Chapter 5

The Reaction Against Richmond

A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great period of Confederate history--these six months of Titanic effort which embraced between March and September, 1862, splendid success along with catastrophes. But there was a marked difference between the two tides of popular emotion. The wave of alarm which swept over the South after the surrender of Fort Donelson was quickly translated into such a high passion for battle that the march of events until the day of Antietam resounded like an epic. The failure of the triple offensive which closed this period was followed in very many minds by the appearance of a new temper, often as valiant as the old but far more grim and deeply seamed with distrust. And how is this distrust, of which the Confederate Administration was the object, to be accounted for?

Various answers to this question were made at the time. The laws of the spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis was held responsible for them and also for the slow equipment of the army. Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its business in secret session, the President was charged with a love of mystery and an unwillingness to take the people into his confidence. Arrests under the law suspending the writ of habeas corpus were made the texts for harangues on liberty. The right of freedom of speech was dragged in when General Van Dorn, in the Southwest, threatened with suppression any newspaper that published anything which might impair confidence in a commanding officer. How could he have dared to do this, was the cry, unless the President was behind him? And when General Bragg assumed a similar attitude toward the press, the same cry was raised. Throughout the summer of victories, even while the thrilling stories of Seven Pines, the Peninsula, Second Manassas, were sounding like trumpets, these mutterings of discontent formed an ominous accompaniment.

Yancey, speaking of the disturbed temper of the time, attributed it to the general lack of information on the part of Southern people as to what the Confederate Government was doing. His proposed remedy was an end of the censorship which that Government was attempting to maintain, the abandonment of the secret sessions of its Congress, and the taking of the people into its full confidence. Now a Senator from Alabama, he attempted, at the opening of the congressional session in the autumn of 1862, to abolish secret sessions, but in his efforts he was not successful.

There seems little doubt that the Confederate Government had blundered in being too secretive. Even from Congress, much information was withheld. A curious incident has preserved what appeared to the military mind the justification of this reticence. The Secretary of War refused to comply with a request for information, holding that he could not do so "without disclosing the strength of our armies to many persons of subordinate position whose secrecy cannot be relied upon." "I beg leave to remind you," said he, "of a report made in response to a similar one from the Federal Congress, communicated to them in secret session, and now a part of our archives."

How much the country was in the dark with regard to some vital matters is revealed by an attack on the Confederate Administration which was made by the Charleston Mercury, in February. The Southern Government was accused of unpardonable slowness in sending agents to Europe to purchase munitions. In point of fact, the Confederate Government had been more prompt than the Union Government in rushing agents abroad. But the country was not permitted to know this. Though the Courier was a government organ in Charleston, it did not meet the charges of the Mercury by disclosing the facts about the arduous attempts of the Confederate Government to secure arms in Europe. The reply of the Courier to the Mercury, though spirited, was all in general terms. "To shake confidence in Jefferson Davis," said the Courier, "is ... to bring 'hideous ruin and combustion' down upon our dearest hopes and interests." It made "Mr. Davis and his defensive policy" objects of all admiration; called Davis "our Moses." It was deeply indignant because it had been "reliably informed that men of high official position among us" were "calling for a General Convention of the Confederate States to depose him and set up a military Dictator in his place." The Mercury retorted that, as to the plot against "our Moses," there was no evidence of its existence except the Courier's assertion. Nevertheless, it considered Davis "an incubus to the cause." The controversy between the Mercury and the Courier at Charleston was paralleled at Richmond by the constant bickering between the government organ, the Enquirer, and the Examiner, which shares with the Mercury the first place among the newspapers hostile to Davis. ¹

¹ The Confederate Government did not misapprehend the attitude of the intellectual opposition. Its foreign organ, The Index, published in London, characterized the leading Southern papers for the enlightenment of the British public. While the Enquirer and the Courier were singled out as the great champions of the Confederate Government, the Examiner and the Mercury were portrayed as its arch enemies. The Examiner was called the "Ishmael of the Southern press." The Mercury was described as "almost rabid on the subject of state rights."

Associated with the Examiner was a vigorous writer having considerable power of the old-fashioned, furious sort, ever ready to foam at the mouth. If he had had more restraint and less credulity, Edward A. Pollard might have become a master of the art of vituperation. Lacking these qualities, he never rose far above mediocrity. But his fury was so determined and his prejudice so invincible that his writings have something of the power of conviction which fanaticism wields. In midsummer, 1862, Pollard published a book entitled The First Year of the War, which was commended by his allies in Charleston as showing no "tendency toward unfairness of statement" and as expressing views "mainly in accordance with popular opinion."

This book, while affecting to be an historical review, was skillfully designed to discredit the Confederate Administration. Almost every disaster, every fault of its management was traceable more or less directly to Davis. Kentucky had been occupied by the Federal army because of the "dull expectation" in which the Confederate Government had stood aside waiting for things somehow to right themselves. The Southern Congress had been criminally slow in coming to conscription, contenting itself with an army of 400,000 men that existed "on paper." "The most distressing abuses were visible in the ill-regulated hygiene of our camps." According to this book, the Confederate Administration was solely to blame for the loss of Roanoke Island. In calling that disaster "deeply humiliating," as he did in a message to Congress, Davis was trying to shield his favorite Benjamin at the cost of gallant soldiers who had been sacrificed through his incapacity. Davis's promotion of Benjamin to the State Department was an act of "ungracious and reckless defiance of popular sentiment." The President was "not the man to consult the sentiment and wisdom of the people; he desired to signalize the infallibility of his own intellect in every measure of the revolution and to identify, from motives of vanity, his own personal genius with every event and detail of the remarkable period of history in which he had been called upon to act. This imperious conceit seemed to swallow up every other idea in his mind." The generals "fretted under this pragmatism" of one whose "vanity" directed the war "from his cushioned seat in Richmond" by means of the one formula, "the defensive policy."

One of Pollard's chief accusations against the Confederate Government was its failure to enforce the conscription law. His paper, the Examiner, as well as the Mercury, supported Davis in the policy of conscription, but both did their best, first, to rob him of the credit for it and, secondly, to make his conduct of the policy appear inefficient. Pollard claimed for the Examiner the credit of having originated the policy of conscription; the Mercury claimed it for Rhett.

In other words, an aggressive war party led by the Examiner and the Mercury had been formed in those early days when the Confederate Government appeared to be standing wholly on the defensive, and when it had failed to confide to the people the extenuating circumstance that lack of arms compelled it to stand still whether it would or no. And yet, after this Government had changed its policy and had taken up in the summer of 1862 an offensive policy, this party--or faction, or what you will--continued its career of opposition. That the secretive habit of the Confederate Government helped cement the opposition cannot be doubted. It is also likely that this opposition gave a vent to certain jealous spirits who had missed the first place in leadership.

Furthermore, the issue of state sovereignty had been raised. In Georgia a movement had begun which was distinctly different from the Virginia-Carolina movement of opposition, a movement for which Rhett and Pollard had scarcely more than disdainful tolerance, and not always that. This parallel opposition found vent, as did the other, in a political pamphlet. On the subject of conscription Davis and the Governor of Georgia--that same Joseph E. Brown who had seized Fort Pulaski in the previous year--exchanged a rancorous correspondence. Their letters were published in a pamphlet of which Pollard said scornfully that it was hawked about in every city of the South. Brown, taking alarm at the power given the Confederate Government by the Conscription Act, eventually defined his position, and that of a large following, in the extreme words: "No act of the Government of the United States prior to the secession of Georgia struck a blow at constitutional liberty so fell as has been stricken by the conscript acts."

There were other elements of discontent which were taking form as early as the autumn of 1862 but which were not yet clearly defined. But the two obvious sources of internal criticism just described were enough to disquiet the most resolute administration. When the triple offensive broke down, when the ebb-tide began, there was already everything that was needed to precipitate a political crisis. And now the question arises whether the Confederate Administration had itself to blame. Had Davis proved inadequate in his great undertaking?

The one undeniable mistake of the Government previous to the autumn of 1862 was its excessive secrecy. As to the other mistakes attributed to it at the time, there is good reason to call them misfortunes. Today we can see that the financial situation, the cotton situation, the relations with Europe, the problem of equipping the armies, were all to a considerable degree beyond the control of the Confederate Government. If there is anything to be added to its mistaken secrecy as a definite cause of irritation, it must be found in the general tone given to its actions by its chief directors. And here there is something to be said.

With all his high qualities of integrity, courage, faithfulness, and zeal, Davis lacked that insight into human life which marks the genius of the supreme executive. He was not an artist in the use of men. He had not that artistic sense of his medium which distinguishes the statesman from the bureaucrat. In fact, he had a dangerous bent toward bureaucracy. As Reuben Davis said of him, "Gifted with some of the highest attributes of a statesman, he lacked the pliancy which enables a man to adapt his measures to the crisis." Furthermore, he lacked humor; there was no safety-valve to his intense nature; and he was a man of delicate health. Mrs. Davis, describing the effects which nervous dyspepsia and neuralgia had upon him, says he would come home from his office "fasting, a mere mass of throbbing nerves, and perfectly exhausted." And it cannot be denied that his mind was dogmatic. Here are dangerous lines for the character of a leader of revolution--the bureaucratic tendency, something of rigidity, lack of humor, physical wretchedness, dogmatism. Taken together, they go far toward explaining his failure in judging men, his irritable confidence in himself.

It is no slight detail of a man's career to be placed side by side with a genius of the first rank without knowing it. But Davis does not seem ever to have appreciated that the man commanding in the Seven Days' Battles was one of the world's supreme characters. The relation between Davis and Lee was always cordial, and it brought out Davis's character in its best light. Nevertheless, so rooted was Davis's faith in his own abilities that he was capable of saying, at a moment of acutest anxiety, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from those people." And yet, his military experience embraced only the minor actions of a young officer on the Indian frontier and the gallant conduct of a subordinate in the Mexican War. He had never executed a great military design. His desire for the military life was, after all, his only ground for ranking himself with the victor of Second Manassas. Davis was also unfortunate in lacking the power to overcome men and sweep them along with him--the power Lee showed so conspicuously. Nor was Davis averse to sharp reproof of the highest officials when he thought them in the wrong. He once wrote to Joseph E. Johnston that a letter of his contained "arguments and statements utterly unfounded" and "insinuations as unfounded as they were unbecoming."

Davis was not always wise in his choice of men. His confidence in Bragg, who was long his chief military adviser, is not sustained by the military critics of a later age. His Cabinet, though not the contemptible body caricatured by the malice of Pollard, was not equal to the occasion. Of the three men who held the office of Secretary of State, Toombs and Hunter had little if any qualification for such a post, while the third, Benjamin, is the sphinx of Confederate history.

In a way, Judah P. Benjamin is one of the most interesting men in American politics. By descent a Jew, born in the West Indies, he spent his boyhood mainly at Charleston and his college days at Yale. He went to New Orleans to begin his illustrious career as a lawyer, and from Louisiana entered politics. The facile keenness of his intellect is beyond dispute. He had the Jewish clarity of thought, the wonderful Jewish detachment in matters of pure mind. But he was also an American of the middle of the century. His quick and responsive nature--a nature that enemies might call simulative--caught and reflected the characteristics of that singular and highly rhetorical age. He lives in tradition as the man of the constant smile, and yet there is no one in history whose state papers contain passages of fiercer violence in days of tension. How much of his violence was genuine, how much was a manner of speaking, his biographers have not had the courage to determine. Like so many American biographers they have avoided the awkward questions and have glanced over, as lightly as possible, the persistent attempts of Congress to drive him from office.

Nothing could shake the resolution of Davis to retain Benjamin in the Cabinet. Among Davis's loftiest qualities was his sense of personal loyalty. Once he had given his confidence, no amount of opposition could shake his will but served rather to harden him. When Benjamin as Secretary of War passed under a cloud, Davis led him forth resplendent as Secretary of State. Whether he was wise in doing so, whether the opposition was not justified in its distrust of Benjamin, is still an open question. What is certain is that both these able men, even before the crisis that arose in the autumn of 1862, had rendered themselves and their Government widely unpopular. It must never be forgotten that Davis entered office without the backing of any definite faction. He was a "dark horse," a compromise candidate. To build up a stanch following, to create enthusiasm for his Administration, was a prime necessity of his first year as President. Yet he seems not to have realized this necessity. Boldly, firmly, dogmatically, he gave his whole thought and his entire energy to organizing the Government in such a way that it could do its work efficiently. And therein may have been the proverbial rift within the lute. To Davis statecraft was too much a thing of methods and measures, too little a thing of men and passions.

During the autumn of 1862 and the following winter the disputes over the conduct of the war began to subside and two other themes became prominent: the sovereignty of the States, which appeared to be menaced by the Government, and the personality of Davis, whom malcontents regarded as a possible despot. Contrary to tradition, the first note of alarm over state rights was not struck by its great apostle Rhett, although the note was sounded in South Carolina in the early autumn. There existed in this State at that time an extra assembly called the "Convention," which had been organized in 1860 for the general purpose of seeing the State through the "revolution." In the Convention, in September, 1862, the question of a contest with the Confederate Government on the subject of a state army was definitely raised. It was proposed to organize a state army and to instruct the Legislature to "take effectual measures to prevent the agents of the Confederate Government from raising troops in South Carolina except by voluntary enlistment or by applying to the Executive of the State to call out the militia as by law organized, or some part of it to be mustered into the Confederate service." This proposal brought about a sharp debate upon the Confederate Government and its military policy. Rhett made a remarkable address, which should of itself quiet forever the old tale that he was animated in his opposition solely by the pique of a disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as ever against the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit of the state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the moment rendered the organization of such an army inopportune. A year earlier he would have strongly supported the plan. In fact, in opposition to Davis he had at that time, he said, urged an obligatory army which the States should be required to raise. The Confederate Administration, however, had defeated his scheme. Since then the situation had changed and had become so serious that now there was no choice but to submit to military necessity. He regarded the general conscription law as "absolutely necessary to save" the Confederacy "from utter devastation if not final subjugation. Right or wrong, the policy of the Administration had left us no other alternative...."

The dominant attitude in South Carolina in the autumn of 1862 is in strong contrast, because of its firm grasp upon fact, with the attitude of the Brown faction in Georgia. An extended history of the Confederate movement--one of those vast histories that delight the recluse and scare away the man of the world--would labor to build up images of what might be called the personalities of the four States that continued from the beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederate system--Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to forget that the Confederacy was practically divided into separate units as early as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a great history of the time would have a special and thrilling story of the conduct of the detached western unit, the isolated world of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas--the "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"--cut off from the main body of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army and the deep sea. Another group of States--Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama--became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, on which the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity for genuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldiers larger than its voting population.

Thus, after the loss of New Orleans, one thing with another operated to confine the area of full political life to Virginia and her three neighbors to the South. And yet even among these States there was no political solidarity or unanimity of opinion, for the differences in their past experience, social structure, and economic conditions made for distinct points of view. In South Carolina, particularly, the prevailing view was that of experienced, disillusioned men who realized from the start that secession had burnt their bridges, and that now they must win the fight or change the whole current of their lives. In the midst of the extraordinary conditions of war, they never talked as if their problems were the problems of peace. Brown, on the other hand, had but one way of reasoning--if we are to call it reasoning--and, with Hannibal at the gates, talked as if the control of the situation were still in his own hands.

While South Carolina, so grimly conscious of the reality of war and the danger of internal discord, held off from the issue of state sovereignty, the Brown faction in Georgia blithely pressed it home. A bill for extending the conscription age which was heartily advocated by the Mercury was as heartily condemned by Brown. To the President he wrote announcing his continued opposition to a law which he declared "encroaches upon the reserved rights of the State and strikes down her sovereignty at a single blow." Though the Supreme Court of Georgia pronounced the conscription acts constitutional, the Governor and his faction did not cease to condemn them. Linton Stephens, as well as his famous kinsman, took up the cudgels. In a speech before the Georgia Legislature, in November, Linton Stephens borrowed almost exactly the Governor's phraseology in denying the necessity for conscription, and this continued to be the note of their faction throughout the war. "Conscription checks enthusiasm," was ever their cry; "we are invincible under a system of volunteering, we are lost with conscription."

Meanwhile the military authorities looked facts in the face and had a different tale to tell. They complained that in various parts of the country, especially in the mountain districts, they were unable to obtain men. Lee reported that his army melted away before his eye and asked for an increase of authority to compel stragglers to return. At the same time Brown was quarreling with the Administration as to who should name the officers of the Georgia troops. Zebulon B. Vance, the newly elected Governor of North Carolina and an anti-Davis man, said to the Legislature: "It is mortifying to find entire brigades of North Carolina soldiers commanded by strangers, and in many cases our own brave and war-worn colonels are made to give place to colonels from distant States." In addition to such indications of discontent a vast mass of evidence makes plain the opposition to conscription toward the close of 1862 and the looseness of various parts of the military system.

It was a moment of intense excitement and of nervous strain. The country was unhappy, for it had lost faith in the Government at Richmond. The blockade was producing its effect. European intervention was receding into the distance. One of the characteristics of the editorials and speeches of this period is a rising tide of bitterness against England. Napoleon's proposal in November to mediate, though it came to naught, somewhat revived the hope of an eventual recognition of the Confederacy but did not restore buoyancy to the people of the South. The Emancipation Proclamation, though scoffed at as a cry of impotence, none the less increased the general sense of crisis.

Worst of all, because of its immediate effect upon the temper of the time, food was very scarce and prices had risen to indefensible heights. The army was short of shoes. In the newspapers, as winter came on, were to be found touching descriptions of Lee's soldiers standing barefoot in the snow. A flippant comment of Benjamin's, that the shoes had probably been traded for whiskey, did not tend to improve matters. Even though short of supplies themselves, the people as a whole eagerly subscribed to buy shoes for the army.

There was widespread and heartless speculation in the supplies. Months previous the Courier had made this ominous editorial remark: "Speculators and monopolists seem determined to force the people everywhere to the full exercise of all the remedies allowed by law." In August, 1862, the Governor of Florida wrote to the Florida delegation at Richmond urging them to take steps to meet the "nefarious smuggling" of speculators who charged extortionate prices. In September, he wrote again begging for legislation to compel millers, tanners, and saltmakers to offer their products at reasonable rates. As these men were exempt from military duty because their labor was held to be a public service, feeling against them ran high. Governor Vance proposed a state convention to regulate prices for North Carolina and by proclamation forbade the export of provisions in order to prevent the seeking of exorbitant prices in other markets. Davis wrote to various Governors urging them to obtain state legislation to reduce extortion in the food business. In the provisioning of the army the Confederate Government had recourse to impressment and the arbitrary fixing of prices. Though the Attorney-General held this action to be constitutional, it led to sharp contentions; and at length a Virginia court granted an injunction to a speculator who had been paid by the Government for flour less than it had cost him.

In an attempt to straighten out this tangled situation, the Confederate Government began, late in 1862, by appointing as its new Secretary of War, ¹ James A. Seddon of Virginia--at that time high in popular favor. The Mercury hailed his advent with transparent relief, for no appointment could have seemed to it more promising. Indeed, as the new year (1863) opened the Mercury was in better humor with the Administration than perhaps at any other time during the war. To the President's message it gave praise that was almost cordial. This amicable temper was short-lived, however, and three months later the heavens had clouded again, for the Government had entered upon a course that consolidated the opposition in anger and distrust.

¹ There were in all six Secretaries of War: Leroy P. Walker, until September 16, 1861; Judah P. Benjamin, until March 18, 1862; George W. Randolph, until November 17, 1862; Gustavus W. Smith (temporarily), until November 21, 1862; James A. Seddon, until February 6, 1865; General John C. Breckinridge.

Early in 1863 the Confederate Government presented to the country a program in which the main features were three. Of these the two which did not rouse immediate hostility in the party of the Examiner and the Mercury were the Impressment Act of March, 1863 (amended by successive acts), and the act known as the Tax in Kind, which was approved the following month. Though the Impressment Act subsequently made vast trouble for the Government, at the time of its passage its beneficial effects were not denied. To it was attributed by the Richmond Whig the rapid fall of prices in April, 1863. Corn went down at Richmond from $12 and $10 a bushel to $4.20, and flour dropped in North Carolina from $45 a barrel to $25. Under this act commissioners were appointed in each State jointly by the Confederate President and the Governor with the duty of fixing prices for government transactions and of publishing every two months an official schedule of the prices to be paid by the Government for the supplies which it impressed.

The new Tax Act attempted to provide revenues which should not be paid in depreciated currency. With no bullion to speak of, the Confederate Congress could not establish a circulating medium with even an approximation to constant value. Realizing this situation, Memminger had advised falling back on the ancient system of tithes and the support of the Government by direct contributions of produce. After licensing a great number of occupations and laying a property tax and an income tax, the new law demanded a tenth of the produce of all farmers. On this law the Mercury pronounced a benediction in an editorial on The Fall of Prices, which it attributed to "the healthy influence of the tax bill which has just become law." ¹

¹ The fall of prices was attributed by others to a funding act,--one of several passed by the Confederate Congress--which, in March, 1863, aimed by various devices to contract the volume of the currency. It was very generally condemned, and it anticipated the yet more drastic measure, the Funding Act of 1864, which will be described later.

Had these two measures been the whole program of the Government, the congressional session of the spring of 1863 would have had a different significance in Confederate history. But there was a third measure that provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of the Mercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bitter controversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed A Despotism over the Confederate States Proposed in Congress amounted to a declaration of war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drew steadily further and further apart and their antagonism grew steadily more relentless.

What caused this irrevocable breach was a bill introduced into the House by Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi, an old friend of President Davis. This bill would have invested the President with authority to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any part of the Confederacy, whenever in his judgment such suspension was desirable. The first act suspending the privilege of habeas corpus had long since expired and applied only to such regions as were threatened with invasion. It had served usefully under martial law in cleansing Richmond of its rogues, and also had been in force at Charleston. The Mercury had approved it and had exhorted its readers to take the matter sensibly as an inevitable detail of war. Between that act and the act now proposed the Mercury saw no similarity. Upon the merits of the question it fought a furious journalistic duel with the Enquirer, the government organ at Richmond, which insisted that President Davis would not abuse his power. The Mercury replied that if he "were a second Washington, or an angel upon earth, the degradation such a surrender of our rights implies would still be abhorrent to every freeman." In retort the Enquirer pointed out that a similar law had been enacted by another Congress with no bad results. And in point of fact the Enquirer was right, for in October, 1862, after the expiration of the first act suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, Congress passed a second giving to the President the immense power which was now claimed for him again. This second act was in force several months. Then the Mercury made the astounding declaration that it had never heard of the second act, and thereupon proceeded to attack the secrecy of the Administration with renewed vigor.

On this issue of reviving the expired second Habeas Corpus Act, a battle royal was fought in the Confederate Congress. The forces of the Administration defended the new measure on the ground that various regions were openly seditious and that conscription could not be enforced without it. This argument gave a new text for the cry of "despotism." The congressional leader of the opposition was Henry S. Foote, once the rival of Davis in Mississippi and now a citizen of Tennessee. Fierce, vindictive, sometimes convincing, always shrewd, he was a powerful leader of the rough and ready, buccaneering sort. Under his guidance the debate was diverted into a rancorous discussion of the conduct of the generals in the execution of martial law. Foote pulled out all the stops in the organ of political rhetoric and went in for a chant royal of righteous indignation. The main object of this attack was General Hindman and his doings in Arkansas. Those were still the days of pamphleteering. Though General Albert Pike had written a severe pamphlet condemning Hindman, to this pamphlet the Confederate Government had shut its eyes. Foote, however, flourished it in the face of the House. He thundered forth his belief that Hindman was worse even than the man most detested in the South, than "beast Butler himself, for the latter is only charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form, did not exist in Virginia. He alluded to a riot, ostensibly for bread, in which an Amazonian woman had led a mob to the pillaging of the Richmond jewelry shops, a riot which Davis himself had quelled by meeting the rioters and threatening to fire upon them. But sarcasm proved powerless against Foote. His climax was a lurid tale of a soldier who while marching past his own house heard that his wife was dying, who left the ranks for a last word with her, and who on rejoining the command, "hoping to get permission to bury her," was shot as a deserter. And there was no one on the Government benches to anticipate Kipling and cry out "flat art!" Resolutions condemning martial law were passed by a vote of 45 to 27.

Two weeks later the Mercury preached a burial sermon over the Barksdale Bill, which had now been rejected by the House. Congress was about to adjourn, and before it reassembled elections for the next House would be held. "The measure is dead for the present," said the Mercury, "but power is ever restive and prone to accumulate power; and if the war continues, other efforts will doubtless be made to make the President a Dictator. Let the people keep their eyes steadily fixed on their representatives with respect to this vital matter; and should the effort again be made to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, demand that a recorded vote should show those who shall strike down their liberties."