Dixie Betrayed

by David J. Eicher

  Three long blocks northeast of Capitol Square, at Twelfth and Clay streets, stood the John Brockenbrough House, now known as the White House of the Confederacy. This lovely mansion, built in 1818 and lived in by several occupants before the war—including would-be Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon—had been purchased in 1861 by the city of Richmond as a residence for the Jefferson Davis family. The beautiful two-story house had a basement that was used as a breakfast room and children’s dining room. The first story contained an entrance hall and four large rooms: a dining room, central parlor, drawing room, and library. The second floor included Jefferson Davis’s office—where he greeted many Confederate officials and held some memorable meetings—a secretary’s office (occupied by Burton Harrison, the president’s secretary), a waiting room, the Davises’ bedroom, a dressing room, and the large nursery, where all the children slept. A third story, newly added at the time of the war, contained rooms for Harrison, military aides, house servants, and family guests. 4

  Immediately northwest of Capitol Square stood the city’s most celebrated house of worship, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. This Greek Revival structure was completed in 1845; the Davis family attended church here, as did the Robert E. Lee family, when in town. On Broad Street, the Monumental Church (Episcopalian) was completed in 1814 as a memorial to seventy-two victims of a theater fire that had occurred on the spot three years earlier. The Old First Baptist Church, another Greek Revival structure at East Broad and Twelfth streets, was built in 1839 and served as a Confederate hospital during the war. To the east, across Shockoe Valley, stood St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry delivered his “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech.

  ON July 20, 1861, the ninety-nine members of the Confederate Congress, led by Howell Cobb, met for their first session in Richmond, which would last until the end of August. 5 The military situation was so dominated by organizing, recruiting, and drilling on both sides that little in the way of battles had taken place since Sumter. Minor skirmishes had occurred in Virginia at the towns of Fairfax Court House, Philippi, and Big Bethel, and in the western part of the state the situation was heating up. But so far the war had involved mostly pregame preparation. That was about to change along the banks of a little creek near Manassas dubbed Bull Run. Here, the armies of Gen. Joe Johnston, commanding the Army of the Shenandoah, and Brig. Gen. G. T. Beauregard, leading the Army of the Potomac (the armies adopted geographical names for two of the region’s important rivers) met the Yankee army of Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell, the so-called Army of Northeastern Virginia. The battle of First Manassas (or First Bull Run) commenced on July 21, 1861. Spectators had packed picnic baskets and carried wagonloads of citizens from surrounding villages and from Washington to see the great battle. Some U.S. congressmen were even in attendance—one, Alfred Ely, was captured by the Rebs. When the smoke cleared, most of the Yankee army had bid the battlefield a hasty retreat and skedaddled back to Washington, and the Confederates considered themselves victorious in a day of glory.

  Richmond celebrated. At the Confederate Department of State, Robert Hunter reported on Manassas:

  It affords me extreme pleasure to announce to you in my first official communication the glorious victory achieved by our army over the forces of the United States, on Sunday, the 21st instant, at Manassas, in this state. . . . For weeks previous to the battle of Manassas the Northern press teemed with boastful assurances of the vast superiority of the Federal Army over that of the Confederate States. . . . The result has proved how delusive was their confidence in their superiority and in our weakness. 6

  Jefferson Davis himself had ridden out to the field to supervise the effort. “Night has closed upon a hard-fought field,” he reported in a message to Congress. “Our forces were victorious. The enemy was routed, and fled precipitately, abandoning a large amount of arms, ammunition, knapsacks, and baggage. The ground was strewn for miles with those killed, and the farmhouses and the ground around were filled with wounded. . . . Too high praise cannot be bestowed, whether for the skill of the principal officers or for the gallantry of all of our troops.” 7 In what would turn out to be the single verifiable instance of a “battlefield promotion” in the war, Davis bestowed upon G. T. Beauregard the appointment of full general in the Army of the Confederate States. However, divisive splits already were appearing between Davis and the general.

  Beauregard’s history with Davis had been good. On Davis’s oath as president, Beauregard had immediately sent him a letter of congratulations; in response Davis had made him the first brigadier general in the Confederacy, the ranking brigadier general, and sent him to South Carolina’s governor, Francis Pickens. Beauregard had become the first great hero of the Confederacy at Sumter, and as such, he was treated everywhere with the utmost respect and profound awe. Beauregard had become the first commander of the Army of the Potomac (C.S.A.), occupying Centreville, Virginia, after Union forces beat him to Alexandria. At Manassas he and Johnston more or less had combined forces to defeat McDowell, and Davis’s battlefield reward sat well with the Little Creole, as he was called due to his short stature.

  But Beauregard, bolstered by his ego from successes at Sumter and Manassas, wanted to be an independent army commander, with his own army and no superior to answer to, and Davis wouldn’t allow this. Davis pointed out sharply that when Johnston was absent, Beauregard, as number two, would be in command. But Johnston was not about to leave and allow Beauregard to take over.

  Although Beauregard did not hold this against Johnston, he was furious with Davis—despite the fact that the Confederate president’s refusal of his request made military sense. As for Johnston, he was still furious with Davis over the rank question. As the Confederate armies settled in after Manassas, camping within staring distance of each other, the bad feelings percolated. It was a rocky start for Davis and his two most important field generals.

  In the wake of First Manassas, these thistles would be wrapped in a veneer of success and pushed away in the glow of Confederate patriotism. “We arrived here safely on Wednesday evening, and immediately drove out to the Texas camp to see President Davis present a flag that Mama had made for them,” wrote Louise Wigfall, daughter of Louis Wigfall, the aide of President Davis and a Confederate senator. “He made a beautiful speech and was vociferously cheered. . . . Oh! how glad I was when I first put my foot on Confederate soil. . . . We went to the President’s last night and he was very agreeable as usual, we took tea with him the night we arrived, and I had the honor of a kiss from Jeff, I declare I have almost fallen in love with him.” 8 In Richmond Howell Cobb, leader of the Congress, penned his wife a letter, suggesting fast independence. “From the tone of the Northern papers I infer that the people there are getting sick of the war and since their disastrous defeat at Manassas they begin to talk of peace,” he declared. “Besides their people are not volunteering very freely for the war and their treasury is getting low and their credit lower. From all which it would seem a very natural conclusion that they cannot continue the war much longer.” 9

  But a new war actually was brewing, a war of second-guessing between Beauregard and Davis—or perhaps more accurately, between the general and most everyone else. Beauregard began sniping at Lucius Northrop over reportedly inadequate supplies for his army. He pecked at Secretary of War Judah Benjamin for supposedly interfering with his command decisions. And his report to the Confederate Congress on the battle of Manassas caused a bombshell: Davis’s political opponents claimed Beauregard’s account showed the president prevented the general from pursuing the retreating Yankee army. Davis fumed at Beauregard:

  Yesterday my attention was called to various newspaper publications purporting to have been sent from Manassas, and to be a synopsis of your report of the battle of the 21st of July last, and in which it is represented that you had been over ruled by me in your plan for a battle with the enemy south of the Potomac, for the capture of Baltimore and Washington, and the liberation of Maryland. . . . Wi
th much surprise I found that the newspaper statements were sustained by the text of your report. I was surprised because if we did differ in opinion as to the measures and purposes of contemplated campaigns, such fact could have no appropriate place in the report of a battle; further because it seemed to be an attempt to exalt yourself at my expense; and especially because no such plan as that described was submitted to me. 10

  In the autumn of 1861, Davis reflected on his critics in a letter to Johnston. “Though such statements may have been made merely for my injury,” penned the president, “they have acquired importance in that they have served to create distrust, to excite disappointment, and must embarrass the Administration in its further efforts to reinforce the armies of the Potomac.” 11 Beauregard denied he had said anything designed to damage Davis, but he did suggest that the Confederate leader had blown the chance to capture Washington by rejecting Beauregard’s original battle plan and insisting on his own. In fact Davis had arrived on the Manassas battlefield to witness Beauregard directing the battle, and Johnston, who ranked him, playing, in effect, a secondary command role. And while Davis had suggested sober strategy, Beauregard had actually shown himself indecisive at the critical hour. Davis had never been against seizing the momentum and dealing a knockout blow. It had been Beauregard who chose instead to take a defensive stance. The lack of action on his part would haunt everyone in the high command for months to come, as it gradually became clear that the best opportunity for ending the war early would have been immediately following First Manassas. 12 All this was taking place with the knowledge that Beauregard might run against Davis for the permanent presidency of the Confederacy in elections to be held in the spring of 1862. Given Beauregard’s immense popularity with Congress and with the people, Davis had plenty of reason to be nervous.

  After days and weeks of intense squabbling, the “Report on the Battle of Manassas Affair” took on a life of its own. Davis was furious with Beauregard, flatly stating that the general was attempting to reach loftier heights by attacking his commander in chief. In response Beauregard sent a letter to the Richmond Whig attacking the president obliquely and ensuring that their relationship would be fractured forever.

  As if to make himself certain of that fact, Beauregard also attacked another front, one close to Davis’s heart. Beauregard (aided by Johnston) began making harsh assertions that the Commissary and Quartermaster-General’s departments were not properly supporting the armies with food and equipment. While this may have been largely true, the available amounts of food and the logistics of getting it to the right place were difficult questions to work out early in the war. Beauregard didn’t give a damn about how difficult the task was—to him, Abraham Myers and Lucius Northrop were clearly failing in their jobs. He was particularly harsh on Northrop regarding the food issue, and Northrop being an old, close friend of Davis’s, the president defended him staunchly. Davis angrily wrote Beauregard: “Some excitement has been created by your letter. The Quartermaster and the Commissary Genl. both feel that they have been unjustly arraigned. . . . I think you are unjust to yourself in putting your failure to pursue the enemy to Washington on account of short supplies of subsistence and transportation. . . . Let us . . . give form and substance to the criticisms always easy to those who judge after the event.” 13

  None of this boded well for the rebellion. And within the boundaries of the Confederate capital itself, the arguments were just beginning.

  Chapter 6

  The Military High Command

  IN Richmond many hopeful senators and representatives looked at the fight that had arisen over Beauregard’s actions at First Manassas in disbelief. Surely this was not the time to fight within the Confederate nation; there were Yankees to kill and, as time marched on, more and more supplies ready for a conquest that might spell Confederate doom. Although Richmonders were flushed with success, Davis knew what lay ahead. He warned that hard battles would follow against a determined enemy, but few believed him until, during a pouring rain, trains rolled into Richmond bearing the Manassas wounded, and men without limbs and soldiers with heads wrapped in bloody bandages were carried off to makeshift hospitals.

  “Richmond was then one vast general hospital,” wrote Sallie Putnam, the nurse, a native of Madison County, Virginia, who moved to Richmond in 1858 and who kept a celebrated wartime diary. “Our surgeons were kept constantly busy in the rounds of their profession, and we were told, as far as it was in their power . . . they practiced the principles of conservative surgery, although much blame has been attached to the surgeons of both armies for reckless waste and sacrifice of human limbs.” 1

  Along with the wounded came Yankee prisoners, to the point where the town was “crowded to the caves.” 2 (One of those brought to Richmond was the congressman captured at Manassas, Alfred Ely of New York.) Many houses, schools, and other institutions had been converted into hospitals, and now prisons had to be created. For Yankee officers a warehouse and ship chandlery near the James River, owned by the estate of Luther Libby, was converted and renamed Libby Prison. Common soldiers were held on Belle Isle, an isolated spit of land that housed a tent city for the prisoners. All together some eighteen hundred prisoners were housed in Richmond during the last weeks of 1861.

  Not everyone appreciated the growth of Richmond. As Sallie Putnam wrote,

  With the incoming of the Confederate government, Richmond was flooded with pernicious characters. . . . Speculators, gamblers, and bad characters of every grade flocked to the capital, and with a lawlessness which for a time bade defiance to authority, pursued the rounds of their wicked professions, and grew rich upon their dishonest gains. Thieving, garroting, and murdering were the nightly employments of the villains who prowled around the city. 3

  In this arena of strange politics, relations between President Davis and his generals became further strained. The argument between Davis and Beauregard over First Manassas failed to dissipate. Davis was faring no better with Joe Johnston, who also was annoyed with Secretary of War Judah Benjamin. Johnston had added to the Manassas controversy by writing that following the battle the president had been “satisfied with the victory as it was” and that he gave “no instructions” about pursuing the Yankees, later summarized in his memoirs. 4 Davis professed continued anger over the Confederate lack of pursuit. All sides continued to point fingers.

  As 1861 dragged on and Johnston’s armies stayed encamped at Fairfax Court House and Centreville, Johnston maintained a positive correspondence with the War Department and with President Davis. In mid-September, however, the glue that held the relationship between these old associates came apart. On August 31 Davis finally sent the names of the five full generals of the Army of the Confederate States to the Senate for confirmation, in rank order of Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joe Johnston, and Beauregard. The news struck Johnston “like a slap in the face,” and he immediately sat down to pen a letter to the president. He declared:

  It seeks to tarnish my fair fame as a soldier and a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service. I had but this, the scars of many wounds, all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father’s Revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerated hand, without a stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war, not for rank or fame, but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children, aye, the men of my mother Virginia, my native South. 5

  Sending the letter may have been the worst decision Johnston ever made. Davis was furious, and the relationship never was mended.

  Two of the five generals now were very angry with their president. To Davis’s credit, he was probably right in both situations. But the tension among the three men would be palpable for years to come.

  Such was not the case with Robert Edward Lee, who—after leaving the old Union and taking command of the Virginia state forces in April—had spent the first few
months of the war in a succession of assignments. In January 1861 he had turned fifty-four years old, his hair and mustache still black with just a sprinkling of gray, and he had not yet grown a beard. He stood five feet eleven inches in height, and weighed 170 pounds. His father, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, had been Washington’s cavalry commander and governor of the commonwealth before falling from grace, drinking, gambling, and losing his family’s money. His son’s career as an engineer in the U.S. Army had been stellar, and his service in the Mexican War outstanding. Lee’s loyalty to the U.S. Army was intense, but he felt he had no choice but to turn southward when Virginia departed from the Union.