Jefferson Davis, American
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Their mission a complete failure, the three commissioners returned to Richmond. They gave the president a written report. Although they declined the president’s request that they include an assessment of the conference, their recital of events left no doubt about the position of the United States. Making sure the newspapers had the report, Davis passed it along with all pertinent correspondence to Congress. In his covering message, he did not hesitate to make judgments. The enemy, he pointed out, declined to negotiate with the Confederate States. Furthermore, he continued, our opponent refused “to give to our people any other terms or guaranties than those which the conqueror may grant, or to permit us to have on any other basis than our unconditional submission to their rule.…”12
The public reacted as Davis both desired and anticipated. Denouncing such terms, one editor stormed, echoing Patrick Henry, “Forbid it, Almighty God! Now, let us cease all bickering, and strike for life and liberty.” Another discovered “new life … visible everywhere.” Senator Benjamin Hill informed the president that the outcome at Hampton Roads had revived the war spirit in Georgia. Calling Davis’s handling of the matter “the most admirable master stroke,” Hill chortled at the discomfiture of Stephens and Governor Brown and opined that many absentees would now return to the army. In Richmond on February 6 Virginia governor William Smith called a public meeting to reaffirm Confederate loyalty. Three days later an even more impressive affair took place. A band led a march from the Governor’s Mansion to the African Church, a substantial structure often used by whites for large gatherings. During the afternoon and evening an estimated 10,000 people congregated in and around the building to listen to ringing speeches by Benjamin, Hunter, and others.13
Speaking at both assemblies, Davis hurled defiance at his foe. Thunderous applause greeted his unexpected appearance on the sixth. Excoriating Lincoln as “His Majesty Abraham the First,” he proclaimed that Confederates would “teach the insolent enemy who had treated our proposition with contumely in that conference in which he had so plumed himself with arrogance, he was, indeed talking to his masters.” He especially fulminated against the Thirteenth Amendment. In the African Church, Davis again slammed Lincoln and his demands while praising the nobility and ultimate triumph of the Confederate cause with which he so proudly and utterly identified himself. On these occasions Davis glimpsed his countrymen as he wanted to believe them, equally as determined as he not to let their cause fail. On the rostrum he became a man possessed; conviction and enthusiasm spurred his oratory. Applause and cheers repeatedly interrupted. Calling Davis’s address on the sixth “the most remarkable speech of his life,” his dedicated critic, the editor of the Richmond Examiner, confessed he had never been “so much moved by the power of words spoken for the same space of time.” Davis even impressed Alexander Stephens, who, despite his having given up on the Confederacy after Hampton Roads, sat on the podium at the African Church with Davis and other dignitaries. Stephens termed the president’s performance “brilliant,” even though he considered Davis’s predictions of victory “the emanation of a demented brain.”14
Even after the failure of the Hampton Roads Conference and the flare of renewed enthusiasm, including the boisterous celebrations in Richmond, talk of peace ventures never entirely disappeared. A suggested military convention between Lee and Grant died stillborn, though Davis gave it his blessing—“two countries” again. Senator Hunter spoke about saving whatever possible from what he termed the “wreck,” but then backed away. On one occasion Hunter, Graham, and a third colleague visited the president and urged negotiations based on abandoning independence. When Davis inquired if they represented the Senate in an official capacity, they demurred. When he asked about a Senate resolution, there was none. After the war Davis’s former rival from prewar Mississippi, Albert G. Brown, also a Confederate senator, faulted everyone, including himself, for waiting on everyone else to take the lead on peace, which resulted in no one stepping forward. Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory claimed that if the Senate had passed a resolution for peace, Davis would have agreed to Lincoln’s terms, but his chief could not act unilaterally.15
Davis gave no indication at this point that he would have entertained anything other than his public condition, independence. He made clear he was “unwilling to seek peace by the surrender of the Confederacy.” Some, he admitted in a postwar letter, had come to call that attitude a sin; “that sin was mine,” he attested. Although Davis unequivocally demanded the survival of the Confederate States of America, he was prepared to pay an enormous price for that endurance—the voluntary relinquishment of slavery. Despite his making political capital out of Lincoln’s demands on slavery, Davis stood prepared to give up the venerable institution, if the sacrifice could secure Confederate independence.16
The sharply different approach to slavery introduced by the president in his congressional message of November 1864 provided the background for an unprecedented initiative designed to obtain recognition from Great Britain and France. In late December 1864 Davis, with Secretary of State Judah Benjamin’s strong support, had made the momentous decision to sacrifice slavery on the altar of hope for European intervention. Davis came to this position despite the provision in the Confederate Constitution forbidding Congress to enact any law denying property rights in slaves. He also did so without congressional authorization, though he did inform congressional leaders about his intentions. Davis saw this step as an extra-constitutional war measure essential for national survival.17
The Confederate president’s overture offered gradual emancipation in return for European recognition and assistance. Benjamin’s written instructions to his diplomats in Europe did not mention slavery directly. Instead, he told them the Confederacy was willing to act if the British and French had “objections not made known to us, which have for four years prevented the recognition of our independence.…” In language expressing Davis’s sentiment, Benjamin declared that to secure independence “no sacrifice is too great, save that of honor.”
To take this plan across the Atlantic and oversee its implementation, Davis selected a wealthy Louisiana sugar planter, Duncan F. Kenner, who was close to Benjamin and also chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives. Having concluded soon after the fall of New Orleans that slavery threatened Confederate success, Kenner was enthusiastic about this new direction. In addition to the written directives he carried, Kenner had also received oral instructions from Davis. Moreover, the president made him a minister plenipotentiary to ensure that neither James Mason nor John Slidell could thwart the presentation of the revised Confederate position to the British and French governments. Kenner did not get started until mid-January, and by that time no Confederate Atlantic ports remained open to blockade-runners. He therefore undertook a harrowing and secret journey: he passed through enemy lines in northern Virginia, crossed an ice-filled Potomac River, and traveled incognito, chiefly by train, on to New York City, where he took passage on a German liner for Great Britain.
He arrived in Britain on February 21, 1865, and went on immediately to Paris, where he met with Mason and Slidell. Working with them, Kenner spent a month striving to achieve his goal. He failed. As before, Napoleon III said he was willing to help the Confederacy, but only in conjunction with Great Britain. As always, the British refused. Both governments stated that the issue of slavery had not controlled their previous reactions to the Confederacy. It is doubtful whether even an earlier offer of emancipation would have persuaded Great Britain to recognize the Confederate States, but 1865 was in any case far too late. The Confederacy was tottering, and the British knew it. Duncan Kenner was still in Europe when the end came.
The Kenner Mission was not the only instance that revealed Davis’s willingness to sever slavery from the Confederacy. When in his congressional message of November 1864 he urged government ownership of slaves and even broached the possibility of emancipation for faithful service, he said that he did not yet ad
vocate making soldiers of slaves, though he did indicate that if the ultimate crisis ever came, he would consider such a role for bondsmen.18
Arming slaves and sending them into combat would have meant a fundamental uprooting of the traditional southern worldview. That action went far beyond government possession of slaves, or even freeing some of them. The antebellum proslavery argument placed blacks beneath whites racially and socially. To have them fight would give them characteristics of manhood previously denied them and put them on an equal basis with whites, at least in one absolutely critical area. As teamsters, cooks, and laborers, slaves surely helped the Confederate war effort, but in these capacities they served in distinctly inferior roles. The white men did the fighting. But with slaves as combat soldiers the sharp distinction between superior and inferior could no longer hold. Combat service also brought up the question of freedom. Would slaves fight to maintain slavery, or would freedom become a requisite badge for bearing arms? Would the government offer freedom as an inducement or reward? What about the aftermath of the war? If becoming a soldier led to becoming a free man, then certainly the postbellum social order would markedly differ from the world southern whites and blacks had always known.
The Confederacy had come into existence over slavery, and with slavery as its fundamental social institution. It is impossible to imagine the breakup of the Union without the presence of slavery. Seceding southerners spoke about building a slaveholding republic, and the Confederate Constitution declared slavery a bedrock of the new nation. The southern white conception of liberty had long been intimately tied to slavery for blacks. That connection was central in the initial formation of Confederate identity. The widespread mention of slave soldiers in the winter of 1865 underscored the feelings of desperation seeping through the Confederacy.19
As early as 1863, already concerned about the course of the war and viewing slaves as an underutilized asset, a few southerners had suggested using them as soldiers. Newspapers in Jackson and Montgomery, for example, called for slave soldiers to ensure Confederate victory. Infrequent letters, the earliest in 1861, also arrived on President Davis’s desk with the same outlook. One correspondent based his case on the conventional white view of the master-slave relationship: “Cannot we, who have been raised with our negroes and know how to command them, make them more efficient than the Yankees can?” Although these writers made salient points, they gave no indication that they had thought through the potential repercussions of taking the path they proposed.20
Discussions about slaves as fighters became much more serious in January 1864, when the best division commander in the Army of Tennessee proposed slave soldiers. A native of Ireland who had immigrated to Arkansas, Major General Patrick Cleburne asserted he could see no other way to meet urgent manpower needs. Cleburne’s proposal carried the signatures of thirteen other officers. This project created considerable excitement among various commanders in the army. To one, it was a “monstrous proposition”; another said following through on it would “involve our cause in ruin and disgrace.” Visiting the army at that time, Governor Isham Harris of Tennessee was appalled. He alerted Davis, imploring the president to smother the proposal because public knowledge of it “would produce the greatest possible discontent.” Davis, who also heard directly from the army, agreed: “Deeming it to be injurious to the public service that such a subject should be mooted, or even known to be entertained by persons possessed of the confidence and respect of the people,” Davis directed General Joseph Johnston to quash the matter. The suppression basically succeeded; Cleburne’s proposition did not become widely known.21
A year later the situation had changed dramatically. No one now doubted the existence of a grave manpower shortage in Confederate armies. Since his western trip in the autumn of 1864, Davis regularly pleaded for soldiers to return to the colors. In early 1865 he made a special plea to southeastern governors for men to stop Sherman. At the same time, cries for slave soldiers increased both in the press and in letters to Davis. As one Virginian wrote, he saw no other way to overcome “the perils of our country.” At the great African Church conclave, Secretary Benjamin made a forceful appeal to save the Confederacy by putting slaves on the battlefield.22
But even in this dark hour, opposition remained powerful. Many white southerners simply could not conceive of breaking the bond between white liberty and black slavery. They could not imagine their new nation jettisoning the institution that in their minds guaranteed social harmony and social safety. This disagreement over slave soldiers revealed the fragility of Confederate nationalism. Forged in the furnace of war, it had not had sufficient time to solidify. It remained brittle, susceptible to sharp blows along visible seams.
Although at one on the sanctity of slavery in the Confederate nation, opponents of slave soldiers did not follow a single path. Senator William Graham declared slaves as soldiers “inexpedient and dangerous,” but he also argued that enrolling slaves would violate the Dred Scott decision. Robert Barnwell Rhett raged against what he called governmental interference with slavery, which, to him, mocked strict construction and states’ rights. Governor Joseph Brown saw nothing but evil in any plan for slave soldiers. In making known their opposition, two consistent allies of the president bore to the heart of the fundamental Confederate dilemma. The former United States senator from Florida, David L. Yulee, told Davis that if the Confederate government ever treated slaves “other than as property a social revolution is begun in the South, the end of which may not be foreseen.” Howell Cobb was even more emphatic: “the day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”23
This disagreement among Confederates was not chiefly a debate about emancipation. The arguments largely concentrated on the virtues of placing slaves in combat and what that step would mean for Confederate government and society. Some did consider that freedom would be at least an implied result of any positive decision on slave soldiers, but others did not draw such a conclusion. Congress certainly did not. Although the ultimate outcome cannot be known, slaves serving successfully as soldiers would surely have wrenched the traditional social order.24
Decisive in this matter was the opinion of Robert E. Lee, the single most prestigious and influential person in the Confederacy. Privately, Lee had decided that the Confederacy should employ slaves as soldiers, despite the risk to the social order. He saw no other way to fill the ranks. In a public letter to a congressional sponsor of slave soldiers, Lee in mid-February 1865 wrote that placing slaves in the army was essential. He also maintained that those who served honorably should be freed.25
In the midst of this argument Jefferson Davis’s stance was clear. Although he did not make numerous public statements, he did not keep his views secret. He advocated slave soldiers. As he wrote in February to an Alabama friend, “it is now becoming daily more evident to all reflecting persons that we are reduced to choosing whether the negroes shall fight for us or against us.” For the country’s defense Davis wanted “all the able bodied men we have without distinction of color.” He also expected that service would lead to emancipation, certainly for a number of those who served. Back in November 1864 he had signaled Congress his willingness to emancipate for less than combat. In the final spring he made his position unequivocally clear to Governor Smith, a stalwart backer of slave soldiers. The president promised the governor “to seek legislation to secure unmistakably freedom to the slave who shall enter the Army with a right to return to his old home when he shall have been honorably discharged from the Military Service.” Davis committed himself to work for freedom plus the right for the exslave to live as a free man at his former home, the property of the individual who had previously owned the freedman. Thus, to save the Confederacy he was willing to challenge the privileges of private property and to contemplate a quite different postbellum society: whites, slaves, and a substantial, albeit unknown, number of free blacks, who had
been enslaved, all living on the land of the white property owner.26
The legislative initiative to put uniforms on slaves took place in two venues. At Governor Smith’s urging, and aware that General Lee believed the enlistment of slaves necessary, the Virginia legislature in early March adopted a resolution calling for slave soldiers, though nothing was said about emancipation. The Confederate Congress witnessed a hard, close battle. The effort to get an act through would certainly have failed without General Lee’s public support. Davis had lobbied privately, but his formal appeal for congressional action did not come until March, when he chided the lawmakers for not sending him a bill to sign. The measure passed the House by a margin of only three, and on the initial try failed by one vote in the Senate. Thereupon the Virginia legislature instructed the states’ two senators, who had voted no, to support the bill. They did so. Congress passed it on March 13.
This law did not, however, guarantee emancipation as a reward for service. In fact it stated that no change could take place in the relationship between slaves and owners, except with the consent of both the owners and the states in which they resided. This provided for a double veto on emancipation. Davis tried to accommodate this provision by having the War Department regulations governing the enlistment of slaves require that masters consent to freedom before slaves could be enrolled. How many slaves would have joined the army and how the numerous issues involved in slaves as soldiers would have worked out will never be known. Before the collapse of the Confederacy only two companies were organized, both in Richmond.27
President Davis’s dispatch of Duncan Kenner to Europe and, especially, his shift on slave soldiers leave no doubt that he understood the gravity of the situation facing his country in the winter and early spring of 1865. In a March message to Congress he described the Confederacy as “environed with perils.” Yet it is not possible to chart in detail his reaction to rapidly deteriorating Confederate fortunes. He kept his public statements positive, while his private anxieties and fears were not chronicled. His total commitment to the Confederate States of America made contemplation of failure intensely painful, if not impossible. But the rational Jefferson Davis knew that catastrophe was looming. Two years after the war, in a letter to his former boss, Judah Benjamin referred to “the anxious hours when we could not but perceive that our holy and sacred cause was gradually crumbling under a pressure too grievous to be borne, and when we looked every where for some sign of sympathy, some promise of help, some ray of hope.”28