Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

  Having won this round, McClellan decided to pull back his thirty thousand men north of the Chickahominy several miles to a new line behind Boatswain’s Swamp near Gaines’ Mill. Lee followed and launched a full-scale attack with fifty-five thousand men on June 27, this time including Jackson’s troops. After a series of failed assaults, the Confederates finally broke the enemy line toward dusk. The Federals again retreated, this time heading for a new base on the James River. Lee attacked repeatedly, at Savage’s Station on June 29, Glendale on June 30, and Malvern Hill on July 1, losing twice as many killed and wounded as the enemy but achieving a strategic victory by lifting the threat to Richmond.

  Davis was present at each of these battles and even helped to rally stragglers on one occasion. At Glendale on June 30 he and Lee were both the subjects of another “Davis to the rear” incident. They were sitting on their horses under enemy artillery fire when General A. P. Hill rode up and declared: “This is no place for either of you, and, as commander of this part of the field, I order you both to the rear.” Abashed, they moved back, but not far enough to satisfy Hill. “Did I not tell you to go away from here?” he asked them with exasperation. “Why, one shell from that battery over yonder may presently deprive the Confederacy and the Army of Northern Virginia of its commander!” This time they moved out of range.6

  The final Confederate assault at Malvern Hill was a costly failure. But McClellan nevertheless continued his retreat to Harrison’s Landing on the James River. Despite McClellan’s description of the retreat as a “change of base,” most people North and South alike regarded it as a humiliating defeat. Davis issued a congratulatory order to the Army of Northern Virginia that included a none-too-subtle hint of future Confederate operations. After this “series of brilliant victories” over an enemy “vastly superior to you in numbers and in the material of war, ” proclaimed the president, you will move on to “your one great object . . . to drive the invader from your soil, and carrying your standards beyond the outer bounds of the Confederacy, to wring from an unscrupulous foe the recognition of your birthright, community independence.”7

  Davis gave private assurances that he meant what he said publicly. He agreed with critics who maintained that the ultimate consequence of purely defensive war was surrender. “There could be no difference of opinion as to the advantage of invading over being invaded,” he told John Forsyth, the mayor of Mobile and editor of the influential Mobile Register. However, “the time and place for invasion has been a question not of will but of power.” Davis reiterated that he had silently endured criticism of the defensive strategy during the earlier shortage of men and arms, “because to correct the error would have required the disclosure of facts which the public interest demanded should not be revealed.” But now, with a victorious army in Virginia and captures of weapons that ended the arms famine, the country could soon look for offensive operations. General Lee “is fully alive to the advantage of the present opportunity, and will, I am sure, cordially sustain and boldly execute my wishes to the full extent of his power.”8

  Lee was if anything more offensive-minded than Davis. He did indeed intend to act “boldly.” Retaining part of his army to watch the idle Federals at Harrison’s Landing, Lee sent Jackson to confront the newly formed Union Army of Virginia under General John Pope moving against Richmond from the north. “We hope soon to strike another blow here,” Davis explained to one of his Western generals, “and are making every effort to increase the force so as to hold one army in check whilst we strike the other.”9 Jackson defeated part of Pope’s army at Cedar Mountain on August 9. When McClellan began to evacuate the peninsula to reinforce Pope’s army, Lee and Longstreet joined Jackson to assail Pope before McClellan’s men could join him. Davis stripped the Richmond defenses of veteran troops to bolster Lee’s force, leaving only raw recruits in the capital. “Confidence in you,” Davis telegraphed to Lee as he forwarded two full divisions to him, “overcomes the view that would otherwise be taken of the exposed condition of Richmond.”10

  Robert E. Lee

  Lee fully justified this confidence with a notable victory at the Battle of Second Manassas on August 29–30. Pope’s beaten army retreated into the Washington defenses, opening Maryland to the invasion that Davis had long wanted to undertake. Lee acknowledged to Davis that his army was “not properly equipped for an invasion of an enemy’s territory. It lacks much of the material of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being much reduced, and the men poorly provided with clothes, and in thousands of instances, are destitute of shoes.” Nevertheless, “we cannot afford to be idle, and though weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them. . . . The movement is attended with much risk, yet I do not consider success impossible.”11

  Neither did Davis, who recognized the political and diplomatic as well as military potential of the invasion. Northern “Copperhead” Democrats were denouncing the war as a failure and calling for peace negotiations. Upcoming Northern congressional elections might result in a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. “Liberation” of Maryland and its adherence to the Confederacy seemed possible. Davis was aware of the British and French desire for an end of the war and of the Union blockade that had drastically reduced imports of cotton and thrown thousands of their textile workers out of employment. Davis and Lee were avid readers of Northern newspapers smuggled across the lines. These papers were full of information about political unrest and diplomatic maneuvers that might lead to foreign recognition of the Confederacy. A successful invasion of Maryland and another victory over the Army of the Potomac might accomplish these ends. “The present posture of affairs,” Lee wrote to Davis on September 8, four days after he had crossed the Potomac into Maryland, “places it in our power . . . to propose [to the Union government] . . . the recognition of our independence.” Such a proposal, “coming when it is in our power to inflict injury on our adversary . . . would enable the people of the United States to determine at their coming elections whether they will support those who favor a prolongation of the war, or those who wish to bring it to a termination.”12

  Davis intended to join Lee in Maryland to exploit these possibilities and to be present at the anticipated battle as he had been at those near Richmond. Fearing the danger of capture by roving Union cavalry, and probably not wanting Davis looking over his shoulder, Lee discouraged the president from coming. Davis nevertheless departed from Richmond on September 7 with a former governor of Maryland in tow, hoping to use his influence to attract Marylanders to the Confederacy. They got only as far as Warrenton, Virginia, and returned from there to Richmond the next day for reasons never explained. Davis’s fragile health had been giving him problems, which may explain his return.

  As the president traveled back to his capital, Lee’s army was traveling in several directions in Maryland. Having cut the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between Washington and the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Lee expected the Federals to evacuate that position, which lay athwart the Confederate supply route from the Shenandoah Valley. When they did not leave, Lee decided that he must capture Harpers Ferry before he could continue the invasion. He divided the army into five parts, three of them to converge on the enemy garrison. They succeeded in capturing Harpers Ferry and its twelve thousand defenders on September 15—the largest Confederate haul of Union prisoners in the war. But a copy of Lee’s orders for this operation, apparently lost by a careless Confederate courier, had been found wrapped around three cigars by two Union soldiers in a field near Frederick, Maryland, on September 13. This extraordinary stroke of luck gave Union general George B. McClellan information on the separation of the Army of Northern Virginia into several parts. Although McClellan and his subordinates did not move quickly enough to save Harpers Ferry from capture, he did attack the badly outnumbered Confederates along a stream named Antietam near the village of Sharpsburg on September
17. In a battle with the most casualties on a single day in the entire war (approximately twenty-three thousand killed, wounded, and missing in both armies), the Confederates were forced to retreat on the night of September 18–19. Davis was disappointed by the failure of the invasion to achieve its grand objectives, but with the record of the summer’s achievements in mind, he thanked Lee “and the brave men of your Army for the deeds which have covered our flag with imperishable fame.”13

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  EVENTS IN TENNESSEE MAY HAVE ACCOUNTED FOR DAVIS’S decision to return to Richmond rather than continue on to Maryland to join Lee. As commander in chief, his place was in the capital rather than with a single army in the field. After Union general Henry W. Halleck’s occupation of Corinth, Mississippi, at the end of May, Lincoln called Halleck to Washington in July to become general-in-chief of all Union armies. Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union troops in northern Mississippi, while Don Carlos Buell began a glacial advance toward Chattanooga to carry out Lincoln’s cherished hope to “liberate” the Unionists of East Tennessee. Having taken command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, Braxton Bragg began making plans to counter this effort. Confederate cavalry raids on Union supply lines by Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and Col. John Hunt Morgan slowed Buell’s progress. These successes encouraged Bragg to devise a more ambitious goal than merely defending Chattanooga. He moved his army over a circuitous route to that city, leaving behind about twenty-two thousand men under Generals Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price to harass Grant and if possible to recapture Corinth. Once he reached Chattanooga, Bragg proposed to move north from there and “produce [a] rapid offensive . . . following the consternation now being produced by our cavalry.” A Kentuckian, Morgan told Bragg that thousands in that state would join the Confederates as soon as a Southern army crossed the border.14

  Davis was hearing the same information from his aide William Preston Johnston, also a Kentuckian and son of his late lamented friend Albert Sidney Johnston. Davis needed little persuasion. He too was convinced that Kentuckians under the iron heel of Lincoln’s hirelings were eager to join the Confederacy. He had already reinforced the small army of Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Department of East Tennessee with headquarters at Knoxville.15 Although Davis failed to create unity of command by placing Kirby Smith’s and Bragg’s armies under a single head (Bragg had seniority), he expected them to cooperate in a joint invasion of Kentucky. This cooperation, he told Kirby Smith, would “enable the two armies to crush Buells column and advance to the recovery of Tennessee and the occupation of Kentucky.” To Bragg he added: “Buell being crushed, if your means will enable you to march rapidly on Nashville, Grant will be compelled to retire to the [Mississippi] river, abandoning Middle and [West] Tennessee. . . . You may have a complete conquest over the enemy, involving the liberation of Tennessee and Kentucky.”16

  This hopeful scenario seemed to be coming true in late August and early September. Kirby Smith’s force captured Richmond, Kentucky, along with more than four thousand Northern soldiers on August 30. On September 3 they occupied the state capital at Frankfort and prepared to inaugurate a Confederate governor. When this news reached Robert E. Lee just days after his army entered Maryland, he issued a general order to his troops announcing “this great victory” that was “simultaneous with your own at Manassas. Soldiers, press onward! . . . Let the armies of the East and West vie with each other in discipline, bravery, and activity, and our brethren of our sister States [Maryland and Kentucky] will soon be released from tyranny, and our independence be established on a sure and abiding basis.” Lee also issued a proclamation to the people of Maryland declaring that his army had come to help a state linked to the South “by the strongest social, political, and commercial ties” throw off “this foreign yoke” of Yankee occupation.17

  Not to be outdone in the matter of proclamations, Davis issued his own to the people of Kentucky and Maryland explaining why Confederate armies had invaded their states. The South was “waging this war solely for self-defence,” Davis declared, and “it has no design of conquest or any other purpose than to secure peace and the abandonment by the United States of its pretensions to govern [our] people.” Confederate armies were in Kentucky and Maryland “to protect our own country by transferring the seat of war to that of an enemy who pursues us with a relentless . . . hostility.” Davis appealed to the people of these states to “secure immunity from the desolating effects of warfare on the soil of the State by a separate treaty of peace” with the Confederacy.18

  The responses of people in Maryland and Kentucky were disappointing. Western Maryland was mostly Unionist in sentiment and few men from there joined the Army of Northern Virginia. Bragg wrote to Davis from Kentucky that “our prospects here . . . are not what I expected” from Colonel Morgan’s promise of thousands of recruits. Bragg had brought along some fifteen thousand muskets to arm Kentuckians, but only fifteen hundred joined up. “Enthusiasm runs high, but exhausts itself in words,” said Bragg in disgust.19

  Bragg did achieve one success in Kentucky: the capture of the Union garrison of four thousand men at Munfordville on September 17. His continued advance northward threw a scare into Union forces at Louisville and created a panic in Cincinnati. But September 17 was also the day of the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, which forced Lee to retreat to Virginia. Three weeks later, Bragg’s Army of Tennessee fought to a draw with Buell’s Army of the Ohio at Perryville, Kentucky. Short of supplies, irked by the Kentuckians, and outnumbered by Buell, Bragg and Kirby Smith began the long retreat to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Four days before the Battle of Perryville, a third leg of the Confederacy’s offensive-defensive bid for victory had also collapsed when Van Dorn’s and Price’s effort to recapture Corinth had been bloodily repulsed.

  Davis confessed himself “sadly disappointed” with the outcome of these campaigns. The chief administrative officer in the War Department said that the president “considers this the darkest and most dangerous period we have yet had.” He was “very low down after the battle of Sharpsburg” (the Confederate name for Antietam). “He said our maximum strength had been laid out, while the enemy was but beginning to put forth his.”20

  Confederate armies were forced to go over to the defensive again. The three main Union armies, two of them under new commanders, launched new offensives in November and December. In Mississippi, Grant moved against Vicksburg; in Tennessee, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, who renamed his command the Army of the Cumberland when he replaced Buell, marched out of Nashville against Bragg at Murfreesboro. And Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who replaced McClellan, aimed his army at the Confederate defenses on the hills above the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg.

  Davis also faced renewed pressures from governors around the Confederate periphery who resented the concentration of troops from their states in the main Confederate armies in Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi. North Carolinians, including newly elected Governor Zebulon Vance, complained of neglect of the state’s coastal defenses and asked for the return of North Carolina troops from Virginia. Davis responded that the best defense of North Carolina consisted of a strong army in Virginia “at a point where they can offer the most effective resistance.” To the commander of Charleston’s defenses, Davis explained that his call for South Carolina regiments to come to Virginia “was the result of pressing necessity. . . . You can estimate the consequences to the common cause which depend upon success here.”21 When the governors of Florida and Alabama lamented “disaster after disaster” to scattered coastal areas that enabled the enemy to make numerous lodgments along their shores, Davis commiserated with them but noted that “the enemy greatly outnumber us and have many advantages in moving their forces [by water] so that we must often be compelled to hold positions and fight battles with the chances against us. Our only alternatives are to abandon important points or to use our limited resources as effectively as the circumstances will permit.�
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  Davis’s ambiguous explanation provided cold comfort to these governors, who nevertheless remained loyal supporters of the Confederate government. More troubling were the protests and threats from Louisiana and Arkansas, largely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy by Union control of most of the Mississippi River. Nearly all Confederate troops still in Louisiana had been transferred to northern Mississippi after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, enabling the enemy to occupy New Orleans and most of southern Louisiana. The governor bewailed “the calamity that has deprived us of our metropolis, severed the State, and rendered all the banks of our navigable rivers . . . vulnerable to the enemy’s armed vessels.” All thirty Louisiana regiments were serving outside the state, he reminded Davis, and “knowing the necessity of massing the Confederate troops at vital points, I do not ask or expect soldiers to be withdrawn from our great armies” to defend what remained of Confederate Louisiana. But “no more men or arms should be spared for distant service until the yet uninvaded part of the State is guarded against marauders.”23

  The governor of Arkansas went even further and threatened to secede from the Confederacy if the state was left undefended. Most troops in Arkansas had been ordered east of the Mississippi in April 1862 to help defend Corinth, and remained there even after that city fell. Union forces occupied northern Arkansas. The angry governor issued a proclamation deploring “Arkansas lost, abandoned, subjugated.” She “is not Arkansas as she entered the confederate government. Nor will she remain Arkansas a confederate State desolated as a wilderness.”24