Dixie Betrayed

by David J. Eicher

  In mid-September the Senate Judiciary Committee declared the president’s use of martial law had effects “far beyond a mere suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.” It reaffirmed that only Congress should have the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and asked for new legislation to limit the president’s authority. At the same time in the House, Virginian Charles Russell offered a resolution to authorize suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in certain cases. Foote strongly opposed it. “I will never again consent to a suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus unless the enemy is within sight of the city,” he said, “and then only so long as circumstances might render absolutely necessary.” 28

  A few days later Thomas Semmes of Louisiana reported that the Judiciary Committee had formulated a bill enabling the president to declare suspension in towns or cities in danger of rebellion, in the neighborhoods of armies, or in areas of potential attack. Such arrests would be confined to those to maintain discipline of the army or for crimes against the Confederate States. 29

  Early in October the debate flared again in the House. Foote argued to limit the powers of the president so Davis could not threaten the Constitution. The next day Foote’s amendment was defeated, forty-five to fourteen—an easy fail, and yet the minority in support constituted almost a quarter of the House, and they would not let the issue die. 30

  As habeas corpus bubbled, so did issues relating to the general staff. Davis saw most of this as interference in matters that should be purely in the domain of the executive branch, and for the most part, he was right. Nonetheless, on September 23 Orr introduced a bill asking for the quartermaster general to have the “rank, pay, and allowance” of a brigadier general. This was an attempt to have his friend Abraham Myers, the quartermaster general, promoted. “The experience of seventy years under the old government shows the necessity of giving to the quartermaster general a higher rank than colonel,” Orr declared. Davis, however, disliked Myers, whose wife had cracked that Varina Davis was “an old squaw,” and would not stand for his promotion. John Clark of Missouri suggested extending the bill to cover the commissary general, chief engineer, and chief of ordnance as well. The bill went to committee and was sent to the House. 31

  The next day in the House, Miles reported on the bill and recommended it should be approved. Barksdale supported the extension to include the commissary, ordnance, and engineering chiefs. Miles opposed the amendment. Barksdale argued that the four offices were equally important. Foote objected to any amendment. The bill passed without amendment, and Davis responded with a veto once the Senate sent up its version. 32

  A week later the House introduced a bill to make the surgeon general a brigadier general. Again Davis struck with a veto. On the same day he returned a bill regarding the building of warships, claiming it afforded insufficient discretion for the secretary of war. Davis also returned an act to provide relief for the Confederate States Bible Society, concluding that Congress did not have the authority to use government funds for repaying civilians whose property may have been damaged or destroyed through acts of war. 33 What chemistry there was between Davis and Congress seemed to have broken down completely. The chemistry between senators wasn’t so positive, either. Nothing, it would seem, was destined to get done anytime soon.

  On the day of the battle of Antietam, September 17, House members passed a resolution requesting that the Judiciary Committee organize a Supreme Court. A week passed, and then the Senate got involved. Benjamin Hill of Georgia, chair of the Judiciary Committee, proposed taking up the Supreme Court bill. Edward Sparrow opposed the motion, feeling any such court would be too powerful over the states. Louis Wigfall was strongly in favor of organizing the court. “There should be some tribunal to decide questions between the States and the Confederate States,” he said. After further debate the topic was postponed. The next day the debate flared again but was then postponed. As with many topics, nothing would be resolved at present because of the divisive split between viewpoints. And Union generals had no plan to pause until the Confederacy was ready with its paperwork. 34

  On September 12 Davis asked the advice of the Senate on military reappointments, reminding senators that the sixth article of the Constitution had something to say about the appointments that had already been made: “All the officers appointed by the [Provisional Government] shall remain in office until their successors are appointed and qualified, or the offices are abolished.” On September 23 the Senate debated renominations and how they should be made. This was a sensitive issue because it allowed a weeding out of undesirable officers whose commissions were carried over from the Provisional Congress, and many of these officers had powerful advocates in Congress. Little was resolved despite the intensity of debate.

  The same issues dragged on through autumn. On October 10 Davis requested an extra Executive Session of the Senate to process a backlog of pending nominations. These were simply referred to the Judiciary Committee. On the same day a bill allowing the president to make recess appointments, subject to later confirmation, passed in the Senate but failed in the House. 35

  Also in October a long debate erupted in the Senate over the confirmation of Joseph R. Davis as a brigadier general. Aside from being the president’s nephew, Davis had a serviceable record in the army, having entered as a Mississippi captain. By the summer of 1861, the younger Davis was commissioned colonel and joined his uncle’s staff; this apparent nepotism upset many congressmen. After considerable argument the Senate confirmed Joseph Davis as a brigadier general by a vote of thirteen to six. The Senate also argued over the confirmations of others of Davis’s friends, including John Pemberton, who would become famous as the defender of Vicksburg, and Henry Heth, who would end up as a trusted lieutenant of Robert E. Lee’s. The confirmation of Pemberton as a lieutenant general was shot down thirteen to five, with Sparrow and Wigfall voting for and Robert M. T. Hunter against the motion. The confirmation of Heth as major general also failed, Hunter, Sparrow, and Wigfall all voting for disapproval. On October 13, 1862, however, Pemberton’s confirmation was reconsidered and approved, with Wigfall still holding out. Such was how they spent their days.

  With troop shortages a big factor in the minds of everyone during this summer and autumn of battle, a new, almost unspoken subject arose in the arena of Confederate politics. Along Antietam Creek, west of Frederick, Maryland, the bloodiest single day of the war had occurred on September 17. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia clashed with McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, sending 4,808 men to their graves, with another 21,000 wounded or missing. The Union infantry struck southward into Lee’s Rebels early in the morning, thrusting forward in savage attacks, and heavy artillery and infantry battles raged along a huge line of battle all day. In the end the Confederates, endangered and forced back, were reinforced late in the afternoon and counterattacked handsomely. But at nightfall they abandoned the field and retreated southward, ending what was effectively a gigantic raid onto Northern soil. The battle, a strategic victory for the Yankees, had enabled President Lincoln to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Shocked Confederate politicians were outraged at the freeing of slaves who, in their point of view, were theirs and living in their nation. On October 1 the Confederate House issued a response to Lincoln: “Resolved that after the first day of January 1863, no officer of the Lincolnite army or navy ought to be captured alive, and if so captured should be immediately hung.” The resolution was sent to committee, and the next day a final resolution was drafted. It included the inflammatory clause, “All slaves taken in arms against the Confederate States shall be delivered to the authority of the State in which they were taken, to be punished or otherwise dealt with according to the law of such State or States.” The final response continued, “Every white person who shall act as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer, commanding negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States, or who shall arm, organize, or prepare negroes or mulattoes for military service against the Confederate State
s, or who shall voluntarily aid negroes or mulattoes in any military enterprise, attack, or conflict, in such service, shall, if captured, be put to death by hanging.”

  In the Senate Semmes declared the Emancipation Proclamation was “leveled against the citizens of the Confederate States, and as such is a gross violation of the usages of civilized warfare, an outrage upon private property and an invitation to a servile war, and therefore should be held up to the execration of mankind and counteracted by such severe retaliatory measures as, in the judgment of the president, may be best calculated to secure its withdrawal or arrest its execution.” John Clark of Missouri thought the proclamation so shocking that he felt “every person found in arms against the Confederate Government and its institutions, on our soil, should be put to death.” Likewise, Gustavus Henry of Tennessee believed the time had come to “declare a war of extermination upon every foe that puts his foot upon our soil, no matter what the bloodshed it may cause.” 36

  ON the battlefield the bloody war certainly did continue. The awful struggles of the Antietam campaign in Maryland, which soon would be shown in battlefield photographs in exhibitions in American cities, would shock the American nation with up-close evidence of death and woe. The scale of the carnage seemingly knew no bounds.

  In Mississippi, at Corinth, Confederates under Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price battled fiercely with Yankees commanded by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, leaving a body-strewn town with the Yankee army pursuing the retreating Southerners. As the year wound down, a bloody fight took place in the far west at Prairie Grove, Arkansas, as a genuine brawl shaped up at Fredericksburg, Virginia, between Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Yankee army commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. After hellish fighting in which the Northerners attacked across the Rappahannock River and uphill through the town of Fredericksburg, the battle accomplished little but more death.

  The bloody horrors of the battlefield touched everyone on a personal level. Casualties meant losses of sons and fathers and brothers in thousands of families, and if your own family didn’t lose someone, you certainly knew a family who did. Even Howell Cobb, who had served as the Confederacy’s provisional president, had to write his wife a heartfelt letter on the day of Antietam. “My telegraph from Richmond will have informed you of the death of your brother [Col. John B. Lamar],” he penned, “who fell in the hottest of the fight, struggling to rally our broken columns. He lived until the next day and suffered no great pain. . . . I need hardly, my dear wife, say how my own heart has bled and how it flows with sympathy for you in this trying hour.” 37

  And death had not finished with the Cobb family. The talented soldier and attorney Thomas R. R. Cobb, who had helped his brother in the early days of the Provisional Congress, fell mortally wounded at Fredericksburg as a colonel, never having been confirmed as a brigadier general (as he often is reported to have been). Having written a tender letter informing his wife of the death, Cobb now received one from a fellow officer. “In performing the sad office of having sent to you today a dispatch of Major Lamar Cobb [Howell Cobb’s son] informing you of the death of your noble and gallant brother, I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt sympathy in this terrible bereavement. His death has cast a gloom over this city.” 38

  Amid the wreckage one thing was clear: now it was Lee’s army, and the soldiers adored their commander, whose beard and gray hair made him look grandfatherly and wise. Gone were the barbs about Lee’s timidity in western Virginia; he was now seen as a magnificent leader—by his boss, most of all. “Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon the skill and daring of the commanding General who conceived, or the valor and hardihood of the troops who executed, the brilliant movement,” wrote Davis following the Second Bull Run campaign. 39 For his part Lee now had to command the battlefield but also play politics. In touch with Congress as well as with the president, Lee lobbied for help for his army, the preeminent force of the South. “I have not yet heard from you with regard to the new Texas regiments which you promised to endeavour to raise for this army,” he inquired of Louis Wigfall shortly after Antietam. “I need them much. I rely on those we have in all tight places and fear I have to call upon them too often. . . . With a few more such regiments . . . I could feel much more confident of the results of the campaign.” 40

  THROUGHOUT all the military actions, Jefferson Davis persisted with his micromanagement, using his War Department chieftain like an executive secretary. By November 1862 the toll was too much for George Wythe Randolph, who suddenly resigned his post. Randolph had been frustrated not only by Davis’s henpecking, but also because he fundamentally disagreed with the president on grand strategy. Davis’s primary strategy was an offensive-defensive one, in which he could maximize the effect of interior supply lines and lines of movement and use inferior Southern resources against Northern strength. In this way Southern armies would employ men and matériel conservatively, retreating in the face of superior forces. They would choose the great moments for boldness on their own, as Lee had with the Antietam campaign. Chief among the disagreements between Randolph and Davis was where the strategy would best be employed. The secretary repeatedly emphasized the western theater, whereas Davis focused mostly on the east. In the west Pemberton and Bragg were not succeeding against Grant and Rosecrans, and this frustrated Randolph almost beyond measure. When Davis belittled Randolph’s ideas about rectifying the situation during October and the first days of November, the secretary bailed. 41

  Davis seemed shocked. “As you have thus without notice and in terms excluding inquiry retired from the post of a constitutional advisor to the Executive of the Confederacy,” he wrote, “nothing remains but to give you this formal notice of the acceptance of your resignation.” 42 Others seemed shocked, too. “Usually when a cabinet member resigns,” wrote Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory, “he remains in possession of the post until the installation of his successor; but Genl. Randolph walked out of it on Saturday, leaving much business that he might have concluded on that day, unattended to. . . . The fact is that the Presdt’s familiarity with army matters induces his desire to mingle in them all & to control them & this desire is augmented by the fear that details may be wrongly managed without his constant supervision.” 43

  For his new war secretary, Jefferson Davis turned to another Virginian, James A. Seddon, an attorney and former U.S. representative who had served in the Confederate Congress. Seddon, Davis knew, would be content to be subservient. He suffered from neuralgia, was an Episcopalian, and a staunch follower of John C. Calhoun. In 1845 he had married Sallie Bruce, a daughter in a very wealthy family, who bought for them the mansion on the corner of Clay and Twelfth streets, which later became the Confederate White House. Seddon was a staunch defender of state rights but also could remember very clearly for whom he worked. He established residence at the Spotswood Hotel to be near the government offices, while his family lived at an estate known as Sabot Hill, about twenty miles up the James River.

  Seddon’s office was in Mechanic’s Hall, on the southwestern corner of Capitol Square. Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell and Clerk John B. Jones worked alongside him in the two-room war office. Seddon concentrated on recruiting men and gathering supplies, while the president handled most of the strategy and personnel details. By this time it was becoming clear to Richmond’s politicians that Seddon, Judah Benjamin, Lee, and Bragg were the president’s closest friends—which meant they were good candidates as potential enemies. 44

  Some had doubts about the new secretary. “I see that Mr. Randolph has resigned,” wrote Albert Bledsoe, who had recently left his post as assistant secretary of war. “I have taken up my pen to suggest, for your consideration, Genl. Polk as his successor. . . . Seddon would be a failure. A man of fine parts, a most estimable character, an accomplished gentleman, and as fine a patriot as ever lived; but his physique is too feeble. The labors of the office would kill him in a month.” 45

  After one month in office, S
eddon was still breathing, but hard; he faced considerable challenges spread across the whole landscape. One missive, from Louis Wigfall, underscores the nature of what Seddon faced. “I have just received a letter from Genl. Johnston which contains gloomy forebodings as to our future in the west,” Wigfall advised. “Pemberton he says has fallen back before a superior force & he [Johnston] is ordered to reinforce him with troops from Bragg’s command. Consider the positions of these armies. As Pemberton falls back he will be each day one march further from Bragg. Grant is between them with, I suppose, a superior force to either. If he falls upon either before their junction may he not destroy him & then turn upon the other?” 46

  Such difficult challenges on the battlefield sparked a strange twist in Congress from one of its most unusual members, Henry Foote. Why not simply send peace commissioners to Washington to see if they would call off the whole war? Foote suggested negotiating a “just and honourable” peace. “I have but little confidence, I confess, sir,” said Foote, “in the wisdom and sagacity, the statesmanship, or the true manliness of spirit, of Mr. Lincoln and his deluded cabinet counselors,” said Foote. But he still felt the effort worthwhile:

  In sheer magnanimity, we are bound to offer terms of peace to the enemy. With us alone can a proposition of peace originate, without the deepest dishonour. . . . Mr. Speaker, I know well that I shall be denounced in certain quarters for my present conduct. I shall probably be charged with excessive moderation, and perchance even of pusillanimity. I shall not be at all surprised if all who are specially interested in the continuance of the war shall resort even to ridicule and denunciation.