The Life of Jefferson Davis

12

Governor Wise, of Virginia, characterized “squatter sovereignty” as a “short cut to all the ends of Black Republicanism.”

13

To be found at the conclusion of this chapter.

14

William Rawle, of Philadelphia, an able lawyer and constitutional expounder. Mr. Buchanan, in his history of his own administration, thus mentions him: “The right of secession found advocates afterwards in men of distinguished abilities and unquestioned patriotism. In 1825, it was maintained by Mr. William Rawle, of Philadelphia, an eminent and universally-respected lawyer… His biographer says that, ‘in 1791, he was appointed District Attorney of the United States,’ and ‘the situation of Attorney General was more than once tendered to him by Washington, but as often declined,’ for domestic reasons.”

15

Hon. C. C. Clay, of Alabama.

16

It is not to be understood that Mr. Davis approved Mr. Buchanan’s policy in the winter of 1861. The message of the President disappointed the South, and was offensive to many of his most attached supporters, in consequence of its denial of the right of secession. Denying the right of secession, Mr. Buchanan yet denied, also, the power of coercing the States, but subsequently lent himself to the latter policy. Mr. Davis freely testified his disappointment at certain positions taken in the Message, and criticised them with emphasis, but great courtesy. Mr. Buchanan indicates the special message of January, 1861, as the occasion of the termination of all friendly relations between himself and those whom he terms the “secession Senators.”

17

It is a notable fact that, years ago, the strong and avowed attachment of Mr. Davis for the Union, was habitually sneered at by some Southern men, who are now seeking to gratify their lust for place by “crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee,” to those who persecute him and his countrymen.

18

Mr. Crittenden, whose supreme devotion to the Union, can not be called in question, since he continued to cling to the shadow long after the substance had departed, and in the midst of actual war continued to hope for a final pacific settlement, was greatly incensed at the unpatriotic course of the Republican Senators. His gray hairs, his eloquence, his unquestioned Unionism, were all unavailing. He was frequently hotly denunciatory, of what, equally with Mr. Davis, he regarded a purpose to prevent any adjustment which could have a pacifying effect upon the country.

19

Statement of Hon. S. S. Cox.

20

Acts of secession were adopted by the various States as follows:

South Carolina, December 20, 1860.

Florida, January 7, 1861.

Mississippi, January 9, 1861.

Alabama, January 11, 1861.

Georgia, January 20, 1861.

Louisiana, January 26, 1861.

Texas, February 1, 1861.

21

Extract from President Davis’ address before the Mississippi Legislature, December, 1862.

22

By the steamer “Star of the West,” which was driven back by the South Carolina batteries.

23

It was not until the 8th of April that the commissioners obtained a reply to their official communication of March 12th. From this reply, it appeared that “during the whole interval while the commissioners were receiving assurances calculated to inspire hope of the success of their mission, the Secretary of State and the President of the United States had already determined to hold no intercourse with them whatever; to refuse even to listen to any proposals they had to make, and had profited by the delay created by their own assurances, in order to prepare secretly the means for effective hostile operations.” —President Davis’ Message, April 29th, 1861.

24

Message to Confederate Congress.

25

This expedition, ostensibly “for the relief of a starving garrison,” consisted of eleven vessels, with two hundred and eighty-five guns and twenty-four hundred men.

26

Before instructing General Beauregard to fire upon the fort, President Davis made another effort to prevent hostilities, which he thus explains: “Even then” (after Beauregard had applied for instructions), “under all the provocation incident to the contemptuous refusal to listen to our commissioners, and the treacherous course of the Government of the United States, I was sincerely anxious to avoid the effusion of blood, and directed a proposal to be made to the commander of Fort Sumter, who had avowed himself to be nearly out of provisions, that we would abstain from directing our fire at Fort Sumter, if he would promise not to open fire on our forces unless first attacked. This proposal was refused. The conclusion was, that the design of the United States was to place the besieging force at Charleston between the simultaneous fire of the fleet and fort. The fort should, of course, be at once reduced. This order was executed by General Beauregard with skill and success.” —Message, 29th April, 1861.

27

Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation was dated April 15, 1861.

28

On the day of the surrender of Fort Sumter, Mr. Lincoln protested to the Virginia commissioners the pacific purposes of his government. When giving these assurances to Virginia he had heard of the surrender of the fort, and knew that for two days Beauregard had been firing upon the “sacred flag.”

29

April 24, 1861. Virginia joined the Confederacy as a member May 6, 1861.

30

“East Tennessee” was a perpetual “fire in the rear” to the Confederacy.

31

President Davis appreciated the immense value to the South of privateering. The Federal Government employed all the naval force at their command to blockade the South, recalled the squadrons stationed in foreign waters, and made extensive purchases of vessels for purposes of war. The South, of course, had no navy, since there had been no time to prepare or purchase one within the brief space between the organization of the Confederate Government and the beginning of hostilities. Under these circumstances there remained only the resort to private armed ships, under letters of marque, to assault the floating commerce of the enemy, and, to some extent, neutralize the blockade. Doubting the constitutional power of the executive in the premises, he, with characteristic regard for law, determined not to commission privateers until duly authorized by the legislation of Congress. The authority to issue commissions, and letters of marque and general reprisal, to privateers, was given by act of Congress, passed 6th of May.

32

A recent work (Richmond During the War) thus mentions the arrival of Mr. Davis in Richmond:

“He was received with an outburst of enthusiasm. A suite of handsome apartments had been provided for him at the Spotswood Hotel, until arrangements could be made for supplying him with more elegant and suitable accommodations. Over the hotel, and from the various windows of the guests, waved numerous Confederate flags, and the rooms destined for his use were gorgeously draped in the Confederate colors. In honor of his arrival, almost every house in the city was decorated with the ‘Stars and Bars.’

“An elegant residence for the use of Mr. Davis was soon procured. It was situated in the western part of the city, on a hill, overlooking a landscape of romantic beauty. This establishment was luxuriantly furnished, and there Mr. and Mrs. Davis dispensed the elegant hospitalities for which they were ever distinguished. Mrs. Davis is a tall, commanding figure, with dark hair, eyes and complexion, and strongly-marked expression, which lies chiefly in the mouth. With firmly-set yet flexible lips, there is indicated much energy of purpose and will, but beautifully softened by the usually sad expression of her dark, earnest eyes. Her manners are kind, graceful, easy, and affable, and her receptions were characterized by the dignity and suavity which should very properly distinguish the drawing room entertainments of the Chief Magistrate of a Republic.”

33

We intentionally waive the discussion of this question as to the extent of the preparation made by the States, severally, for actual war. It is not incumbent upon us here to examine the action of the individual States. We do not desire to be understood, however, as assenting to the proposition that all the States were inadequately prepared. It is a singular commentary upon the wisdom and sagacity of the leaders of secession in its earlier stages (by the various States), that Virginia and North Carolina were each better able to arm their troops than were some of the Cotton States. The latter may have made as much preparation as was possible under the circumstances. When Mr. Davis reached Mississippi, after his withdrawal from the Senate, the Legislature had appropriated $150,000 for military purposes. As Major-General commanding the forces of the State, he was consulted as to additional appropriations. He immediately recommended an appropriation of three millions of dollars. It is needless to say that such a recommendation, at that period, was deemed little less than extravagant folly.

34

It should be observed that Mr. Lincoln did not call upon the Federal Congress to assemble until July 4th, two months after the meeting of the Confederate Congress.

35

In this connection, we quote from a remarkably faithful and careful chronicle of events during a portion of the war: “On the morning of the 29th of May, President Davis arrived in Richmond… He found the military preparations in a state requiring instant energy, and, within a few hours after his arrival, he telegraphed and wrote messages to every State in the South, urging that troops should be sent forward with increased speed.” —Howison’s History of the War.

36

General Von Molkte, who planned the Prussian campaign in Bohemia.

37

General Jubal A. Early.

38

The speech made by Mr. Davis at the depot of the Virginia Central Railroad was not reported in the newspapers. The writer, in company with two friends, was in the crowd which greeted the return of Mr. Davis to the capital, and such was the effect of the scene and the glowing words of the speaker, that neither can ever be forgotten. A few hours subsequently to the scene at the depot, the words, as given below, were repeated, in the presence of several persons who heard Mr. Davis, and were pronounced by them the identical language used by him. They were preserved in writing, and are now published for the first time. Apart from its historical interest, the speech is a remarkable specimen of spontaneous, sententious eloquence, eminently appropriate to the occasion:

“Fellow-citizens of the Confederate States:

“I rejoice with you, this evening, in those better and happier feelings which we all experience, as compared with the anxiety of three days ago. Your little army – derided for its want of numbers – derided for its want of arms – derided for its lack of all the essential material of war – has met the grand army of the enemy, routed it at every point, and it now flies, in inglorious retreat, before our victorious columns. We have taught them a lesson in their invasion of the sacred soil of Virginia; we have taught them that the grand old mother of Washington still nurtures a band of heroes; and a yet bloodier and far more fatal lesson awaits them, unless they speedily acknowledge that freedom to which you were born.”

39

The Harper’s Magazine article of General Jordan.

40

The Federal official reports are overwhelmingly in confirmation of these views of General Jackson. General McClellan stated that “in no quarter were the dispositions for defense such as to offer resistance to a respectable body of the enemy.”

41

The writer heard this speech of Mr. Davis, and his recollection is positive of the encouragement extended by the President to the hope of an immediate forward movement. The recollection of the author of “The Diary of a Rebel War Clerk” seems to be substantially the same.

42

One evidence of this “persecution” would appear to consist in the fact that the President, having reluctantly commissioned Generals Lovell and G. W. Smith, upon the recommendations of Generals Beauregard and Johnston, chose also to commission, at the same time, with a similar rank, General Van Dorn, giving the latter a senior commission. Smith and Lovell had but recently come to the South, both being residents of New York, before the war, while Van Dorn had promptly sought service in the Confederate army before hostilities commenced, had done excellent service, and been constantly in front of the enemy. Another proof of “persecution” is that the President refused to permit such an organization of the army as he believed to be in conflict with the laws of Congress.

The commonly assigned origin of the difference between President Davis and General Beauregard, which gave rise to so much scandal and falsehood during the war, was the suppression of the preliminary portion of General B.’s report of the battle of Manassas. The correct version of that matter is now well known. President Davis did not suppress any portion of Beauregard’s report. He did object to certain preliminary statements of the report, and requested that they should be altered or omitted. When this was declined, the President sent the report to Congress, accompanied by an indorsement of his own, correcting what he conceived to be errors. General Beauregard’s friends in Congress, unwilling that these comments of the President should be published, suppressed both the objectionable passages and the executive indorsement. So that they, and not the President, occasioned that “suppression,” from which arose much gossip and mystery. A sufficient answer to these charges of personal antagonism by the President to these two officers, should be the fact that he retained them in command of the two largest armies of the Confederacy, until relinquished by them, in the one case, because of sickness, and in the other, in consequence of a wound which caused disability.

43

The friends of Mr. Mallory, in illustration of this unreasoning prejudice, were accustomed to declare that, “were a Confederate vessel to sink in a storm, in the middle of the ocean, the Richmond Examiner and Mr. Foote would advocate the censure of the Secretary of the Navy, as responsible for her loss.”

44

The careful reader will hardly have overlooked the passage, in the Message to Congress, in the preceding chapter, in which Mr. Davis thus alludes to this subject: “The active state of military preparation among the nations of Europe, in April last, the date when our agents first went abroad, interposed unavoidable delays in the procurement of arms, and the want of a navy has greatly impeded our efforts to obtain military supplies of all sorts.”

A few months later, he said, speaking with characteristic candor: “I was among those who, from the beginning, predicted war as the consequences of secession, although I must admit that the contest has assumed proportions more gigantic than I had anticipated. I predicted war, not because our right to secede and to form a government of our own was not indisputable and clearly defined in the spirit of that declaration, which rests the right to govern on the consent of the governed, but saw that the wickedness of the North would precipitate a war upon us.” —Address before Mississippi Legislature, December, 1862.

Mr. Davis here candidly admits that the “gigantic proportions” of the war exceeded his expectations, as they did also the expectations of the whole country and of the world. He did foresee a great war, and prepared for it; but he was not guilty of the foolish pretension that the war simply realized his expectations, when every statesman of Europe and America was deceived, both as to its duration and magnitude. Who believes that Napoleon the First, equally the unrivaled master of war and diplomacy, would pretend that he foresaw the extent and duration, or the results, of the wars of the empire? that he realized the inextinguishable nature of English hostility, or anticipated the numerous perfidies of Austria? Mr. Seward, who is likely to be remembered, with some distinction, in connection with the diplomacy and statesmanship of the late war, constantly predicted its termination in “ninety days.” No opinion can be truthfully ascribed to Mr. Davis indicating a light estimate of the struggle either before or during the war. Yet there is a retrospective statesmanship in the South which now claims that he should have been lifted to its own preternatural powers, and from the first have seen every phase and incident. How absurd must this pretension appear to the sober judgment of fifty years hence.

Mr. Davis was even accredited in Richmond, by an extravagant and unfounded popular report, with the prophecy that “children then (1862) unborn would be soldiers in the war between the North and South.” People in those days saw nothing in the action of the Government indicating its faith in a short war. Their only consolation was found in the editorials of Richmond newspapers predicting foreign intervention should McClellan be defeated.

45

Inaugural Address, February 22, 1862.

46

The order was in these terms:

“War Department, “Adjutant and his Inspector-General’s Office, “March 13. 1862

“General Orders,

No. 14.

“General Robert E. Lee is assigned to duty at the seat of Government; and, under the direction of the President, is charged with the conduct of military operations in the armies of the Confederacy.

“By command of the Secretary of War.“S. COOPER,“Adjutant and Inspector-General.”

47

The fact is not generally known that the President was, upon two occasions, assailed with urgent petitions for the removal of Stonewall Jackson, which he peremptorily rejected on both occasions; first, after the campaign about Romney, in December, 1861, and again, after the battle of Kernstown. March, 1862.

48

I am mainly indebted for these facts to a recent publication by Professor Bledsoe, late Assistant Secretary of War of the Confederate States.

49

In this engagement General Benjamin McCulloch, of Texan fame, a brave and efficient soldier, was killed.

50

When General Beauregard had eluded Halleck at Corinth, and brought his army to Tupelo, he turned over the command to General Bragg, and sought repose and recuperation at Bladon Springs, Alabama. Those who assume to be the friends and admirers of General Beauregard, but who are far more anxious to establish a mean malignity in the character of Mr. Davis, than to exalt their favorite, have laid great stress upon the fact, that the President then placed Bragg in command of the army for the ensuing campaign, thus placing Beauregard in retirement. There can be little difficulty in comprehending the commendable motives which prompted Mr. Davis to this course. The period of General Beauregard’s absence from his command (three weeks, it is understood) would protract the period of inactivity until midsummer. Time was precious. The Western army had done nothing but lose ground all the current year, and, meanwhile, Lee was preparing his part of the operations, by which the Government hoped to throw the enemy back upon the frontier. Was, then, the Western army to lie idle, awaiting the disposition and convenience of one man? With the approval of the army and the country, the President appointed to the vacated command, an able and devoted soldier, whose reputation and service justified the trust. The writer has seen nothing from General Beauregard approving the assaults of his pretended admirers upon Mr. Davis, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he does not indorse them.

It is also urged that Mr. Davis, when pressed to remove Bragg and replace Beauregard, declared that he would not, though the whole world should unite in the petition. Very likely, and altogether proper that he should not remove an officer while in the actual execution of his plans of campaign. But there can be no better explanation than that given by Mr. Davis: “The President remarked, that so far as giving Beauregard command of Bragg’s army is concerned, that was out of the question. Bragg had arranged all his plans, and had co-intelligence with the Department, with Kirby Smith, and Humphrey Marshall; and to put a new commander at the head of the army would be so prejudicial to the public interests, he would not do it if the whole world united in the petition.”

But President Davis never designed that General Beauregard should be without a command. With that just appreciation of the real merits of his generals, apart from the cheap applause or unmerited censure of the crowd, which distinguished most of his selections, he placed General Beauregard in charge of the coast defenses, where his reputation was certainly much enhanced. In this oft-repeated and unfounded charge of “injustice” and “persecution,” in the case of General Joseph E. Johnston, as in that of General Beauregard, there is no specification, more awkwardly sustained, than that which denies the abundant opportunity enjoyed by each of those officers, for the display of the superior genius asserted for them by their admirers. The slightest acquaintance with the history of the war will verify this statement.

51

Much crimination and recrimination followed the fall of New Orleans. It is, at least, safe to say, that public opinion in the South was much divided, as to where the burden of censure for this dire and unexpected calamity should properly rest. The intelligence of the capture of the city was an appalling surprise, not only to the public in Richmond, but to the Government. President Davis declared that the event was totally unexpected by him. The fall of New Orleans was one of those instances, in which the Confederates had decided for them, in a most unsatisfactory manner, the long disputed question as to the efficiency of shore batteries against vessels of war. Precedents established, when sailing vessels were used in warfare, were overthrown by the experience of steam vessels, especially when iron-plated. Commodore Farragut, with perfect success and comparative ease, passed the forts below New Orleans, after the chief of the naval force had despaired of their reduction.

52

These revelations of the designs of McClellan are derived from the admirable work of Mr. Swinton – the “History of the Army of the Potomac” – perhaps the ablest and most impartial contribution yet made to the history of the late war.

It is noteworthy that General Grant attempted nearly the same approach to Richmond and was signally foiled – a fact which he promptly recognized, by his change of plan, after his bloody repulse at Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864.

53

This dispatch was in substance: “Halt the army where it is.”

54

The incidents of this trying period, when Richmond was doubly threatened by the hosts of McClellan, and the gunboats in the river, are “mementoes of heroism,” proudly illustrating the unconquerable spirit of that devoted city and its rulers. We give the resolution passed by the Legislature on the occasion referred to – May 14, 1862:

“Resolved by the General Assembly, That this General Assembly expresses its desire that the capital of the State be defended to the last extremity, if such defense is in accordance with the views of the President of the Confederate States; and that the President be assured, that whatever destruction or loss of property, of the State, or individuals shall hereby result, will be cheerfully submitted to.”

Two days after, at a public meeting of the citizens of Richmond, Governor Letcher said, that under no circumstances would he approve the surrender of the city, and avowed his readiness to endure bombardment, if necessary. In the same stout spirit spoke Mayor Mayo: