In March the House finally passed a resolution to determine what prevented Johnston, who was at Bowling Green, from relieving Fort Donelson during its investment by Grant. Congress also overwhelmingly passed a bill demanding an explanation from the executive branch 5 and debated holding a vote of no confidence in Johnston, a discussion that was inconclusive. 6
Davis hoped to cheer up a shocked Congress. “The hope is still entertained that our reported losses at Fort Donelson have been greatly exaggerated,” he wrote, “in as much as I am not only unwilling, but unable to believe that a large army of our people have surrendered without a desperate effort to cut their way through the investing forces, whatever have been their numbers, and to endeavor to make a junction with other divisions of the army.” 7 But it was clear to everyone in Richmond that disaster had struck. The surrender at Fort Donelson sent about 11,500 Confederate soldiers to Yankee prisons. Moreover, Nashville—also under Johnston’s jurisdiction—fell into Federal hands at month’s end. “The terrible disaster at Fort Donelson is a terrific shock upon weak nerves—and somewhat trying to strong ones,” wrote Howell Cobb, former president of the Provisional Congress. 8 Moreover, Roanoke Island, North Carolina, fell to Union forces, and the South lost 2,500 soldiers to prisons.
It didn’t take long for the finger pointing to begin. Judah Benjamin tried to help Davis and Johnston escape the blame. “The bearer Capt. Wickliffe, aid of Genl. A. S. Johnston, can give you some interesting details of the escape of Genls. Floyd and Pillow from Fort Donelson,” he wrote Davis. “He says we had 17,000 men there, and the enemy only 30,000, and that all the army could easily have been saved.” 9 Replied the president, “The reports of Brig. Genls. Floyd and Pillow of the defense and fall of Fort Donelson are unsatisfactory. . . . You will order Genl. A. S. Johnston to relieve both of these officers from command.” 10 This did not sit particularly well with senators and representatives. The anger and sense of frustration with Johnston in Congress simmered on.
Nevertheless, Davis, ever true to his close friends, seemed to shake any sense of holding Johnston responsible. “You have done wonderfully well,” he wrote his old friend late in March, “and I now breathe easier in the assurance that you will be able to make a junction of your two armies. If you can meet the division of the enemy moving from the Tenn. before it can make a junction with that advancing from Nashville, the future will be brighter. If this can not be done, our only hope is that the people of the South West will rally en masse with their private arms.” 11
Meanwhile, the distrust between Congress and the friends of Davis grew. With no one in the administration apparently holding anyone accountable for the Fort Donelson disaster, Congress discussed a vote of no confidence against Secretary of War Benjamin. They tabled the debate after much talk, and Davis responded by appointing Benjamin secretary of state, replacing Robert M. T. Hunter. In this way Davis could move his close friend and intellectual aide out of the direct fire of Congress when it came to military affairs. In his place Davis chose Virginia loyalist George Wythe Randolph, who became secretary of war on March 18.
Randolph was a gentleman from Charlottesville who happened to be a grandson of Thomas Jefferson’s. He had a diverse background as a naval officer, an attorney, and a militia captain and was an influential member of Richmond’s City Council. Randolph had spent the first months of the war in the field as a major and subsequently as a colonel of Virginia troops, conducting himself well in the Army of the Peninsula. He had just become a brigadier general a month before his appointment as war secretary, and Randolph’s credentials seemed impeccable: his family pedigree was exceptional; his experience as an administrator and lawyer was solid; his education and military experience were unassailable; and he had the confidence of the president. However, within days of inhabiting the War Department building, receiving frequent communication from Davis, it became clear to Randolph that the president really wanted to run the war. Instead of being a leader in his own right, Randolph quickly found himself a Davis functionary and a relative nonentity.
The Navy Department—what there was of it—was not shaping up well, either. In the Senate South Carolinian James L. Orr led a fight to block the confirmation of Secretary Stephen Mallory; a significant group of politicians in Richmond lacked confidence in Mallory’s ability and was not particularly sympathetic to the enormity of the job before him. On March 18 the Senate debated Mallory’s confirmation, tabled the issue, and then returned to it and voted to confirm the Floridian, thirteen to six. Davis had dodged another political bullet—but it was clear further shots would be fired. 12
Still contentious were Davis’s executive authority versus that of the Provisional Congress and the provisional government’s authority versus the new, permanent government. For example, the House passed a bill allowing generals who had been confirmed during the provisional session to continue in their grade throughout the entire war. Debates about the status of general officers ensued. In the House the Judiciary Committee tried to determine whether army officers also could hold seats in Congress. The South Carolina fire-eater Roger Pryor introduced the first of many attempts to create an enlarged general staff for the army. The Congress also argued over the confirmation of Davis’s friend Lucius B. Northrop as commissary general of subsistence, the officer charged with providing food to the armies. Congress then resolved that its members could not concurrently hold commissions in the army or navy, thereby mixing legislative and executive functions. This regulation was not always obeyed, however. Members believed this did not apply to the militia. The issue was debated from time to time without a clear regulation. 13 Two weeks after Pryor’s proposed legislation, the Senate followed suit by introducing a bill to expand the general staff. This time the bill came from the chair of the Military Affairs Committee, Edward Sparrow.
To the administration all this was Congress sticking its nose into the business of the War Department—plain and simple. 14 And it kept going. In March Congress, alarmed over what appeared to be a lack of leadership among military officers in the field and the War Department, called for and debated the merits of assigning a general-in-chief for the entire Confederate army. This was the last thing Jefferson Davis wanted, of course, given his desire to manage every military campaign and all aspects of the war office. In the House of Representatives, Pryor raised the issue, and subsequently, Foote jumped in with an even more radical approach: Foote moved that a commander in chief should replace the secretary of war, whose office would be discontinued. Jefferson Davis was not amused.
Two days after Foote’s motion, on March 3, the issue again came up in the House. William Porcher Miles, chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, said he was frustrated that various important topics were brought up only to be subjected to “long, rambling, and desultory debate.” Hines Holt of Georgia declared that if Miles pressed for the topic to be discussed, he would respond by moving for a postponement. Nothing but stalemate resulted. Later on the same day, noting that the subject of replacing the secretary had risen in secret session—in a subcommittee behind closed doors—South Carolinian Milledge L. Bonham cautioned against discussing the matter publicly. Pryor, who had brought up the bill, claimed he did not wish it to go into secret session, and Foote testily cut in to say that the subject should be resolved in the open. He was overruled, and the point went into secret session. 15
On March 10 the general-in-chief debate heated up when the House bill was discussed in the Senate. Davis now clearly felt that the issue couldn’t be avoided, and four days later, he reacted angrily. With the bill passed in the House and pending in the Senate, the House received a startling veto message from the president. Davis announced that he feared the legislation would create a quasimilitary dictator. He refused to have an officer who could “take the field at his own discretion and command any army or armies he may choose, not only without the direction but even against the will of the President, who could not consistently with this act prevent such conduct of the general ot
herwise than by abolishing his office.” 16
But the House of Representatives seemed willing to fight. A representative at this moment wrote that “Congress is raising a perfect storm” over the issue and would have rid the government of President Davis if only any of them had faith in the abilities of Vice President Stephens. 17 On March 20 the House attempted to override Davis’s veto, and a vote was taken in open session. In the end, however, not wishing to seem against prosecution of the war, of sixty-nine representatives, only Joseph P. Heiskell of Tennessee voted to override.
The backing off of the House resulted in one change: for the rest of the war, Davis would assign a general officer to act as a sort of executive assistant. This would be a highly capable military mind—at least in Davis’s view—and also someone who politically would not threaten him. His choice was none other than Robert E. Lee, who lately had been supervising field operations down in the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, while stationed in the swampy outpost town of Coosawhatchie, South Carolina. Certainly, Davis felt, another general could take over there, and Lee was told to make his way north to Richmond, becoming chief adviser to the president.
In Washington, meanwhile, adjustments on the fly were being made fairly effectively. In the Lincoln cabinet the least competent and most troublesome member had been Simon Cameron, a corrupt Pennsylvania politician, as secretary of war. The appointment had been made as a concession to Pennsylvania Republicans. Not only did Cameron possess no particular qualifications for the office, but he clashed with the president and other cabinet members over the building of the army, its training, and army logistics. For example, Cameron believed that volunteer and militia officers should rank along with the regular army—that their relative ranks should depend only on the seniority of their commission. Long-prevailing regulations allowed all regulars to outrank volunteers, who in turn outranked all militia officers of the same grade, regardless of their commission dates. Cameron’s desires favored the political generals, while the regulations favored those with experience, training, and competence. After much debate the traditional viewpoint prevailed, which influenced the command structure at the very top. Cameron was finally appointed minister to Russia (a move most called, with a smile, exile to Siberia), which removed him from the political scene, allowing Lincoln to appoint the Ohio politician Edwin M. Stanton to take over the War Department. When situations became too tense or unworkable, Lincoln found a way to resolve them, unlike his Confederate counterpart.
DURING war, in any time or place where constitutional principles apply, civil liberties and fundamental rights of citizens always spark considerable controversy regarding the government’s ability to control despotism. With the feud over the commanding generalship simmering down, Congress and President Davis formed a tense alliance over another sensitive topic—suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. In a statedom steeped in personal liberties and individual rights, no issue so fueled the fire of controversy.
Early 1862 was a troublesome time for Confederates, both on the battlefield and on the home front, and everyone seemed to understand the dire consequences if the Yankees won the war. In late February Congress passed a bill suspending the writ of habeas corpus. This allowed the president to suspend civil rights and declare martial law in cities, towns, and areas in danger of assault by the Yankees. Extensive discussions and arguments flared within Congress, the administration, and the press and with governors over the wisdom and right of suspension. Among other things the bill would allow the government to hold suspects in confinement for long periods without bringing them to trial. 18 Davis’s old friend Louis T. Wigfall of Texas spoke eloquently in the Senate and argued that such a law rarely would be needed, that individual rights of Southerners would be held as sacred as possible, and that Jefferson Davis could be trusted.
Davis didn’t wait long to act. On February 27 he issued a proclamation suspending the writ in Norfolk and Portsmouth and “the surrounding country to the distance of ten miles from said cities, and all civil jurisdiction and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus are hereby declared to be suspended within the limits aforesaid.” 19 Two days later the president extended his suspension to include Richmond itself, to a distance of ten miles out. He assigned Brig. Gen. John H. Winder to carry out the proclamation; liquor was prohibited immediately. On the same day Winder assigned Capt. Archibald C. Godwin as provost marshal of the city. He also ordered all persons with arms to deliver them to the Ordnance Department. Winder assembled a gang of provost marshal “plug-uglies” who marched around town, keeping order and intimidating citizens, many of whom were alarmed by “seeing the glimmer of bayonets in the streets.” All of a sudden Richmonders began to take a sterner look at the national government to which they played host. 20
Seeing the effects of martial law on the streets of Richmond, the very places where they walked and talked and went to church, the members of Congress began to rethink their position. Certainly in a climate of such strict control, even Davis, who justly felt suspension of the writ necessary to keep chaos from sinking in, had to wonder about how his own people saw him. This was especially true in an age when he was now regularly receiving threats. One letter read, “You rebel traitor here is the beauty of America one of the greatest treasures that ever wavest over your sinful head. How I want you to look at this motto and think of me for I say death to cesession [sic] and death to all traitors to their country and these are my sentiments exactly.” This little ditty was scrawled on patriotic letter sheet with the imprinted motto Death to traitors! and an American flag. 21 It had not, to state what was becoming obvious to Davis, been sent from the North.
WHEREAS Davis often wanted to restrict power, reserving it for himself, in other ways he was happy to give it away. For the judicial branch the president favored formulating a Confederate Supreme Court. The House of Representatives discussed the matter in mid-March. In fact the Confederate Constitution had provided for a Supreme Court, but without sufficient detail on how it would be put together. On March 11 Senator Thomas J. Semmes of Louisiana introduced a Supreme Court bill, which proposed a chief justice and three associate justices. The sessions would commence in January and August, and the chief would make seven thousand dollars per year, the associates six thousand. The bill was ordered to be printed and placed on the calendar. In the House William Porcher Miles brought out the legislation about a month later. The subject was then infected with a disease that pervaded much of the new Southern law: debatitis. Day after day after day, representatives and senators discussed how a Supreme Court might work. Before long it was clear that the whole topic may as well have been buried in the subbasement of the Capitol Building. The bill was going nowhere. 22
As the Supreme Court legislation stagnated, another hot topic reared its head. Among his other worries President Davis was daily growing more and more concerned that the South could lose its army to attrition. Twelve-month volunteers, who had enlisted for a period that originally seemed to be longer than any war could last, might well not reenlist, the president reasoned. And yet there was no method in place to conscript soldiers to fight out the rest of the war. On March 28 President Davis delivered a message to the Senate, telling his countrymen, “There is also embarrassment from conflict between state and Confederate legislation . . . on conscription.” He pleaded with Congress for a conscription act, which would help raise a large, standing army for defense. The next day debate erupted. Davis wrote that a general conscription law was needed to provide for uniformly organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States. Williamson S. Oldham of Texas bluntly shouted that Congress “does not have the power to force citizens into the Army of the Confederate States.” Fellow Texan Louis Wigfall disagreed, saying he “is and always will be a state rights man, but the right to make war was transferred by the States to the central government.” 23
As the debate continued, Wigfall’s temperature rose. “Cease this child’s pla
y!” he screamed. “The enemy are in some portions of almost every State in the Confederacy; they are upon the borders of Texas; Virginia is enveloped by them. We need a large army. How are you going to get it? . . . No man has any individual rights, which come in conflict with the welfare of the country.” In response Oldham said, “It was the object and theory of our government to secure and preserve the liberties of the people. If they are to be destroyed, I don’t care a fig whether it is effected by the General or State government.” 24 The topic was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs, where it would live another day—and longer. But by April 16 Congress passed the First Conscription Act, which drafted for military service all white males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five for a period of three years, unless the war came to an end. For the time being Davis had bested his opponents.
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