The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

by Thomas Dixon

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE AFTERMATH

  Socola dismissed his hope of a speedy end of the war and devoted himselfwith new enthusiasm to his work. His eyes were sleepless--his ear to theground. The information on conditions and public sentiment in Richmondand the South which he had dispatched to Washington were of incalculableservice to his government. One of the immediate effects of the battlewas the return of Jennie Barton to the Capital. Her mother was improvingand Jimmie had been wounded. Her coming was most fortunate. It was ofthe utmost importance that he secure a position in the Civil Service ofthe Confederacy. It could be done through her father's influence.

  Socola watched the first division of Northern prisoners march throughthe streets amid the shouts and laughter of a crowd of urchins black andwhite. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables wouldbe shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without ascruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on thechessboard of Life and Death over which he bent.

  Jefferson Davis watched the effects of the battle on the North withbreathless interest and increasing dismay.

  His worst fears were confirmed.

  He had hoped that a decisive victory would place his Government in aposition to make overtures for a peaceful adjustment of the conflict.

  The victory had been too decisive. The disgraceful rout of the Northernarmy had stung twenty-three million people to the quick. Defeat sooverwhelming and surprising had roused the last drop of fighting bloodin their veins.

  Boasting and loud talk suddenly ceased. There was no lying about theresults. In all their bald hideous reality the Northern mind faced themand began with steady purpose their vast preparations to wipe thatdisgrace out in blood.

  Abraham Lincoln suddenly found himself relieved of all embarrassment inthe conduct of the war. His critics had threatened to wreck hisadministration unless he forced their "Grand Army" to march on Richmondand take it without a day's delay.

  In obedience to this idiotic clamor he was forced to order the army tomarch. They came home by a shorter route than they marched and they camequicker.

  They returned without baggage.

  Incompetent men and hungry demagogues had clamored for high positions inthe army. Their influence had been so great he had been forced to findberths for many incompetent officers.

  He had suddenly become the actual Commander-in-Chief of the Army andNavy and his word was law. Fools and incompetents were relegated to therear. Men who knew how to fight and how to organize armies marched tothe front.

  His administration had been embarrassed for funds. It was found next toimpossible to float a loan of a paltry seven million dollars for warpurposes. He borrowed one hundred and fifty million dollars next day ata fraction above the legal rate of interest in New York. He askedCongress for 400,000 more men and $400,000,000 to support them. Congressvoted a half million men and five hundred millions of dollars--ahundred million more than he had asked.

  While Washington's streets were thronged with the mud-smeared,panic-stricken rabble that was once an army, the Federal Congresseagerly began the task of repairing the disaster. When they had done alland much more than their President had asked, they calmly andunanimously passed this resolution:

  "_Resolved_, That the maintenance of the Constitution, the preservation of the Union, and the enforcement of the laws, are sacred trusts which must be executed; that no disaster shall discourage us from the most ample performance of this high duty; and that we pledge to the Country and the world the employment of every resource, national and individual, for the suppression, overthrow and punishment of rebels in arms."

  To the dismay of the far-seeing Southern leader in Richmond the pressand people of the South received this resolution with shouts ofderision. In vain did he warn his own Congress that the North wasmultiplying its armies, and building two navies with furious energy.

  The people of the South went mad over their amazing victory. Davis sawtheir deliverance suddenly develop into the most appalling disaster.

  The decisive battle of the war was fought and won. The European powersmust immediately recognize the new Nation. In this hope their Presidentcould reasonably share. Their other delusions he knew to be madness.

  The Southern press without a dissenting voice proclaimed that thequestion of manhood between the North and South was settled and settledforever. From the hustings the demagogue shouted:

  "One Southerner is the equal anywhere of five Yankees."

  Manassas, with its insignificant record of killed and wounded, wascompared with the decisive battles of the world. The war was over. Theremight still be fought a few insignificant skirmishes before peace wasproclaimed but that auspicious event could not be long delayed.

  The fatal victory was followed by a period of fancied security anddeadly inactivity. Exertions ceased. Volunteers were few. The volatile,sanguine people laughed at the fears of their croaking President.

  So firmly had they established the new Nation that politicians began toplot and scheme for control of the Confederate Government on theexpiration of the Davis term of office.

  R. M. T. Hunter, the foremost statesman of Virginia, resigned hisposition in the Cabinet to be unembarrassed in his fight for thepresidency.

  Beauregard had been promoted to the full rank of general and his tentwas now a bower of roses. Around the figure of the little fiery,impulsive, boastful South Carolinian gathered a group of ambitiousschemers who determined to make him President. They filled thenewspapers with such fulsome praise that the popular nominee for anhonor six years in the distance, and shrouded in the smoke of battle,sought to add fuel to the flame by waving the Crown aside! In a weakbombastic letter which deceived no one, dated,

  "Within Hearing of the Enemies' Guns," he emphatically declared:

  "I am not a candidate, nor do I desire to be a candidate, for any civiloffice in the gift of the people or Executive!"

  Controversies began between different Southern States, as to thelocation of the permanent Capital of the Confederacy. The contestdeveloped so rapidly and went so far, that the Municipal Council of theCity of Nashville, Tennessee, voted an appropriation of $750,000 for aresidence for the President as an inducement to remove the Capital.

  A furious controversy broke out in the yellow journals of the South asto why the Southern army had not pursued the panic-stricken mob into theCity of Washington, captured Lincoln and his Congress and ended the warnext day in a blaze of glory.

  It was inconceivable that it was the fault of the two heroes of thebattle, Joseph E. Johnston and Peter G. T. Beauregard. The President hadrushed to the battlefield for some purpose. The champions of the heroesinsinuated that his purpose was not to prevent their quarreling, but totake command of the field and rob them of their glory.

  They made haste to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders to lay thefailure to pursue. They seized on Jefferson Davis as the man. Theydeclared in the most positive terms that Johnston and Beauregard,flushed with victory, were marshaling their hosts to sweep intoWashington when they were stopped by the Confederate Chief and had nochoice but to bivouac for the night.

  Three men alone knew the truth: Davis, Beauregard and Johnston. The twovictorious generals remained silent while their friends made thisremarkable accusation against the President.

  The President remained silent to save his generals from the wrath of afickle public which might end their usefulness to the country.

  As a matter of fact, Davis' trained eye had seen the enormous advantageof quick merciless pursuit the moment he was convinced that McDowell'sarmy had fled in panic.

  He had finally written a positive order commanding pursuit but waspersuaded by the continued pleas of both commanders not to press it.

  The reptile press of the South began on the President a bitter,malignant and unceasing vilification for this, his first fatal andinexcusable blunder!

  Defeat had freed Abraham Lincoln of fools and incompetents and armed
himwith dictatorial powers. Victory had saddled on the Confederacy twoheroes destined to cripple its efficiency with interminable controversy,sulking bitterness and personal ambitions. The halo of supreme militarygenius which encircled the brows of Johnston and Beauregard with thelifting of the smoke from the field of Bull Run grew quickly into twostorm clouds which threatened the life of the new Republic.

  Johnston's contempt for Beauregard had from the beginning been outspokento his intimate friends. The battle had raised this little upstart tohis equal in rank! He claimed that the President had robbed him of histrue position in the Southern army through favoritism in the appointmentof Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee to positions of seniority towhich they were not entitled.

  Johnston began a series of bitter insulting letters to the ConfederatePresident, complaining of his injustice and demanding his rights. Notcontent with his letters to the Executive, Johnston poured hiscomplaints into the ears of his friends and admirers in the ConfederateCongress and began a systematic and determined personal campaign todiscredit and ruin the administration.

  Among his first recruits in his campaign against Jefferson Davis was thefiery, original Secessionist, Roger Barton. Barton had never likedDavis. Their temperaments were incompatible. He resigned his position onthe staff of the President, allied himself openly with Johnston andbecame one of the bitterest and most uncompromising enemies of thegovernment. His position in the Confederate Senate would be a powerfulweapon with which to strike.

  The substance of Johnston's claim on which was founded this malignantclique in Richmond was the merest quibble about the date of hiscommission to the rank of full general. Because its date was later thanthat of Robert E. Lee he felt himself insulted and degraded.

  When the President mildly and good naturedly informed him that hisposition of Quartermaster General in the old army did not entitle him toa field command and that Lee's rank as field commander was higher, hereplied in a letter which became the text of his champions. Itshigh-flown language and bombastic claims showed only too plainly that aconsuming ambition had destroyed all sense of proportion in his mind.

  With uncontrolled passion he wrote to the President:

  "Human power cannot efface the past. Congress may vacate my commission and reduce me to the ranks. It cannot make it true that I was not a general before July 4, 1861.

  "The effect of the course pursued is this:

  "It transforms me from the position first in rank to that of fourth. The relative rank of the others among themselves (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) is unaltered. It is plain that this is a blow aimed at me only. It reduces my rank in the grade I hold. This has never been done heretofore in the regular service in America but by the sentence of a court-martial as a punishment and as a disgrace for some military offense.

  "It seeks to tarnish my fair name as a soldier and as a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service. I have but this--the scars of many wounds all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father's revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerable hand without stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war not for rank or fame (sic!), but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children, aye, and the men of my mother, Virginia--my native South. It may hereafter be the sword of a general leading armies, or of a private volunteer. But while I live and have an arm to wield it, it shall never be sheathed until the freedom, independence, and full rights of the South are achieved. When that is done, it then will be a matter of small concern to the Government, to Congress, or to the Country, what my rank or lot may be.

  "What has the aspect of a studied indignity is offered me. My noble associate with me in the battle has his preferment connected with the victory won by our common trials and dangers. His commission bears the date of July 21, 1861, but care seems to be taken to exclude the idea that I had any part in winning that triumph.

  "My commission is made to bear such a date that my once inferiors in the service of the United States and of the Confederate States (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) shall be above me. But it must not be dated as of July 21, nor be suggestive of the victory of Manassas!

  "If the action against which I have protested is legal, it is not for me to question the expediency of degrading one who has served laboriously from the commencement of the war on this frontier, and borne a prominent part in the only great event of that war, for the benefit of persons, neither of whom has yet struck a blow for this Confederacy.

  "These views and the freedom with which they are presented may be unusual, so likewise is the occasion which calls them forth.

  "I have the honor to be, most respectfully, Your obedient servant, J. E. Johnston, _General_."

  With a curve of his thin lips and a look of mortal weariness on hishaggard face, the man on whose shoulders rested the burden of the livesof millions of his people seized his pen and wrote this brief note:

  "Richmond, Va., September 14, 1861.

  "General J. E. Johnston:

  "Sir:

  "I have just received and read your letter of the 12 instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and statements utterly one-sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming.

  "I am, etc., Jefferson Davis."

  While the Commander of the victorious Confederacy was sulking in histent on the field of Manassas, playing this pitiful farce about the dateof a commission, and allowing his army to go to pieces, George B.McClellan with tireless energy and matchless genius as an organizer waswhipping into shape Lincoln's new levy of five hundred thousanddetermined Northern men.

  To further add to his embarrassment and cripple his work the VicePresident of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, developed earlyinto a chronic opponent of the administration. Much of this oppositionwas due to dyspepsia but it was none the less effective in underminingthe influence of the Executive. Mr. Stephens' theories were theoutgrowth of the most radical application of the dogma of States'Rights.

  Before secession he had bitterly opposed the withdrawal of Georgia fromthe Union. His extreme advocacy of the Sovereignty of the States nowthreatened the unity and integrity of the Confederacy as a Republic.

  He proclaimed the remarkable doctrine that as the war was one in whichthe people had led the politicians into a struggle for their rights,therefore the people could be absolutely relied on by the administratorsof the Government to properly conduct the war. The people could alwaysbe depended on when a battle was to be fought. When no fighting was tobe done they should be at home attending to their families and theirbusiness. The people were intelligent. They were patriotic. And theywere as good judges of the necessity of their presence with the colorsas the commanders of the armies. The generals were professionalsoldiers. They fought for rank and pay and most of them had no propertyin the South!

  In the face of such doctrines proclaimed from so high a source it wasnot to be wondered at if thousands of men obtained furloughs on longleaves of absence. In the judgment of the intelligent and patrioticpeople of the South the war was practically over. Why should they swellthe ranks of great armies to augment the power of military lords?

  While these comfortable doctrines were being proclaimed in the South,the North was drilling five hundred thousand soldiers who had enlistedfor three years.

  The soreheads, theorists, and chronic kickers now had their supremeopportunity to harass the President. They rallied behind the sulkingGeneral and his friends and established a vigilant and malignantopposition to Jefferson Davis in the Confederate Congress.

  They centered their criticism naturally on the weakest spot in the newGovernment--the weakest spot in all new nations--its financial policy.

  They
demanded the immediate purchase of all the cotton in the South andits exportation to England as a basis of credit. They blithely ignoredtwo facts--that the Government had no money with which to purchase thisenormous quantity of the property of its people and the still moreimportant fact that the ports of the South had been blockaded, that thisblockade was becoming more and more effective and that blockade-runnerscould not be found with sufficient tonnage to move one-tenth of the cropif they were willing to risk capture and confiscation.

  If the President could have met the members of his Congress in dailysocial intercourse much of the opposition could have been cleared by hisclose reasoning and the magnetism of his powerful personality. But underthe strain of his official life his health forbade the attempt at socialamenities.

  He ceased to entertain except at formal receptions, gave himself bodyand soul to his duties as President and allowed his critics full swingwith their tongues.

  The Richmond _Examiner_ early developed into the leader of the reptilepress of the South which sought by all means fair or foul to break downand destroy the President. This sheet was made the organ of all thebickering, backbiting, complaining and sulking in the army and the civillife of the new Republic.

  Because the President could not spare the time for socialentertainments, he was soundly abused for the stinginess of hisadministration. Because the young people of Richmond could not bereceived at the White House of the Confederacy on every evening in theweek _The Examiner_ sneered at the assumption of "superior dignity bythe satraps."

  This scurrilous newspaper at last made the infamous charge that Daviswas getting rich on his savings from a salary of twenty-five thousanddollars in Confederate money! Every politician who had been overlookedrushed into these friendly columns and aired his grievances. The oldsecession leaders who had been thrust aside for the presidency by thepeople who had forced the office on Jefferson Davis now pressed forwardto put their knives into the sensitive soul of the man they envied. Wm.L. Yancey, Barnwell Rhett and Robert Toombs joined his foes in a chorusof criticism and abuse. Every man who had been slighted in highpositions bestowed on rivals rushed now to the attack.

  Davis was never a man who could hedge and trim and lie and be allthings to all men. He was totally lacking in the patience that canflatter a fool. He was too sincere, too downright in his honesty forsuch demagoguery.

  He was abused for a thousand things for which he was in no senseresponsible and made no effort to defend himself. He merely took refugein dignified silence. And when his enemies could not provoke him intoangry outbursts they accused him of contempt for public opinion.

  In this hour of his sore trial he lacked the sense of broad humor whichsaved Abraham Lincoln. His rival in Washington was abused with far moresavage cruelty--but it always reminded him of a funny story. He told thestory, roared with laughter himself, and turned again to his work.

  Not so with Jefferson Davis. He was keenly and painfully sensitive tothe approval or condemnation of the people about him. The thoughtlessword of a child could cut him to the quick. To have explained many ofthe difficulties on which he was attacked would have been to endangerthe usefulness of one of his generals or expose the army to danger.

  He steadfastly remained silent and accepted as inevitable the accusationthat his manner was cold and repellent.

  But once did his soul completely break down under the strain.

  An officer whom he loved had been censured by one of his commandinggenerals who demanded his removal. This censure was conveyed to thePresident in a letter marked "Private."

  The officer was removed. Hard as the duty was, he felt that as theservant of his country he had no other choice.

  Flushed and indignant, his old friend called.

  "You know me, Mr. President," he cried passionately. "How can I everhold my head up again under censure from you--one of my oldest and bestfriends?"

  The muscles of the drawn face twitched with nervous agony. He could notwith his high sense of honor as President tell this man that he lovedhim and found no fault with him. To make his acceptance of the situationeasier, his only course was to roust his friend's anger.

  He turned and said curtly:

  "You have, I believe, received your orders. I can suggest nothing butobedience."

  Too angry to ask an explanation, he strode from the room without a word.

  The President closed his desk, climbed the steep hill of the CapitolSquare, walked home in brooding silence, and locked himself in his roomwithout eating his dinner.

  Alarmed at his absence, Mrs. Davis at last gently rapped on his door.With tender tact she drew from his reluctant lips the story.

  Turning his dimmed eyes on hers, he burst out in tones of quiveringanguish:

  "Oh, my Winnie dear, how could any man with a soul write a letter likethat, mark it private and force me to plunge a knife into the heart ofmy best friend and leave it there without a word--"

  "You should have told your friend the whole truth!"

  "No--he could have made trouble in the army. His commander knew that Icould bear it best."

  "You must try to mingle more with those men, dear," his wife pleaded."Use your brains and personality to win them. You can do it."

  "At the cost of precious hours I can give to better service for mycountry. No. I've given my life to the South. I'll eat my heart out insilence if I must--"

  He paused and looked at her tenderly.

  "Only your friendly eyes shall see, my dear. After all, what does itmatter what men think of me now? If we succeed, we shall hear no more ofmalcontents. If we do not succeed, I shall be held accountable by bothfriend and foe. It's written so in the book of life. I must accept it.I'll just do my best and God will give me strength to bear what comes."

  And so while the South was gayly celebrating the end of the war andevery crow was busy pecking at the sensitive heart of their leader, theominous shadow of five hundred thousand Northern soldiers, armed withthe best weapons and drilled by the masters of military science, wasslowly but surely drawing near.