by Shelby Foote
Good riddance, friends of the President said. But such relief as his departure brought was more than offset by the simultaneous reappearance of Alexander Stephens, who reacted in just the opposite way to a gloom as deep as Foote’s. Instead of entering, he emerged from exile to lead a headlong attack on the Administration, not only for its failure to check Sherman’s march through his beloved Georgia, but also for all its previous sins of omission and commission. Resuming his vice-presidential chore of presiding over the Senate, he arrived in time to cast the deciding vote restoring habeas corpus, then moved on to deliver a ringing speech in which he arraigned the government for incompetence, slack judgment, and despotic arrogance at all levels. The war having failed, he called for the removal of Davis or, short of impeachment, the opening of direct negotiations for peace with Washington, ignoring the Executive entirely, since there could be no end to the fighting so long as the present leader remained in control of the nation’s destiny. Thus Stephens, whom Davis in friendlier days had referred to as “the little pale star from Georgia,” and the Richmond Examiner took up the cry in its January 17 issue, urging the assembly of a convention to abolish the Constitution and remove the Chief Executive from office, both in preparation for a return to principles long since betrayed by those in whom the people, to their current dismay, had placed their trust.
On that same day Virginia’s General Assembly passed and sent to the President a resolution calling for the appointment of R. E. Lee as commander of all the Confederate armies, on grounds that this would promote their efficiency, reanimate their spirit, and “inspire increased confidence in the final success of our arms.” Though Davis saw the request as an attempt to infringe on his constitutional designation as Commander in Chief, he handled the matter tactfully in a letter to Lee, asking whether he wished to undertake this larger duty “while retaining command of the Army of Northern Virginia.” Lee promptly replied that he did not. “If I had the ability I would not have the time.… I am willing to undertake any service to which you think proper to assign me, but I do not wish you to be misled as to the extent of my capacity.” This was written on January 19, but Davis had known so well what Lee would say that he had not waited for an answer. His letter of response to the Assembly had gone out the day before. Thanking the members for their suggestion, as well as for “the uncalculating, unhesitating spirit with which Virginia has, from the moment when she first drew the sword, consecrated the blood of her children and all her natural resources to the achievement of the object of our struggle,” he assured them “that whenever it shall be found practicable by General Lee to assume command of all the Armies of the Confederate States, without withdrawing from the direct command of the Army of Northern Virginia, I will deem it promotive of the public interest to place him in such command, and will be happy to know that by so doing I am responding to [your] expressed desire.”
That more or less took care of that; or should have, except that the issue would not die. While the Virginians were framing their request, the Confederate Senate — by a 14–2 vote, January 16 — passed a resolution not only favoring Lee’s elevation to general-in-chief, but also proposing that Beauregard take charge in South Carolina and that Johnston be restored to command of the Army of Tennessee. Varina Davis was indignant at this attempt to clip her husband’s presidential wings. “If I were he,” she told one cornered senator, “I would die or be hung before I would submit to the humiliation that Congress intended him.” Davis himself had no intention of complying with the resolution, which landed on his desk a few days later. For one thing, he had just disposed of the Lee question, at least to his and the general’s satisfaction, and Beauregard was already slated to assume the recommended post on his return from Mississippi, where he was busy turning Hood’s army over to Richard Taylor. As for Johnston, Davis was presently engaged in composing a 5000-word survey of that other Virginian’s war career from First Manassas to Peachtree Creek, a thorny indictment rounded off with a brief summation: “My opinion of General Johnston’s unfitness for command has ripened slowly and against my inclination into a conviction so settled that it would be impossible for me again to feel confidence in him as the commander of an army in the field.” Moreover, the lengthy document would close with a final cutting answer to those critics who sought to curtail the Chief Executive’s military prerogatives. “The power to assign generals to appropriate duties is a function of the trust confided in me by my countrymen. That trust I have ever been ready to resign at my country’s call; but, while I hold it, nothing shall induce me to shrink from its responsibilities or to violate the obligations it imposes.”
He would not bow to the three-count resolution. However, now that Lee’s deferential reply to the recent feeler had been received, he saw a chance for a compromise that would cost him nothing, either in principle or in practical application, yet would serve to placate his congressional foes, at least in part, and would also, as the Virginia members put it, “inspire increased confidence in the final success of our arms.” Accordingly, on January 26 he gladly signed, apparently with no thought of the predicted veto, an act that had passed both houses three days ago, providing for the appointment of a Confederate general-in-chief. Congress of course had Lee in mind, and on the last day of the month Davis recommended his appointment, which the Senate quickly approved. Lee’s response, addressed to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, was something of a snub to the politicians who had worked for his elevation. “I am indebted alone to the kindness of His Excellency the President for my nomination to this high and arduous office,” he declared, and a final sentence indicated how little he was likely to assert his independence at the post: “As I have received no instructions as to my duties, I do not know what he desires for me to undertake.” To Davis himself, soon afterward, Lee expressed his thanks for “your indulgence and kind consideration.… I must beg you to continue these same feelings to me in the future and allow me to refer to you at all times for counsel and advice. I cannot otherwise hope to be of service to you or the country. If I can relieve you from a portion of the constant labor and anxiety which now presses upon you, and maintain a harmonious action between the great armies, I shall be more than compensated for the addition to my present burdens.” This was no more and no less than Davis had expected. Not to be outdone in graciousness, he replied: “The honor designed to be bestowed has been so fully won, that the fact of conferring it can add nothing to your fame.”
Greeted with enthusiasm, Lee’s appointment encouraged many waverers to hope that his genius, which had transformed near-certain defeat into triumph in Virginia two and one half years ago, would now work a like miracle on a larger scale; the man who had saved beleaguered Richmond from McClellan, flinging him back in confusion, first on his gunboats and then on his own capital, would save the beleaguered Confederacy from Grant. But Davis knew only too well that the confirmed defeatists — men like Hunter, Campbell, and Stephens — were not converted by this stroke, which after all was of the pen and not the sword. They were for peace, peace now, and would not believe that anyone, even Robert E. Lee, could do anything more than stave off defeat and thus make the terms for surrender that much stiffer when it came. Above all, they and the Impossiblists, who wanted him removed for other reasons, mainly having to do with his overriding of States Rights, believed that Davis would never consent to the mildest compromise the Union authorities might offer, not only because of his known conviction that the loss of the war meant the loss of honor, but also because of his personal situation as the leader of a failed rebellion. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree!” blue-clad troops were singing now, to the tune of John Brown’s Body, and Republican politicians were saying much the same thing, in words as harsh and even more specific, from stumps all over the North, to wild applause.
Davis knew this, and knew as well that he had to find some way to answer and, if possible, discredit his domestic critics before he could unite the nation to meet the impending crisis. But how? He watch
ed and waited. Then it came: from Lincoln, of all people — or, more specifically, Old Man Blair.
Blair, that long-time adviser to all the Presidents back through Jackson, wanted to add one more to his list in the person of Jefferson Davis, who had been his friend for more than twenty years, but was now beyond his reach. Or perhaps not. Approaching seventy-four, the distinguished Marylander hoped to crown a life of public service with a trip to Richmond for the purpose of persuading Davis to treat for peace and thereby end the war. In mid-December, shortly after Sherman reached the coast, Blair went to Lincoln and asked permission to make the trip. “Come to me after Savannah falls,” the President told him; which he did, and on December 28 was handed a card inscribed, “Allow the bearer, F. P. Blair, Senr. to pass our lines, go South and return. A. Lincoln.”
He left at once, and on December 30 sent Davis two letters from Grant’s headquarters at City Point. One was brief, requesting admission to the Confederacy to search for some title papers missing since Jubal Early’s July visit to his home in Silver Spring. The other, considerably longer, remarked that the first would serve as a cover for his true purpose, which was to “unbosom my heart frankly and without reserve” on matters regarding the “state of affairs of our country.” He was “wholly unaccredited,” he said, but he hoped to offer certain “suggestions” he believed would be of interest.
There were delays. Davis recognized another peace feeler, and though he did not expect to find anything advantageous in the exchange under present circumstances, he knew that a refusal to see the Washington emissary was apt to bring still heavier charges of intransigence on his head. Besides, his wife encouraged the visit for old times’ sake. In the end he wrote the elder statesman to come on, and Blair did. Lodged unregistered at the Spotswood on January 12, he came that evening to the White House, where Mrs Davis met him with a hug.
Alone with Davis in the presidential study, he elaborated on what he had meant by “suggestions.” In brief, his plan was for the North and South to observe a cessation of hostilities for such time as it might take to drive the French and their puppet Maximilian out of Mexico, possibly with none other than Jefferson Davis in command of the joint expeditionary force; after which the two former combatants, flushed with victory from their common vindication of the Monroe Doctrine, could sit down and discuss their various differences in calm and dignity. Davis did not think highly of the plan, mainly because it sounded to him like one of Seward’s brainstorms, concocted for some devious purpose. Blair replied that the crafty New Yorker had had and would have no part in the matter. “The transaction is a military transaction, and depends entirely on the Commander in Chief.” Whatever Seward’s shortcomings, which admittedly were many, Lincoln was altogether trustworthy, Blair declared. Davis said he was glad to hear it. In point of fact, he added, he was willing now, and always had been, to enter into negotiations for ending the war by this or any other honorable method, and in demonstration of his sincerity he drafted a letter for Blair to take back and show Lincoln. “Notwithstanding the rejection of our former offers,” the letter read in closing, “I would, if you could promise that a commission, minister, or other agent would be received, appoint one immediately, and renew the effort to enter into a conference with a view to secure peace to the two countries.”
Back in Washington, Blair had a second interview with Lincoln on January 18. After giving him Davis’s letter to read he reported that he had seen a number of prominent Confederates in the southern capital, many of them friends of long standing, and had found them for the most part despondent about the outcome of the war. Lincoln appeared more interested in this last than in the letter, which seemed to him to promise little in the way of progress, but in the end gave Blair a letter of his own, in indirect answer to the one from Davis. “You may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and shall continue, ready to receive any agent whom he, or any other influential person now resisting the national authority, may informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the people of our one common country.”
There in the final words of the paired notes — “the two countries”: “our one common country” — the impasse was defined and, paradoxically, the maneuvering began in earnest: not so much between the two leaders, though there was of course that element in what followed, as between them and their respective home-front adversaries. Blair went back to Richmond four days later, then returned, his part complete, and newspapers North and South began to speculate frantically on what might come of the old man’s go-between travels back and forth. Southern journalists accused Davis of near treason for having entertained a “foreign enemy” in the White House, while those who were for peace at almost any price expressed fears that he had rejected an offer to end the war on generous terms. Conversely, up in Washington, the Jacobins set up a hue and cry that Lincoln was about to stop the fighting just short of the point where they could begin to exact the vengeance they saw as their due from the rebellion. Each of the two Presidents thus had much to fret him while playing their game of high-stakes international poker, and they functioned in different styles: different not only from each other, but also different each from what he had been before. During this diplomatic interlude, Lincoln and Davis — fox and hedgehog — swapped roles. Lincoln remained prickly and unyielding, almost stolid, though always willing to engage on his own terms as he defined them. It was Davis who was foxy, secretive and shifty, quick to snap.
He began by inviting the Vice President to a consultation — their first since the government moved to Richmond, nearly four years ago — at which he showed him Lincoln’s letter, reviewed its background, and requested an opinion. Stephens replied that he thought the matter should be pursued, “at least so far as to obtain if possible a conference upon the subject.” Asked for recommendations on the makeup of the proposed commission, he suggested the Chief Executive as the most effective member, then added the names of several men who were known to be as strong for peace as he was, including John A. Campbell, the former Supreme Court Justice, now Assistant Secretary of War. Davis thanked him for his time and trouble, and next day, January 25, summoned the chosen three to his office. They were Campbell, Robert Hunter — who presided over the Senate, as president pro tern, in the Vice President’s frequent absences — and Stephens himself. The frail Georgian protested but was overruled, and all three were handed their instructions: “In conformity with the letter of Mr Lincoln, of which the foregoing is a copy, you are requested to proceed to Washington City for an informal conference with him upon the issues involved in the existing war, and for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries.”
There again were the critical words, “two countries.” Judah Benjamin in the original draft had written, “for conference with him upon the subject to which it relates,” but Davis had made the revision, not wanting to leave the trio of known “submissionists” any leeway when they reached the conference table. He knew well enough how little was likely to come of the effort with this stipulation attached, though he did not go into that at present. He merely informed the commissioners that they would set out four days from now, on Sunday the 29th, passing beyond the farthest Petersburg outworks under a flag of truce, presumably bound for Washington and a talk with Lincoln about the chances of ending the war without more bloodshed.
3
And so it was. Due east of Petersburg on that designated Sunday, near the frost-rimed scar of the Crater, a white flag appeared on the rebel parapet and a messenger came over with a letter addressed to Lieutenant General U. S. Grant. Word spread up and down the opposing lines that something was up; something important, from the look of things — something that maybe had to do with peace.
As it turned out, there was plenty of time for speculation. Grant was down the coast, looking over the Wilmington defenses with Schofield, who was to move against them as soon as his transports could descend the ice-jammed Potomac. By the time a fast packet got the flag-of-truce message to Fort Fisher, and wor
d came back that the applicants were to be admitted and lodged at headquarters pending Grant’s return, two days had passed. Then at last, on the final afternoon in January, a carriage bearing the three would-be commissioners came rolling out the Jerusalem Plank Road, which was lined with gray-clad soldiers and civilians, and on to an opening in the works, which were crowded left and right, as far as the eye could follow — northward to the Appomattox and south toward Fort Hell and Fort Damnation — with spectators who jammed the parapets for a look at what some were saying meant an end to all the killing. Across the way, the Union works were crowded too, and when the carriage turned and began to jolt eastward over the shell-pocked ground between the trenches, a roar of approval went up from opposite sides of the line of battle. “Our men cheered loudly,” Meade would write his wife that night, “and the soldiers on both sides cried out lustily, ‘Peace! Peace!’ ” Blue and gray alike, west and east of that no-man’s land the carriage rocked across, spokes twinkling in the sunlight, men swung their hats and hollered for all they were worth. “Cheer upon cheer was given,” a Federal artillerist would recall, “extending for some distance to the right and left of the lines, each side trying to cheer the loudest. ‘Peace on the brain’ appeared now to have spread like a contagion. Officers of all grades, from lieutenants to major generals, were to be seen flying in all directions to catch a glimpse of the gentlemen who were apparently to bring peace so unexpectedly.”
Grant had returned by then, and though he saw to it that the three Confederates were made comfortable on a headquarters steamer tied up at the City Point wharf, he was careful not to discuss their mission with them. Which was just as well, since he received next morning a wire from the Commander in Chief, warning against any slackening of vigilance or effort on his part. “Let nothing which is transpiring change, hinder, or delay your military movements or plans,” Lincoln told him, and Grant replied: “There will be no armistice in consequence of the presence of Mr Stephens and others within our lines. The troops are kept in readiness to move at the shortest notice if occasion should justify it.” That afternoon Major Thomas Eckert, who normally had charge of the War Department telegraph office in Washington, arrived with instructions from the President to interview the proposed commissioners. Seward was on his way to Fort Monroe, and Eckert was to send them there to talk with him, provided they would state in writing that they had come for the purpose Lincoln had specified; that is, “with a view of securing peace to the people of our one common country.”