This assignment of Grant’s would prove to be the solution Lincoln had been looking for all along to the problems of command. The arrangement eased friction that had existed between Secretary of War Stanton and Grant, both of whom now had direct access to Lincoln. Lincoln had allowed the assignment of two chiefs of staff, one in Washington (Halleck) to continue on as the chief military paper pusher, and the other, Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlins, in the field, to serve as Grant’s personal attaché to military departments and field forces. Both Halleck and Rawlins now performed at their full potential, filtering communications, summarizing the consequential and blocking the trivial, interpreting military and political jargon, and effectively interacting with Lincoln and Grant. Thus, Lincoln was freed to concentrate on policy matters, while Grant considered matters of strategy. It was a smooth, efficient system in the making, hit on by pure experimentation. The Confederates, by contrast, would never discover such efficiency.
THE calendar may have turned, but familiar subjects continued to upset congressmen and members of the administration. The touchy business of who could appoint officers to act in the field still, after months of war, presented problems. On January 9 the Senate, led by Edward Sparrow, discussed Davis’s custom of antedating his nominations, which the Senate felt was an abuse of power. Davis had had enough. On January 15 he sent the Congress an angry explanation of his powers and why he should be enabled to order military commissions as he chose. Responding to the Senate’s Military Affairs Committee Report Number 15, which disapproved of the president’s action and challenged his authority, he wrote,
I confess my surprise at finding myself apparently charged with a violation of the Constitution . . . the only difficulty . . . is that . . . the date [of] rank is anterior to the last session of Congress. The Committee are of the opinion that the Constitution contemplates that all officers appointed in the recess of Congress shall only hold under such appointments to the close of the next session of Congress . . . and that they should be renominated, if it is intended to retain them in their office. . . .
The Senate cannot but agree with me that the plain inference from these passages is that the Constitution has been violated by my having appointed these offices during the recess and retained them in office without nominating them to the Senate at its next session. It has thus become incumbent on me . . . to repel any inference that might hereafter be drawn from my silence on the subject, by stating that not only had no appointments of these officers been made prior to the nominations on which the Senate has just acted, but in fact of the necessity for the appointments reached the Executive only since the commencement of your present session, by communication received last month from the Trans-Mississippi Department.
Upon the point suggested in the close of the resolution, that the Executive is without the right to make a nomination to a military grade, coupled with a rank from a date prior to a former session of the Senate, it is not deemed proper to anticipate any future disagreement with the Senate by presenting the reasons for the opposite conclusion as being the only one consistent with the laws for the regulation of the Army, as well as with long-settled usage and the necessity of the service.
Davis went on almost endlessly, the words gushing with volume but not force,
When the occasion shall arise I cannot doubt that the Senate will, notwithstanding this resolution, refuse to abandon its own constitutional power to act on nominations at its pleasure, according to the merits of each case and the good of the service. I am confirmed in this conclusion by observing that the resolution passed without a call for the yeas and nays, and therefore with probably less than the usual consideration, as well as by the further reflection that as Executive nominations which meet the disapproval of the Senate on any ground are always subject to rejection without assignment of reasons, experience will show that no advantage can arise from the Senate’s curtailing its own discretion in future cases by binding its own judgment in advance. 1
Most senators were dumbstruck by Davis’s angry, long legalese. Wigfall ordered that Davis’s reply be tabled, and the situation smoldered without resolution.
On January 21 the Senate resolved that Abraham Myers was legally recognized as the quartermaster general of the army, not Alexander Lawton, whom the president had appointed the previous August. 2 A showdown over the Myers-Lawton controversy now began. On January 27 Davis decided to go back to square one. “I submit to the Senate herewith,” he wrote, “the Nomination of A. R. Lawton, of Georgia, to be Quartermaster General, with rank of Brigadier General to take rank from the 13th day of April 1861, and deem it proper to communicate the reasons which induce this course.” In an effort to appoint the most competent person, Davis reported that
the office of Quartermaster General was offered to General Lawton, who was adverse to accepting it if it involved a nomination and new appointment, for the reason that it withdrew him from service in the field, interfered with his chances for promotion, and that, as he was then the oldest [sic; senior] brigadier in the service, he would, by acceptance of a new commission, be deprived of his relative rank as compared with other brigadiers. There were two other officers recommended to me . . . and they were both Major Generals and could not therefore be expected to accept a lower grade in the staff than that which they held in the line.
Davis then continued with his explanation of the Lawton case, and just as with his response to the antedating report, his argument lacked all conclusion. On and on he went, for pages, with technical detail and legal qualification.
The name of the officer then performing the duties of Quartermaster General was also presented to me [But Davis did not approve of the promotion or retention of the incumbent, Myers]. . . . On examination of the law above referred to, its language, although not free from doubt, was held, after consultation and advice, to justify the conclusion that the intention of Congress would be fulfilled by assigning to the performance of the duties of Quartermaster General an officer already confirmed as Brigadier General in the Provisional Army, without again submitting his nomination to the Senate. The grounds for this conclusion were that the eighth section of the Act of 6th March, 1861, organizing the Regular Army, expressly authorized the Executive to assign Brigadier Generals to any duties he might specially direct, and when the five Brigadier Generals were raised to the rank of General in the Act of 16th May, 1861, the president was again empowered to assign them to such command and “duties” as he might specially direct. As it had therefore been permitted by Congress that any one of the Generals of the Regular Army might be assigned to staff or any other duty at Executive discretion, it seemed a fair inference that when by the law of last session provision was made that the rank, pay, and allowances of Quartermaster General should be those of a Brigadier General in the Provisional Army the will of the Legislature was as well fulfilled by assigning to the duties of that office one who was already a Brigadier General of the Provisional Army as by nominating a new officer.
Incensed, Davis continued his barrage:
This view of the question was fortified by the fact that the law last referred to did not create an office, but only provided that during the war the officer discharging the duties of Quartermaster General should have the rank of Brigadier General, and by the further fact that the original act of 26th February, 1861, for the establishment and organization of the general staff, contained a provision, still in force, that officers of the Quartermaster General and other staff departments might by order of the President be assigned to the command of troops, according to their rank in the Army, thus indicating that positions in the Quartermaster’s and other staff departments were not distinct offices, but were posts of duty to which officers of the Army were appointed, and from which they might be withdrawn and assigned to other duties at Executive discretion. This provision of our law that did not exist in the former service of the United States, in which when an officer of the Army entered the Quartermaster’s Department he surrendered his commission in the line and
his right to command troops.
“I am advised, however,” Davis continued, “that such is not the construction given to the law by many Senators”—an understatement to say the least. 3 The Senate was not about to take up Davis on his nomination offer. The House, for its part, worked on its own general staff bill. The controversy would smolder for months, leaving Lawton in place. The president seemed to have won the technical debate but lost potential supporters in Congress by doing so. He was not the only loser: regarding the staff bill, Joe Johnston wrote Wigfall from the field, full of fury. “My objection to the bill is that it will take so many of the best officers from their proper places with the troops,” said Johnston, “for others in which they have not been tried. . . . The officer who had distinguished himself in the command of a brigade might utterly fail as a staff officer.” 4 Another major area seemed to have been resolved to the satisfaction of nearly no one in the Confederacy.
MEANWHILE, soldiers on both sides survived as best they could through the long winter and wondered about the campaigns to come. Religion filled the lives of an increasing number of soldiers in 1864, as the war dragged on. “The church was very neat and filled with soldiers, but one woman in the audience,” wrote Jenkin Jones of the Sixth Wisconsin Artillery, at church in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 17. “Chaplain of 18th Wisconsin officiated, of the Calvinistic school, and but ill agreed with my views, but it seemed good to be once more listening to an earnest speaker and hear the old-fashioned tunes swell in the bass voices that filled the room. Returned to camp, if not better a more thoughtful man.”
In the Army of Northern Virginia, however, earthly concerns made for a tone that was becoming increasingly grim. “Short rations are having a bad effect upon the men, both morally and physically,” wrote Lee to Seddon on January 22. “Desertions to the enemy are becoming more frequent, and the men cannot continue healthy and vigorous if confined to this spare diet for any length of time. Unless there is a change, I fear the army cannot be kept together.” 5
With the Rapidan River separating the opposing eastern armies, little action occurred. A number of relatively small engagements took place in the western theater, however. In Mississippi Sherman launched an expedition to destroy railroads and military resources in the central portion of the state, in somewhat of a dress rehearsal for his March to the Sea later the same year. On February 3 he moved from Vicksburg with twenty-five thousand men and faced scattered forces under four Confederate commanders. After five skirmishes Sherman’s army wrecked the facilities at Meridian before withdrawing to Vicksburg.
As Sherman was busily ruining the military value of Meridian, the largest battle of the war fought in Florida occurred. At Olustee, west of Jacksonville, the clash was a relatively small engagement, but nonetheless it ended as a spectacular Confederate victory, with heavy losses. On the same day to the north, fighting in northern Georgia accelerated. Since the Union occupation of Chattanooga, Joe Johnston had positioned forces around Dalton, Georgia. A reconnaissance on February 22 by Union major general John M. Palmer checked the enemy’s positions and produced clashes at Tunnel Hill, Rocky Face Ridge, and Varnell’s Station. Johnston’s defensive tactics constituted an approach that would be debated heavily in the weeks to come.
The recapture of Arkansas and Louisiana continued to trouble the Lincoln administration. Lincoln also worried over the French governance of Mexico and desired a strong show of Federal force in Texas. He, therefore, acquiesced to Henry Halleck’s request to launch an operation that became known as the Red River campaign. This befuddled series of maneuvers, led by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, was coordinated with Sherman and Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele. It was a combined operation, with naval gunboats providing support. The campaign lasted until May 18, produced a large series of small skirmishes and a few battles, and entrapped the gunboats near Alexandria due to low water. Only Lt. Col. Joseph Bailey’s engineering genius saved the fleet. Wrote Porter from his flagship Black Hawk to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles on May 16: “I have the honor to inform you that the vessels lately caught by low water above the falls at Alexandria, have been released from their unpleasant position. . . . Lieut.-Colonel Bailey, Acting Engineer of the 19th Army Corps, proposed a plan of building a series of dams across the rocks at the falls, and raising the water high enough to let the vessels pass over.” 6 The campaign ended with virtually nothing accomplished but causing a great deal of disarray on both sides.
WHAT is wanting in Richmond is ‘brains,’” Howell Cobb wrote to his Georgia friend Aleck Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. “I did not find the temper and disposition of Congress as bad as I expected, but there is a lamentable want of brains and good sound common sense.” 7 Lawrence Keitt, writing his wife, echoed Cobb’s fears:
I hear that Toombs is on the stump in Geo., and is arraigning Davis in a terrible manner. I have always feared the divisions, which I saw would spring up among us. You cannot have liaison—connexion—unity—among a planting community. Too many Revolutions have shipwrecked upon internal division. This Revolution proves that canonized imbecility is but a straw before the wrath of masses—it seems to be a law of humanity that generation after generation must rescue its liberties from the insidious grasp of a foe without or within. In our case, we have to seize them from both foes—we have a worthless government, and are reduced to the humiliation of acknowledging it, because we cannot, with safety, shake it. 8
Some congressmen tired of the constant bickering and grew fearful of the potential advance of Grant’s army toward Richmond. Wrote Wigfall in April,
If Lincoln has, as the Northern papers say, at last found out, that he cannot . . . wound the armies of the United States longer with safety to either his country or himself & Grant is not a greater fool than he is usually taken to be, Lee will have no child’s play this spring & the sooner Congress adjourns & we get South the better. Richmond is an entrenched camp without depots & subsistence & if Lee is ever driven with the lines around the city & it is thoroughly invested, the surrender of his Army will be only a question of time. 9
Those were strong words from the fire-eating Texan.
If the conventional war was appearing increasingly unlikely for the Confederate authorities to win, then they would introduce and experiment with other options. “I have not been unmindful of the necessity for prompt action in the matter to which you refer,” Jefferson Davis wrote Robert M. T. Hunter, on April 14, 1864, “and have made attempts to engage for the service in Canada several gentlemen deemed competent; but they have declined for various reasons. The subject is too delicate to permit entering into details until I have the pleasure of seeing you. I confine myself to saying that two persons specially qualified are now on their way here from the South. . . . One of them, the General Agent, is well known to you.” 10 Davis was referring to hiring spies who would conduct secret operations on behalf of the Confederacy, one of which would be a raid on St. Albans, Vermont. Other actions also were planned, such as blowing up ships on the Great Lakes. These quasiterrorist acts reflect the onrushing sense of despair that Davis and other Southern politicians were beginning to feel this spring.
Two weeks later, Clement Clay began a mission. “I am on my way to Canada, for the purpose of arming the country as I best can,” he wrote to his friend Wigfall. “You know how as well as I do. It is a very responsible, difficult, and delicate duty, for which I am not suited by my talents, tastes or habits. . . . I cannot enjoy secret service. I expect to suffer daily annoyances from the hounds who will be set to watch & pursue me.” 11
While future terror plans were being drafted in Canada, another radical act, this one by the Yankees, was unfolding. In February Union cavalrymen hatched and carried out a raid on the outskirts of the Confederate capital that sent a chill through the spines of Richmonders. Civil War prisons held thousands of Southern and Northern soldiers in their brutal grip throughout the war. The most notorious prisons in the South were part of a group in Richmond that included Libby Pri
son (for Yankee officers) and Belle Isle (for enlisted men). During the late winter thaw of 1864, a dashing young Union cavalry brigadier general named H. Judson Kilpatrick had hatched a plan to raid Richmond, free Northern prisoners, and generally wreak havoc on the city. This was prompted by intelligence reports of horrible overcrowding in the prisons, inadequate food, and a supposed garrison force in Richmond of only 3,000. The Union high command approved of the plan, and Kilpatrick, Col. Ulric Dahlgren, and 3,584 troopers set out on the raid on February 28. Dahlgren was of particular value to the Yankee general. He was just twenty-one years old and the son of the highly respected Union rear admiral John A. B. Dahlgren, a close friend of President Lincoln’s. Young Dahlgren had a reputation for hard fighting—he had lost a leg at Hagerstown, Maryland, the previous summer.
On the twenty-ninth the raiders reached Spotsylvania Court House, where Dahlgren took a detachment of five hundred to attack Richmond from the south. Kilpatrick—with enemy forces behind him—would enter the city from the north. The only nuisance was a cold rain that transformed into sleet by the following night. Meanwhile, Confederate Brig. Gen. George Washington Custis Lee—Robert E. Lee’s eldest son—shifted his local defense forces to block an attack he predicted would come from the west.
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