THE Davis administration desired nothing but a fight to the end, convinced it could separate successfully and live on as a sovereign nation. But by late 1864 senators and representatives had been calling for peace in more frequent, urgent terms. On November 7 the Senate had resolved that the president should inform the Senate whether he had information that any state in the United States had expressed a willingness to negotiate a peace with the Confederate States. Davis issued no reply, suggesting there had been none. 19
In mid-December the issue reared its head in the House. Josiah Turner of North Carolina introduced a resolution asking the president to appoint thirteen peace commissioners, one from each state, to seek an end to the war. After discussion, however, debate was postponed. 20
The next day Representative Lafayette McMullen of Virginia derided the Davis administration for not seeking peace proposals. “Governor Brown and Vice President Stephens have said that we are unwilling to open negotiations with the enemy for securing a peace,” screamed McMullen. “Let the Government open negotiations for peace—let Congress despatch its commissioners into the enemy’s line—let us show to the world that we are willing to accept an honourable peace—and the mouths of Governor Brown and his friends will be stopped.” 21
Finally, without support of either administration, high officials began to come to terms with opening a negotiation. On December 30 Yankee politician Francis P. Blair Sr. wrote Davis about a meeting to discuss peace terms. “In candor I must say to you, in advance, that I come to you wholly unaccredited, except in so far as I may be by having permission to pass our lines and to offer you my own suggestions.” 22
The assistant secretary of war of the Confederacy, John A. Campbell, also took it into his own hands to find a pathway toward peace. He wrote an old colleague, Associate Justice Samuel Nelson of the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for a meeting to discuss possible peace terms. But nothing would come from these political ripples—not for a few weeks, at least. 23
Meanwhile, the old, tired issue of conscription—who was eligible and who wasn’t—again confronted both President Davis and the annoyed Congress. More outraged than either of these two parties was Brig. Gen. John S. Preston, the Virginian who had been appointed chief of the Bureau of Conscription in 1863. Fed up with Congress seemingly meddling in the issue and tying his hands for months, coupled with the fuming anger over the fact that many congressmen disliked him, Preston accelerated an already weeks-long letter-writing campaign to the War Department and to members of Congress. “I am aware that there is a project on foot under high military sanction to abolish the existing system of Conscription and substitute for it a military organization to be regulated by purely rigid military rules,” he ranted, “and by the operation of Law to remove me from the control delegated to me by you.” As was so often the case for the Confederacy, each state for its own sake could contribute to a distinct individual selfishness. Preston was as much concerned about his own position as he was the war effort; who decided was as important as what was decided. “Nothing will tend more rapidly to disintegrate the Confederacy—than the adoption of these petulant undisguised and revolting schemes of military Conscription.” Congress also lashed back. The House
resolved that the report of John S. Preston, Supt. of Conscription, shows laxity, and culpable neglect in the execution of the conscript law. Resolved that neither Congress nor the country looks to Gen. [Gideon] Pillow for a faithful expression of its laws, and any failure, delay, or partiality in their execution must rest on the President and not upon General Pillow. Resolved that General Preston is in error to the number of conscripts furnished by the State of North Carolina, as well as the number of his so-called quasi-volunteers.
On March 6 in the House, a resolution was offered condemning Preston for mismanagement. A week later President Davis returned to Congress, with his approval, an act to regulate the business of conscription. He did ask for one modification: a medical board requested by Congress to examine soldiers for discharge seemed impractical to Davis because it would result in the discharge of too many soldiers. 24 The messy business of conscription would rage on, making everyone unhappy for weeks to come, even as the South’s shorthanded military machine gradually fell to pieces. 25
And with times becoming ever more desperate, the old subject of habeas corpus only inflamed the souls of men in Congress more than ever. “A dangerous conspiracy exists in some of the counties of southwestern Virginia and in the neighboring portions of North Carolina and Tennessee,” Davis warned Congress, “which it is found impracticable to suppress by the ordinary course of law. . . . I deem it my duty to recommend the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in order that full efficacy may be given to the military power for the repression of the evil.” 26 On December 3 on the floor of the House, Henry Foote demanded his bill on limiting habeas corpus be debated openly. With Foote and William Porcher Miles voting for it, the bill still lost, fifty to forty. By year’s end in the House, a resolution that “no exigency exists justifying the [suspension of habeas corpus]” failed to pass, forty-one to thirty-one. The House was betwixt and between, and again, no one would be fully happy with the outcome.
IN Georgia the little cabal arranged by Vice President Aleck Stephens and comrades Bob Toombs, Howell Cobb, and friends continued to gain momentum. This group now determinedly supported an overthrow of the Davis administration if the South should survive intact. Davis’s failure to see the war as it really was frustrated the Georgia cabal to no end. The group clearly believed that some sort of a negotiated end to the struggle was on the horizon. “I see Mr. Davis in his speech at Columbia refers to the traitorous conduct of states that would attempt to negotiate,” Georgia governor Joe Brown wrote to his fellow conspirator Aleck Stephens, in wonderment about the sensibility of the chief executive. 27 Aleck Stephens thought that he ought to meet with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, seeking an end to the bloodshed. But Bob Toombs steered the frail politician away from the notion. “Do not by any means go to see Sherman,” he wrote, “whatever may be the form of his invitation. It will place you in a wrong, very wrong position. . . . If Sherman means anything he means to detach Georgia from the Confederacy. Better any fate than that. Davis is impregnable upon the peace issue. In every shape and form and at all times he has professed to seek peace, and in truth up to this time his actions have conformed to his professions.” 28
The rift that existed between Stephens and Davis widened considerably as the year closed. The Augusta Constitutionalist printed a letter from Stephens to Senator Thomas Semmes that claimed some in the South, perhaps even Jefferson Davis, would prefer the reelection of Lincoln to the election of George McClellan, the Union general who opposed him. “Perhaps the President belongs to that class,” Stephens wrote. “Judging by his acts I should think that he did.” Astounded, Davis wrote Stephens: “I am quite at a loss to imagine the basis for your conclusion, and have therefore to ask to what acts of mine you refer.” 29
Setting aside the collapsing military situation, the Confederacy was in a complete shambles. What began as a precarious relationship among Davis, the Congress, and the supporting politicians in key areas had collapsed into total dysfunction. The Confederacy was now—politically and functionally—on the ropes. Its lifeblood was flowing out and running away, and no one on any level seemed to have an idea about how to stop the bleeding.
Chapter 18
Peace Proposals
AS a new year began, the Confederacy was on its last legs. The siege operations around Petersburg ground on, sapping the remaining resources and supplies that could be brought to bear against the Union army. Hood’s disastrous campaign in Tennessee had effectively eliminated the Army of Tennessee from further meaningful service in the war. A combined operation by the Federal army and navy was closing in on Wilmington, North Carolina, the last port open to supply the Confederacy. The Lincoln administration had won the autumn election decisively, pushing into the shadows the possibility of a peace movement in
the North dominating the Yankees’ actions. The Confederacy had lost many a hero in the past couple of years—Stonewall Jackson more important than anyone—and many had lost faith in Jefferson Davis. They had now a single general in the field on whom to place their great hopes: Robert E. Lee.
The growing sense of despair on the Confederate home front and in the ranks led to consideration of some measures that would have been thought insane a year before. An increasing number of officers and politicians toyed with the idea of emancipating slaves as a source of new soldiers. Lee himself supported the idea, which finally gave it the kind of approval to be taken seriously in the Confederate Congress. Still, in January 1865, the measure was debated without a conclusion. Summed up Howell Cobb, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” 1 And for the moment theory trumped reality.
By contrast the psychology of the Union military was strongly unified. Soldiers and civilians alike began to sense the impending victory, and heroes had multiplied on the Federal side. Grant was locked in the struggle, along with Meade, against Lee in Virginia, and Sherman had emerged in 1864 as a leading figure. “I do think that in the several grand epochs of this war, my name will have a prominent part,” Sherman wrote to his wife, Ellen, from Savannah on January 5. “And not least among them will be the determination I took at Atlanta to destroy that place, and march on this city, whilst Thomas, my lieutenant, should dispose of Hood.” 2
Having arrived at Savannah before Christmas, Sherman now trained his armies on the Carolinas. Panic already had struck South Carolina. “Depend upon it,” wrote Andrew Magrath, the state’s governor, “the order which evacuates Charleston destroys the last hope of our success.” 3 Robert E. Lee, meanwhile, wrote to Porcher Miles, who had asked for more troops to be sent to the state. Lee’s reply stated that the government would send them, “if any troops could be obtained.” It was a very big “if.” “It will be impossible for me to send sufficient troops from this army to oppose Sherman’s, and at the same time resist Grant,” said Lee. 4
One of the duties of Sherman’s invading army would be to liberate Union prisoners wherever they were found. The prisoners at Andersonville had been moved prior to Sherman’s approach, but Yankees were released at Millen, Georgia, and other facilities. As Sherman contemplated turning northward, a major attack by the Federal army and navy was planned for Wilmington. Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler had commanded an unsuccessful movement against Fort Fisher, which protected the city’s entrance, in December. Now, Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry was ordered to take the position. Terry’s eight thousand men would be assisted by Rear Adm. David D. Porter’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which amounted to sixty ships armed with a total of 627 guns.
The flotilla arrived in the waters off North Carolina’s coast on January 12. The Confederate district commander, Maj. Gen. William H. C. Whiting, reinforced the garrison at Fort Fisher so that it consisted of nearly two thousand troops and forty-seven guns. Just after midnight on January 13, the Federal ships opened fire on the fort, and during the following day, troops landed to assault the position. Augustus Buell, a soldier in the Fourth U.S. Artillery, described the heavy bombardment during the thirteenth. “There would be two puffs of blue smoke about the size of a thunder cloud in June,” he wrote, “and then I could see the big shell make a black streak through the air with a tail of white smoke behind it—and then would come over the water, not the quick bark of a field gun, but a slow, quivering, overpowering roar like an earthquake, and then, away among the Rebel traverses, there would be another huge ball of mingled smoke and flame as big as a meeting house.” 5
On January 15 a heavy naval bombardment commenced at close range, softening the position where the Federal attack would concentrate. Early in the afternoon a small party rushed forward and dug in close to the fort. Late in the afternoon Federal soldiers stormed the fort in force, breaking into the parapets with axes and firing wildly at the fort’s defenders. Before nightfall the Yankees succeeded in capturing the position, nearly two thousand soldiers, all the guns, and the mortally wounded Whiting. The last great Confederate port was closed.
The most progress from Congress during the final weeks of war came from the exact area where Davis wanted it least—peace proposals. As early as January 12, the House passed a resolution to send a peace commission to Washington. The next day Davis reported to the House that his old nemesis, Henry Foote, had been arrested on his way to Washington. Foote had been detained at Occoquan, Virginia, while trying to cross the lines on a private peace mission to the Yankee capital. As Foote was already known as the principal antagonist of Davis’s in the House, a special committee was appointed to investigate. 6
On January 16, members of the House considered all sorts of punishments for Foote. John Clark, leader of the committee of five appointed to investigate, recommended that the whole matter should be referred to the president. 7 Nevertheless, eight days later, Clark and his committee appeared on the House floor and addressed Congress regarding Foote. “Whatever may have been his motive,” Clark said, when Foote left the Confederate States, he became “guilty of conduct incompatible with his duty and station as a member of the Congress of the Confederate States, and he is hereby expelled from this House.” 8
On January 30 the House spent much of the day debating peace proposals. It was rumored that a secret peace commission had already met with Lincoln in Washington. (The Richmond Sentinel had reported the rumor as fact and claimed those involved were traitors.) The majority of Southerners believed, according to Congress, that there was no intention on the part of the North to acknowledge their independence and that peace and independence could be achieved only by force of arms. Reflecting this position Senator Williamson Oldham offered resolutions from Texas regarding any peace commissioners. Oldham advised against “going back into the old Union,” as it could be done only if “we went as a whipped and conquered people.” 9 But other leaders, seeing the writing on the wall, remained more flexible.
ALTHOUGH Lee had prevented Grant’s forces from taking Petersburg (or destroying the Army of Northern Virginia), time was running out for the Southern hero. “[Grant’s] present force is so superior to ours, that if he is reinforced to any extent, I do not see how in our present position he can be prevented from enveloping Richmond,” Lee wrote Davis on January 29. 10 At about this time, on January 23, the Confederate Congress reacted to the poor morale and lack of faith in Davis by assigning a general-in-chief of all Confederate armies, naming (after rancorous debate and amendment) Robert E. Lee to the post. Finally, after several years of war, the Confederate government had put the right man in the spot. But in the meantime, the die had been cast. Lee’s fears over Grant were about to come true.
On February 2 the emancipation debate spilled over into the Senate. Never one to shy from the spotlight, Wigfall took the floor. “The time has come to settle whether this is to be a free negro free country, or a free white man’s free country,” he said. “In some of the States the slave population is greater than the white. What is to become of the whites if the negroes should be emancipated?” 11 The following day, however, some senators began to toy with the idea and how it might be established. On February 3 the House resolved to place 100,000 black soldiers into the service. The government should purchase these men from their masters, one by one, and then give one man to each white soldier in the service. The resolution, however, was tabled.
Congress’s reluctant proposals to arm black troops rang out like gunshots across the Southern landscape. “The proposition is having a ruinous effect here,” Edmund Rhett, an officer, relayed to Porcher Miles from Charleston, South Carolina.
It is breaking down peoples’ spirits. Men ask, what are we fighting for? You tell them, “for independence.” But what is independence? Independence is the right and the power to make our own laws and to govern our own institutions. But if you take away this power, and destroy those institutions, what independence is left? For God’s sake
stop it if you can. Our troops are fighting here in the worst way. They do not stand at all before Sherman’s men. The demoralization amongst them is very disheartening. 12
Meanwhile, a peace conference held at Hampton Roads, near Norfolk, Virginia, on February 3 had led nowhere. Initiated by the aged Union politician Francis P. Blair Sr.—a member of Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet”—the conference brought Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, and Senator Robert M. T. Hunter together on board the USS River Queen. Meeting them was none other than President Lincoln, who told the agents that the Confederacy had virtually no room for bargaining in terms of surrender.
On February 6 President Davis informed Congress about the failed peace conference held at Hampton Roads. “Having recently received a written notification, which satisfied me that the President of the United States was disposed to confer informally with unofficial agents which might be sent by me with a view to the restoration of peace,” Davis explained, “I requested the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, the Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, and the Hon. John A. Campbell to proceed through our lines, and to hold conference with Mr. Lincoln, or any one he might depute to represent him.” 13
“The Commissioners have returned,” the president wrote Senator Benjamin H. Hill. “They met Lincoln and Seward at Fortress Monroe, were informed that neither the Confederate States nor an individual State, could be recognized as having power to enter into any agreement prescribing conditions of peace. Nothing less would be accepted than unconditional submission to the government and laws of the United States, and that Congress had adopted a Constitutional amendment for the emancipation of slaves, which disposed of that question.” 14
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