Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Although President Davis acted to stop the Richmond rioters, he recognized that they and many other Confederate citizens were suffering. He asked Congress to assist those whose property had been destroyed by the government for defensive purposes. Tax policy also addressed the issue. Congress in 1863 placed a levy on exempted overseers, enacted a progressive income tax, and put a 10 percent tax in kind on agricultural products. The last stipulated that after reserving subsistence for his family, a farmer would turn over 10 percent of the surplus to the government, which, in turn, would be distributed among soldiers’ families. The tax in kind was double-edged, for the tax collectors became to many farmers government oppressors. The president also hailed efforts by states and localities to assist those deprived by war. The Confederacy fell far short of fulfilling needs for assistance, but seven decades before the New Deal and under extremely difficult circumstances, it tried, however stumblingly. For the government and the president, significant relief could only come if the battlefield could relieve pressure on the home front.79

  Jefferson Davis did not have to experience the vicissitudes and viciousness of war vicariously. His brother Joseph, Joseph’s property, and his own were caught in the tornado of war twisting through Mississippi. In late 1862, Joseph, with the human and animal property of both brothers that he could bring from Davis Bend, had relocated at Fleetwood in Hinds County, west of Jackson. During the following spring Joseph undertook unfruitful farming operations while worrying about his wife Eliza’s worsening health. Even here, as he wrote Jefferson, “much anxiety” and “uncertainty” about Federal military movements preyed on his mind. Moving to Fleetwood did not take Joseph to safety, for Grant’s campaign placed his new homestead in harm’s way.80

  In late May 1863 Federal troops arrived at Fleetwood. The elderly Joseph, who was given just thirty minutes to get his furniture outside, could only watch helplessly as the men in blue burned buildings and carried off personal valuables, provisions, and slaves. Joseph believed that false promises along with force motivated the blacks to leave. Whatever the causes, all but a few were gone. Jefferson’s nearby place received identical treatment. By mid-June, Joseph told his brother that “never since the war began has appearances been so bad.” “Affairs here are depressing,” he wrote. Despite his own travail, Joseph regularly expressed concern for his youngest sibling’s welfare.81

  Following the ravaging of Fleetwood, Joseph traveled a short distance to the farm of Owen Cox, a former overseer on Hurricane and now a helpful friend. From Cox’s, he narrated the disaster for his brother, including the news that their sister in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, had also suffered grievous depredations. In spite of Eliza’s illness, Joseph set about repairing wagons and carts to take him, her, and granddaughter Lise Mitchell away from the fury.

  Even before the baleful tidings of destruction inflicted on Fleetwood reached him, Jefferson was distraught. “It has been to me a constant source of deep anxiety to know that you were exposed to the malignant outrages of the cruel foe with whom we are at war,” he wrote. He even suggested that Joseph come to Richmond with wife and granddaughter. His words conveyed palpable distress: “It is sad to me to know that you and Sister Eliza are in your old age denied the repose required and to feel powerless to give you the personal assistance which in the order of nature is due from me. God I trust will shield you.…”82

  Then yet more terrible news reached Richmond. Just after the fall of Vicksburg, Federals showed up at Cox’s farm. There Joseph had hidden personal belongings of Jefferson he had managed to bring from Brierfield, thinking these would be safe at what he considered an anonymous farmstead. He might have been right but for a slave belonging to Cox who had run off to the Union army. Returning with the soldiers, this bondsman revealed the hiding places. From Saturday until Monday the bluecoats assaulted—tearing, wrecking, burning, pillaging. A box of correspondence did survive, wending its way up the chain of command all the way to the War Department in Washington and in the early twentieth century to the Library of Congress. Aside from those few papers, almost the sole surviving items were a writing desk and a marble bust of Jefferson and Varina’s firstborn, Samuel. The latter escaped because the white caretaker, held under guard during the rampage, claimed it represented his own dead child. Upon getting word of this pillaging, the president pressed for particulars. The resulting accounts only added detail to the story of destruction. They were punctuated by Joseph’s report in mid-August that everything hidden at Cox’s had been destroyed or carried off.83

  Joseph had become a wandering refugee. Three difficult weeks on the road with wife, granddaughter, and a few slaves brought him in August all the way to western Alabama. After a short stay for the bedridden Eliza to regain some strength, in early September he turned his small caravan back toward Mississippi, heading for Lauderdale Springs above Meridian and just inside the state. Though supposedly a healthy location, Joseph found it hot and unhealthy. But he hoped to hire out his slaves to the military hospital there; besides, Eliza, who had survived two months under extremely arduous conditions, was simply too weak to move. Within the month she was dead. From Lauderdale Springs, Joseph let Jefferson know that Cox had brought the bust of Samuel to him.

  Late in the year Joseph went back to Jackson, hoping to generate an expedition to recover the slaves still at Brierfield and Hurricane. A cavalry raid did take place, but it did not please the old planter. To Jefferson, he termed it “murderous,” accusing the Confederates of firing on slaves, killing several. The blacks had been armed by the Federals to protect and slaughter cattle, but according to Joseph they fired only in self-defense. Frustrated that he could not bring about another effort to reclaim the bondspeople at Davis Bend, Joseph once more started east. Reporting on his final visit to their Hinds County property, Joseph informed Jefferson that nothing remained, not even hogs. For the president Vicksburg was a personal as well as a national disaster.

  Scanning his far-flung battle lines, President Davis could see little brightness. With the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the distant Trans-Mississippi became almost a separate territory. Recognizing that the closure of the Mississippi River fundamentally altered the status of the westernmost segment of his country, Davis assigned his commander more complex and varied duties. Since March that position had been occupied by Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, an energetic officer who always relished independent command. A good choice for this vast, difficult domain in place of the loyal and conscientious but nervous and incompetent Theophilus Holmes, Smith set out to stabilize and make an imprint on his command.

  The commander in chief understood the difficulty of Smith’s task, realizing that its political dimensions equaled, even exceeded, the military ones. Davis knew that west of the river, sentiment existed to separate the Trans-Mississippi states from the Confederacy, a feeling he attributed to “unreasonable men [who believe] they have been neglected and timid men [who] may hope that they can make better terms for themselves, if their cause is not combined with that of the Confederacy.” To counter this view, Davis assured political leaders in his distant Far West that “no effort shall be spared to promote the defense of the Trans-Missi. Dept. and to develop its resources so as to meet the exigencies of the present struggle.” To overcome any thought of local primacy, he asserted to the governor of Arkansas, “the states of the Confederacy can have but one fortune.” He admitted that in the great struggle localities would not suffer equally; still, “the prize for which we strive—independence—must be gained by us all, or we must all share a fate which to every man fit to be a freeman would be worse than torture and death.”84

  The president shared his sense of the political complexities and dangers with his commander. Warning Smith about the separatist sentiment, he directed the general to demonstrate Confederate commitment through public assurances and industriousness. Although Davis knew Smith could not “give to each section all that local interests may suggest,” he never contemplated voluntary sur
render of territory. Always aware of the newborn fragility of Confederate nationalism, he worried that any such concessions also meant loss of loyalty and troops. The president counseled Smith to take political leaders into his confidence, telling him that doing so was the surest way to make for “valuable coadjutors.”

  Davis also laid out an ambitious program for General Smith, whom he envisioned as a director of economic development and active politician as well as military commander. He wanted Smith to develop the mineral wealth and industrial potential of the region from mining ventures to ironworks capable of casting cannon and rolling sheets for ironclads. A powder mill was essential. Davis urged tanning and textile operations along with those for building gun carriages and wagons. In sum, the Trans-Mississippi would become self-sufficient. To assist in these endeavors, he was sending skilled workers because of their paucity in the area. He also informed Smith that officials from the Treasury Department were en route to handle critical financial tasks. Arms and ammunition were coming by sea and then through Mexico. Closing, the president admitted the distance between the goals he had set and his ability to help Smith reach them: “It grieves me to have enumerated so many and such difficult objects for your attention when I can give you so little aid in their achievement.”85

  General Smith understood the nature of his command. He informed Richmond that too few troops were available to defend all significant, threatened places. He needed arms and money. The citizens and the state troops he found “luke warm” and “disheartened,” with little hope of success. But he also reported good crops and detailed promising work on textiles and ordnance. In addition, the general acted to incorporate political chieftains into his leadership team by calling a meeting in Marshall, Texas, in mid-August, to which he invited notables from the four states in his department. They responded; to this gathering came governors, members of Congress, and other prominent men from Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas. At its conclusion the conferees in published proceedings proclaimed the fidelity of the Trans-Mississippi and their confidence in ultimate Confederate victory.86

  Given the realities of the Trans-Mississippi, President Davis did what he could. He realized that without substantial improvement in Confederate military fortunes, the vast area lay largely beyond the regular orbit of the Confederate States. One realistic goal he pursued: to strive to maintain Confederate authority in order to sustain general allegiance to the government of the Confederate States.

  Much closer to home, Davis’s best general and his most successful army required his careful attention. Back in Virginia after Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee offered to resign. Although he did not believe he had totally failed in Pennsylvania, the campaign had not fulfilled his expectations. On August 8 he wrote the president: “the general remedy for the want of success in a military commander is his removal.” Then he mentioned his health, “the growing failure of my bodily strength” and his not having “recovered from the attack I experienced the past spring.” Although the extent of Lee’s illness was then unknown, he had developed cardiovascular disease, which he would never overcome.

  A surprised president rejected this suggestion. In an amiable, even intimate response, Davis tried to buoy his friend while at the same time acknowledging dependence upon him. Davis could find no substantive failure. Regretting that Lee still did not feel completely well, he entreated the general to “take all possible care of yourself, that your health and strength may be entirely restored.…” He was also bluntly honest and complimentary: “To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army, or of the reflecting men in the country is to demand an impossibility.” Nor was there anyone else, he could have added, who had his confidence and on whom he could absolutely rely. This episode in no way diminished the trusting, confidential relationship between the general and the president.87

  Twice, in late August and in early September, Davis called Lee to Richmond for consultation. The chief topic was the Army of Tennessee. As had been the case since the death of Sidney Johnston, that army generated the most vexing problem for the commander in chief. Its internal destructiveness seemed endemic, and squabbling among its general officers appeared permanent. There was also strategic peril. During the summer Braxton Bragg and his army had been maneuvered out of middle Tennessee by the Union commander Major General William S. Rosecrans. Bragg fell back into northern Georgia, losing Chattanooga along the way. Moreover, a strong Union force had advanced into East Tennessee, occupied Knoxville, and severed the most direct rail connection between Virginia and the West. During Bragg’s withdrawal, Davis urged him to isolate and fall upon a portion of Rosecrans’s army. Aware that Bragg needed more men, the president tried to help. Following Vicksburg, the Department of the West was abolished and the Department of East Tennessee placed under Bragg’s authority. In addition, Joseph Johnston, left with a small force in Mississippi, was directed to send reinforcements. Davis also dispatched an aide to see the governors of Georgia and Alabama, urging them to forward state troops.88

  Davis wanted Lee’s advice on how he should handle the situation, both pressing and dangerous. He also wanted more; he wanted Lee to go to Georgia. The Virginian just as clearly did not want the assignment, but as a soldier he would follow orders. He articulated several reasons for not going: he knew little of the Army of Tennessee or its strategic circumstances; his health was not good; and most important, he had no obvious replacement. At that moment the Army of Northern Virginia faced a powerful Federal host little more than fifty miles north of Richmond. It became painfully clear that no one else was readily available. Lee obviously did not have sufficient confidence in any of his subordinates. The only full general in the East was Beauregard in Charleston, but Davis had already decided he was unfit to command a major field army. Thus, Lee would stay in Virginia; but the president decided to assist Bragg further by sending substantial reinforcements from Lee’s army, more than two full divisions under Lee’s senior corps commander, Lieutenant General James Longstreet.89

  For Davis, dispatching Longstreet’s detachment to the Army of Tennessee represented neither caving in to pressure to protect the West nor embracing defensive warfare. With good reason, he was legitimately concerned about the fate of the Army of Tennessee, now standing at the gateway to the heart of the Deep South. Moreover, a major triumph around Chattanooga could have momentous results. In this instance Davis acted in character. He undertook a considerable risk for victory.90

  As Longstreet moved by rail through the Carolinas into Georgia, Bragg prepared to strike. After being outgeneraled in Tennessee, he regrouped. In the difficult, sub-mountainous terrain of northwestern Georgia, he managed to get powerful segments of his army between separated elements of his enemy. He planned to beat Rosecrans in detail, but it never happened. The virulent animus and hostility plaguing the army prevailed. Orders were disregarded or disobeyed; cooperation was a foreign concept. As a result, several promising battle plans self-destructed. Finally, on September 19, just as Longstreet arrived, Bragg managed to get an attack underway. Despite the poisonous relations that affected operations, on that day and the next the Army of Tennessee won its greatest victory of the war, the Battle of Chickamauga. Longstreet’s troops had a decisive part in the struggle. But though the Confederates drove Rosecrans from the field, they did not destroy his army or prevent his retreat to Chattanooga.

  Western Theater, Summer 1863–1865.

  From W. J. Cooper and T. E. Terrill, The American South: A History (2d ed.), with permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies

  This smashing triumph did nothing to change the personality of the army’s high command, however. Instead of congratulating each other on a hard-fought victory, the generals blamed each other for not winning more stupendously, for not destroying the enemy. But this time the generals went beyond accusations and diatribes. Bragg relieved Leonidas Polk, his senior subordinate and bitterest critic, along with another lieutena
nt general, for not obeying orders. Before his dismissal Polk had met with several other generals, including Longstreet, who immediately became a stalwart in the anti-Bragg camp, to discuss ways of getting Bragg replaced. Polk and Longstreet undertook a letter-writing campaign. After Polk’s dismissal anti-Bragg corps and division commanders drew up a petition to the president demanding Bragg’s removal. Twelve general officers signed it.

  Davis initially attempted to mollify the disputants and paper over the conflict. He told Bragg that removing Polk would only cause trouble. But Bragg wanted the disobedient, malcontent bishop-general gone; he even preferred court-martial charges. Yet Bragg did not comprehend the breadth or depth of his generals’ opposition to him. Aware that he had cured nothing, the president worried and contemplated a western trip. At that moment his aide James Chesnut was in Georgia on an assignment. After meeting with men on both sides of the acrimonious quarrel, Chesnut wired on October 5 that Davis’s presence was essential. The president responded that he would depart immediately.91