Part 5

This series of victories in some measure offset the blow the South sustained in the fall of New Orleans, and immediately thereafter the President attempted to deal with the situation in that quarter in a way which will serve to throw a strong side light upon another phase of his character. General Butler had hanged a semi-idiotic boy by the name of Munford for hauling down the flag from the mint. The act was one of impolicy, if not of wanton barbarity, and it aroused a storm of indignation throughout the South. This was, in a few days, followed by the infamous "Order No. 28," which in retaliation for snubs received at the hands of the women of New Orleans, licensed the soldiers, upon repetition of the offense, "to greet them as women of the town plying their avocation."

President Davis at once issued a proclamation declaring Butler an outlaw, and placing a price upon his head and commanding that no commissioned officer of the United States should be exchanged until the culprit should meet with due punishment. The officers in Butler's army were also declared to be felons, their exchange was prohibited and they were ordered to be treated as common criminals.

As to the justice of the proclamation so far as it related to Butler himself few North or South at this day who have read "Order No. 28" will be inclined to question. But to attempt to attain to the officers of a numerous army with the guilt of a personal act of its commander must, upon due reflection, have appeared as absurd to the President as it did to the rest of the country. As a matter of fact the proclamation was never attempted to be executed although abundant chances were presented, and it is very probable that had Butler himself fallen into the hands of the Confederates he would have had nothing worse than imprisonment to fear had his fate been left to the President.

Mr. Davis, as we all know, issued some very sanguinary proclamations in his time, but they were altogether sound and fury, "signifying nothing," and not one of them was ever enforced. He no doubt hoped that their terrible aspect would operate as a deterrent and no doubt they did at first. But gradually their seriousness came to be questioned and then they became a subject of amusement to both friend and foe. During his most eventful administration, although hundreds of death warrants of criminals, who richly deserved the extreme punishment, came before him he never signed one of them or permitted an execution when he had the slightest opportunity to interfere.

This, of course, was charged by Pollard and other enemies to his desire to save himself, in the event the Confederacy should fail, but no motive could have been further from the correct one than this view of the case. The truth is that Jefferson Davis was as kindly, tender, gentle and considerate as a woman, and it was quite impossible for him to assume the responsibility of inflicting serious punishment or suffering of any kind upon any of God's creatures, human or otherwise. Had he hanged a few prisoners upon one or two occasions, it would have been of inestimable benefit to the South; had he executed one or two deserters in 1864, he would at once have checked an evil which was threatening the very existence of the Confederacy, but he did neither, although fully realizing the impolicy of his course. And whatever we may think of his strength of character we can but love the man whose humanity triumphed over passions, prejudice, policy and wisdom and brought him through those awful times that frightfully developed the savage instinct in the best of men without the taint of bloodshed upon his conscience.

XXII. Mental Imperfections

History must finally charge all of Mr. Davis' blunders to no moral defective sense but rather to imperfect mental conceptions augmented and intensified by a strong infusion of self-confidence and stubbornness which frequently destroyed the perspective and blinded him to the truth apparent to other men of far less capacity. Criticism, however well meant, never enlightened him to his own mistakes.

If he made a bad appointment, he saw in the objection to his protege ignorance of his merit, jealousy, a disposition to persecute, in fact anything rather than the possibility that he himself might have made a mistake.

This unfortunate mental attitude, combined with the fixed idea that his genius was that of the soldier was responsible for the most unfortunate acts of his life. What his real merits as a soldier were we can only conjecture. In the Mexican War he demonstrated first-rate ability, but his highest command was that of a regiment. Although he constantly interfered with some of his generals with suggestions, sometimes tantamount to commands, he never exercised the military prerogative in directing troops in the field. We know that those suggestions were often wrong, but before concluding that his capacity as an active commander must be determined by them, we must remember that they were given usually at a great distance, and that they might have been otherwise had he understood the situation as thoroughly as he supposed he did. There is probably no doubt that he would have proved a splendid brigade commander, but it is more than doubtful if he could ever have understood the science of war as Lee or Johnston or Jackson knew it.

In Virginia, where President Davis did not attempt to interfere with his generals, the most brilliant triumphs of the South were won, and while this is not assigned as the only reason, the fact is nevertheless significant. From second Manassas, where the vain, boastful General Pope, who had won notoriety at Shiloh by reporting the capture of 10,000 Confederates whom he must also have eaten as they never figured in parol, prison or exchange lists--was annihilated by Jackson, to the brilliant victory of Chancellorsville where the great soldier sealed his faith with his life-blood, the army of Northern Virginia was handled with that consummate generalship and displayed a degree of heroism which must ever challenge the admiration of mankind as the most perfect fighting machine in the world's history.

XXIII. Blunders of the Western Army

During this time the Western army suffered one disaster after another in such rapid succession that the warmest friends of the Confederacy began to despair of its future. Thoroughly alarmed. President Davis overcame his animosity sufficiently to send General Johnston to the rescue, but instead of giving him full authority over one or both of the armies he designated him as the commander of a geographical department with little more than the power usually invested in an inspector general.

Bragg, the most unfortunate of all the Southern generals, commanded in Tennessee, where he was out-generaled and defeated at Murfreesboro when he held all of the winning cards in his own hands. His blunders upon that field so enraged his officers that they were almost in revolt against him. However, in his fidelity to his old friend and comrade, Mr. Davis failed to discover what was evident to every intelligent lieutenant in the army, and Bragg was continued in command to perpetrate other blunders still more costly and unpardonable.

The Southern corps of the Western army was still worse handled. The Mississippi River, after the fall of New Orleans and Memphis, was of little or no use to the Confederacy, but Mr. Davis conceived the idea that it must be defended although that course, necessarily would weaken Bragg and render success impossible to either corps.

To the command of the Southern corps, Mr. Davis appointed General Pemberton, a theoretical soldier who it was alleged had never witnessed any considerable engagement. However this may be, his conduct fully sustained the allegation, for, from start to finish, he seems to have been mystified by the tactics of Grant and Sherman, and after a series of marches and countermarches in which he lost much and gained nothing he fell back on Vicksburg, perhaps the most indefensible city in America, and prepared to sustain a siege, the outcome of which could not be doubtful for a moment.

Being safely driven into a position from which there was but one line of retreat, Pemberton appealed to the President for aid, and General Johnston was instructed to furnish it. His soldierly mind saw at a glance that the proper thing to do was to abandon Vicksburg, and he accordingly ordered Pemberton to do so. That officer protested and appealed to Mr. Davis, who sustained him and notified Johnston that under no circumstances must Vicksburg be abandoned. That decision sealed the fate of Pemberton's army, and on the day General Grant invested it he telegraphed to Washington that its fall was only a question of time. How that prediction was verified by the surrender of Pemberton's army of 30,000 men, thus leaving Grant and Sherman free to double back on Bragg, are too well known to need any discussion at this time. All thinking men realized that it sealed the doom of the Confederacy unless the Northern campaign of General Lee should prove successful.

XXIV. Davis and Gettysburg

The conception of the Gettysburg campaign has been properly attributed to Mr. Davis, but much of the criticism that it has evoked is unfair being based upon a misconception of the object sought to be attained. If one will consider the moral effect that the victory of Chancellorsville produced throughout the North, that many influential leaders and a large part of the press openly declared that another such calamity must be followed by the recognition of the Confederacy, the idea of this Northern campaign, it must be conceded, was founded upon sound military principles. Military critics are very generally agreed that Gettysburg would have been a Confederate instead of a Union victory had the Southern troops occupied Little Round Top on the evening of the first day. That they did not is a fortuitous circumstance, which can militate nothing against the soundness of the idea involved in the campaign, while the fact that a victory so great as to have been decisive lay within easy grasp of the Confederates would seem to amply justify the hazard on the part of President Davis.

The last reasonable hope of success was over when Lee retreated from Pennsylvania, but if Mr. Davis recognized that fact he gave no indication of it. On the other hand, adversity had begun to develop that real strength of character which a little later was destined to win the respect of his enemies and the admiration of the rest of the world.

Confederate finances had now sunk to so low an ebb that a collapse seemed inevitable. Congress passed one futile piece of legislation after another, each worse than its predecessor, and matters went from bad to worse with startling rapidity. Mr. Davis was not a financier, but he brought forward a plan which, while it laid perhaps the heaviest burden of taxation ever placed upon a people, nevertheless served for a time to stem the fast rising tide of national bankruptcy.

About the same time, deeply impressed with the suffering of Federal prisoners caused by the cruel policy of refusing exchanges, he attempted to send Vice-President Stephens to Washington to negotiate a general cartel with President Lincoln, but Stephens was allowed to proceed no farther than Fortress Monroe, and nothing came of the mission which was conceived by Mr. Davis purely in the interest of humanity.

As the fall drew on, Bragg was being pressed steadily back by an overwhelming force under Rosecrans, and it became apparent that another disaster was impending over the Confederacy. To avert it President Davis hurried Longstreet's corps forward as reinforcements, a policy the soundness of which was demonstrated a little later by the great victory of Chickamauga.

But again Bragg failed to measure up to the situation, and instead of capturing or destroying his antagonist, which a prompt pursuit must have insured, he actually refused to understand that he had won a victory until its fruits were beyond his reach. Not even that costly piece of stupidity could quite shake the confidence of the President in his old friend, and it was not until Bragg had insured and received his own disastrous defeat at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, by sending Longstreet's whole corps away on a wild-goose chase against Knoxville, that his resignation was accepted; and even then he was taken to Richmond and duly installed as the military adviser of the Chief Executive.

The fortunes of the Confederacy were now at a low ebb. The Western army was demoralized and so hopeless seemed the task of reorganization that one general after another refused to undertake it, until in his dilemma the President turned once more to General Johnston. That splendid soldier, forgetting past injuries, accepted the command and soon succeeded in creating an army whose very existence infused new courage throughout the Confederacy. In the meantime, Mr. Davis' resolution rose superior over the reverses that were everywhere overwhelming his government, and our admiration for the man vastly increases as we see him steering, wisely now, his foundering nation into that dark year 1864, destined to reveal to us a great man growing greater, better and more lovable under the heavy accumulation of terrible misfortune.

XXV. The Chief of a Heroic People

The world has never witnessed a more sublime spectacle than that presented by the Southern people at the beginning of 1864. The finances of the government had gone from bad to worse until it required a bursting purse to purchase a dinner. Or, rather it would have done so had the dinner been procurable at all, which in most cases it was not. Gaunt famine stalked through a desolate land scarred by the remains of destroyed homes and drenched in the blood of its best manhood. Scarcely a home had escaped the besom of death and destruction, and, on the lordly domains where once a prodigal and princely hospitality had been daily dispensed, children cried in vain for the bread that the broken-hearted mother could no longer give. That such terrific desolation should have failed to force submission is almost beyond understanding, but it produced exactly the opposite result.

Delicately nurtured women, reared in ease and luxury, cheerfully chose to starve in thread-bare garments while they sent their silver and jewels to the government to enable it to continue the struggle. They bade their husbands and sons and brothers to remain at the front and never sheathe their swords unless in an honorable peace; and forthwith the stripling of tender years and the gray-bearded grandsire, bowed with the infirmities of time, went forth to perform prodigies of valor upon the last sanguinary fields of the dying Confederacy.

The President of the Confederacy was too wise a man not to realize the significance of the situation at that time. He fully realized the awful suffering of his people. He saw his armies driven from the West, the lines of the Confederacy daily contracting. He saw the last hope of foreign intervention die and he witnessed the birth, even in the government, of a strong spirit of hostility to himself. What this must have meant to a man of his sensitive, kindly nature we may readily guess, but to the world his attitude was most admirable. Calm, resolute, majestic he stood at the helm, steering the foundering craft of state through the last storm as steadily, as resolutely as though he knew a haven of safety instead of destruction to lie just beyond.

Early in 1864 it became apparent that such an effort as had never been made before to crush the Confederacy was impending. General Grant was transferred to the East, and early in the spring with a magnificent army of 162,000 began his advance upon Richmond. The great Confederate chieftain, Lee, with a force one-third as great confronted him, and then began that mighty duel which must always remain the wonder and admiration of the world. In the Wilderness Lee struck a staggering blow, which halted the advance and doubled up the Federal army. Grant announced that he proposed to fight it out on that line if it took all summer, straightened his lines and began the campaign, which one may more readily understand if he will imagine some Titan armed with a ponderous hammer, confronting a wily, agile antagonist, who must rely upon a rapier sharp, indeed, but slender to a dangerous degree. Incessantly through those spring days the forests rang with the clamor of blows. At Culpepper and Spottsylvania and North Anna the hammer fell and was parried by the rapier, Grant always moving by the flank and seeking to out-maneuver his antagonist and always failing to do so. By June, the two armies in their side-stepping tactics had reached Cold Harbor, where Grant in a great frontal attack lost 13,000 men in a few moments, which must have convinced him that it would take longer than all summer to fight it out on that line, as he then and there abandoned it and adopted a new one. In three months he had lost 150,000 men and was not so near Richmond as McClellan had been in 1862.

XXVI. Sherman and Johnston

In the meantime that campaign which was destined to place Sherman and Johnston in the very front rank of the world's great commanders, was in progress. Both were masters of military strategy and each fully appreciated the ability of the other. Sherman ever seeking to draw Johnston into a pitched battle was constantly thwarted. At Dalton, Resaca and Marietta Johnston delivered hard blows, falling back before his antagonist could use his superior numbers to any advantage.

By this means he reached Atlanta with a larger army than he had in the beginning of the campaign, while that of Sherman had decreased from one hundred to little more than fifty thousand. Johnston's tactics of wearing out the enemy by drawing him through a hostile country away from his base of supplies is now admitted by military critics to have been a piece of masterly strategy. It is also generally conceded that Sherman could not have captured Atlanta by siege with three times his force. But although Johnston had repulsed every assault upon his works and was daily growing stronger, President Davis was greatly displeased with this defensive policy and constantly importuned him to give battle. This Johnston refused to do and was relieved of the command by the President, who appointed General Hood, whom he declared "would at least deliver one manly blow for the South."

In so far as the delivery of the blow was concerned he was destined not to be disappointed, but very greatly so in the result.

The very day that he took command, Hood, a brave, impetuous man of slight ability and poor judgment, left his works, furiously assaulted Sherman, and was promptly cut to pieces. The Confederate army was practically annihilated, and the fall of Atlanta made certain the success of that famous march to the sea which alone would have doomed the Confederacy.

General Johnston, too great to cherish resentment, once more yielded to the appeals of the President and took command of the shattered army. But the time had passed when he might have accomplished any substantial results and henceforth even his genius could not serve to postpone the end.

XXVII. Mr. Davis' Humanity

In the meantime, amidst these disasters and the gloomy forebodings that were settling over the South, Mr. Davis did not forget the sufferings of the army of captives that languished in Southern prisons. Time and again he had sought to establish a cartel for the exchange of all prisoners but it had never been faithfully observed by the Federal government, and at last General Grant had refused to exchange upon any terms, declaring that to do so would ensue the defeat of Sherman's army. The result was that the Southern prisons were rapidly filled, and as supplies and medicines failed, the sufferings in some places, notably Andersonville, became intense. The prisoners were placed upon the same rations as the Confederate soldiers, but they had never been used to such fare and it meant starvation to them. The ravages of malaria among them was appalling, and yet as the Federal government had made quinine contraband of war not an ounce of it could be procured for their use.

Mr. Davis, whose strongest trait of character was gentleness and humanity, felt keenly this state of affairs, and sought by every power at his command to ameliorate it. When the proposition to exchange was rejected, he asked that medicines and supplies be sent for the exclusive use of Northern prisoners. When that was refused, he asked that doctors and nurses be furnished from the Federal army. That also failing, and the condition of the sufferers at Andersonville growing worse he finally offered to liberate them provided the government would take them out of the South--a proposition which was not accepted until after many months of useless delay which cost thousands of lives.

Thus it will be seen how baseless was that calumny which yet survives in some quarters that Jefferson Davis was responsible for the sufferings of those poor unfortunates who in reality were sacrificed by an indifferent government, which feared to recruit the ranks of the Confederate army by the exchange of prisoners although such a course was dictated by the laws of civilized warfare no less than by motives of humanity. In reality Mr. Davis did far more than required by the laws of nations, and the verdict of history not only acquits him of any share in that great iniquity, but places him in marked contrast to his antagonists who chose to sacrifice their soldiers rather than jeopardize the prospects of an early final victory.

The brilliant victory of Colquitt at Ocean Pond, of Forest at Fort Pillow, and other minor successes gained by the Confederate leaders added scarcely a transient ray of hope. Clouds of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night, marked the advance of Sherman through Georgia. The most fruitful region of the South was left a charred and desolate ruin. Tilly, the Duke of Alva, nor Wallenstein ever left destruction so complete and irremediable as that which marked the path of that great soldier who declared war was hell and fully lived up to that harsh conviction.

After the fall of Savannah, the blue legions now irresistible, turned northward, and it became apparent that the vitals of the Confederacy lay between the two huge iron jaws of Grant's and Sherman's armies which were closing with a steady force that nothing could resist.

Day and night Grant rained his mighty sledge-hammer blows upon the defenses of the devoted capital, which Lee met and parried with the skill of consummate military genius. But the blade of the rapier was growing thinner and the time must come when it would break. Holding works forty miles in length with less than a thousand soldiers to the mile, he inflicted repulse after repulse until the Southern people came to regard him as invincible.

Even Mr. Davis, who was now almost constantly with his great Captain, seems to have shared the delusion, and despite his warnings that the end must soon come delayed his departure from Richmond.