The case of Evander Law was equally difficult. On December 19, 1863, Law had tendered his resignation through Longstreet’s headquarters. It was his purpose, Law intimated, to transfer to the cavalry and procure a command in that service. Law’s subsequent explanation was that Longstreet had recommended Jenkins’s promotion after promising that Hood’s division should go to Law. While action on the resignation was pending, Law asked leave of absence. It is entirely probable that Old Pete granted this leave without any urging, perhaps even with alacrity, because he shared the belief that Hoods old division never would have its former value as a combat unit so long as both Jenkins and Law served with it.
After Law had departed for Richmond, it was reported to Longstreet that certain officers of Law’s Alabama brigade were circulating a petition to the War Department for transfer to their native state. Law was said to have engineered the leave of absence in order to exert his influence in Richmond to have the petition granted. Longstreet was outraged, and drew up charges against Law for “conduct highly prejudicial to good order and military discipline.” When Law did not present his resignation in the capital as promised, Longstreet filed new charges against the South Carolinian.22
The vexatious cases of Robertson, McLaws, and Law showed a weakening, if not a demoralization of Longstreet’s command, but they were not the full measure of Old Pete’s tribulations that winter. In February Congress passed an act to provide for the appointment of an additional general of full rank. The measure was designed solely to give adequate administrative and military powers to Kirby Smith in the Trans-Mississippi Department. In spite of this, Longstreet felt himself aggrieved that Smith, “of lower rank than mine,” was appointed “to hold rank above me.” Longstreet late in life wrote that he thought his resignation was proper when passed over in this manner, but he decided he should “stay and go down with faithful comrades of long and arduous service.”23
After his period of doubt and humiliation and discontent, Longstreet swung to the other extreme. Subsequently he explained that “the disaffected”—meaning McLaws, Robertson, and Law—“were away, and with them disappeared their influence.” His little army, he said, “was bright and cheerful and ready for any work to which it could be called.” He returned eagerly to the same sort of planning in which he had indulged in the spring and late summer of 1863. It is futile to inquire whether this sudden activity was itself a confession of failure or the expression of his purpose to make a new record that would efface the old. This much is clear. In his planning he showed less of undisguised striving for leadership and more of regard for the cooperation of others—as if he had learned his lesson!—but he scarcely displayed more of wisdom concerning the practicality of the strategical combination he urged.24
Bragg had relinquished command of the Army of Tennessee on December 2. Joseph E. Johnston took Bragg’s place but found himself confronted by superior force. So was Longstreet. Between them, in effect, were two Federal armies, Grant’s at Nashville and Thomas’s at Chattanooga. Longstreet felt that he could do nothing where he was unless the enemy obligingly came up and attacked him. The only course he could follow, as he saw the situation, was to mount the whole of his command, move into Kentucky, and seize the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. This he thought he would be able to hold long enough to force the Federals to withdraw from Tennessee, which Johnston then could occupy. “The only way to mount us,” he wrote Lee, “is by sending us 5,000 mules from Virginia, 2,500 from Georgia, and 2,000 from South Carolina; I have 5,000…. We have no time to spare….”
It was entirely beyond the resources of the Southern government to convert Longstreet’s command into mounted infantry. Before he could be brought to see this, his enthusiasm for his plan led him to inquire directly of the President whether he could undertake the movement. From the War Department came back a singularly stiff snub. Old Pete continued to press for his plan until the second week in March, when he concluded that the animals and forage were unprocurable. But he would not surrender the idea of an offensive against the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. His new plan was that Beauregard should move from South Carolina to unite with him. Thence the two commands would advance against Louisville. Longstreet hoped then to hold the Federals’ lines of supply long enough to compel them to retreat. Thereupon Johnston was to advance behind the retreating Federals. Junction of the three Confederate armies would give them superior force.
This plan assumed that Beauregard could take all the infantry from Charleston and march them 300 miles to Louisville. A further assumption was that the combined troops of Longstreet and Beauregard could be subsisted and foraged en route and would be strong enough to beat off attacks until Johnston arrived. Longstreet journeyed to Richmond to join Davis, Lee, Bragg, and War Department officials in a discussion on March 14. Longstreet’s scheme for a triple concentration was examined carefully. When the council adjourned without announcement of Davis’s decision, Longstreet was of the opinion that the President favored the return of Old Pete’s command to the Army of Tennessee before anything further was attempted. The spirit of the meeting, in Longstreet’s opinion, was cold, if not positively uncivil to Lee and to him, and after he left the room with Lee he probably invoked his old commander to support his plan and to take direction of the army he hoped to see newly organized.
His plan remained uppermost in Longstreet’s mind. He devoted hour after hour to letters in which he explained to Beauregard, to Davis, and to Lee what he thought the strategy of the Southern army should be in Tennessee and Kentucky. In describing all this Longstreet was explicit, but he said afterward that he believed little attention would be paid his views by Davis and Bragg, both of whom he thought hostile to him. Consequently he sent Lee a copy of his fullest letter to Davis, and he again besought Lee to sponsor the plan and to take command of the expedition when it was ready to move into Kentucky.25
By March 18, Longstreet was back in East Tennessee and on the down curve of his emotional crisis. Disappointment of every sort met him. Troops were on short rations. Corn arrived in such small quantities that Longstreet doubted whether he could keep his horses and mules alive. The answers to his appeals for action in Kentucky were discouraging. Davis replied in terms that Longstreet considered a rebuke. The President’s preference for the union of “the two wings of the Army of Tennessee” was reiterated. Beauregard questioned the soundness of the plan Longstreet proposed. Johnston did not think an advance should be undertaken. Lee agreed that either a concentration on Johnston’s line or an advance into Kentucky was feasible, but he thought the heaviest Federal blow might fall in Virginia, and he said frankly that he would not advocate an advance into Kentucky if Johnston was opposed to it.26
Old Pete held to his opinion with the stubbornness that made some of his comrades think of him as German in his mentality; but he soon had other and scarcely less humiliating matters to deepen his distress. He was anxious that men of his own choice be named to succeed McLaws, whom he did not wish to return, and Hood, who would be incapacitated for months. Longstreet’s choice for Hood’s division continued to be Micah Jenkins, whose promotion he previously had sought. If Jenkins was advanced, Longstreet wanted Joe Kershaw to succeed to McLaws’s division. In the event only one vacancy occurred, Longstreet wished Jenkins to have it.
At the outset an obstacle to the execution of Longstreet’s plan was presented in the person of Charles W. Field. That fine officer at length had recovered sufficiently from the wounds suffered at Second Manassas to resume field duty, though he still was crippled. The War Department on February 12 ordered Field to join Longstreet for assignment to duty with Hood’s division. The same day Field was promoted major general, which automatically under his orders gave him command of the division.
At the moment Longstreet made no protest at the assignment of “an outsider” to the command of a division which the senior brigadier, Jenkins, was qualified to lead. Hopeful of doing by indirection what the promotion of Field kept him from doing d
irectly, Longstreet tried this arrangement: With him, on temporary duty, was Major General Simon Buckner, a capable and experienced soldier whose whole career had been spent in the Mississippi Valley. There was no reason to assume that Buckner would wish to go to Virginia. Hood’s division was larger than Buckner’s and in need of an active commander. Field was crippled. Longstreet transferred Buckner to command Hood’s division and put Field in charge of Bucker’s troops. If, subsequently, Buckner was called to other duty, the direction of Hood’s division would be vacated in favor of Jenkins, who was eager for promotion to regular command of that division.
Blandly Longstreet reported his action to the War Department. As soon as his letter reached Richmond, the adjutant general telegraphed disapproval. “The order from this office,” said Cooper, “assigning General Field to [Hood’s] division will be carried into effect.” Longstreet was not to be outdone. Command of McLaws’s division was vacant so long as its former head was suspended. If Field were put in McLaws’s place, command of Hood’s division might be retained for Jenkins. Accordingly Longstreet telegraphed Cooper, “Would it meet the views of the Department to assign Major-General Field to the division formerly commanded by Major-General McLaws?” The answer came the same day: “It does not suit the views of the President to assign Major-General Field to the division lately commanded by Major-General McLaws. He is to take the division which he was assigned in orders from this office.”27
Longstreet said no more at the time, but as the days passed his indignation mounted. On March 20 he wrote a wrathful letter asking to be informed of “the distinguished services rendered by [Field] and the high recommendations of his commanding generals which have induced the Government to make this unusual promotion and assignment.” This was a challenge of the sort Jefferson Davis never ignored. His was the constitutional right to appoint general officers; it was the duty of his military subordinates to accept his choice. The adjutant general was directed to administer a strong rebuke. “The advice you have asked [concerning Field’s service] is considered highly insubordinate and demands rebuke,” Cooper wrote. “It is also a reflection upon a gallant and meritorious officer … and is deemed unbecoming the high position and dignity of the officer who thus makes the reflection. The regulations of the Army, with which you should be familiar, prescribe that appointments of general officers are made … by the Executive, by whom appointments are made under the Constitution … and your inquiry is a direct reflection upon the Executive.”28
This came when Longstreet’s mission was nearing its end. The tone of the rebuke, which approached a reprimand, had not been the temper of all officialdom toward Longstreet. He and his men had received on February 17 the thanks of Congress. Had these thanks been specific, they might have dwelt on what Old Pete and his veterans achieved at Chickamauga. Although Longstreet had little or no part in planning that battle, he had done much to win it.
When this is stated, it covers substantially everything that can be said to Longstreet’s credit in Tennessee. He had done poorly in all the actions he directed independently. His administration had been as luckless as his combat. While serving under Lee, the one serious difficulty Longstreet had with subordinate commanders involved A. P. Hill, but in Tennessee, during five months of detached service, one major general and two brigadiers were ordered before courts-martial. A famous division had been crippled because of rivalries between two of its brigade commanders. The return of Micah Jenkins was followed by strife. Concerning all this Longstreet never wrote a line to indicate that he considered himself at fault.
That was not all. With his command disorganized and his achievement in tragic contrast to the hopes he had cherished before he left Virginia, Longstreet remained confident that he could shape the soundest strategy to terminate the war successfully in 1864. To this confidence in himself as a strategist he tenaciously held. In advocating the recovery of Kentucky, without previously defeating the Federals in Tennessee, the one point of departure for an army would be southwest Virginia. The objective would be the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. This was unshakable logic, a perfect paper basis for a campaign. Practicality was lacking. The mounting of Longstreet’s men on mules scarcely would have been possible at a time when the shortage of horses and mules was one of the most acute of the army’s problems, and supplying forage in a country remote from the railways would have been impossible.
Longstreet’s alternative plans for the convergence of all the infantry in the southeastern states of the Confederacy were by no means original with him. They were part of what might be termed the prevailing strategical theory of the South. All military men of experience accepted without argument the doctrine that the Confederate armies should be concentrated, but the administration consented to dispersion because the people of each state demanded protection from the invader. Seapower made it possible for the Union leaders to take advantage of the Confederacy’s mistaken policy and immobilize a great part of the Confederate army. Where Longstreet’s planning was original it was not practical, and where it was practical it was not original. He personified the familiar danger to the effective organization of an army, the danger that a competent executive officer will destroy his usefulness by regarding himself as a great strategist.
3
WINTER TESTS TEMPER
By comparison with conditions Longstreet found in Tennessee, the army command in Virginia seemed a happy fellowship, but during the months of Old Pete’s absence some of Lee’s other lieutenants had probably more of contention and heartburning than they had known since the spring of 1862. Of different nature, but manifestly serious was the threat, early in December 1863, that the man whose tact, courage, and character held the army together would himself be sent to Georgia to succeed Bragg. The President was frankly desirous that Lee assume command in the Mississippi Valley. It was only by definite expression of his desire to retain his old association that Lee escaped an assignment that would have placed him, not Joseph E. Johnston, in front of Sherman. Had Lee gone, the Southern government might have discovered, quickly and unhappily, the extent to which the morale not less than the strategy of the Army of Northern Virginia depended on him.
As for Bragg, after Mr. Davis reluctantly had concluded that the man who lost Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge was not qualified to command one army, he decided to give that unsuccessful officer command of all the armies. On February 24, 1864, Bragg, under direction of the President, was “charged with the conduct of the military operations in the armies of the Confederacy.”29 The post, which vaguely resembled that of a modern chief of the general staff, was one which Lee had found impossible in the spring of 1862. Bragg was to surprise everyone by his discharge of his new duties, which better fitted his abilities than did field command.
If the crisis of Lees transfer and Bragg’s promotion was passed without hurt, a progressive decline in the rations of the troops and the forage of the animals brought to the camps the specter of starvation. “Unless there is a change,” said Lee in January, “I fear the army cannot be kept effective and probably cannot be kept together.”30 Hunger was the normal condition of man and mount. The men damned the commissaries; artillerists and troopers blamed the quartermasters. No Southerner, unless it was Colonel Northrop, would admit that the food and the fodder actually were unavailable.
In this want and suffering, the army had to recruit or re-enlist its cavalry. A proposal to bring from South Carolina some regiments that had enjoyed an easy life provoked bitter complaints on their part—something scarcely thought of a year before, and certainly not two years previously. Worse even than the task of recruiting the cavalry was that of filling the gaps in the infantry. The veterans re-enlisted, but to catch the skulkers a new conscription act had to be passed. Some state judges so captiously disputed the constitutionality of various military laws that the writ of habeas corpus had to be suspended.31
Certain army officers, like these jurists, began to balk. Harvey Hill, on October 15, 1863, had been relie
ved by Bragg from duty with the Army of Tennessee. Hill thought the reason for his removal was his participation in the round-robin against Bragg. He demanded a court of inquiry be detailed to investigate the charges, but was told that a court was not necessary. Prediction, freely made, of a duel between Hill and Bragg came to nothing. Instead of trying to kill Bragg, the aggrieved Hill sought service elsewhere.
In doing this he stipulated that the position be one equivalent to his interim rank of lieutenant general, to which he had been promoted in July 1863 but which had not yet been confirmed by the Senate. This insistence disclosed a newly developed quality of his mind. Harvey Hill had not previously expressed dissatisfaction with his commission or with any field command. Now he became jealous of his rank. Corps command, it seemed, was the only service in keeping with that rank. The adjutant general accordingly had to advise him on the sixteenth of November that there was no command to which he then could be assigned. “Until a suitable opportunity is offered for placing you on duty according to your rank, you will consider yourself authorized to dispose of your time is such manner as may best suit your convenience, reporting your address monthly to this office.”32
While Hill waited obediently at home, the Senate assembled on December 7 and from time to time received presidential messages. None of the lists of officers submitted by Mr. Davis for confirmation included the nomination of D. H. Hill to be lieutenant general. When Beauregard called for an experienced subordinate for duty in Charleston, the President proposed to assign to the post Hill “as a major-general and explain to him that thus only could we employ him at this time and at that place.” There ensued a complex exchange of orders and requests and demands and proposals and counter-proposals. At length Hill concluded he would accept a command at his old rank only if it was accompanied by a statement of the government’s full confidence in him.
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