Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

  Despite disappointment with the failure to launch an offensive in Tennessee, Southern morale was buoyed by a victory over Union invaders of Florida at the Battle of Olustee in February, the recapture of Plymouth, North Carolina, in April, and the repulse of a major Union effort to capture Shreveport and penetrate into Texas in the Red River campaign in the spring of 1864. For Davis the satisfaction of these victories was marred by the personal tragedy of the death of his five-year-old son Joseph in a fall from the balcony of the executive mansion on April 30. The president had to surmount his sorrow and shoulder the heavy burden of running a war, for the military campaigns that could make or break the Confederacy were about to begin.

  6.

  WE MUST BEAT SHERMAN

  On May 4, 1864, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River to begin a campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia that would prove unequaled in the war for its intensity and carnage. The next day the newly formed Union Army of the James moved up its namesake river toward the railroad lifeline between Petersburg and Richmond. These movements on the military chessboard posed an even greater threat to the Confederate capital than McClellan’s Peninsula campaign of 1862 had done. Commander in Chief Jefferson Davis mobilized the Confederacy’s dwindling resources to meet the threat. Excerpts from some of Davis’s telegrams to General Robert E. Lee provide hints of his hands-on activities. May 5: “Two (2) brigades have been ordered up from Charleston.” May 11: “Hoke’s brigade left Petersburg this morning with other troops to effect if possible a junction with Ransom at Chester. . . . We have been sorely pressed by enemy on south side. . . . I go to look after defence. Will have supplies attended to at once and soon as possible send troops to you.”1

  On May 12 Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s Union cavalry was reported approaching Richmond from the north. Davis dashed home from his office and grabbed his pistols. He rode out to join the brigades of Generals Robert Rodes and Archibald Gracie. As matters turned out, they were able to stop Sheridan without the aid of Davis’s revolvers. May 15: “Have directed all organized Infantry and Cavalry to come forward from the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and part of Florida. . . . I am endeavoring to get out reserves in Virginia and No. Carolina, to guard lines of communication and depots so as to liberate veteran troops.” These reserves were men and boys over or under conscription age and men with occupational exemptions from the draft.2

  Davis brought General Pierre G. T. Beauregard from Charleston to command the troops he was assembling at Drewry’s Bluff, seven miles south of Richmond, to confront Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. Davis rode out to these lines frequently to consult Beauregard and position troops; on one occasion he came under fire from Union artillery that took off the arm of a soldier standing near him.3 Beauregard proposed one of his bold but unrealistic schemes to defeat Butler and Grant in turn. Lee would fall back from Spotsylvania toward Richmond and send ten thousand men to Beauregard, who would attack Butler. Once Butler was taken care of, Beauregard would join Lee north of Richmond to destroy Grant. Davis vetoed the plan, which would have been likely to open Richmond’s defenses to Grant long before Beauregard’s shuttling of troops back and forth could have accomplished anything.4

  Davis ordered Beauregard to attack Butler at Drewry’s Bluff with the 18,000 troops he had, reinforced by 5,300 under Maj. Gen. William H. C. Whiting from Port Walthall on the railroad between Drewry’s Bluff and Petersburg. Beauregard proposed instead to have Whiting assail Butler’s rear while the main Confederate force attacked his front. Davis vetoed that plan too, because a Union force would be able to block Whiting’s approach. He ordered Beauregard to bring Whiting to join his main force for the attack on May 16. Behind the president’s back, however, Beauregard phrased his orders to Whiting according to his original idea. And just as Davis had warned, Whiting was not able to bring his troops to bear during the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff on May 16. This battle was a Confederate victory, but less complete than it might have been had Beauregard not defied Davis’s orders. Butler entrenched his army on a neck between the James and Appomattox Rivers, where they remained a serious threat to Petersburg.5

  Nevertheless, the limited victory at Drewry’s Bluff and Lee’s staunch defense at Spotsylvania seemed to relieve the danger to Richmond, at least temporarily. Ordnance Chief Josiah Gorgas reported on May 20 that Davis “was in better spirits than I have seen him for a long time.”6 The Richmond front stabilized as the Army of the Potomac crossed the James River in mid-June to attack Petersburg. Beauregard’s few troops managed to hold them off until the Army of Northern Virginia filed into the formidable defensive works and forced Grant to settle down for a siege of Petersburg and Richmond that would turn out to last more than nine months.

  During that time Davis often rode out to the lines at Richmond and occasionally came under enemy fire. Maj. Gen. Robert Ransom commanding part of the capital’s defenses wrote that “there was no individual who was more familiar with the topography of Richmond and its vicinity than Mr. Davis. He had made himself acquainted with every road and by path and with the streams and farms for twenty miles around.” Davis’s private secretary Burton Harrison and members of his staff sometimes accompanied him on these rides to the front. Harrison described how the president “always led the staff as close to the ragged edge of danger as was humanly possible, having an apparent longing to escape from official thraldom and return to the risks of his days of soldiering.”7

  If Davis remained in thrall to paperwork, however, it still seemed to be more by choice than by necessity. The War Department clerk and diarist John B. Jones marveled at how “the President is indefatigable in his labors. Every day the papers he sends to the department bear evidence of his attention to the minutest subject, even to the small appointments.” On another occasion Jones noted that “nine-tenths of the President’s time and labor consist of discriminating between applicants for office and for promotion.”8 Little wonder that with only one functioning eye (and that one none too sound) Davis was plagued by frequent headaches and facial neuralgia. And the better spirits that Josiah Gorgas had observed on May 20 soon gave way to vexation with the news from Georgia.

  • • •

  AS LATE AS THE FIRST WEEK OF MAY 1864, DAVIS STILL hoped that General Johnston might be able to take the offensive against Sherman in northern Georgia. On May 4 General Leonidas Polk was ordered to bring his corps of fourteen thousand men from Alabama to reinforce Johnston, boosting the latter’s strength to sixty-five thousand men to face Sherman’s one hundred thousand. It was Sherman who took the initiative, however. He launched flanking movements that forced Johnston twenty miles south to Calhoun, Georgia, by May 16. Davis learned this news with “disappointment.” He still hoped that “the future will prove the wisdom of [Johnston’s] course, and that we shall hereafter reap advantages that will compensate for the great disappointment.”9

  Instead, the news grew worse. Johnston retreated another twenty miles to Cassville. There he turned to fight, assigning Hood the task of attacking the Union Twenty-Third Corps separated from the rest of Sherman’s army. But Hood’s scouts reported a Federal force on his flank, so he held back. This force turned out to be only a cavalry detachment, but by the time that information was sorted out, the chance for an attack had passed. Hood and Polk persuaded Johnston to pull back yet again to a more defensible position at Allatoona Pass through the mountains less than forty miles north of Atlanta. Johnston explained to Davis in a dispatch on May 21 that Hood “was deceived by a false report that a heavy column of the enemy had turned our right & was close upon him and took a defensive position. When the mistake was discovered it was too late to resume the movement.” Johnston assured the president that “I have earnestly sought for an opportunity to strike the enemy” and would continue to do so.10

  But Davis was getting contrary information from Hood. The general sent Col. Henry Brewster of his staff to Richmond to make a confidential report “in relation
to our affairs.”11 Although no record exists of Brewster’s report, its content can be deduced from the colonel’s careless talk in Richmond parlors. Mary Chesnut reported that he said “Hood and Polk wanted to fight,” but Johnston “resisted their counsel” because he was “afraid to risk a battle.” These remarks were disingenuous, to say the least. But Davis was disposed to believe them. Johnston’s alleged reluctance to risk battle seemed to be a reprise of his strategy in Virginia in 1862 and Mississippi in 1863. Secretary of War Seddon reinforced Davis’s doubts. “Johnston’s theory of war,” said Seddon, “seemed to be never to fight unless strong enough certainly to overwhelm your enemy, and under all circumstances merely to continue to elude him.”12

  As Sherman advanced, his rail supply line stretching 60 miles to Chattanooga and another 150 miles back to Nashville became increasingly vulnerable. Earlier Confederate cavalry raids on such lines of communication had slowed or stopped Union advances. Johnston wanted to try it again—not with his own cavalry, but with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s horsemen moving north from Mississippi. But when Polk brought fourteen thousand men to reinforce Johnston, he had left behind only about ten thousand, mostly cavalry including Forrest’s troopers, to defend Mississippi. Union forces operating out of Memphis posed a serious threat, so Davis urged Johnston to use his own plentiful cavalry under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler to raid Sherman’s rear. Johnston maintained that most of Wheeler’s cavalry were dismounted because of a shortage of horses, and he needed every mounted trooper for patrol and scouting duties. To a skeptical Davis, this seemed like one more excuse for doing nothing. Concerned about the defense of Mississippi, the president refused Johnston’s request to turn Forrest loose in Tennessee.13

  Insisting that stopping Sherman was more crucial than defending the marginal Mississippi theater, some contemporaries (and historians) were critical of Davis’s failure to use Forrest against Sherman’s communications.14 One of those contemporaries was Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia, who lost few opportunities to throw darts at the president on issues ranging from the draft to the defense of Georgia. Maintaining that Atlanta was “almost as important” to the Confederacy “as the heart is to the human body,” Brown accused Davis of favoring Mississippi over Georgia. Davis patiently replied, “I fully appreciate the importance of Atlanta. . . . I have sent all available reinforcements, detaching troops even from points that remain exposed to the enemy. . . . I do not see that I can change the disposition of our forces so as to help Gen’l Johnston more effectively than by the present arrangement.”15

  When Brown responded with a telegram lecturing Davis on his failure to understand that “Sherman’s escape with his army would be impossible if ten thousand good cavalry under Forrest were thrown in his rear,” Davis lost his temper. He telegraphed a withering reply to Brown bristling with the pent-up anger that he probably felt toward Johnston: “Your dicta cannot control the disposition of troops in different parts of the Confederate States. Most men in your position would not assume to decide on the value of the service to be rendered by troops in distant positions.” Brown had the last word in this exchange. “I have not pretended to dictate,” he wrote on July 7, “but when Georgia has forty to fifty regiments defending Richmond & Atlanta is in great danger probably no one but yourself would consider the anxiety of the efforts of her Governor . . . just cause of rebuke.” If Davis refused to concentrate more troops to support Johnston, “I fear the result will be similar to those which followed the like policy of dividing our forces at Murfreesboro and Chattanooga.”16

  After stabilizing the front and holding Sherman in place at Kennesaw Mountain twenty miles north of Atlanta during a rainy June, Johnston pulled back twelve miles to the Chattahoochee River on July 4 in response to another flanking movement by Sherman. In reply to a telegram from Davis expressing alarm at this latest retreat, Johnston explained that Sherman’s “greatly superior numbers” made it impossible to prevent such advances. “I have found no opportunity for battle except by attacking entrenchments,” wrote Johnston, who again urged a raid by cavalry from Mississippi.17

  For Davis this was the last straw. He sent Braxton Bragg to Georgia to survey the situation and advise him what to do. As Bragg headed south, Davis met the next day with a visitor who had just come north: Senator Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia. He had recently visited Johnston’s army, where he discussed the condition of affairs with the general. Davis quizzed Hill, who was one of his strongest supporters in the Senate. Hill told the president that Johnston had assured him he could hold Sherman north of the Chattahoochee at least fifty-four days. With a wry face, Davis read Hill a telegram he had just received announcing that Sherman had crossed that river two days earlier and Johnston had completed his withdrawal that very morning.18

  Even before he heard from Bragg, Davis decided that Johnston must go. But who would replace him? On July 12 Davis telegraphed Lee at his headquarters in Petersburg: “Gen’l Johnston has failed and there are strong indications that he will abandon Atlanta. . . . It seems necessary to relieve him at once, who should succeed him? What think you of Hood for the position?” Lee replied with regrets about the necessity and timing of replacing Johnston, and added: “Hood is a bold fighter. I am doubtful as to the other qualities necessary.”19 Lee followed this telegram with a letter elaborating his brief comments. “It is a grievous thing to change commander of an army” facing an imminent crisis, he wrote. “Still if necessary it ought to be done.” As for Hood, he is “a good fighter very industrious on the battle field, careless off.” Lee had had no opportunity to judge his capacity for command of an entire army, and suggested that “General Hardee has more experience in managing an army.” Davis agreed that replacing Johnston “is a sad alternative, but the case is hopeless in present hands. The means are surely adequate, if properly employed.”20

  Bragg’s reports confirmed Davis’s convictions. “I cannot learn that [Johnston] has any more plan for the future than he has had in the past,” Bragg wired the president. “The best interests of the country demand a change.” In addition to holding long conversations with Johnston, Bragg spoke at length with Hood, who repeated his assertions that he had wanted to attack Sherman on several occasions but Johnston had held him back. Hood also said that General Hardee had agreed with Johnston. These self-serving claims were considerably less than the truth. Hood realized that Hardee was his chief rival for the command if Johnston was removed. And he probably knew that Bragg was receptive to criticisms of Hardee, who had been part of the anti-Bragg faction in the army the previous year. Bragg thus informed Davis that “Hood is the man. . . . I am decidedly opposed [to Hardee] as it would perpetuate the past & present policy, which he has advised & now sustains.”21

  Davis still hesitated. He knew that relieving Johnston would be controversial. It would intensify the hostility of the anti-administration coterie in Congress led by Senator Wigfall and now supported by a powerful trio of Georgians: Governor Brown, Robert Toombs, and even Vice President Alexander Stephens. Lee’s caution about removing Johnston and his seeming preference, if removal proved absolutely necessary, for Hardee rather than Hood gave Davis pause. The president had offered the command to Hardee back in December. He had turned it down then and was a pro-Johnston man now, according to Bragg. Davis could have given the post to Beauregard, “but the President thinks as ill of him as of Johnston,” commented the chief administrative officer in the War Department.22

  Davis decided to give Johnston one last chance. On July 16 he telegraphed the general: “I wish to hear from you as to present situation & your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate [events].” Johnston replied that “as the enemy has double our numbers, we must be on the defensive. My plan of operations must therefore depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in a condition to be held for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider
.”23

  The Georgia militia? A day or two? To Davis this reply meant that Johnston was planning to yield Atlanta to the enemy. The consequences would be disastrous. The city was home to several war industries and was the nexus of a rail network radiating to every corner of the lower South. It had become a symbol of Confederate resistance second only to Richmond. Johnston’s apparent unwillingness to defend the city or to strike Sherman a blow sealed his fate. With the unanimous support of the cabinet, Davis replaced Johnston with Hood.24

  This act was perhaps Davis’s most divisive and fateful proceeding as commander in chief. The press and public took sides and condemned or defended the decision. Congressmen and senators spoke out for and against it. Division also existed in the army, where Johnston was popular with the rank and file because, like Union general George B. McClellan, he was careful with their lives. But also like McClellan, he incurred the displeasure of his commander in chief because he would not fight. And whatever else Hood’s appointment meant, it meant fight.

  Two days after taking command, Hood attacked part of Sherman’s army as it was crossing Peach Tree Creek just north of Atlanta. The assault was poorly coordinated and the Yankees repulsed it while inflicting almost twice as many casualties as they suffered themselves and driving the Confederates back into the Atlanta defenses. Another two days later Hood attacked again east of the city, bringing on the largest battle of the campaign. After initial confusion and retreat, the Federals steadied and counterattacked, again causing Confederate losses more than twice their own. Once more Hood attacked unsuccessfully, this time west of Atlanta on July 28, with the Confederates suffering seven times the number of Union casualties.