Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

  Another strategic alternative was guerrilla war. Confederate partisans were active behind Union lines in several theaters, and quasi-guerrilla cavalry commanders like Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan also carried out many successful raids. Although Davis approved of these activities, he showed relatively little interest in guerrilla warfare as a primary strategy. In this lack of interest his instincts were probably sound. The Confederacy was an established polity with the institutions of a nation-state and an organized army with professional commanders. Conventional warfare supplemented by auxiliary guerrilla operations or cavalry raids behind enemy lines represented its best strategic mix. Guerrilla actions as the main strategy are most appropriate for a rebel force trying to capture the institutions of government, not to defend them. And a slave society that practices guerrilla warfare is playing with fire, for it opens up opportunities for the slaves to carry out their own guerrilla actions against the regime.

  Most critical appraisals of Davis as commander in chief have focused more on his choices of generals and his relations with them than on his choice of strategies. Davis’s alleged favoritism toward old West Point classmates and army comrades like Theophilus Holmes, Leonidas Polk, and Lucius Northrop has been the subject of much censure. His high regard for Albert Sidney Johnston, Braxton Bragg, John C. Pemberton, and John Bell Hood, which caused him to appoint them to top commands where they failed to measure up to expectations, likewise raised questions about his judgment. Davis’s supposed vendettas against two of the Confederacy’s foremost generals, Pierre G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston, have generated reams of reproach. His stubborn insistence on retaining Northrop, Holmes, Polk, and Bragg in their posts despite widespread criticism alienated many people and weakened his administration. Beauregard and especially Joseph Johnston became the focal points of an increasingly corrosive political opposition that undermined Davis’s ability to lead.

  Some of these negative appraisals are at least partly justified. Northrop, Holmes, Polk, and perhaps Pemberton did not deserve Davis’s high opinion of their merits. His continued support for them did evince favoritism. His faith in Hood may have been misplaced. The issue of Braxton Bragg is more complicated. Davis recognized that part of the opposition to Bragg by his principal subordinates was petty and self-serving. And he did try to get Joseph Johnston to replace Bragg in the spring of 1863, when it became clear that Bragg had lost the confidence of his senior generals. But Johnston managed to evade the responsibility. Davis then tried twice to persuade Robert E. Lee to take this troubled command, but Lee also demurred. Either Beauregard or Johnston probably would have accepted command of the Army of Tennessee after the next outbreak of an anti-Bragg revolt following Chickamauga, and Davis probably should have appointed one of them.

  His refusal to do so raises the matter of his caustic relationships with these two top generals. It seems clear that in both cases Davis was more sinned against than sinning. Beauregard’s outsize ego caused him repeatedly to glorify himself at Davis’s expense. The president should perhaps have given Beauregard more slack, but his distrust of the general was surely justified. As for Johnston, Davis showed heroic patience with that general’s constant complaints, frequent flouting of presidential orders, and failure to keep Davis informed of his operational plans. The president gave Johnston more slack than he deserved. Davis’s most controversial act, the removal of Johnston from command in July 1864, was fully warranted. The military historian Richard McMurry was not being entirely facetious when he said, in a casual conversation, that if Johnston had been left in command he would have fought the crucial battle of the Atlanta campaign at Key West.

  Davis’s relationship with General Robert E. Lee was one of the brightest features of his tenure as commander in chief. The president recognized Lee’s ability and supported the general in the face of initial criticisms. The two men forged a partnership even closer and longer lasting than the one between Lincoln and Grant on the other side. And while the Lincoln-Grant team eventually won the war, this does not mean that the Davis-Lee team was responsible for losing it. For in the final analysis, the salient truth about the American Civil War is not that the Confederacy lost but that the Union won.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I could not have written this book without the pioneering scholarship of William J. Cooper, Jr., and William C. “Jack” Davis, whose biographies of Jefferson Davis provided much of the framework for my own research. That research was made possible by the professionalism of Lynda Lasswell Crist and her fellow editors of The Papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University, whose scholarly thoroughness provided me with access to all known documentation on Davis as commander in chief, supplementing the earlier edition of Davis’s speeches, letters, and telegrams edited in the 1920s by Dunbar Rowland.

  I am grateful to Scott Moyers of The Penguin Press for suggesting that I undertake this project and for keeping faith in it from first to last. Copy editor Adam Goldberger improved the accuracy and readability of my prose, while Mally Anderson and production editor Bruce Giffords shepherded the manuscript through the process of publication. Bill Nelson skillfully drew the maps. To all of them I owe a big vote of thanks.

  My wife, Patricia McPherson, tolerated my preoccupation with Jefferson Davis, who is not her favorite historical character. But she recognizes that we cannot understand the Civil War and its meaning without coming to grips with the Confederate as well as the Union commander in chief.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Crist, PJD, followed by volume and page numbers, for Lynda Lasswell Crist, Mary Seaton Dix, Kenneth H. Williams, Barbara J. Rozek, and Peggy L. Dillard, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vols. 7–11 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992–2003).

  O.R., followed by series, volume, part, and page numbers, for The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 volumes in 128 serials (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901).

  Rowland, JDC, followed by volume and page numbers, for Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, vols. 5–6 (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923).

  INTRODUCTION

  1.Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885–86), 2:87; David M. Potter, “Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat,” in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), 102, 112.

  2.James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin Press, 2008).

  3.George Bagby, quoted in Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 142.

  4.Quoted in E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950), 385–86.

  5.James Z. Rabun, “Alexander H. Stephens and Jefferson Davis,” American Historical Review 58 (1953): 307.

  6.Quoted in T. Michael Parrish, “Jeff Davis Rules: General Beauregard and the Sanctity of Civilian Authority in the Confederacy,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Jefferson Davis’s Generals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 38.

  7.Stephen R. Mallory to his son “Buddy,” Sept. 27, 1865, in Joseph T. Durkin, Stephen R. Mallory: Confederate Navy Chief (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 179.

  8.George Akin, quoted in Grady McWhiney, “Jefferson Davis and His Generals,” in McWhiney, Southerners and Other Americans (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 85–86. See also Crist, PJD, 11:299.

  9.Harris D. Riley, Jr., “Jefferson Davis and His Health,” Journal of Mississippi History 49 (1987): 179–202, 262–87.

  10.John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Howard Swiggett, 2 vols. (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 1:312, 319, entries of May 6 and 19, 186
3.

  11.Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

  1. WE MUST PREPARE FOR A LONG WAR

  1.Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir by His Wife, 2 vols. (New York: Belford, 1890), 2:18–19; Jefferson Davis to Alexander M. Clayton, Jan. 30, 1861, Davis to Franklin Stringfellow, June 4, 1878, Crist, PJD, 7:28, 29n.

  2.Davis to Francis Pickens, Feb. 20, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:55.

  3.New Orleans Delta, Feb. 14, 1861, quoted in William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 305; Memphis Daily Appeal, Feb. 19, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:42.

  4.Charleston Tri-Weekly Mercury, Feb. 19, 1861, in Rowland, JDC, 5:48; Davis’s address, ibid., 5:49–53.

  5.Davis to Semmes, Feb. 21, 1861, ibid., 5:54–56.

  6.T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1955), 49–50; Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 167; Davis to Pickens, Feb. 22, 1861, Davis to Braxton Bragg, Apr. 3, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:57, 85–86; Davis to Pickens, Mar. 1, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:58–59.

  7.Davis to Bragg, Apr. 3, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:85–86.

  8.W. C. Davis, Davis, 320–23; William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 337–40; Herman Hattaway and Richard E. Beringer, Jefferson Davis, Confederate President (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 65–66; Rowland, JDC, 5:97–98.

  9.Charlotte Maria Wigfall to Louise Wigfall, Apr. 26, 1861, in Louise Wigfall, A Southern Girl in ’61: The Wartime Memories of a Confederate Senator’s Daughter (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905), 49.

  10.C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 60, 83, diary entries of May 17, June 28, 1861, quoting conversations with Davis. See also C. Vann Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, eds., The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 69, 86.

  11.Rembert W. Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1944), 107–8; Paul Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 115; John H. Reagan, Memoirs, with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War (reprint of 1906 ed., Austin, Tex.: Pemberton Press, 1968), 116–17.

  12.Rowland, JDC, 5:84.

  13.Davis to Claiborne Fox Jackson, Apr. 23, 1861, ibid., 5:66.

  14.Davis’s message to Congress, ibid., 5:70–72.

  15.W. C. Davis, Davis, 176; Cooper, Davis, 302, 315.

  16.Davis to Robert Barnwell Rhett, Nov. 10, 1860, Crist, PJD, 6:369.

  17.Davis to Edmund Kirby Smith, Nov. 19, 1863, ibid., 10:81.

  18.Spencer Adams to Davis, May 1, 1861, Jacob Thompson to Davis, Sept. 6, 1861, Corpus Christi Committee of Public Safety to Davis, Apr. 28, 1861, ibid., 7:143, 329, 141.

  19.Charles J. Mitchell to Davis, Apr. 27, 1861, Thomas O. Moore to Davis, Apr. 28, Sept. 7, 1861, ibid., 7:134–35, 141, 331; Joseph E. Brown to J. H. Howard, May 20, 1861, in Joseph Howard Parks, Joseph E. Brown of Georgia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 147; Brown to Leroy P. Walker, May [?], 1861, in William Harris Bragg, Joe Brown’s Army: The Georgia State Line, 1862–1865 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987), 4.

  20.Davis to Isham G. Harris, July 17, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:248; italics added.

  21.Davis to Johnston, Sept. 5, 8, 1861, Davis to John Letcher, Sept. 13, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:129, 131, 135–36.

  22.Davis’s endorsement on a letter from Herschel V. Johnson to Davis, Nov. 11, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:409; Davis to Pickens, Nov. 11, 1861, ibid., Addenda, 11:598; Parks, Joseph E. Brown, 168.

  23.P. G. T. Beauregard to Davis, June 12, 1861, Davis to Beauregard, June 13, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:197, 199–200.

  24.Davis to James Chesnut, Oct. 30, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:157; Chesnut to Davis, Nov. 2, 1861, Robert E. Lee to Davis, Nov. 24, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:388–92, 426.

  25.Davis to Joseph Davis, June 18, 1861, Davis to Johnston, June 22, July 13, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:203, 208–9, 239.

  26.Rowland, JDC, 5:111; Crist, PJD, 7:249; O.R., ser. 1, vol. 2:932, 980.

  27.Steven E. Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 6–7.

  28.Leonidas Polk to Mrs. Polk, June 10, 1861, in W. C. Davis, Davis, 346; Johnston to Davis, June 26, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:213.

  29.W. C. Davis, Davis, 350–51; Cooper, Davis, 348; Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 1–5; Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols. (reprint of 1881 ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), 1:302–5.

  30.Crist, PJD, 7:258–59.

  31.Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 43–44; Williams, Beauregard, 89–90.

  32.Johnston to Davis, Aug. 3, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:273.

  33.Woodward and Muhlenfeld, The Private Mary Chesnut, 103, diary entry of July 24, 1861.

  34.Quoted in Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 49.

  35.Judah P. Benjamin to Beauregard, Oct. 17, 1861, Beauregard to Davis, Nov. 5, 1861, Davis to Beauregard, Nov. 10, 1861, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 5:904, 945.

  36.Davis to Beauregard, Oct. 30, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:156–57.

  37.John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Howard Swiggett, 2 vols. (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 1:71, entry of Aug. 11, 1861; Davis, Rise and Fall, 1:315–16.

  38.Johnston to Davis, Sept. 12, 1861, O.R., ser. 4, vol. 1:605–8.

  39.Davis to Johnston, Sept. 14, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:340.

  40.Richmond Examiner, Sept. 27, 1861, in Frederick S. Daniel, The Richmond Examiner During the War (reprint ed. of 1868, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 23–24.

  41.Wilmot D. De Saussure to James Chesnut, Oct. 4, 1861, in Woodward, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 215.

  42.Davis to William Brooks, Mar. 14, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:100.

  43.The main source for the discussions at this conference is Smith’s memorandum, written in January 1862: O.R., ser. 1, vol. 5:884–87. See also Davis to Johnston, Sept. 8, Nov. 10, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:129, 161–63; Gustavus W. Smith to Davis, Oct. 8, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:355; Davis to Smith, Oct. 10, 1861, Rowland, JDC, 5:139; Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 60–69.

  2. WINTER OF DISCONTENT

  1.Isham Harris to Jefferson Davis, Sept. 4, 1861, and Davis’s endorsement, Leonidas Polk to Davis, Sept. 4, 1861, Davis to Polk, Sept. 5, 1861, Harris to Davis, Sept. 13, 1861, Davis to Polk, Sept. 15, 1861, Crist, PJD, 7:325–28 and n, 339, 341; Steven E. Woodworth, Jefferson Davis and His Generals (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 36–41; Steven E. Woodworth, No Band of Brothers: Problems of the Rebel High Command (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 15–17; William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 356–57; Herman Hattaway and Richard E. Beringer, Jefferson Davis: Confederate President (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 104–6.

  2.Charles P. Roland, Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 277. See also William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 396–97.

  3.O.R., ser. 1, vol. 6:823–24.

  4.Jefferson Davis to Joseph Davis, Feb. 21, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:53.

  5.Grady McWhiney, “Jefferson Davis and His Generals,” in McWhiney, Southerners and Other Americans (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 90–91.

  6.Roland, Johnston, 299–300.

  7.Davis to Albert Sidney Johnston, Mar. 12, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:92–94; Thomas Bragg diary, entry of Mar. 7, 1862, quoted in ibid., 8:94n.

 
8.Sidney Johnston to Davis, Mar. 18, 1862, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 7:258–61; Davis to Johnston, Mar. 26, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:117.

  9.Davis to Judah P. Benjamin, Mar. 11, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:214.

  10.Richmond Whig, Mar. 18, 1862, in Harrison Anthony Trexler, “The Davis Administration and the Richmond Press, 1861–1865,” Journal of Southern History 16 (1950): 187; Toombs quoted in Cooper, Davis, 382.

  11.Eli N. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (New York: Free Press, 1988), 146–47; Cooper, Davis, 382–83; Rembert W. Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1944), 64–65, 173.

  12.Rowland, JDC, 5:198–203.

  13.Davis to William M. Brooks, Mar. 15, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:100; Thomas Bragg diary, entry of Feb. 19, 1862, in Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 200.

  14.Rowland, JDC, 5:203–4.

  15.Sidney Johnston to Davis, Mar. 18, 1862, Davis to Johnston, Mar. 26, Apr. 5, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:106, 117, 130.