Political issues were hardly limited to the capital. In the field Toombs, now a brigadier general hoping to win the war by killing Yankees rather than arguing in Richmond, wrote to Aleck Stephens often, sharing his frustration:
As [to] the assignment of Smith’s regiment, [Judah P.] Benjamin wrote me the President instructed him to suggest to me to call Genl. [Joseph E.] Johnston’s attention to it; that he was commander of both corps of the army. I replied to Benj[amin] that I had good reasons to know that fact, “and in common with the army, not without reasons to lament it.” I never knew as incompetent [an] executive officer. As he has been to West Point, tho’, I suppose he necessarily knows everything about it. We are doing nothing here, and will do nothing. The army is dying. . . . Set this down in your book, and set down opposite to it its epitaph, “died of West Point.” 24
The following week Toombs turned his ire more directly toward the president. “Davis is here,” he confided to Stephens. “His generals are fooling [him] about the strength of our force in order to shield their inactivity. [Davis] talks of activity on the Potomac but I fear he does not feel it strong enough to move this inert mass.” 25 Toombs was hardly alone in his vilification. “Pres. Davis was up the other day and reviewed about 12,000 troops at Fairfax Court House,” wrote Thomas Thomas, colonel of the Fifteenth Georgia Infantry. “There was not a single cheer, even when some one in the crowd among the staff called out for three cheers there was not a single response, everything was as cold as funeral meats.” 26
Members of Congress fancied themselves better managers of the army than their president, whether or not that may have been the case. Since First Manassas, it seemed, nothing at all had been accomplished by the Southern armies. The repeated skirmishing in western Virginia had led nowhere. Federal troops had landed along the southeastern coast, capturing positions at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. What had the Confederate armies accomplished? The gloom over Davis’s management of the army spread during the inactive autumn. “All governments are humbugs and the Confederate government is not an exception,” Thomas told Stephens in October. He went on:
Its President this day is the prince of humbugs and yet his nomination for the first permanent presidency meets with universal acceptance, and yet I do know that he possesses not a single qualification for the place save integrity. . . . Imbecility, ignorance, and awkwardness mark every feature of his management of this army. He torments us, makes us sick and kills us by appointing worthless place-hunters to transact business for us on which depends our health, efficiency, and even our lives. . . . He would make a good ordinary [judge of probate] of a county in Georgia and his capacity is not above that; but he is king, and here where we are fighting to maintain the last vestige of republicanism on earth we bow down to him with more than eastern devotion. 27
Late in the year the clash between Beauregard and the president’s inner circle heated up again, disrupting the harmony between Richmond and the field officers. In November Beauregard had argued repeatedly and over a multitude of subjects with Secretary of War Benjamin. Davis had written Beauregard, trying to soothe him, but Beauregard replied that his “motives must not be called into question” and that if his “errors are pointed out, it must be done in a proper tone and style.” Davis had responded that he did not feel “competent to instruct Mr. Benjamin in the matter of style.” 28
As the armies stood inactive, the weather turned cold, and the Congress reconvened in Richmond, patience for military victories seemed to be running thin. They would come, but much more slowly than the people on the home front and the soldiers would have liked. Davis, meanwhile, was saddled with a vast job, and the cards were stacked against him. The naysayers were growing in numbers, and their complaints growing in volume. No one embodied the antiadministration rhetoric better than Robert Rhett. “Jefferson Davis is not only a dishonest man, but a liar,” he wrote at year’s end. “What is to become of us, under this man for six years?” 29
Chapter 7
State Rightisms
WITH the turn of the new year, hope sprang: Confederate commanders drew up plans for springtime battles; politicians planned their returns to the House and Senate chambers in Richmond’s Capitol, thinking of how best to whip the Yankees as well as how to put the best spin for their constituents on what was happening.
For his part Jefferson Davis planned on taking greater charge. The Confederacy remained mostly under his control, despite the arguing and politicking that was growing slowly like an infection in Richmond. But just when Davis thought he had enough to worry about, another deleterious effect appeared. A theme had emerged in this winter of discontent: who would wield the real power of the Confederacy—the executives or the legislators? Davis began to wonder if the states would remain loyal to his leadership. This was particularly scary because, after all, the states were held to be supremely powerful by nearly all the politicians of the Confederacy.
The new fears were bound up most completely in the form of Joseph E. Brown, the governor of Georgia. Joe Brown, who often wore stark black suits, was balding, with tufts of white hair on the sides. He sported a long, white-and-gray beard and looked every inch like a preacher. To Davis he symbolized everything that could spin the Richmond government out of control. Infused with supreme confidence from his South Carolina roots, Brown applied that fanatical sanctimoniousness to his adopted state. Georgia was itself in a politically influential position at this time because it had to be held in solid, loyal form—militarily, it was the gateway to the Deep South. If Georgia fell, Union troops could destroy the Confederacy from within by marching and fighting through its heart. To Davis, Brown’s loyalty to Richmond was crucial.
A native South Carolinian, Brown was forty years old as the second calendar year of the war began. He had studied at Yale Law School before winning election to the Georgia State Senate, where his family had moved. A leading Democrat, he was elected governor in 1857. At the outset of war, Brown enthusiastically called for volunteers and vowed to support Confederate military operations. But he would not budge on one issue: he wanted to maintain control of the Georgia troops—how they were supplied, who commanded them, and where and when they fought. This sent chills through the War Department. A conflict with state governors attempting to call the shots on the battlefield simply wouldn’t work. A sniping campaign commenced between members of the Georgia State House and the authorities in Richmond.
Brown supported the Confederate war effort during the first months of the conflict, and he was a masterful state politician, keeping the spirits of both his civilians and troops high. He acted ceaselessly to procure clothing and blankets for the Georgia troops, pulling strings everywhere he could to obtain cotton for basic goods and salt to preserve the troops’ food. But Brown felt the mounting wrath of Davis and the Richmond War Department, as well as another factor that was starting to turn public sentiment at home: inflation. Like most state politicians of the time, Brown could not bring himself to see affairs through a lens larger than the local view. He, therefore, dragged his heels on issues of Confederate unity, and the president could see that a time would come when Brown would have a head-on collision with the Confederate States of America.
The other Confederate governors were a mixed bag. In North Carolina Henry Clark, the product of a plantation upbringing, was no model of ambition and had failed to inspire the people of his state. A Yankee blockade made it impossible to get supplies to the Tar Heel troops, so the state had to scramble to supply many of its own men. Federal troops had landed and secured positions along North Carolina’s coast, so Clark initiated a draft of one-third of the state’s militia to help defend adjoining areas along the coast. This created ill feeling in the now less-defended inner, central counties, which began to question North Carolinians’ loyalty to the Confederate effort. Scattered protests against the Confederacy sprang up in the weeks following secession; by 1862 Unionism in the state was real, though only among a small numbe
r of the citizens. More so than in other Confederate states, however, a resentment by many over class distinctions—the war had to be fought for the rich and by the poor—and a general distrust of the state and national governments began to erode the feeling of support for the Confederacy. In Richmond this began to put Clark and other North Carolina politicians in a somewhat precarious position.
In Virginia Governor John Letcher was the middle-class product of comfortable Lexington, in the Shenandoah Valley. A moderate conservative, Letcher worked frantically to mobilize Virginia in the early months of the war. The philosophical opposite of Brown, Letcher realized that compromising state principles and closing ranks behind Jefferson Davis would be necessary if the South were to have a chance of winning its independence. He continued to be demanding, though, expecting privileged treatment for Virginia and her interests, which he generally got.
Another pro-Davis man, Francis Lubbock, was a South Carolinian who had become a Texas rancher and governor. A Democrat and strong supporter of secession, Lubbock was a strong militarist who delighted in discussing strategy and tactics; in fact he would not be able to keep himself away from the battlefield as the war drew on. Texas’s isolated nature meant that it held limited political sway in Richmond.
In Florida Governor John Milton was a secession Democrat who had amassed a personal fortune as a planter and slave owner. He was limited in ability by the scant resources the state had to bring to bear in the war. Pleased with Richmond’s plans to defend the approaches to Apalachicola, the harbor at Fernandina, Jacksonville, and other towns along the coast, Milton would be disappointed early in 1862, when Davis failed to follow through with them. As Federal forces began to threaten Kentucky and Tennessee, Richmond ordered Florida’s forces and resources northward and, thus, began disillusionment in the Sunshine State.
In Louisiana Governor Thomas Moore was a native Tar Heel who had become one of Louisiana’s largest sugar planters before the war. He was a fanatical secessionist who seized Yankee property even before his state left the Union. Louisiana’s political leaders offered trouble for Richmond authorities over the national government’s ability to build defensive works to protect the state, but the state supported the Davis administration on most matters. Governor John J. Pettus of Mississippi was a frontier lawyer and cotton planter who, politically, was another rabid secessionist. Support for the war in Mississippi started strong, but strain on the home front quickly became apparent. Pettus felt the Davis administration did not adequately provide for the state’s defense and, in early 1862, wanted to secure the state with its own troops under his control. South Carolina’s governor, Francis Pickens, who had been involved in the Fort Sumter drama, was the grandson of a Revolutionary War general. Pickens found himself publicly criticized for his inability to act independently since he was bound by a five-member state Executive Council that limited his powers.
Arkansas governor Henry Rector was a Kentucky native who had led a revolt within Arkansas’s Democratic Party, subsequently ordering the seizure of the U.S. Arsenal at Little Rock before the state seceded. Rector began his relationship with Jefferson Davis in a series of clashes, partly because the state’s military board, which he chaired, wanted Arkansas troops employed only within their home state—mirroring Joe Brown’s position in Georgia. In Alabama Governor John G. Shorter was a Georgian who migrated to Alabama before becoming a lawyer, planter, and slave owner. A Davis supporter, Shorter told the folks in his state in December 1861 that they would face “unaccustomed burdens” in the future. He had no idea what an understatement that would turn out to be.
The governorships of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri were more muddled. Late in 1861, following pro-Confederate meetings in Russellville, Kentucky was admitted as a Confederate state under the governorship of George Johnson. However, the government’s jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate troops in the state advanced, so it withdrew from the state in early 1862. The pro-Southern prewar governor, Beriah Magoffin, continued to act as the state’s government leader as recognized by the Lincoln administration, although many Northern politicians didn’t trust him. Tennessee had seceded and set up a pro-Richmond government under Isham G. Harris, but eastern Tennessee citizens refused to follow its authority. So Tennessee began as a divided state, and the divisions would only deepen as time moved on. Missouri, another area with deeply split loyalties, left the Union after a rump session had met at Neosho, late in 1861. The state’s prewar governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, was a rabid secessionist. After raiding the U.S. Arsenal at St. Louis, Jackson’s militia troops thwarted Union efforts to maintain control of the state. As with Kentucky and Tennessee, two governments arose in the state, and Hamilton R. Gamble led the one recognized by the Yankees.
STATE governors who might not comply with Jefferson Davis’s wishes were just another growing worry for the Confederate president. Comfortable in the Confederate White House, on January 1, 1862, Davis and his family opened their abode to anyone who wanted to come and see it. For four hours on this New Year’s Day, the president welcomed all who stopped by, greeting them with cheer and high spirits for the Confederacy. (His wife, Varina, stayed in her room, too ill to join the fray.) A continuous string of visitors was treated to the music of the Armory Band and a “very large bowl of apple brandy toddy.” 1
At the war’s outset Davis and Stephens had been inaugurated as president and vice president of the provisional government of the Confederate States. Now February 22 would mark their inauguration as president and vice president of the permanent government. The symbolism was intentional: the birthday of George Washington would provide the Southern nation with a touchstone of credibility that recalled the earliest days of the Republic. To strengthen the philosophical bond, Davis was set to deliver his inaugural address at the base of the great equestrian statue of Washington that stood adjacent to Richmond’s Capitol. It was a neat public-relations package, one that seemed fluently constructed, and with the new president commanding armies that stretched from the Atlantic coast to west of the Mississippi River, the Confederacy seemed in good shape.
In Richmond February can be mild, but this year, the sky was gray, the temperatures cold, and the streets wet with rain. This dampened the mood for the city’s inaugural festivities, but Davis was determined to press on with his speech. Numerous umbrellas dotted the hillside around the Capitol, and despite mud that approached being “ankle-deep,” a throng of visitors pushed forward to hear the president, amid a band that belted out “Dixie,” just as at the Montgomery inauguration.
The Senate and House assembled at 7:30 a.m. and then moved to the House of Delegates. Davis and Stephens were conducted there at 11:45 a.m. At 12:30 p.m. the procession moved from the House of Delegates to the Washington statue. 2 Prayer was followed by the inaugural address. As Davis rose he seemed oblivious to the rain that fell on him, and a guest nearby stuck an umbrella up to cover him. With, according to one observer, “a fine manner and with a loud voice,” the president told his fellow countrymen that “on this birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled to usher into existence the Permanent Government of the Confederate States.”
Justifying the war, he flatly said, “The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism, has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty.” Davis pointed to the “lights and shadows” of the first year of the war and commented that difficult times lay ahead. But he had no doubt that Southerners would prevail in the “great strife” they suffered through.
Following his remarks, which were met by loud cheers and sustained applause, the oath of office for Davis and Stephens was administered by Judge J. D. Halyburton, and the result announced by the Confederate Senate. The band commenced playing �
�La Marseillaise,” and Davis, this time along with Varina, hosted a reception at the White House that evening. All around town was a sense that Richmond was back on its feet with a permanent president. The country could move forward; the confidence with which the president spoke gave all hope for a speedy end to the war.
It didn’t take long for the president and Congress to begin to have sharp differences about their permanent government. State rights reared its philosophical head right away. The president, jealously attempting to hold onto his national power, vetoed a bill that would have allowed the state of Texas to assign a regiment to frontier duty after it had joined the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Davis would have none of that; he wanted to preserve his authority over how and where troops would be assigned. 3 Rationality departed the chambers. Robert Toombs and Robert Barnwell Rhett, along with eight others in the House, strongly protested a bill that would furnish Davis with one million dollars to connect the Richmond & Danville Railroad with the North Carolina Railroad in downtown Richmond in order to expedite the transportation of military supplies. Casting an immense spotlight on state rights over national ones, Toombs and Rhett were willing to forgo what was clearly best for supplying battlefronts because they wanted Virginia to make such decisions—not the national government.
There were other problems, too. A week after the session opened, for example, Davis wrote Congress complaining of the short-term (one year or less) enlistment of soldiers and their frequent absences home, both practices Congress approved of and the War Department fought tooth and nail against. “The policy of enlistment for short terms, against which I have steadily contended from the commencement of the war, has, in my judgment, contributed in no immaterial degree to the recent reverses which we have suffered,” Davis said. “Now that it has become probable that the war will be continued through a series of years, our high-spirited and gallant soldiers, while generally reenlisting, are, from the fact of having entered into the service for a short term, compelled in many instances to go home to make the necessary arrangements for their families during their prolonged absence.” 4 The “recent reverses” Davis spoke of to Congress referred to the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson in early and mid-February at the hand of the then little-known Yankee general Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had attacked the perimeter line of Kentucky defenses held by Davis’s trusted friend and admired general Albert Sidney Johnston, and Johnston’s failure to hold his line and to supervise the defense of the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, which now opened up a potential deep penetration southward by Grant, became a hot topic in Congress. In the House of Representatives, meddlesome politician Henry S. Foote of Tennessee argued that the cause of the disasters in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina should be investigated. Not only had Johnston, touted as the South’s greatest general, completely failed in his duty, but a succession of commanders on-site, John B. Floyd and Gideon J. Pillow, had escaped and left the Confederate troops to surrender under a junior general officer, Simon B. Buckner. The whole affair smacked of total incompetence and wholesale evasion of responsibility for what happened. The matter was discussed and then tabled. A week later Foote again argued about the cause of the disasters at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Nashville. The inquiry was again tabled, but it wouldn’t go away forever.
Dixie Betrayed Page 10