On March 1 Representative James Leach of North Carolina proposed that Robert E. Lee ought to be invested with powers to seek peace with the North. But nothing seemed to hold even a glint of promise. “Congress will remember [in the recent Peace Conference] that our commissioners were informed that the government of the United States would not enter into any agreement or treaty whatever with the Confederate States,” Davis sternly warned on March 13, “that the only possible mode of obtaining peace was by laying down our arms, disbanding our forces, and yielding unconditional obedience to the laws of the United States, including those passed for the confiscation of our property and the constitutional amendment for the abolition of slavery. . . . There remains, then, for us no choice but to continue the contest to a final issue.” 15
Despite the desperation many Confederates in positions of power failed to see the coming ruin. “Doubtless Lee could protract the war, and, by concentrating farther South, embarrass the enemy by compelling him to maintain a longer line of communication by land and by sea,” wrote the war clerk John B. Jones on February 12. “Lee could have an army of 100,000 effective men for years.” 16 Such optimism was nothing short of delusional.
If there was to be no peace, war would have to continue, and Lee planned a major attack at Petersburg. His hope was to stun Grant’s army, hold Petersburg and Richmond with reduced numbers of men, and head south to unite with Gen. Joe Johnston in the Carolinas, thereby gaining the opportunity to ruin Sherman’s army. It was an unlikely plan that would never gain the opportunity for testing except for the initial stage and never assume a form more tangible than rumor. “Something is about to happen,” wrote Luther Rice Mills, a North Carolina Confederate, on March 2. “I know not what. Nearly every one who will express an opinion says Gen’l Lee is about to evacuate Petersburg. . . . I would regret very much to give up the old place. The soiled and tattered Colors borne by our skeleton Regiments is sacred and dear to the hearts of every man.” On the same day Josiah Gorgas wrote: “People are almost in a state of desperation. Lee is about all we have & what public confidence is left rallies around him, and he it seems to me fights without much heart in the cause.” 17
While the military was crumbling along the Southern lines, politicians were discovering disheartening circumstances in previously ignored corners. On February 7 in the House, information from secret sessions revealed an “enormous blunder” that would require a great increase in taxation. Instead of $114 million, the Confederate government’s war debt was recalculated to be in excess of $400 million. Ever greater financial panic struck the Confederacy. 18
On March 5 Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell wrote John Breckinridge, declaring that “a full and exact examination be made of the resources of the Confederate government available for the approaching campaign. It is not a part of statesmanship to close our eyes upon them.” Campbell described the current year’s debt of the government at a staggering $1.3 billion and said it was “needless to comment” on that. Moreover, he cited “over 100,000 deserters scattered over the Confederacy,” and went on to state, “I do not regard the slave population as a source from which” additional troops could be raised. “Their employment since 1862 has been difficult and latterly almost impracticable.” Supplies for the army were woefully inadequate, and “the present Commissary General requires the fulfillment of conditions, though, not unreasonable, nearly impossible.” The chief of ordnance reported a store of twenty-five thousand arms remaining. “The South may succumb,” Campbell wrote, “but it is not necessary that she be destroyed.” 19
As financial woes mounted the Senate also turned toward their lack of confidence in Judah P. Benjamin as secretary of state. Wigfall introduced a resolution of no confidence “because the country and the Congress does not really back him.” The measure was voted down fifteen to six, however. On February 15 in the House, it was
resolved that the views of J. P. Benjamin, Secy. of State, as reported in a speech by him on the tenth instant in the city of Richmond, is derogatory to his position as a high public functionary of the Confederate government, a reflection on his motives of Congress as a deliberative body, and an insult to public opinion. Resolved, our army is not composed of mob-materials; that our soldiers are law-abiding men, that in common with their representatives and friends at home they deprecate croakers, official insolence, or mob law, as being repugnant to justice, incompatible with the rights of free men, and revolting to the feelings of patriots and Christians. 20
Joe Johnston, meanwhile, was busy fighting old battles. Johnston wrote to his friend Wigfall complaining that the secretary of war’s report on Johnston’s earlier operations in northern Georgia contained lies and inaccuracies. On the receipt of a letter from Aleck Stephens, seventeen senators, including Wigfall and Orr, recommended Johnston be restored to command of the Army of Tennessee. Lee replied: “I entertain a high opinion of Genl. Johnston’s capacity, but think a combined change of commanders is very injurious to any troops & tends greatly to thin disorganization.” 21 Congress responded by ignoring Lee’s opinion and passed a resolution in favor of Johnston’s instatement. Still, no movement would be made by the president toward Johnston. “The Joint Resolution of Congress and other recent manifestations of a desire that General Joseph E. Johnston should be restored to the command of the Army of Tennessee have been anxiously considered by me,” Davis wrote, “and it is with sincere regret that I find myself unable to gratify what I must believe to have become quite a general desire of my countrymen.” 22
Finally Lee gave in and assigned Johnston to command the Army of Tennessee on February 25. “I have directed Genl. J. E. Johnston to assume command of [the] Southern Army,” Lee penned to Beauregard, “and to assign you to duty with him. Together, I feel assured you will beat back Sherman.” Below Lee’s telegraphic message Beauregard wrote, “Not without your assistance by concentration.” 23
In Washington on March 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on the east portico of the Capitol, with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee now becoming his vice president. Lincoln struggled to summarize the horrifying war that had characterized nearly his entire first term and still had not drawn to a conclusion. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 24
As Lincoln looked forward the politicians in Richmond glared at each other. On the issue of habeas corpus, Davis still demanded action and got nothing. Even some of Davis’s enemies tried to assist. “The maxim that it is better one hundred guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be punished, will not do for a time of war,” said Wigfall. “In times like these, it is better that one hundred innocent persons should be arrested than one suspected man would escape.” 25
On March 13 the president scolded Congress: “The Writ of Habeas Corpus must be suspended. Congress has not concurred with me in this opinion. On Congress must rest the responsibility of declining to exercise a power conferred by the Constitution as a means of public safety to be used in periods of national peril from foreign invasion.” 26 Two days later the completed habeas corpus bill went to the Senate Judiciary Committee but was rejected by a vote of nine to six. In the House a completed habeas corpus bill was passed thirty-six to thirty-three. The next day in the Senate, the House bill was debated and finally lost by a vote of nine to six. Nothing would come of it in the end. 27
Lee’s attack finally came at Fort Stedman on the Petersburg front on the afternoon of March 25. An attempted breakthrough by Confederate troops worked well at first before a counterattack stalled it. The situation for Lee deteriorated rapidly. Sheridan, who had defeated the scattered remnants of Early’s forces in the valley, rejoined Grant, and movements by Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord on March 27-28
allowed Grant to send Sheridan and Warren westward to threaten the Southside Railroad, potentially severing Petersburg from the rest of the country. An explosive engagement along the White Oak Road southwest of Petersburg on March 31 ended in Confederate failure, and the situation for Lee crumbled. At Five Forks, fifteen miles southwest of Petersburg, on April 1, Sheridan and Warren—despite confusion in orders and slowness in executing them—struck the force of forty-five hundred under Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett, capturing them, eliminating the Southside Railroad as a supply route for Lee, and forcing the evacuation of Petersburg.
Struck heavily by Union artillery and a piercing set of attacks on their right flank, Lee’s army was in a hopeless situation. Assaults on weak gaps in the Confederate lines continued through April 2, and Grant ordered such thrusts to continue the following day. The main defenses of the Confederacy in the east were collapsing; as soon as Petersburg fell, with its rail lines running north into Richmond, the Confederate capital would be compelled to surrender. Events accelerated. Gen. Robert E. Lee telegraphed Davis, telling him that he could no longer hold his position at Petersburg and could not maintain any protection of Richmond. As the beautiful spring morning infused hope into those who didn’t yet know, churchgoers crowded Richmond’s streets. Summoned from the Broad Street Methodist Church, Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge scurried to the War Department to await further telegrams. The telegraph wires went dead, however, spooking the group of officials left at the building. Finally, after a period of silence, the wires reignited, and by 10:40 a.m., word arrived that shocked everyone into silence. Lee sent a message declaring he would have to abandon his positions that evening or perhaps sooner. Now, even those who held out the most hope saw that the Confederacy was coming down around them.
The president, on his way to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, greeted citizens as best he could. “When Davis entered,” wrote Adj. Gen. Samuel Cooper, “one who saw him noted his appearance: ‘the cold calm eye, the sunken cheeks, the compressed lip, were all as impenetrable as an iron mask.’” In the Davis family pew, sans family, the president listened to the hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” as he waited for the Reverend Charles Minnegerode’s sermon.
Davis was kneeling during antecommunion when St. Paul’s sexton approached the pew and handed him a telegram from General Lee. Although Davis had heard the news already, he felt he could remain in the pew no longer and, “with his usually quick military tread,” walked out. Many in the packed house seemed shocked and noticed the president’s “deathly pale, absolutely calm demeanor.” “The occurrence probably attracted attention,” Davis later recalled, “but the people had been too long beleaguered, had known me too often to receive notice of threatened attacks, and the congregation at St. Paul’s was too refined to make a scene at anticipated danger.” 28
A little while after Davis left the church, the sexton returned and pulled Cooper away from his pew; then he returned for Assistant Secretary of War John Campbell. It was clear to all that the great moment of terror was arriving, and whole sections of parishioners rose and walked out of St. Paul’s. As befuddled throngs of citizens stood in the church’s entryway, the streets were already littered with documents and stacks of military supplies. The Central Hotel on Grace Street, within sight of the church, had served as offices for the Confederate States’ auditors. Now, government clerks piled crates of documents carrying the history of the South’s war effort outside the hotel, set them ablaze, and transformed them into a tower of black-and-white smoke rising above the Richmond skyline.
Davis walked downhill toward the river, to his office in the former U.S. Customs House. He convened the cabinet, as well as Governor William Smith and Mayor Joseph Mayo, and read Lee’s telegram aloud. The suddenness of Lee’s evacuation of Petersburg surprised Davis, who knew the rail center would be given up but not necessarily so quickly. Davis felt the collapse was not so “near at hand.” 29 The president inquired from Lee by telegraph whether the government could have any further time to prepare for an evacuation. Lee, somewhat irritated by the chief executive, replied that no more time was available. Packing of the government archives had been going on for some time—those documents that would not be burned—but there would still be much that would stay behind.
The Confederate president then walked uphill to his home on Clay Street. He projected a serene air of resignation to Richmond’s fate. Ordinary citizens asked him what to do. Should they scatter for the hills? No, they should calmly leave the city. A group of ladies in Capitol Square, frantic, pleaded with the president for guidance. Perhaps General Hardee would come in on time to prevent any catastrophe, he told them. This couldn’t have been true, but it reduced the level of panic in their eyes. To a government colleague he was more blunt: “Get out of town.” 30
Davis issued an address to the people of the Confederate States. “The General in Chief of our Army has found it necessary to make such movements of the troops as to uncover the capital and thus involve the withdrawal of the Government from the city of Richmond,” he revealed. He went on:
It would be unwise, even were it possible, to conceal the great moral as well as material injury to our cause that must result from the occupation of Richmond by the enemy. It is equally unwise and unworthy of us, as patriots engaged in a most sacred cause, to allow our energies to falter, our spirits to grow faint, or our efforts to become relaxed under reverses, however calamitous. . . . Let us not, then, despond, my countrymen; but, relying on the never-failing mercies and protecting care of our God, let us meet the foe with fresh defiance, with unconquered and unconquerable hearts. 31
The withdrawal from Richmond began in good order, but quickly collapsed into chaos and frenzy. When he arrived at the Executive Mansion, Davis found a group of friends and ordinary citizens waiting for him. He walked into the house to pack the few personal belongings he would take on the train to Danville. The president bid several people adieu, climbed with a freshly lit cigar into a carriage, and rode toward the station. When the special train was found unprepared, Davis waited in the railway president’s office, and then finally, at 11 p.m., he left the beleaguered city accompanied by his cabinet members and Samuel Cooper.
Evacuation fires set to destroy supplies that would otherwise fall into Yankee hands burned out of control, eventually destroying nearly a third of the city. “I was wakened suddenly by four terrific explosions, one after the other, making the windows of my garret shake,” wrote Richmond resident Constance Cary on April 4. “It was the blowing up, by Admiral Semmes, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, of our gunboats on the James, the signal for an all-day carnival of thundering noise and flames. Soon the fire spread, shells in the burning arsenals began to explode, and a smoke arose that shrouded the whole town, shutting out every vestige of blue sky and April sunshine. Flakes of fire fell around us, glass shattered, and chimneys fell.” 32 As had been the case all war long, much of the damage had been self-inflicted.
Some of the Confederate troops greeted Grant’s men with quiet joy. On February 7 the Senate had resolved to take into the army about 200,000 black soldiers and, at the end of the war, emancipate the loyal ones; the matter was referred to committee, where the bill lost nine to eight. By March 13 President Davis had had enough. He sent the Senate a secret message by way of Burton Harrison, his private secretary. The president’s alarm read like a final appeal, a search for those who might in the greatest hour of crisis consider themselves old friends and come to his support. The president wrote,
Recent military operations of the enemy have been successful in the capture of some of our seaports in interrupting some of our lines of communication, and in devastating large districts of our country. These events have had the national effect of encouraging our foes and dispiriting many of our people. The capital of the Confederate States is now threatened, and is in greater danger than it has heretofore been during the war. . . . I desire also to state my deliberate conviction that it is within our power to avert the cal
amities which menace us.
Long deliberation and protracted debate over important measures are not only natural, but laudable in representative assemblies, under ordinary circumstances, but in moments of danger, when action becomes urgent, the delay thus caused is itself a new source of peril. . . . The bill for employing negroes as soldiers has not yet reached me. Much benefit is anticipated from this measure, though far less than would have resulted from its adoption at an earlier date, so as to afford the time for its organization and instruction during the winter months. 33
A few days later the Senate had begrudgingly issued a Select Committee report on emancipation. “At what period of the session the president or Secretary of War considered the improbable contingency had arisen,” the report began, “which required a resort to slaves as an element of resistance, does not appear by any official document within the knowledge of your committee. . . . The president has never asked, in any authentic manner, for the passage of a law authorizing the employment of slaves as soldiers.” 34 (This, of course, was untrue.)
Soon thereafter Congress stopped bickering about communications and passed the bill to enlist black soldiers in the Confederacy. But it was too little too late, and no authenticated African American combat soldiers ever served in the field; the unit that had been issued uniforms was simply drilling in Richmond when the city fell to Union forces. The mere fact that the official step had been taken was evidence of the Confederacy’s desperation.
FAR to the south the prospect of the Confederate army meeting up with Joe Johnston was shrinking daily. Sherman had moved out of Savannah and toward Columbia, where on February 17 an evacuation fire also destroyed much of that city. “I began to-day’s record early in the evening, and while writing I noticed an unusual glare in the sky,” wrote George Ward Nichols, of Sherman’s staff, “and heard a sound of running to and fro in the streets, with the loud talk of servants that the horses must be removed to a safer place. Running out, I found, to my surprise and real sorrow, that the central part of the city, including the main business street, was in flames, while the wind, which had been blowing a hurricane all day, was driving the sparks and cinders in heavy masses over the eastern portion of the city.” 35 On March 16 a portion of Johnston’s command had attempted to block Sherman at Averasboro but was beaten badly. Three days later, at Bentonville, Johnston’s force had hit Sherman squarely but again was defeated.
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