Dixie Betrayed
Page 22
As the armies clashed at Chattanooga, other events occurred in eastern Tennessee, at Knoxville, where Rebel Lt. Gen. James Longstreet had been sent following Chickamauga, partly because of his animosity toward Bragg. Eastern Tennessee with its pro-Union sentiment had long been a problem for the Confederacy, and Longstreet wished to attack Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s Yankees, who were operating in the region. Small actions erupted before Burnside retreated into Knoxville, pursued by Longstreet. Longstreet attacked Fort Sanders on November 29, but a deep, icy ditch prevented Confederate success. “For fully twenty minutes the men stood around the ditch unable to get at their adversaries but unwilling to retreat,” wrote Col. Edward Porter Alexander, Longstreet’s acting chief of artillery. Capt. Orlando M. Poe, Burnside’s chief engineer, recalled, “Meanwhile those who remained in the ditch found themselves under a deadly flank fire of musketry and canister, supplemented by shells thrown as hand-grenades from inside the fort, without the slightest possibility of returning a blow.” 5 The Confederate attack failed, and Longstreet was ordered back to support the Army of Northern Virginia.
Before the year ended the United States president solidified the sense of purpose brought into the war the previous New Year’s Day. For his trip to Gettysburg to dedicate the new National Cemetery, Lincoln struggled to express the meaning of all the death, the suffering, the smoke and battle. On November 19, speaking for little more than two minutes after the two-hour discourse by Massachusetts orator Edward Everett, Lincoln concluded, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.” 6
THROUGHOUT the struggles on the battlefield, Confederate Richmond held its head high, hoping for turnarounds that would signal progress against the Yankees. And yet a sort of hopelessness had set in among some politicians in Richmond and army officers in the field. To some it hardly mattered what happened anymore. If you were a crony of the administration, you got a free pass despite the troubles that might surround you. Otherwise, it would be an uphill struggle for recognition and influence. It seemed that a new theme was emerging in Richmond: playing favorites. If your name was Bragg, Lee, or Cooper, you were above reproach. Sometimes the bonds seemed to come from the unlikeliest directions. “I know not what to think of Davis since he professed to be Yancey’s friend!” penned Clement Clay of Alabama. “By the way he quite persuaded Y. that he was his friend. He left D. his telescope (wh. was [George] Washington’s) by his will. Yet his wife is very bitter against D. and even blames him for her husband’s death!” 7 For the most part, however, the favorites were predictable and immutable.
For his part Davis enjoyed looking to Johnston as chief scapegoat. Bragg, meanwhile, remained an almost indestructible friend of Jefferson Davis’s. But confidence in Bragg was draining from almost everyone else at nearly lightning speed. In the wake of Chickamauga, Bragg blamed several subordinate officers for supposed incompetent behavior on the battlefield, most notably D. H. Hill and Leonidas Polk, both of whom were relieved of command by Bragg. Bragg’s army felt their commander had overreacted, and a spirit of disunity and insubordination followed. Trying to assuage the troops, Davis addressed them: “He who sows the seeds of discontent and distrust prepares for the harvest of slaughter and defeat. To zeal you have added gallantry; to gallantry, energy; to energy, fortitude. Crown these with harmony, due subordination, and cheerful support of lawful authority, that the measure of your duty may be full.” 8 Such words were cold comfort.
On October 15 several important officers of the army wrote a memorandum in support of Hill’s actions at Chickamauga, testifying that he had the confidence of the army now. Moreover, Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, the former vice president of the United States, wrote Hill: “I was present on the night of the 19th Sept. at an interview between Lt. Gen. Polk and Lt. Col. Anderson of your staff and think I heard all that passed between them. I do not recollect that Lt. Gen. Polk ordered you to attack at daylight.” 9
Polk, meanwhile, had the good fortune, like Bragg, of being the president’s close friend. “After an examination into the causes and circumstances attending your being relieved from command with the army commanded by General Bragg,” Davis wrote Polk, “I have arrived at the conclusion that there is nothing attending them to justify a Court Martial, or a Court of Inquiry, and I therefore dismiss the application.” 10
The Hill matter lingered for weeks, however. On November 13 Hill wrote Samuel Cooper asking that a court of inquiry be ordered to investigate Hill’s conduct at Chickamauga. He wanted to remove the feeling of any “delinquency, mismanagement, or misconduct on the field” he may have committed. 11
Three days later Hill addressed President Davis directly about the Chickamauga incident. He also complained that respected officers such as Longstreet, Simon B. Buckner, and Benjamin F. Cheatham also lacked confidence in Bragg but had not been relieved. 12
But Davis wanted the matter simply to fade away. On November 20 Cooper wrote Hill formally telling him that a court of inquiry was not justified. “You have been simply relieved from duty at the request of your Commanding General,” Cooper declared bluntly. 13
While Hill was struggling with his reputation, Grant was making his way east. Brought to Chattanooga in the wake of the fiasco at Chickamauga, Grant was now ready to take on a major, shaping role in the war. Not all in the Confederacy were convinced this little man was a threat. More worried about Rosecrans. Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina wrote, “Rosecrantz [sic] is superseded by Grant—good for us, for Rosecrantz is far the ablest man.” 14
The new focus of the Confederate leadership was the loss at Chattanooga. “The disaster at Chattanooga gives much uneasiness here,” lamented Joe Brown to his friend Aleck Stephens. “I fear it will be followed by other Federal victories which will cost us Upper Georgia for a time and expose our people there to extreme suffering. I wish we had a more able man at the head of our forces in that Department.” 15
For his part Jefferson Davis continued to worry over the command structure of the army. Davis hated the fact that various offices were appointed as political favors and not with regard to the best men. “My observations convince me that I have not overestimated, but rather underrated the importance of organizing the several staff corps as ‘general staff corps of the army,’’’ he worried to Secretary of War Seddon in late October. 16
As had been the case since the beginning of the war, chaos trumped coordination. The situation in North Carolina seemed to be getting out of control. An Alabama brigade on duty in the state supposedly had committed some outrages against the population, such as stealing, creating a feeling of minor anarchy at local levels. “This thing is becoming unsupportable,” Governor Zeb Vance reported to Jefferson Davis, “for sixty hours I have been traveling up and down, almost without sleep or rest, making speeches alternately to citizens and soldiers—engaged in the humiliating task of trying to defend the laws and peace of the State against our own bayonets!” 17
Vance later informed the War Department about the arrival of his brother, Gen. Robert B. Vance, into the state. “Gen. R. B. Vance has arrived [in western North Carolina] and has not a single man with which to defend this country!” he exclaimed. Seddon endorsed the verso of the letter: “Any would cheerfully furnish the forces, if it could spare them.” The situation was so perilous in parts of the state that Vance could not get any flour for locals to make the troops bread, and Abraham Myers in Richmond had to send him four barrels by special train. To restore order in the state, the Confederacy suggested detaching the Sixty-third North Carolina Infantry from Lee’s army, but Lee refused, and Seddon finally had to write, limply, “If another good regt. from N.C. could be
sent to take its place, there would be no objection.” 18
In South Carolina getting enough slaves released by their masters to help the Confederacy dig ditches and build fortifications continued to be a problem. Governor Milledge Bonham vented his frustration to anyone who would listen, including G. T. Beauregard. “They do not complain that they have to send their slaves,” he wrote, “but they do complain that when impressments are resorted to, the slaves of those who have neither paid the money or sent the negroes are not impressed and carried to the coast . . . [and] that the negroes are not returned at the end of the month, as required by the Act of the Assembly.” 19
Bob Toombs, frustrated with the whole Davis government, contemplated running for political office once again. “I shall leave here Wednesday morning for Milledgeville [Georgia] with the purpose, if I can be elected, to run for the Senate,” he told Aleck Stephens.
Mr. Davis’s present policy will overthrow the revolution in six months if the enemy only [gives] him time enough to stand still and do nothing. I shall do what I can to avert so dire a calamity. Of course in adopting the proposed course towards Davis I am fully aware of the nature of the contest. We shall both fight under the same flag. Vae victis,—with this difference: I shall avow it and he will quote scripture, say “God bids us to do good for evil” and thus “clothe [his] naked villainy in old odd ends stole forth from holy writ and seem a saint when he plays the devil.” 20
WHILE all hell was breaking loose elsewhere, Congress reconvened in Richmond on December 7 for the fourth session of the First Congress. This would last until February 17, 1864. Previous campaigns, particularly those of Chattanooga and Vicksburg, continued to cast long shadows on the proceedings. In his opening message to Congress, President Davis chose to focus on the difficulty of securing international relations, now increasingly unlikely but viewed as the most credible route by which the Confederacy might establish its independence. “I regret to inform you that there has been no improvement in the state of our relations with foreign countries since my message in January last,” Davis wrote. “On the contrary, there has been a still greater divergence in the conduct of European nations from that practical impartiality which alone deserves the name of neutrality, and their action in some cases has assumed a character positively unfriendly.” He then moved on to other serious challenges:
The state of the public finances is such as to demand your earliest and most earnest attention. . . . An organization of the general staff of the Army would be highly conducive to the efficiency of that most important branch of the service. . . . Having begun the war in direct violation of their Constitution, which forbade the attempt to coerce a State, they have been hardened by crime until they no longer attempt to veil their purpose to destroy the institutions and subvert the sovereignty and independence of these States. We now know that the only reliable hope for peace is in the vigor of our resistance. 21
The congressmen, however, were focused on other things. In the Senate, for example, various legislators inquired about whether Davis really meant, as he had apparently been quoted, that “the disasterous [sic] defeat before Chattanooga [was caused by] . . . the want of valour on the part of our army.” An outraged Senate as a whole took issue with the president and anyone else who charged the army with want of valor. A countercharge was made that the president was responsible, for he had not replaced Bragg, who had previously been shown to be incompetent. Some senators demanded that Bragg be replaced by Joe Johnston. The same arguments were applied also to Pemberton in connection with the Vicksburg campaign. 22
In the House on the same day, Bragg came up as a prominent subject. Henry Foote inquired about raising a committee to investigate the country’s “late disastrous defeat before Chattanooga.” Foote was incensed by Davis’s comments. “A more valiant body of men the world never saw,” he exclaimed. He yelled violently, charging “Jefferson Davis with the responsibility of the defeat. . . . The President has persisted at keeping Bragg in office against the protest of both the army and the people.” He accused Davis of treating Pemberton, “his bosom friend,” the same way. “I charge the President with gross misconduct in retaining his favourites in office,” he barked. If continued, he suggested, it “will prove fatal to our course.” 23
Three weeks later in the House, a discussion arose about the letter sent by officers of the Army of Tennessee which had been signed by twelve generals. The generals requested keeping the men in the ranks, without reorganization, for the duration of the war. They also wanted to extend conscription to an age range of fifteen to sixty and to prohibit leaves and furloughs. Incensed, Foote addressed the House. He defended the rights of the common soldiers by insisting they be able to choose their own officers and reacted most violently to the notion of expanded conscription. “If you extend the conscript law in the manner now recommended, the President, as the commander-in-chief, would have more power given to him than any monarch now living,” he bellowed. Davis, said Foote, would not be likely to wield such power “either wisely or with a due regard to the rights of the States or the people. . . . When this country is called on to select a dictator, Jefferson Davis will not be, and ought not be . . . chosen, but . . . General Lee.” 24
Congress also fought bitterly—once again—over the issues of the general staff. It was as if they were a team arguing about uniform colors as their opponents rounded the bases unmolested. On the session’s opening day in the Senate, the body received a message from President Davis recommending abolition of the gradation in rank for staff officers who served in different levels of command—Davis wanted to systematize everything. Rather than taking this seriously, however, the Senate and House attacked one of Davis’s pet staff officers, Commissary of Subsistence Lucius Northrop. The allegation arose that Yankee prisoners were not getting enough to eat, which was true. “It is the fault of the Commissary-General, Mr. Northrop,” barked Foote, “and his way of doing business. This man has been a curse to the country. He is a pepper doctor from South Carolina. . . . He should be dragged from his position.” 25
Also in the Senate, Edward Sparrow, chair of the powerful Military Affairs Committee, resolved to determine whether Quartermaster General Abraham Myers was discharging his duties correctly. Secretary of War James Seddon wrote the Senate reporting that Alexander Lawton had been serving as quartermaster general since August 7, 1863. The secretary’s reply to a query directed at the president infuriated members of Congress. “I do not understand it,” Wigfall said of the letter. “I do not understand why the President has been shuffled to the bottom and the Secretary turned up. General Myers is still the quartermaster general,” he said, “and that General Lawton had been assigned to the duties does not effect [sic] the case. . . . The Senate has been cheated by his assignment.” Essentially ignoring Davis’s assignment of Lawton to the post, on December 23, seventy-six members of Congress sent a letter to the president recommending that “Abraham C. Myers, Quartermaster General, be appointed a brigadier general.” 26 This infuriated Davis.
The old issue of a Confederate Supreme Court came up again, about which no progress had been made since the first time it was mentioned on the House floor. Rufus Garland of Arkansas nevertheless wanted to push ahead. “It is dangerous to society to be without the properly established tribunals of justice,” he proclaimed. “While the pending war is in progress we have no use for a supreme appellate tribunal,” said Foote. “No, sir, the establishment of the court would have inevitable effect of bringing the sovereign States in our system in dire conflict with the central government.” Moreover, Foote asserted, he would never assent to a Supreme Court as long as “Judah P. Benjamin shall continue to pollute the ears of majesty with his insidious counsels,” further evidence of Foote’s anti-Semitism. 27
And in the midst of this arguing, indications of the wheels coming off surfaced in North Carolina. Confederates there were becoming increasingly discontented, and support for the war in the Tar Heel State seemed to be waning. On December 30
Davis received a letter from Governor Vance referring to the unrest in his state. “After a careful consideration of all the sources of discontent in North Carolina,” the governor wrote, “I have concluded that it will be perhaps impossible to remove it, except by making some effort at negotiation with the enemy.” 28 On receiving this barrage, Jefferson Davis must have felt a sting as deep as a shot through the side at Chattanooga or Vicksburg. And, like the wounds that brought down Stonewall Jackson, the pain was all the greater knowing the assailant was supposed to be a friend. The sparks that were supposed to ignite a great Southern torch were drifting apart in the wind, extinguished in the wet and cold of the December midnight.
Chapter 15
The President versus the Congress
THE nature of the war would transform considerably during the year 1864. No longer would the Confederacy feel such confidence in its ability to outlast the conviction of the North or to win support from foreign powers. Never again would the eastern Confederate army bring the war onto Northern soil, apart from small-scale raids. Now the issues of diminishing supplies and an increasingly harder life for citizens on the home front would begin to plague the decisions being made by Confederate commanders. And the decisive Union victory at Chattanooga would allow a Yankee penetration deep into the South that would endanger the Confederacy’s ability to continue waging war.
During the final weeks of 1863, the eastern armies under Lee and Meade had engaged in a fruitless exercise known as the Mine Run campaign. Lee’s army, somewhat scattered, constructed quarters south of the Rapidan River, west of Fredericksburg, Virginia, to serve as winter lodging. Meade’s plan of attack was poorly executed, and by the opening days of December, both armies sat inactive, resigned to the harsh weather. In part due to Lincoln’s ongoing frustration with the eastern commanders, and largely due to Grant’s successive victories in the West, Lincoln had appointed Grant general-in-chief of all armies in the field. Grant was also commissioned lieutenant general in the regular army, the first use of that grade since George Washington. Now Grant would direct all military operations, save for those of the navy. Warned to stay away from Washington by his good friend William T. Sherman, Grant established his headquarters in the field, where politicians couldn’t meddle with him. As a result he would accompany Meade and the Army of the Potomac.