Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Clay and an associate even met with the influential Republican editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, who wanted to talk about peace. Greeley was accompanied by one of Lincoln’s private secretaries. Although Clay and Thompson had no authority to negotiate any peace, they did hope for a propaganda success by placing blame on the United States for preventing peace by demanding unacceptable terms. There was no chance for any consequential outcome, for Lincoln had told Greeley he would listen to talk of peace only when it included restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery—the exact opposites of Davis’s conditions.

  Although the Confederate mission lasted into 1865, it produced few positive results. Clay and Thompson reported that something always went wrong to disrupt their plans. Yet, aside from things going wrong, they confronted two insuperable obstacles. First, the number of northerners ready to take an active part in stopping the war had been greatly exaggerated. Second, Union military triumphs, especially at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley, where during September and October Jubal Early’s small army was decimated, stifled opposition to the war. Then Lincoln’s reelection in November made unmistakably clear that the United States would not relent in its war against the Confederate States.

  The secret war waged by the Confederates had another dimension. There were schemes to kidnap Lincoln and other high Union officials. They received a boost following an unsuccessful cavalry raid on Richmond in the late winter of 1864. Confederates discovered papers on the body of a Federal colonel killed in the fighting declaring that the goals of the raiders included burning the city and killing Davis and cabinet members. When Davis turned these documents over to the press, their publication caused a great outcry among Confederates. For Davis, the purported aims of burning and killing fit his characterization of his enemy as inhuman and murderous. He later termed them “infamous instructions.” When sent copies, high-ranking Union officers completely disavowed them, and they could not be tied to Lincoln. Still, Confederates clearly believed them genuine. Even today scholars disagree on the authenticity of the papers.61

  The existence of Confederate plots to abduct Lincoln and others cannot be doubted, but connecting them directly to President Davis is much more difficult. He certainly knew about the machinations of Clay and Thompson and about other efforts, chiefly in Maryland, to free Confederate prisoners of war and recruit for the army. Yet he consistently denied authorizing any kidnapping, which he said would end in killing because he claimed he did not believe Lincoln could be captured unharmed. He also turned aside other schemes he defined as criminal, such as a proposal to send ships into northern ports loaded with infected blankets, beds, and other items to introduce yellow fever and smallpox into the population. Nor did any other responsible Confederate official ever cite Davis’s involvement in any such intrigues. Even so, modern historians have built a strong circumstantial case in which Davis sanctions attempts to kidnap Lincoln. Davis’s immersion in detail and his awareness of all aspects of Confederate military operations lend credence to the argument that he would have known about and authorized abduction attempts. Still, no documentary evidence has come to light which proves his involvement.62

  Although Davis’s clandestine war sputtered, the strategy he had approved for the Army of Tennessee functioned as designed. Even before Beauregard reached the army, Hood had started for northern Georgia. Receiving word that the Confederates had advanced north of the Chattahoochee River, Sherman moved out of Atlanta to find Hood. For the better part of a month, the two armies played a cat-and-mouse game in northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Neither commander enjoyed this contest. Although Hood had accomplished his purpose of drawing Sherman out of Atlanta, no battle had occurred. Sherman, who had promised to pummel Hood, chafed at the futility of the chase. To Sherman, with his army some sixty miles behind Hood, the possibilities in a march through central Georgia contrasted vividly with the fruitless pursuit of Hood.63

  While Sherman thought of Savannah, Hood had visions of Confederate divisions in Tennessee. The strategy decided on by Hood and Davis at Palmetto and agreed to by Beauregard at Augusta permitted an offensive campaign only so long as Sherman dutifully followed. Should he turn back to Atlanta and strike for the sea, then Hood was to become the hunter. Hood’s new plan dropped that contingency. The Army of Tennessee would forget about Sherman and invade Tennessee.

  Hood conveyed his intentions to Beauregard at Gadsden, Alabama, on October 20. Initially Beauregard exhibited little enthusiasm, but after two days of discussion he altered his opinion, even indicating some excitement about the plan. He authorized Hood to go forward into Tennessee and urged on his subordinate the absolute necessity for speed. Hood had to get into middle Tennessee before the Federals were ready for him. His decision made, Beauregard informed the War Department and the president of the change in operations. Hood in a message to Davis also made clear that his offensive was no longer tied to Sherman’s location. No directive came from either the department or the commander in chief countermanding Hood’s invasion.64

  After a series of alterations in his plan, Hood arrived in Tuscumbia, in northwestern Alabama on the Tennessee River, the place he and Beauregard had finally agreed upon as a jumping-off point for the thrust into Tennessee. But Hood failed to heed Beauregard’s admonition to make haste and get into Tennessee as quickly as possible; instead, Hood stayed for three weeks in Tuscumbia. The dashing, even impetuous Hood sat down. Not until November 21 did he advance into Tennessee. The reasons for this delay have never been convincingly explained, though they surely included increasingly fractious relations between Beauregard and Hood, logistical difficulties, and changes in Hood’s confidence and emotional state.

  The three-week halt certainly diminished Hood’s chances for success. While he trooped between Gadsden and Tuscumbia, Sherman turned back to Atlanta and began the march to the sea. He placed Major General George H. Thomas, with 30,000 men from his own army to be reinforced by additional units, in charge of defending Tennessee; but Thomas did not begin getting his troops positioned until November 4. Disarray pervaded Federal concentration efforts to such an extent that when Hood finally did get underway, he came close to cutting off and isolating from Thomas a sizable portion of his force.

  Hood’s Tennessee campaign was crucial for Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy—and Davis knew it. He understood that giving Hood command of the Army of Tennessee involved risk. He did so because he saw no other way to obtain what he believed necessary, a battlefield victory. In the autumn of 1864 he backed Hood all the way. He did not cancel Beauregard’s authorization. Before Hood left Tuscumbia, he wrote a long, rambling letter expressing the hope that his general might beat the Federals in detail and “advance to the Ohio River.” To Beauregard he spoke of Hood’s “reach[ing] the country proper of the enemy” from where he could “change the plans for Sherman’s or Grant’s campaigns.”65

  While Hood marched in place at Tuscumbia and Davis in Richmond waited on Hood to move, the Second Confederate Congress convened for its second session on November 7. On that day the president submitted his message, which contained much of the same spirit that characterized its predecessors. To the world, Davis still expressed optimism about Confederate prospects, though he did concede that the lawmakers were gathered during “a time of such public exigency.”

  The military situation occupied his attention. Acknowledging the fall of Atlanta, he discounted its importance by claiming that the enemy had gained no significant advantage from its capture. He emphasized the progress he found on his side. From the Trans-Mississippi, where Confederate arms had won victories in every state, to Virginia, where districts previously occupied by Federals were now in Confederate hands, the fortunes of the Confederacy had improved. These improvements included retaking portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Even the most powerful Federal army, unable to have its way, was still at bay at Petersburg.

  Moving away from geographic reporting, Davis asserted that ult
imate Confederate triumph did not depend upon holding any specific area or place, even Richmond. In his view, “the indomitable valor of its troops” and “the unquenchable spirit of its people” controlled the outcome of the war, in which the Confederacy would surely prevail. “There is no military success of the enemy which can accomplish its destruction,” he declared. In this sense Davis reified the Confederacy; it became more idea than physical space, or even a government.

  Part of the message dealt with foreign affairs and finances. Davis once again condemned European powers for not recognizing the legitimacy of the Confederate States, which in his opinion the proper reading of international law required. As for finances, he gave a bifurcated accounting. Pointing to the report of the secretary of the treasury, he pronounced the national budget sound, with the public debt capable of redemption. What Davis termed “the chief difficulty” on the financial front resulted from the depreciation of treasury notes. Yet he said that appropriate taxation strategies, which the secretary had outlined, could remedy the harmful situation. The horrors of runaway inflation were not mentioned.

  Although not completely forthcoming on the deleterious financial situation, which he did not totally comprehend, Davis fully understood the manpower crisis in his armies. He focused on two areas. He wanted the exemption law tightened so that “no pursuit or position should relieve any one who is able to do active duty from enrollment in the Army, unless his functions or services are more useful to the defense of his country in another sphere.” Entire classes of men, he argued, could not be exempt. He requested additional authority for the War Department to regulate exemption and to curb abuses.

  The president devoted considerable space to the relationship of slaves to Confederate military performance. Regretfully, he informed Congress that its law of February 1864 providing for the impressment of 20,000 slaves to serve as teamsters, cooks, and laborers had not worked; it was too restrictive on tasks slaves were allowed to perform. He asked for twice as many slaves, with extended duties.

  He went further. He underscored that the slave bore two relationships to the state, as property and as person—a condition that had obtained through the history of slavery in the South. Davis noted that because the impressed slaves required training and encountered hazard, their duties “demand[ed] loyalty and zeal.” Those attributes, he said, involved person more than property. Accordingly, he thought it appropriate that the government should “acquire for the public service the entire property in the labor of the slave, and to pay therefor due compensation rather than to impress his labor for short terms.” That procedure would eliminate the division between person and property caused by impressment; those two dimensions would be combined in government ownership just as in any private slaveowner. Moreover, Davis suggested that Congress might want to consider manumission for “zealous discharge of duty” and “faithful service.” Should Congress reach that conclusion, Davis said he stood ready to support it.

  Although willing to propose state ownership of slaves and to suggest the possibility of their eventual emancipation, Davis was unwilling at this moment to utilize slaves as soldiers. Until the white population proved insufficient to man the armies, he did not think it wise to arm slaves and make them combat soldiers. Yet, even in taking this position, he made his priorities dramatically clear. “But should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation or of the employment of the slave as a soldier, there seems to be no reason to doubt what should then be our decision.” This potential choice he still called an “improbable contingency,” however.

  After public discussion of a topic unthinkable in 1861, Davis concluded his message with a hope and a declaration. He trusted that what he saw as a “fast-growing” desire for peace among the northern people would influence the Lincoln administration to end the war. But no matter what the United States did or did not do, the Confederate States would never submit. “In the hope that the day will soon be reached when under Divine favor these States may be allowed to enter on their former peaceful pursuits and to develop the abundant natural resources with which they are blessed, let us, then, resolutely continue to devote our united and unimpaired energies to the defense of our homes, our lives, and our liberties.”66

  Despite Davis’s courageous words, the outcome of Hood’s Tennessee campaign struck a mighty blow against his cherished independence. Hood never came close to the enemy homeland. Because of mismanagement, lack of planning, and horrendous judgment Hood squandered whatever chance he had had of succeeding. Eight days into the campaign, through both ineptness and plain bad luck, he missed a marvelous opportunity to isolate and defeat a major Federal column. The next day, November 30, at Franklin he flung his brave men in a furious frontal assault against a strong Federal position. It was a bloodbath; the Army of Tennessee lost one-fourth of its strength, including six generals killed. The wounded army trudged on to Nashville, where two weeks later General Thomas, by then outnumbering Hood by more than three to one, battered the once proud Army of Tennessee. The crippled remnant, fewer than 20,000 men, limped southward, reached the Tennessee River by Christmas, and retreated through northwestern Alabama into Mississippi.

  After the war Jefferson Davis tried to exempt himself from complicity in Hood’s project. Calling the invasion “ill-advised,” he claimed in his memoirs he had no knowledge until after the fact that Hood had decided not to follow Sherman. He even denied Hood’s fatherhood of the plan and insisted that Beauregard forced it on Hood. But the contemporary documents leave no doubt that Davis knew from the beginning what Hood was about. He hoped, as did his two generals, that Hood would succeed in Tennessee. He hoped that Sherman would be compelled to leave Georgia. He hoped the invasion of Tennessee would lead to victory that would rejuvenate the Confederate military effort in the West.67

  Approving Hood’s offensive, he gambled again, just as when he appointed Hood army commander. This time the stakes were even higher than before Atlanta because conditions were more desperate. The evidence from the Atlanta campaign gave no indication that the Army of Tennessee could do more than delay for brief moments Sherman’s inexorable advance. But a resounding win in Tennessee might have made a substantial difference.

  While Hood wrecked his army in Tennessee, Sherman marched triumphantly to the sea. Even before Hood started into Tennessee, Sherman on November 16 set out from Atlanta to make good on his promise to make Georgia howl. Unsure of his target, Confederate commanders were unwilling to concentrate the meager forces they had. Never facing substantial opposition, Sherman moved quickly through the basically undefended Georgia countryside. Five days before Hood’s catastrophe at Nashville, Sherman’s army arrived before Savannah. As the suffering survivors of Franklin and Nashville struggled to reach the Tennessee River and safety, Sherman occupied Savannah on December 21; now the eastern Confederacy had been halved. In the Confederate West, November and December had been disastrous for Jefferson Davis and his cause.68

  Worry and growing concern reached into the Executive Mansion, where Varina shared with a close friend the emotional toll these desperate times were taking on her and her husband. Just after Jefferson’s return from his western trip, she informed Mary Chesnut in South Carolina, “We are in a sad and anxious state here.” Repeating herself with emphasis in the same letter, she confided, “Strictly between us, things look very anxious here.” Varina said she could not read and spoke of being “so constantly depressed” that she dreaded writing. She sewed constantly and never stopped her household duties. She reported her husband “extremely well—for him—but very anxious.” Fully understanding the crucial nature of Hood’s campaign, she wrote on November 20, “Affairs west are looking so critical now that before you receive this you and I will be in the depths or else triumphant.” There was no triumph, only ever-deepening depths.69

  The increasing vexations of daily life underscored the bleakness. The exorbitant cost of provisions affected the Davises, who had to purchase food and supplies like any other citizens. Alth
ough Varina admitted that the deprivations suffered by the first family did not match those of most people, it by no means escaped the exponentially exploding prices and the severe shortages. By the summer and fall of 1864, the cost of basic items had passed beyond exorbitant but kept spiraling upward—bacon $9 a pound, Irish potatoes $25 a bushel, chickens $30 a pair, milk $4 a quart, whole ham $7 a pound, baby shoes $20 a pair, wood $50 per cord. Varina contemplated selling some fine material to obtain money. She also sent her horses to be sold, though the next day they were returned, bought for her by anonymous friends. Still, she feared she could not provide food for them. The president had already sold all the horses he could spare. The basic diet at the White House consisted of rice, cornmeal, and what an aide called the “plainest and scantiest of fare.” Meat was served only a few times a week. Varina recorded that the meager table was not her choice, but what she could find and afford.70

  In the midst of this cheerless time, the first lady still found delight in her children. To Mary Chesnut, she lovingly recounted their looks and activities. Baby Varina Anne, nicknamed “Piecake,” she treasured as “exquisite.” “In pink she looks like a little rosebud.” She described her oldest, Maggie, now almost ten, as “so soft, so good, and so very ladylike.” Jeff Jr., who would be eight in January, had picked up all sorts of habits at school such as “antics and astounding tricks with strings and bows and arrows,” and “seem[ed] in a fair way to graduate in down street dialect.”71

  As 1864 drew to a close, Varina Davis strove to bring enchantment into her house. Despite immense difficulties, she orchestrated with the help of friends a pageant of joy in which for a brief moment reality was suspended. Upon learning that the orphans in the Episcopal Home had been promised a Christmas tree, she included them in her plans. She was determined that no one would be disappointed. For the orphans she oversaw the collection and refurbishment of old toys. Rag dolls, for example, were cleaned and plumped out, with their faces painted and beads used for eyes. On Christmas Eve around twenty young people gathered at the White House to prepare the presents and string apples and popcorn for the tree. The completion of those tasks was the signal to bring out the eggnog, with homemade gingersnaps and lady cake. She permitted her own children to stay up and participate in the festivities. When the little ones had gone to bed, the stockings were stuffed—molasses candy, apples, an orange, a pair of woolen gloves, small whips plaited by the family with colored crackers, and balls of tightly wound rags covered with old kid gloves. During the night, the president had cake sent out to the White House guards.