to recapture Alexandria, which the Federals had seized in May. Davis rejected this suggestion, which would have abandoned the Shenandoah Valley to the enemy, who could then use the same rail network to attack Johnston and Beauregard from the rear while they were battling the main Union army in their front.23

  Undeterred, Beauregard came up with an even more ambitious and fanciful scheme in July. Johnston should join him to attack the Yankees near Alexandria, and after defeating them the combined armies should return quickly to the valley, whip the enemy there, then move farther west to defeat the Federals in the mountains of western Virginia, where they had gained control of Unionist counties in that region. After these lightning strikes, the victorious Confederates could cross the Potomac and attack Washington. The exuberant Beauregard sent an aide, James Chesnut (whose wife, Mary Boykin Chesnut, kept a diary that became a famous source for Confederate history), to Richmond to present this plan to Davis. The president rose from a sickbed to meet with Chesnut and with Adj. Gen. Samuel Cooper and Gen. Robert E. Lee, who was serving as a military adviser to Davis. They heard Chesnut out, and gently but firmly rejected the proposal, which they described as impressive on paper and brilliant in results “if we should meet with no disaster in details”—a kind way of saying that it bore no relationship to the real world of logistics, transportation, and enemy actions.24

  Davis did hope that if the enemy gave him sufficient time, he could build up an army in Virginia strong enough “to be able to change from the defensive to an offensive attitude” and “achieve a victory alike glorious and beneficial,” to “drive the invader from Virginia & teach our insolent foe some lessons which will incline him to seek for a speedy peace.”25 These words
offered a hint of what would become a hallmark of Davis’s preferred military strategy during the next two years. He later labeled it “offensive-defensive”—the best way to defend the Confederacy was to seize opportunities to take the offensive and force the enemy to sue for peace.

  But in July 1861 the enemy did not give him time and opportunity. A few days after disapproving of Beauregard’s fantasy offensive, Davis learned of the Union army’s advance toward Manassas. He ordered Johnston to leave behind a small holding force in the valley and join Beauregard by rail with the rest of his troops. He also ordered Brig. Gen. Theophilus Holmes, commander of a contingent of three thousand men at Fredericksburg, to take them to Manassas.26 This concentration using interior lines was successful. These reinforcements arrived in time to enable Beauregard to hold off the attacks by Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s Federals along the sluggish stream of Bull Run on a brutally hot July 21. The last brigade of Johnston’s army, just off the train at Manassas in midafternoon, helped spearhead a counterattack that turned Union defeat into a rout.

  One other reinforcement detrained at Manassas that afternoon: Jefferson Davis. Ever since the war began, many Southerners had expected Davis to take personal command of the principal army in the field. Davis himself sometimes intimated an intention to do so. His West Point training and experience as a combat commander in the Mexican-American War seemed to fit him for this role. One of the reasons for moving the capital to Richmond was the expectation that the commander in chief would be closer to the principal war theater and could take direct command.27 After a meeting with Davis in June, his good friend since West Point days, Leonidas Polk (whom Davis appointed as a major general to command in Tennessee), told his wife that “Davis will take the field in person when the movement is to be made.” Even Joseph E. Johnston urged the president to “appear in the position Genl. Washington occupied during the revolution. . . . Civil affairs can be postponed.”28

  But even if civil affairs could be postponed, the multitude of tasks connected with organizing, arming, financing, and appointing commanders for armies scattered from Virginia to Texas required all of Davis’s time and energy—and then some. He insisted on reading and acting on all of the papers that crossed his desk. He put in twelve to fourteen hours a day. This hands-on activity as commander in chief at his desk (or sickbed) left him little opportunity for hands-on command in the field. Nevertheless, as the prospect of battle in northern Virginia approached, he grew restless in Richmond and chafed to join the army concentrating at Manassas. The Confederate Congress was scheduled to meet in Richmond on July 20, however, and he needed to remain there to address it.

  On the warm Sunday morning of July 21 he could stand it no longer. He commandeered a special train and with a single aide he chugged northward more than a hundred slow, frustrating miles. Arriving at Manassas Junction in midafternoon, Davis borrowed a horse and rode toward the sound of the guns. He was dismayed by what he first encountered: stragglers and wounded men bearing tales of defeat, damaged equipment, the usual detritus in the rear of a battlefield. Davis tried to rally the stragglers. “I am President Davis,” he shouted. “Follow me back to the field.” Some did. By the time Davis reached Johnston’s headquarters, where he found the general sending reinforcements to the front, it was clear that the Confederates were victorious. Union troops were in headlong retreat. Davis rode farther forward and addressed the soldiers, who cheered him to the echo. It was perhaps his happiest moment in the war.29

  Davis sent a jubilant telegram to Adjutant General Cooper in Richmond: “Our forces have won a glorious victory. The enemy was routed and fled precipitately.”30 Johnston and Beauregard may have raised their eyebrows at this. Was the president trying to take credit for what they had achieved before he arrived? In any event, the three men were cordial with one another at Johnston’s headquarters that evening. Davis wanted to organize a pursuit of the beaten enemy, and suggested that Beauregard or Johnston order such a movement. They remained silent, presumably because as commander in chief, Davis was now in charge. He began to dictate an order, but upon reflection and further consultation, he concluded that in the darkness and the disorganized confusion of even the triumphant Confederates, an effective pursuit was impossible. The next morning Beauregard ordered a reconnaissance forward, but heavy rain and empty haversacks with no immediate prospect of resupply brought the advance to a halt.31

  In a private letter to Davis a few days later, General Johnston offered another reason for the army’s inability to press after the enemy. “This victory disorganized our volunteers as utterly as a defeat would do in an army of regulars,” Johnston reported. “Every body, officer and private, seemed to think he had fulfilled all his obligations to the country—& . . . it was his privilege to look after his friends, procure trophies, or amuse himself—It was several days after you left us [on July 23] before the regiments who had really fought could be reassembled. . . . This trait in the volunteer character gives us real anxiety.”32

  The failure to follow up the victory at Manassas with an effective pursuit stored up controversy for the future. But Confederates everywhere basked in the immediate afterglow of the battle. Davis promoted Beauregard from brigadier to full general (Johnston already held that rank). Beauregard’s popularity, already great because of his capture of Fort Sumter, soared even higher. Davis returned to Richmond, and on the evening of July 23 he responded to the call of a large crowd outside his home for a speech. The diarist Mary Chesnut, a close friend of the president’s, was untypically critical of his address. He “took all the credit to himself for the victory,” she wrote. “Said the wounded roused & shouted for Jeff Davis—& the men rallied at the sight of him & rushed on & routed the enemy. The truth is Jeff Davis was not two miles from the battle-field—but he is greedy for military fame.”33

  Beauregard no doubt learned of this speech from James Chesnut, who had been his aide at the battle. The general began complaining about the failure of Commissary General Lucius B. Northrop to keep his army supplied; some of the regiments were nearly starving, reported Beauregard with considerable exaggeration. Northrop was noted as an old friend of Davis’s from their army days together in the early 1830s, and Beauregard clearly intended his criticism of Northrop as an indictment of Davis’s poor judgment in appointing him commissary general. Beauregard also began hinting to friendly congressmen that this supply deficiency was the reason he could not follow up the victory at Manassas. “The want of food and transportation has made us lose all the fruits of our victory,” he told them. “From all accounts, Washington could have been taken up to the 24th instant, by twenty thousand men! Only think of the brilliant results we have lost by the two causes referred to!”34

  A dispute over army command injected additional poison into the deteriorating relationship between Davis and Beauregard. The latter’s troops at Manassas (designated at the time as the Army of the Potomac—not to be confused with the Union army of the same name) had been merged with Johnston’s army from the Shenandoah Valley, with Johnston as commander by seniority of rank. But Beauregard insisted on issuing orders to his own half of the army as if it were a separate organization. The new secretary of war, Judah Benjamin, tried to set him straight. “You are second in command of the whole Army of the Potomac, and not first in command of half of the army.” Beauregard was infuriated by Benjamin’s lecturing style. He wrote to Davis asking him “as an educated soldier . . . to shield me from these ill-timed, unaccountable annoyances.” Davis was getting fed up with Beauregard’s complaints, and replied to him, “I do not feel competent to instruct Mr. Benjamin in the matter of style. . . . I cannot recognize the pretension . . . that your army and you are outside the limits of the law.”35

  P. G. T. Beauregard

  This caustic correspondence took place in the midst of another contretemps between Davis and Beauregard. The general did not submit his official report of the Battle of Manassas until mid-October.
For some reason never explained, the War Department did not forward a copy to Davis, who read an account of it in the Richmond Dispatch. This version focused on Beauregard’s discussion of his plan for a multipronged offensive presented by James Chesnut to Davis and Lee a week before the battle, and their rejection of it. Beauregard implied that Davis had therefore prevented the glorious success that such an offensive was sure to have accomplished. Somehow the press accounts mixed up this issue with the question of why the army did not pursue the beaten Federals after Manassas. They concluded that Davis had restrained Beauregard (when the opposite was in fact the case). The president called for the actual report from the War Department. “With much surprise,” he wrote Beauregard, “I found that the newspaper statements were sustained by the text of your report.” The report itself, and especially its leak to the Dispatch, appeared to Davis like “an attempt to exalt yourself at my expense.”36 Indeed it was, and Davis never fully trusted Beauregard again. He also never fully put to rest the myth that he had prevented the Confederate army from capturing Washington in July 1861.37

  This altercation with Beauregard was all the more painful for Davis because it came in the wake of a dispute with Joseph Johnston over his rank relative to other Confederate generals. In May 1861 the Confederate Congress had authorized the appointment of five full generals. The law specified that their rank would be equivalent to their relative grade in the United States Army in the same branch of the service before they had resigned to go south. Thus Davis gave the top ranking to Samuel Cooper as adjutant and inspector general, the same staff position he had held in the old army. Davis named his longtime friend Albert Sidney Johnston (who was on his way to Richmond from California) to the second position, followed by Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and Pierre G. T. Beauregard. When Johnston learned in September of his number four grade, he exploded in anger. All along he had assumed that he was number one, based on his position as quartermaster general in the prewar army with the rank of brigadier general, while the three that Davis ranked above him had been colonels. Johnston sat down and wrote a blistering letter to Davis venting his outrage. The president’s action, Johnston told him, was a “studied indignity” that tarnished “my fair fame as a soldier and a man” and was “a blow aimed at me only,” especially since he was in command during the great victory at Manassas and those ranked above him had not “yet struck a blow for the Confederacy.”38