THE DAY OF THE CONFEDERACY, A CHRONICLE OF THE EMBATTLED SOUTH

By Nathaniel W. Stephenson

Volume 30 In The Chronicles of America Series

New Haven: Yale University Press

Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. 

London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press

1919

CONTENTS

 I. THE SECESSION MOVEMENT

 II. THE DAVIS GOVERNMENT

 III. THE FALL OF KING COTTON

 IV. THE REACTION AGAINST RICHMOND

 V. THE CRITICAL YEAR

 VI. LIFE IN THE CONFEDERACY

 VII. THE TURNING OF THE TIDE

 VIII. A GAME OF CHANCE

 IX. DESPERATE REMEDIES

 X. DISINTEGRATION

 XI. AN ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION

 XII. THE LAST WORD

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE DAY OF THE CONFEDERACY

Chapter I. The Secession Movement

The secession movement had three distinct stages. The first, beginningwith the news that Lincoln was elected, closed with the news, sentbroadcast over the South from Charleston, that Federal troops had takenpossession of Fort Sumter on the night of the 28th of December. Duringthis period the likelihood of secession was the topic of discussionin the lower South. What to do in case the lower South seceded was thequestion which perplexed the upper South. In this period no Statenorth of South Carolina contemplated taking the initiative. In theSoutheastern and Gulf States immediate action of some sort was expected. Whether it would be secession or some other new course was not certainon the day of Lincoln's election. Various States earlier in the year hadprovided for conventions of their people in the event of a Republicanvictory. The first to assemble was the convention of South Carolina, which organized at Columbia, on December 17, 1860. Two weeks earlierCongress had met. Northerners and Southerners had at once joined issueon their relation in the Union. The House had appointed its committeeof thirty-three to consider the condition of the country. So unpromisingindeed from the Southern point of view had been the early discussionsof this committee that a conference of Southern members of Congresshad sent out their famous address To Our Constituents: "The argument isexhausted. All hope of relief in the Union. . . Is extinguished, and wetrust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretenseof new guarantees. In our judgment the Republicans are resolute in thepurpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. Weare satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern peoplerequire the organization of a Southern Confederacy--a result to beobtained only by separate state secession. " Among the signers of thisaddress were the two statesmen who had in native talent no superiorsat Washington--Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana and Jefferson Davis ofMississippi. 

The appeal To Our Constituents was not the only assurance of supporttendered to the convention of South Carolina. To represent them atthis convention the governors of Alabama and Mississippi had appointeddelegates. Mr. Hooker of Mississippi and Mr. Elmore of Alabama madeaddresses before the convention on the night of the 17th of December. Both reiterated views which during two days of lobbying they haddisseminated in Columbia "on all proper occasions. " Their argument, summed up in Elmore's report to Governor Moore of Alabama, was "thatthe only course to unite the Southern States in any plan of cooperationwhich could promise safety was for South Carolina to take the lead andsecede at once without delay or hesitation. . . That the only effectiveplan of cooperation must ensue after one State had seceded and presentedthe issue when the plain question would be presented to the otherSouthern States whether they would stand by the seceding State engagedin a common cause or abandon her to the fate of coercion by the arms ofthe Government of the United States. "

Ten years before, in the unsuccessful secession movement of 1850 and1851, Andrew Pickens Butler, perhaps the ablest South Carolinian thenliving, strove to arrest the movement by exactly the opposite argument. Though desiring secession, he threw all his weight against it becausethe rest of the South was averse. He charged his opponents, whose leaderwas Robert Barnwell Rhett, with aiming to place the other SouthernStates "in such circumstances that, having a common destiny, they wouldbe compelled to be involved in a common sacrifice. " He protested that"to force a sovereign State to take a position against its consent isto make of it a reluctant associate. . . . Both interest and honor mustrequire the Southern States to take council together. "

That acute thinker was now in his grave. The bold enthusiast whomhe defeated in 1851 had now no opponent that was his match. No greatpersonality resisted the fiery advocates from Alabama and Mississippi. Their advice was accepted. On December 20, 1860, the cause that tenyears before had failed was successful. The convention, having adjournedfrom Columbia to Charleston, passed an ordinance of secession. 

Meanwhile, in Georgia, at a hundred meetings, the secession issue wasbeing hotly discussed. But there was not yet any certainty which way thescale would turn. An invitation from South Carolina to join in a generalSouthern convention had been declined by the Governor in November. Governor Brown has left an account ascribing the comparative coolnessand deliberation of the hour to the prevailing impression that PresidentBuchanan had pledged himself not to alter the military status atCharleston. In an interview between South Carolina representatives andthe President, the Carolinians understood that such a pledge was given. "It was generally understood by the country, " says Governor Brown, "thatsuch an agreement. . . Had been entered Into. . . And that Governor Floydof Virginia, then Secretary of War, had expressed his determinationto resign his position in the Cabinet in case of the refusal of thePresident to carry out the agreement in good faith. The resignation ofGovernor Floyd was therefore naturally looked upon, should it occur, as a signal given to the South that reinforcements were to be sent toCharleston and that the coercive policy had been adopted by the FederalGovernment. "

While the "canvass in Georgia for members of the State convention wasprogressing with much interest on both sides, " there came suddenly thenews that Anderson had transferred his garrison from Fort Moultrie tothe island fortress of Sumter. That same day commissioners from SouthCarolina, newly arrived at Washington, sought in vain to persuade thePresident to order Anderson back to Moultrie. The Secretary of War madethe subject an issue before the Cabinet. Unable to carry his point, twodays later he resigned. *

 * The President had already asked for Floyd's resignation because of financial irregularities, and Floyd was shrewd enough to use Anderson's coup as an excuse for resigning. See Rhodes, "History of the United States, " vol. II pp. 225, 236 (note). 

The Georgia Governor, who had not hitherto been in the front rank ofthe aggressives, now struck a great blow. Senator Toombs had telegraphedfrom Washington that Fort Pulaski, guarding the Savannah River, was "indanger. " The Governor had reached the same conclusion. He mustered thestate militia and seized Fort Pulaski. Early in the morning on January3, 1861, the fort was occupied by Georgia troops. Shortly afterward, Brown wrote to a commissioner sent by the Governor of Alabama to conferwith him: "While many of our most patriotic and intelligent citizens inboth States have doubted the propriety of immediate secession, I feelquite confident that recent events have dispelled those doubts fromthe minds of most men who have, till within the past few days, honestlysustained them. " The first stage of the secession movement was at anend; the second had begun. 

A belief that Washington had entered upon a policy of aggression sweptthe lower South. The state conventions assembling about this time passedordinances of secession--Mississippi, January 9; Florida, January 10;Alabama, January 11; Georgia, January 19; Louisiana, January 26; Texas, February 1. But this result was not achieved without considerableopposition. In Georgia the Unionists put up a stout fight. The issuewas not upon the right to secede--virtually no one denied the right--butupon the wisdom of invoking the right. Stephens, gloomy and pessimistic, led the opposition. Toombs came down from Washington to take part withthe secessionists. From South Carolina and Alabama, both ceaselesslyactive for secession, commissioners appeared to lobby at Milledgeville, as commissioners of Alabama and Mississippi had lobbied at Columbia. Besides the out-and-out Unionists, there were those who wanted totemporize, to threaten the North, and to wait for developments. Themotion on which these men and the Unionists made their last standtogether went against them 164 to 133. Then at last came the squarequestion: Shall we secede? Even on this question, the minoritywas dangerously large. Though the temporizers came over to thesecessionists, and with them came Stephens, there was still a minorityof 89 irreconcilables against the majority numbering 208. 

"My allegiance, " said Stephens afterwards, "was, as I considered it, notdue to the United States, or to the people of the United States, but toGeorgia, in her sovereign capacity. Georgia had never parted with herright to demand the ultimate allegiance of her citizens. "

The attempt in Georgia to restrain impetuosity and advance withdeliberation was paralleled in Alabama, where also the aggressiveswere determined not to permit delay. In the Alabama convention, theconservatives brought forward a plan for a general Southern conventionto be held at Nashville in February. It was rejected by a vote of 54to 45. An attempt to delay secession until after the 4th of March wasdefeated by the same vote. 

The determination of the radicals to precipitate the issue receivedinteresting criticism from the Governor of Texas, old Sam Houston. To acommissioner from Alabama who was sent out to preach the cause in Texasthe Governor wrote, in substance, that since Alabama would not wait toconsult the people of Texas he saw nothing to discuss at that time, andhe went on to say:

Recognizing as I do the fact that the sectional tendencies of the BlackRepublican party call for determined constitutional resistance at thehands of the united South, I also feel that the million and a half ofnoble-hearted, conservative men who have stood by the South, even tothis hour, deserve some sympathy and support. Although we have lost theday, we have to recollect that our conservative Northern friends castover a quarter of a million more votes against the Black Republicansthan we of the entire South. I cannot declare myself ready to desertthem as well as our Southern brethren of the border (and such, Ibelieve, will be the sentiment of Texas) until at least one firm attempthas been made to preserve our constitutional rights within the Union. 

Nevertheless, Houston was not able to control his State. Delegates fromTexas attended the later sessions of a general Congress of the secedingStates which, on the invitation of Alabama, met at Montgomery on the 4thof February. A contemporary document of singular interest today is theseries of resolutions adopted by the Legislature of North Carolina, setting forth that, as the State was a member of the Federal Union, itcould not accept the invitation of Alabama but should send delegatesfor the purpose of persuading the South to effect a readjustment on thebasis of the Crittenden Compromise as modified by the Legislature ofVirginia. The commissioners were sent, were graciously received, wereaccorded seats in the Congress, but they exerted no influence on thecourse of its action. 

The Congress speedily organized a provisional Government for theConfederate States of America. The Constitution of the United States, rather hastily reconsidered, became with a few inevitable alterationsthe Constitution of the Confederacy. * Davis was unanimously electedPresident; Stephens, Vice-President. Provision was made for raising anarmy. Commissioners were dispatched to Washington to negotiate a treatywith the United States; other commissioners were sent to Virginia toattempt to withdraw that great commonwealth from the Union. 

 * To the observer of a later age this document appears a thing of haste. Like the framers of the Constitution of 1787, who omitted from their document some principles which they took for granted, the framers of 1861 left unstated their most distinctive views. The basal idea upon which the revolution proceeded, the right of secession, is not to be found in the new Constitution. Though the preamble declares that the States are acting in their sovereign and independent character, the new Confederation is declared "permanent. " In the body of the document are provisions similar to those in the Federal Constitution enabling a majority of two-thirds of the States to amend at their pleasure, thus imposing their will upon the minority. With three notable exceptions the new Constitution, subsequent to the preamble, does little more than restate the Constitution of 1787 rearranged so as to include those basal principles of the English law added to the earlier Constitution by the first eight amendments. The three exceptions are the prohibitions (1) of the payment of bounties, (2) of the levying of duties to promote any one form of industry, and (3) of appropriations for internal improvements. Here was a monument to the battle over these matters in the Federal Congress. As to the mechanism of the new Government it was the same as the old except for a few changes of detail. The presidential term was lengthened to six years and the President was forbidden to succeed himself. The President was given the power to veto items in appropriation bills. The African slave-trade was prohibited. 

The upper South was thus placed in a painful situation. Its sympathieswere with the seceding States. Most of its people felt also that ifcoercion was attempted, the issue would become for Virginia and NorthCarolina, no less than for South Carolina and Alabama, simply a matterof self-preservation. As early as January, in the exciting days whenFloyd's resignation was being interpreted as a call to arms, theVirginia Legislature had resolved that it would not consent to thecoercion of a seceding State. In May the Speaker of the North CarolinaLegislature assured a commissioner from Georgia that North Carolinawould never consent to the movement of troops "from or across" the Stateto attack a seceding State. But neither Virginia nor North Carolinain this second stage of the movement wanted to secede. They wanted topreserve the Union, but along with the Union they wanted the principleof local autonomy. It was a period of tense anxiety in those States ofthe upper South. The frame of mind of the men who loved the Union butwho loved equally their own States and were firm for local autonomy issummed up in a letter in which Mrs. Robert E. Lee describes the anguishof her husband as he confronted the possibility of a divided country. 

The real tragedy of the time lay in the failure of the advocates ofthese two great principles--each so necessary to a far-flung democraticcountry in a world of great powers!--the failure to coordinate themso as to insure freedom at home and strength abroad. The principle forwhich Lincoln stood has saved Americans in the Great War from playingsuch a trembling part as that of Holland. The principle which seemedto Lee even more essential, which did not perish at Appomattox butwas transformed and not destroyed, is what has kept us from becoming awestern Prussia. And yet if only it had been possible to coordinate thetwo without the price of war! It was not possible because of the storedup bitterness of a quarter century of recrimination. But Virginia madea last desperate attempt to preserve the Union by calling the PeaceConvention. It assembled at Washington the day the Confederate Congressmet at Montgomery. Though twenty-one States sent delegates, it was nomore able to effect a working scheme of compromise than was the Housecommittee of thirty-three or the Senate committee of thirteen, both ofwhich had striven, had failed, and had gone their ways to a place in thegreat company of historic futilities. 

And so the Peace Convention came and went, and there was no consolationfor the troubled men of the upper South who did not want to secede butwere resolved not to abandon local autonomy. Virginia was the key to thesituation. If Virginia could be forced into secession, the rest of theupper South would inevitably follow. Therefore a Virginia hothead, RogerA. Pryor, being in Charleston in those wavering days, poured out hisheart in fiery words, urging a Charleston crowd to precipitate war, inthe certainty that Virginia would then have to come to their aid. Whenat last Sumter was fired upon and Lincoln called for volunteers, thesecond stage of the secession movement ended in a thunderclap. The thirdperiod was occupied by the second group of secessions: Virginia on the17th of April, North Carolina and Arkansas during May, Tennessee earlyin June. 

Sumter was the turning-point. The boom of the first cannon trained onthe island fortress deserves all the rhetoric it has inspired. Who wasimmediately responsible for that firing which was destiny? Ultimateresponsibility is not upon any person. War had to be. If Sumter had notbeen the starting-point, some other would have been found. Neverthelessthe question of immediate responsibility, of whose word it was thatserved as the signal to begin, has produced an historic controversy. 

When it was known at Charleston that Lincoln would attempt to provisionthe fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter tothe Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session atMontgomery, hesitated--drawn between the wish to keep their hold uponthe moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and thedesire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary ofState in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolutionand came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. . . . It isunnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal, " said he. But theCabinet and the President decided to take the risk. To General PierreBeauregard, recently placed in command of the militia assembled atCharleston, word was sent to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. 

On Thursday, the 7th of April, besides his instructions fromMontgomery, Beauregard was in receipt of a telegram from the Confederatecommissioners at Washington, repeating newspaper statements that theFederal relief expedition intended to land a force "which will overcomeall opposition. " There seems no doubt that Beauregard did not believethat the expedition was intended merely to provision Sumter. Probablyevery one in Charleston thought that the Federal authorities were tryingto deceive them, that Lincoln's promise not to do more than provisionSumter was a mere blind. Fearfulness that delay might render Sumterimpregnable lay back of Beauregard's formal demand, on the 11th ofApril, for the surrender of the fort. Anderson refused but "made someverbal observations" to the aides who brought him the demand. In effecthe said that lack of supplies would compel him to surrender by thefifteenth. When this information was taken back to the city, eagercrowds were in the streets of Charleston discussing the report that abombardment would soon begin. But the afternoon passed; night fell; andnothing was done. On the beautiful terrace along the sea known as EastBattery, people congregated, watching the silent fortress whose brickwalls rose sheer from the midst of the harbor. The early hours of thenight went by and as midnight approached and still there was no flashfrom either the fortress or the shore batteries which threatened it, thecrowds broke up. 

Meanwhile there was anxious consultation at the hotel where Beauregardhad fixed his headquarters. Pilots came in from the sea to report to theGeneral that a Federal vessel had appeared off the mouth of the harbor. This news may well explain the hasty dispatch of a second expedition toSumter in the middle of the night. At half after one, Friday morning, four young men, aides of Beauregard, entered the fort. Anderson repeatedhis refusal to surrender at once but admitted that he would have tosurrender within three days. Thereupon the aides held a council of war. They decided that the reply was unsatisfactory and wrote out a briefnote which they handed to Anderson informing him that the Confederateswould open "fire upon Fort Sumter in one hour from this time. " The notewas dated 3:20 A. M. The aides then proceeded to Fort Johnston on thesouth side of the harbor and gave the order to fire. 

The council of the aides at Sumter is the dramatic detail that hascaught the imagination of historians and has led them, at least in somecases, to yield to a literary temptation. It is so dramatic--thatscene of the four young men holding in their hands, during a momentof absolute destiny, the fate of a people; four young men, in theirresponsible ardor of youth, refusing to wait three days and forcingwar at the instant! It is so dramatic that one cannot judge harshlythe artistic temper which is unable to reject it. But is the incidenthistoric? Did the four young men come to Sumter without definiteinstructions? Was their conference really anything more than a carefulcomparing of notes to make sure they were doing what they were intendedto do? Is not the real clue to the event a message from Beauregard tothe Secretary of War telling of his interview with the pilots? *

 * A chief authority for the dramatic version of the council of the aides is that fiery Virginian, Roger A. Pryor. He and another accompanied the official messengers, the signers of the note to Anderson, James Chestnut and Stephen Lee. Years afterwards Pryor told the story of the council in a way to establish its dramatic significance. But would there be anything strange if a veteran survivor, looking back to his youth, as all of us do through more or less of mirage yielded to the unconscious artist that is in us all and dramatized this event unaware?

Dawn was breaking gray, with a faint rain in the air, when the firstboom of the cannon awakened the city. Other detonations followed inquick succession. Shells rose into the night from both sides of theharbor and from floating batteries. How lightly Charleston slept thatnight may be inferred from the accounts in the newspapers. "At thereport of the first gun, " says the Courier, "the city was nearly emptiedof its inhabitants who crowded the Battery and the wharves to witnessthe conflict. "

The East Battery and the lower harbor of the lovely city of Charlestonhave been preserved almost without alteration. What they are today theywere in the breaking dawn on April 12, 1861. Business has gone up therivers between which Charleston lies and has left the point of thecity's peninsula, where East Battery looks outward to the Atlantic, in its perfect charm. There large houses, pillared, with high piazzas, stand apart one from another among gardens. With few exceptions theywere built before the middle of the century and all, with one exception, show the classical taste of those days. The mariner, entering thespacious inner sea that is Charleston Harbor, sights this row of statelymansions even before he crosses the bar seven miles distant. Holdingstraight onward up into the land he heads first for the famous littleisland where, nowadays, in their halo of thrilling recollection, thewalls of Sumter, rising sheer from the bosom of the water, drowse idle. Close under the lee of Sumter, the incoming steersman brings his shipabout and chooses, probably, the eastward of two huge tentacles of thesea between which lies the city's long but narrow peninsula. To thesteersman it shows a skyline serrated by steeples, fronted by sea, flanked southward by sea, backgrounded by an estuary, and looped aboutby a sickle of wooded islands. This same scene, so far as city andnature go, was beheld by the crowds that swarmed East Battery, aflagstone marine parade along the seaward side of the boulevard thatfaces Sumter; that filled the windows and even the housetops; thatwatched the bombardment with the eagerness of an audience in anamphitheater; that applauded every telling shot with clapping of handsand waving of shawls and handkerchiefs. The fort lay distant fromthem about three miles, but only some fifteen hundred yards from FortJohnston on one side and about a mile from Fort Moultrie on the other. From both of these latter, the cannon of those days were equal to thetask of harassing Sumter. Early in the morning of the 12th of April, though not until broad day had come, did Anderson make reply. All thatday, at first under heavily rolling cloud and later through curiouslymisty sunshine, the fire and counterfire continued. "The enthusiasm andfearlessness of the spectators, " says the Charleston Mercury, "knew nobounds. " Reckless observers even put out in small boats and roamed aboutthe harbor almost under the guns of the fort. Outside the bar, vesselsof the relieving squadron were now visible, and to these Andersonsignaled for aid. They made an attempt to reach the fort, but only partof the squadron had arrived; and the vessels necessary to raise thesiege were not there. The attempt ended in failure. When night came, astring of rowboats each carrying a huge torch kept watch along the barto guard against surprise from the sea. 

On that Friday night the harbor was swept by storm. But in spite oftorrents of rain East Battery and the rooftops were thronged. "The windwas inshore and the booming was startlingly distinct. " At the heightof the bombardment, the sky above Sumter seemed to be filled with theflashes of bursting shells. But during this wild night Sumter itself wasboth dark and silent. Its casements did not have adequate lamps andthe guns could not be used except by day. When morning broke, clear andbright after the night's storm, the duel was resumed. 

The walls of Sumter were now crumbling. At eight o'clock Saturdaymorning the barracks took fire. Soon after it was perceived fromthe shore that the flag was down. Beauregard at once sent offers ofassistance. With Sumter in flames above his head, Anderson replied thathe had not surrendered; he declined assistance; and he hauled up hisflag. Later in the day the flagstaff was shot in two and again the flagfell, and again it was raised. Flames had been kindled anew by red-hotshot, and now the magazine was in danger. Quantities of powder werethrown into the sea. Still the rain of red-hot shot continued. Aboutnoon, Saturday, says the Courier, "flames burst out from every quarterof Sumter and poured from many of its portholes. . . The wind was from thewest driving the smoke across the fort into the embrasures where thegunners were at work. " Nevertheless, "as if served with a new impulse, "the guns of Sumter redoubled their fire. But it was not in humanendurance to keep on in the midst of the burning fort. This splendidlast effort was short. At a quarter after one, Anderson ceased firingand raised a white flag. Negotiations followed ending in terms ofsurrender--Anderson to be allowed to remove his garrison to the fleetlying idle beyond the bar and to salute the flag of the United Statesbefore taking it down. The bombardment had lasted thirty-two hourswithout a death on either side. The evacuation of the fort was to takeplace next day. 

The afternoon of Sunday, the 14th of April, was a gala day in theharbor of Charleston. The sunlight slanted across the roofs of the city, sparkled upon the sea. Deep and rich the harbor always looks in thespring sunshine on bright afternoons. The filmy atmosphere of theselatitudes, at that time of year, makes the sky above the darkling, afternoon sea a pale but luminous turquoise. There is a wonderful softstrength in the peaceful brightness of the sun. In such an atmospherethe harbor was flecked with brilliantly decked craft of everydescription, all in a flutter of flags and carrying a host of passengersin gala dress. The city swarmed across the water to witness the ceremonyof evacuation. Wherry men did a thriving business carrying passengers tothe fort. 

Anderson withdrew from Sumter shortly after two o'clock amid a salute offifty guns. The Confederates took possession. At half after four a newflag was raised above the battered and fire-swept walls. 

Chapter II. The Davis Government

It has never been explained why Jefferson Davis was chosen Presidentof the Confederacy. He did not seek the office and did not wish it. He dreamed of high military command. As a study in the irony of fate, Davis's career is made to the hand of the dramatist. An instinctivesoldier, he was driven by circumstances three times to renounce theprofession of arms for a less congenial civilian life. His finalrenunciation, which proved to be of the nature of tragedy, was hisacceptance of the office of President. Indeed, why the office was givento him seems a mystery. Rhett was a more logical candidate. And whenRhett, early in the lobbying at Montgomery, was set aside as too much ofa radical, Toombs seemed for a time the certain choice of the majority. The change to Davis came suddenly at the last moment. It was puzzling atthe time; it is puzzling still. 

Rhett, though doubtless bitterly disappointed, bore himself with thesavoir faire of a great gentleman. At the inauguration, it was onRhett's arm that Davis leaned as he entered the hall of the ConfederateCongress. The night before, in a public address, Yancey had said thatthe man and the hour were met. The story of the Confederacy is filledwith dramatic moments, but to the thoughtful observer few are moredramatic than the conjunction of these three men in the inauguration ofthe Confederate President. Beneath a surface of apparent unanimity theycarried, like concealed weapons, points of view that were in deadlyantagonism. This antagonism had not revealed itself hitherto. It wasdestined to reveal itself almost immediately. It went so deep and spreadso far that unless we understand it, the Confederate story will beunintelligible. 

A strange fatality destined all three of these great men to despair. Yancey, who was perhaps most directly answerable of the three for theexistence of the Confederacy, lost influence almost from the momentwhen his dream became established. Davis was partly responsible, for hepromptly sent him out of the country on the bootless English mission. Thereafter, until his death in 1863, Yancey was a waning, overshadowedfigure, steadily lapsing into the background. It may be that thosecritics are right who say he was only an agitator. The day of themere agitator was gone. Yancey passed rapidly into futile but bitterantagonism to Davis. In this attitude he was soon to be matched byRhett. 

The discontent of the Rhett faction because their leader was not giventhe portfolio of the State Department found immediate voice. But theconclusion drawn by some that Rhett's subsequent course sprang frompersonal vindictiveness is trifling. He was too large a personality, too well defined an intellect, to be thus explained. Very probably Davismade his first great blunder in failing to propitiate the Rhett faction. And yet few things are more certain than that the two men, the twofactions which they symbolized, could not have formed a permanentalliance. Had Rhett entered the Cabinet he could not have remained init consistently for any considerable time. The measures in which, presently, the Administration showed its hand were measures in whichRhett could not acquiesce. From the start he was predestined to hiseventual position--the great, unavailing genius of the opposition. 

As to the comparative ignoring of these leaders of secession by theGovernment which secession had created, it is often said that theexplanation is to be found in a generous as well as politic desireto put in office the moderates and even the conservatives. Davis, relatively, was a moderate. Stephens was a conservative. Many of themost pronounced opponents of secession were given places in thepublic service. Toombs, who received the portfolio of State, though asecessionist, was conspicuously a moderate when compared with Rhett andYancey. The adroit Benjamin, who became Attorney-General, had few pointsin common with the great extremists of Alabama and South Carolina. 

However, the dictum that the personnel of the new Government was atriumph for conservatism over radicalism signifies little. There wasa division among Southerners which scarcely any of them had realizedexcept briefly in the premature battle over secession in 1851. It wasthe division between those who were conscious of the region as a wholeand those who were not. Explain it as you will, there was a moment justafter the secession movement succeeded when the South seemed to realizeitself as a whole, when it turned intuitively to those men who, as timewas to demonstrate, shared this realization. For the moment it turnedaway from those others, however great their part in secession, wholacked this sense of unity. 

At this point, geography becomes essential. The South fell, institutionally, into two grand divisions: one, with an old and firmlyestablished social order, where consciousness of the locality went backto remote times; another, newly settled, where conditions were stillfluid, where that sense of the sacredness of local institutions had notyet formed. 

A typical community of the first-named class was South Carolina. Herpeople had to a remarkable degree been rendered state-consciouspartly by their geographical neighbors, and partly by their long andillustrious history, which had been interwoven with great Europeaninterests during the colonial era and with great national interestsunder the Republic. It is possible also that the Huguenots, thoughfew in numbers, had exercised upon the State a subtle and pervasiveinfluence through their intellectual power and their Latin sense forinstitutions. 

In South Carolina, too, a wealthy leisure class with a passion foraffairs had cultivated enthusiastically that fine art which is the prideof all aristocratic societies, the service of the State as a professionhigh and exclusive, free from vulgar taint. In South Carolina all thingsconspired to uphold and strengthen the sense of the State as an objectof veneration, as something over and above the mere social order, as thesacred embodiment of the ideals of the community. Thus it is fair tosay that what has animated the heroic little countries of the Old WorldSwitzerland and Serbia and ever-glorious Belgium--with their passion toremain themselves, animated South Carolina in 1861. Just as Serbia waswilling to fight to the death rather than merge her identity in themosaic of the Austrian Empire, so this little American community sawnothing of happiness in any future that did not secure its virtualindependence. 

Typical of the newer order in the South was the community that formedthe President of the Confederacy. In the history of Mississippi previousto the war there are six great names--Jacob Thompson, John A. Quitman, Henry S. Foote, Robert J. Walker, Sergeant S. Prentiss, and JeffersonDavis. Not one of them was born in the State. Thompson was born inNorth Carolina; Quitman in New York; Foote in Virginia; Walker inPennsylvania; Prentiss in Maine; Davis in Kentucky. In 1861 the Statewas but forty-four years old, younger than its most illustrious sons--ifthe paradox may be permitted. How could they think of it as an entityexisting in itself, antedating not only themselves but their traditions, circumscribing them with its all-embracing, indisputable reality? Thesemen spoke the language of state rights. It is true that in politics, combating the North, they used the political philosophy taught them bySouth Carolina. But it was a mental weapon in political debate; it wasnot for them an emotional fact. 

And yet these men of the Southwest had an ideal of their own as vividand as binding as the state ideal of the men of the eastern coast. Though half their leaders were born in the North, the people themselveswere overwhelmingly Southern. From all the older States, all round thehuge crescent which swung around from Kentucky coastwise to Florida, immigration in the twenties and thirties had poured into Mississippi. Consequently the new community presented a composite picture of thewhole South, and like all composite pictures it emphasized only thefactors common to all its parts. What all the South had in common, whatmade a man a Southerner in the general sense--in distinction from aNortherner on the one hand, or a Virginian, Carolinian, Georgian, onthe other--could have been observed with clearness in Mississippi, justbefore the war, as nowhere else. Therefore, the fulfillment of the idealof Southern life in general terms was the vision of things hoped for bythe new men of the Southwest. The features of that vision were commonto them all--country life, broad acres, generous hospitality, anaristocratic system. The temperaments of these men were sufficientlybuoyant to enable them to apprehend this ideal even before it hadmaterialized. Their romantic minds could see the gold at the end ofthe rainbow. Theirs was not the pride of administering a well-ordered, inherited system, but the joy of building a new system, in their mindswholly elastic, to be sure, but still inspired by that old system. 

What may be called the sense of Southern nationality as opposed to thesense of state rights, strictly speaking, distinguished this brilliantyoung community of the Southwest. In that community Davis spent theyears that appear to have been the most impressionable of his life. Belonging to a "new" family just emerging into wealth, he began lifeas a West Pointer and saw gallant service as a youth on the frontier;resigned from the army to pursue a romantic attachment; came hometo lead the life of a wealthy planter and receive the impress ofMississippi; made his entry into politics, still a soldier at heart, with the philosophy of state rights on his lips, but in his heart thatsense of the Southern people as a new nation, which needed only theoccasion to make it the relentless enemy of the rights of the individualSouthern States. Add together the instinctive military point of viewand this Southern nationalism that even in 1861 had scarcely revealeditself; join with these a fearless and haughty spirit, proud to theverge of arrogance, but perfectly devoted, perfectly sincere; and youhave the main lines of the political character of Davis when he becamePresident. It may be that as he went forward in his great undertaking, as antagonisms developed, as Rhett and others turned against him, Davishardened. He lost whatever comprehension he once had of the Rhett type. Seeking to weld into one irresistible unit all the military power of theSouth, he became at last in the eyes of his opponents a monster, whileto him, more and more positively, the others became mere dreamers. 

It took about a year for this irrepressible conflict within theConfederacy to reveal itself. During the twelve months following Davis'selection as provisional President, he dominated the situation, thoughthe Charleston Mercury, the Rhett organ, found opportunities to besharply critical of the President. He assembled armies; he initiatedheroic efforts to make up for the handicap of the South in themanufacture of munitions and succeeded in starting a number of munitionplants; though powerless to prevent the establishment of the blockade, he was able during that first year to keep in touch with Europe, tostart out Confederate privateers upon the high seas, and to import aconsiderable quantity of arms and supplies. At the close of the year theConfederate armies were approaching general efficiency, for all theirenormous handicap, almost if not quite as rapidly as were the Unionarmies. And the one great event of the year on land, the first battle ofManassas, or Bull Run, was a signal Confederate victory. 

To be sure Davis was severely criticized in some quarters for notadopting an aggressive policy. The Confederate Government, whetherwisely or foolishly, had not taken the people into its confidence andthe lack of munitions was not generally appreciated. The easy popularcries were all sounded: "We are standing still!" "The country is beinginvaded!" "The President is a do-nothing!" From the coast regionsespecially, where the blockade was felt in all its severity, the outcrywas loud. 

Nevertheless, the South in the main was content with the Administrationduring most of the first year. In November, when the general electionswere held, Davis was chosen without opposition as the first regularConfederate President for six years, and Stephens became theVice-President. The election was followed by an important change in theSouthern Cabinet. Benjamin became Secretary of War, in succession tothe first War Secretary, Leroy P. Walker. Toombs had already left theConfederate Cabinet. Complaining that Davis degraded him to the level ofa mere clerk, he had withdrawn the previous July. His successor in theState Department was R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, who remained in officeuntil February, 1862, when his removal to the Confederate Senate openedthe way for a further advancement of Benjamin. 

Richmond, which had been designated as the capital soon after thesecession of Virginia, was the scene of the inauguration, on February22, 1862. Although the weather proved bleak and rainy, an immense crowdgathered around the Washington monument, in Capitol Square, to listento the inaugural address. By this time the confidence in the Government, which was felt generally at the time of the election, had suffereda shock. Foreign affairs were not progressing satisfactorily. ThoughEngland had accorded to the Confederacy the status of a belligerent, this was poor consolation for her refusal to make full recognition ofthe new Government as an independent power. Dread of internal distresswas increasing. Gold commanded a premium of fifty percent. Disorder wasa feature of the life in the cities. It was known that several recentmilitary events had been victories for the Federals. A rumor wasabroad that some great disaster had taken place in Tennessee. The crowdlistened anxiously to hear the rumor denied by the President. But itwas not denied. The tense listeners noted two sentences which formed anadmission that the situation was grave: "A million men, it is estimated, are now standing in hostile array and waging war along a frontierof thousands of miles. Battles have been fought, sieges have beenconducted, and although the contest is not ended, and the tide for themoment is against us, the final result in our favor is not doubtful. "

Behind these carefully guarded words lay serious alarm, not only withregard to the operations at the front but as to the composition ofthe army. It had been raised under various laws and its portions weresubject to conflicting classifications; it was partly a group of statearmies, partly a single Confederate army. None of its members hadenlisted for long terms. Many enlistments would expire early in 1862. The fears of the Confederate Administration with regard to this matter, together with its alarm about the events at the front, were expressed byDavis in a frank message to the Southern Congress, three days later. "Ihave hoped, " said he, "for several days to receive official reportsin relation to our discomfiture at Roanoke Island and the fall of FortDonelson. They have not yet reached Me. . . . The hope is stillentertained that our reported losses at Fort Donelson have been greatlyexaggerated. . . . " He went on to condemn the policy of enlistments forshort terms, "against which, " said he, "I have steadily contended"; andhe enlarged upon the danger that even patriotic men, who intended toreenlist, might go home to put their affairs in order and that thus, ata critical moment, the army might be seriously reduced. The accompanyingreport of the Confederate Secretary of War showed a total in the army of340, 250 men. This was an inadequate force with which to meet the greathosts which were being organized against it in the North. To permit theslightest reduction of the army at that moment seemed to the SouthernPresident suicidal. 

But Davis waited some time longer before proposing to the ConfederateCongress the adoption of conscription. Meanwhile, the details oftwo great reverses, the loss of Roanoke Island and the loss of FortDonelson, became generally known. Apprehension gathered strength. Newspapers began to discuss conscription as something inevitable. At last, on March 28, 1862, Davis sent a message to the ConfederateCongress advising the conscription of all white males between the agesof eighteen and thirty-five. For this suggestion Congress was ripe, and the first Conscription Act of the Confederacy was signed by thePresident on the 16th of April. The age of eligibility was fixed asDavis had advised; the term of service was to be three years; every onethen in service was to be retained in service during three years fromthe date of his original enlistment. 

This statute may be thought of as a great victory on the part of theAdministration. It was the climax of a policy of centralization in themilitary establishment to which Davis had committed himself by the veto, in January, of "A bill to authorize the Secretary of War to receive intothe service of the Confederate States a regiment of volunteers for theprotection of the frontier of Texas. " This regiment was to be under thecontrol of the Governor of the State. In refusing to accept such troops, Davis laid down the main proposition upon which he stood as militaryexecutive to the end of the war, a proposition which immediately setdebate raging: "Unity and cooperation by the troops of all the Statesare indispensable to success, and I must view with regret this as wellas all other indications of a purpose to divide the power of Statesby dividing the means to be employed in efforts to carry on separateoperations. "

In these military measures of the early months of 1862 Davis's purposebecame clear. He was bent upon instituting a strong government, able topush the war through, and careless of the niceties of constitutional lawor of the exact prerogatives of the States. His position was expressedin the course of the year by a Virginia newspaper: "It will be timeenough to distract the councils of the State about imaginary violationsof constitutional law by the supreme government when our independence isachieved, established, and acknowledged. It will not be until then thatthe sovereignty of the States will be a reality. " But there were manySoutherners who could not accept this point of view. The Mercury wassharply critical of the veto of the Texas Regiment Bill. In the intervalbetween the Texas veto and the passing of the Conscription Act, thestate convention of North Carolina demanded the return of North Carolinavolunteers for the defense of their own State. No sooner was theConscription Act passed than its constitutionality was attacked. Asthe Confederacy had no Supreme Court, the question came up before statecourts. One after another, several state supreme courts pronounced theact constitutional and in most of the States the constitutional issuewas gradually allowed to lapse. 

Nevertheless, Davis had opened Pandora's box. The clash between Stateand Confederate authority had begun. An opposition party began to form. In this first stage of its definite existence, the opposition made aninteresting attempt to control the Cabinet. Secretary Benjamin, thoughgreatly trusted by the President, seems never to have been a popularminister. Congress attempted to load upon Benjamin the blame for RoanokeIsland and Fort Donelson. In the House a motion was introduced tothe effect that Benjamin had "not the confidence of the people of theConfederate States nor of the army. . . And that we most respectfullyrequest his retirement" from the office of Secretary of War. Friendsof the Administration tabled the motion. Davis extricated his friend bytaking advantage of Hunter's retirement and promoting Benjamin to theState Department. A month later a congressional committee appointedto investigate the affair of Roanoke Island exonerated the officerin command and laid the blame on his superiors, including "the lateSecretary of War. "

With Benjamin safe in the Department of State, with the majority in theConfederate Congress still fairly manageable, with the ConscriptionAct in force, Davis seemed to be strong enough in the spring of 1862to ignore the gathering opposition. And yet there was another measure, second only in the President's eyes to the Conscription Act, that was tobreed trouble. This was the first of the series of acts empowering himto suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Under this acthe was permitted to set up martial law in any district threatened withinvasion. The cause of this drastic measure was the confusion and thegeneral demoralization that existed wherever the close approach ofthe enemy created a situation too complex for the ordinary civilauthorities. Davis made use of the power thus given to him andproclaimed martial law in Richmond, in Norfolk, in parts of SouthCarolina, and elsewhere. It was on Richmond that the hand of theAdministration fell heaviest. The capital was the center of a greatcamp; its sudden and vast increase in population bad been the signal forall the criminal class near and far to hurry thither in the hope of anew field of spoliation; to deal with this immense human congestion, thelocal police were powerless; every variety of abominable contrivance toentrap and debauch men for a price was in brazen operation. The firstcare of the Government under the new law was the cleansing of thecapital. General John H. Winder, appointed military governor, did thejob with thoroughness. He closed the barrooms, disarmed the populace, and for the time at least swept the city clean of criminals. TheAdministration also made certain political arrests, and even imprisonedsome extreme opponents of the Government for "offenses not enumeratedand not cognizable under the regular process of law. " Such arrests gavethe enemies of the Administration another handle against it. As we shallsee later, the use that Davis made of martial law was distorted by athousand fault-finders and was made the basis of the charge that thePresident was aiming at absolute power. 

At the moment, however, Davis was master of the situation. The sixmonths following April 1, 1862, were doubtless, from his own point ofview, the most satisfactory part of his career as Confederate President. These months were indeed filled with peril. There was a time whenMcClellan's advance up the Peninsula appeared so threatening that thearchives of the Government were packed on railway cars prepared forimmediate removal should evacuation be necessary. There were the othergreat disasters during that year, including the loss of New Orleans. ThePresident himself experienced a profound personal sorrow in the deathof his friend, Albert Sidney Johnston, in the bloody fight at Shiloh. Itwas in the midst of this time that tried men's souls that the RichmondExaminer achieved an unenvied immortality for one of its articles onthe Administration. At a moment when nothing should have been said todiscredit in any way the struggling Government, it described Davis asweak with fear telling his beads in a corner of St. Paul's Church. Thispaper, along with the Charleston Mercury, led the Opposition. ThroughoutConfederate history these two, which were very ably edited, did thethinking for the enemies of Davis. We shall meet them time and again. 

A true picture of Davis would have shown the President resolute andresourceful, at perhaps the height of his powers. He recruited andsupplied the armies; he fortified Richmond; he sustained the greatcaptain whom he had placed in command while McClellan was at the gates. When the tide had turned and the Army of the Potomac sullenly withdrew, baffled, there occurred the one brief space in Confederate history thatwas pure sunshine. In this period took place the splendid victory ofSecond Manassas. The strong military policy of the Administrationhad given the Confederacy powerful armies. Lee had inspired them withvictory. This period of buoyant hope culminated in the great offensivedesign which followed Second Manassas. It was known that the Northernpeople, or a large part of them, had suffered a reaction; the tidewas setting strong against the Lincoln Government; in the autumn, theNorthern elections would be held. To influence those elections and atthe same time to drive the Northern armies back into their own section;to draw Maryland and Kentucky into the Confederate States; to fall uponthe invaders in the Southwest and recover the lower Mississippi--toaccomplish all these results was the confident expectation of thePresident and his advisers as they planned their great triple offensivein August, 1862. Lee was to invade Maryland; Bragg was to invadeKentucky; Van Dorn was to break the hold of the Federals in theSouthwest. If there is one moment that is to be considered the climaxof Davis's career, the high-water mark of Confederate hope, it was themoment of joyous expectation when the triple offensive was launched, when Lee's army, on a brilliant autumn day, crossed the Potomac, singing"Maryland, my Maryland". 

Chapter III. The Fall Of King Cotton

While the Confederate Executive was building up its militaryestablishment, the Treasury was struggling with the problem ofpaying for it. The problem was destined to become insoluble. From thevantage-point of a later time we can now see that nothing could haveprovided a solution short of appropriation and mobilization of the wholeindustrial power of the country along with the whole military power--aconscription of wealth of every kind together with conscription of men. But in 1862 such an idea was too advanced for any group of Americans. Nor, in that year, was there as yet any certain evidence that theTreasury was facing an impossible situation. Its endeavors were takenlightly--at first, almost gaily-because of the profound illusion whichpermeated Southern thought that Cotton was King. Obviously, if theSouthern ports could be kept open and cotton could continue to go tomarket, the Confederate financial problem was not serious. When Davis, soon after his first inauguration, sent Yancey, Rost, and Mann ascommissioners to Europe to press the claims of the Confederacy forrecognition, very few Southerners had any doubt that the blockade, would be short-lived. "Cotton is King" was the answer that silenced allquestions. Without American cotton the English mills would have to shutdown; the operatives would starve; famine and discontent would betweenthem force the British ministry to intervene in American affairs. Therewere, indeed, a few far-sighted men who perceived that this confidencewas ill-based and that cotton, though it was a power in the financialworld, was not the commercial king. The majority of the population, however, had to learn this truth from keen experience. 

Several events of 1861 for a time seemed to confirm this illusion. TheQueen's proclamation in the spring, giving the Confederacy the status ofa belligerent, and, in the autumn, the demand by the British Governmentfor the surrender of the commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who had beentaken from a British packet by a Union cruiser--both these events seemedto indicate active British sympathy. In England, to be sure, Yanceybecame disillusioned. He saw that the international situation was not sosimple as it seemed; that while the South had powerful friends abroad, it also had powerful foes; that the British anti-slavery party wasa more formidable enemy than he had expected it to be; and thatintervention was not a foregone conclusion. The task of an unrecognizedambassador being too annoying for him, Yancey was relieved at his ownrequest and Mason was sent out to take his place. A singular littleincident like a dismal prophecy occurred as Yancey was on his way home. He passed through Havana early in 1862, when the news of the surrenderof Fort Donelson had begun to stagger the hopes and impair the prestigeof the Confederates. By the advice of the Confederate agent in Cuba, Yancey did not call on the Spanish Governor but sent him word that"delicacy alone prompted his departure without the gratification ofa personal interview. " The Governor expressed himself as "exceedinglygrateful for the noble sentiment which prevented" Yancey from causinginternational complications at Havana. 

The history of the first year of Confederate foreign affairs isinterwoven with the history of Confederate finance. During that year theSouth became a great buyer in Europe. Arms, powder, cloth, machinery, medicines, ships, a thousand things, had all to be bought abroad. Toestablish the foreign credit of the new Government was the arduous taskof the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury, Christopher G. Memminger. The first great campaign of the war was not fought by armies. It wasa commercial campaign fought by agents of the Federal and Confederategovernments and having for its aim the cornering of the munitions marketin Europe. In this campaign the Federal agents had decisive advantages:their credit was never questioned, and their enormous purchases werenever doubtful ventures for the European sellers. In some cases theirsuperior credit enabled them to overbid the Confederate agents and toappropriate large contracts which the Confederates had negotiated butwhich they could not hold because of the precariousness of their credit. And yet, all things considered, the Confederate agents made a goodshowing. In the report of the Secretary of War in February, 1862, thenumber of rifles contracted for abroad was put at 91, 000, of which15, 000 had been delivered. The chief reliance of the ConfederateTreasury for its purchases abroad was at first the specie in theSouthern branch of the United States Mint and in Southern banks. Theformer the Confederacy seized and converted to its own use. Of thelatter it lured into its own hands a very large proportion by what iscommonly called "the fifteen million loan"--an issue of eight percentbonds authorized in February, 1861. Most of this specie seems to havebeen taken out of the country by the purchase of European commodities. Alittle, to be sure, remained, for there was some gold still at home whenthe Confederacy fell. But the sum was small. 

In addition to this loan Memminger also persuaded Congress on August 19, 1861, to lay a direct tax--the "war tax, " as it was called--of one-halfof one per cent on all property except Confederate bonds and money. Asrequired by the Constitution this tax was apportioned among the States, but if it assumed its assessment before April 1, 1862, each State was tohave a reduction of ten per cent. As there was a general aversion tothe idea of Confederate taxation and a general faith in loans, what theStates did, as a rule, was to assume their assessment, agree to pay itinto the Treasury, and then issue bonds to raise the necessary funds, thus converting the war tax into a loan. 

The Confederate, like the Union, Treasury did not have the courage toforce the issue upon taxation and leaned throughout the war largely uponloans. It also had recourse to the perilous device of paper money, thegold value of which was not guaranteed. Beginning in March, 1861, itissued under successive laws great quantities of paper notes, some ofthem interest bearing, some not. It used these notes in payment of itsdomestic obligations. The purchasing value of the notes soon startedon a disastrous downward course, and in 1864 the gold dollar was worththirty paper dollars. The Confederate Government thus became involved ina problem of self-preservation that was but half solved by the system oftithes and impressment which we shall encounter later. The depreciationof these notes left governmental clerks without adequate salaries andsoldiers without the means of providing for their families. During mostof the war, women and other noncombatants had to support the families orelse rely upon local charity organized by state or county boards. 

Long before all the evils of paper money were experienced, the North, with great swiftness, concentrated its naval forces so as to dominatethe Southern ports which had trade relations with Europe. The shippingports were at once congested with cotton to the great embarrassment ofmerchants and planters. Partly to relieve them, the Confederate Congressinstituted in May, 1861, what is known today as "the hundred millionloan. " It was the first of a series of "produce loans. " The Treasury wasauthorized to issue eight percent bonds, to fall due in twentyyears, and to sell them for specie or to exchange them for produce ormanufactured articles. In the course of the remaining months of 1861there were exchanged for these bonds great quantities of produceincluding some 400, 000 bales of cotton. 

In spite of the distress of the planters, however, the illusion of KingCotton's power does not seem to have been seriously impaired during1861. In fact, strange as it now seems, the frame of mind of the leadersappears to have been proof, that year, against alarm over the blockade. For two reasons, the Confederacy regarded the blockade at first as ablessing in disguise. It was counted on to act as a protective tariffin stimulating manufactures; and at the same time the South expectedinterruption of the flow of cotton towards Europe to make England feelher dependence upon the Confederacy. In this way there would be exertedan economic coercion which would compel intervention. Such reasoninglay behind a law passed in May forbidding the export of cotton exceptthrough the seaports of the Confederacy. Similar laws were enacted bythe States. During the summer, many cotton factors joined in advisingthe planters to hold their cotton until the blockade broke down. In theautumn, the Governor of Louisiana forbade the export of cotton from NewOrleans. So unshakeable was the illusion in 1861, that King Cotton hadEngland in his grip! The illusion died hard. Throughout 1862, and evenin 1863, the newspapers published appeals to the planters to give upgrowing cotton for a time, and even to destroy what they had, so as tocoerce the obdurate Englishmen. 

Meanwhile, Mason had been accorded by the British upper classes thatgenerous welcome which they have always extended to the representative, of a people fighting gallantly against odds. During the hopeful days of1862--that Golden Age of Confederacy--Mason, though not recognized bythe English Government, was shown every kindness by leading members ofthe aristocracy, who visited him in London and received him at theirhouses in the country. It was during this period of buoyant hope thatthe Alabama was allowed to go to sea from Liverpool in July, 1862. Atthe same time Mason heard his hosts express undisguised admiration forthe valor of the soldiers serving under Jackson and Lee. Whether heformed any true impression of the other side of British idealism, itsresolute opposition to slavery, may be questioned. There seems littledoubt that he did not perceive the turning of the tide of English publicopinion, in the autumn of 1862, following the Emancipation Proclamationand the great reverses of September and October--Antietam-Sharpsburg, Perryville, Corinth--the backflow of all three of the Confederateoffensives. 

The cotton famine in England, where perhaps a million people were inactual want through the shutting down of cotton mills, seemed to Masonto be "looming up in fearful proportions. " "The public mind, " he wrotehome in November, 1862, "is very much disturbed by the prospect for thewinter; and I am not without hope that it will produce its effects onthe councils of the government. " Yet it was the uprising of the Britishworking people in favor of the North that contributed to defeat the oneimportant attempt to intervene in American affairs. Napoleon IIIhad made an offer of mediation which was rejected by the WashingtonGovernment early the next year. England and Russia had both declined toparticipate in Napoleon's scheme, and their refusal marks the beginningof the end of the reign of King Cotton. 

At Paris, Slidell was even more hopeful than Mason. He had won overEmile Erlanger, that great banker who was deep in the confidence ofNapoleon. So cordial became the relations between the two that itinvolved their families and led at last to the marriage of Erlanger'sson with Slidell's daughter. Whether owing to Slidell's eloquence, or from secret knowledge of the Emperor's designs, or from his ownaudacity, Erlanger toward the close of 1862 made a proposal that is oneof the most daring schemes of financial plunging yet recorded. If theConfederate Government would issue to him bonds secured by cotton, Erlanger would underwrite the bonds, put the proceeds of their sale tothe credit of the Confederate agents, and wait for the cotton untilit could run the blockade or until peace should be declared. TheConfederate Government after some hesitation accepted his plan andissued fifteen millions of "Erlanger bonds, " bearing seven percent, andput them on sale at Paris, London. Amsterdam, and Frankfort. 

As a purchaser of these bonds was to be given cotton eventually at avaluation of sixpence a pound, and as cotton was then selling inEngland for nearly two shillings; the bold gamble caught the fancy ofspeculators. There was a rush to take up the bonds and to pay the firstinstallment. But before the second installment became due a mysteriouschange in the market took place and the price of the bonds fell. Holdersbecame alarmed and some even proposed to forfeit their bonds ratherthan pay on May 1, 1863, the next installment of fifteen percent of thepurchase money. Thereupon Mason undertook to "bull" the market. Agentsof the United States Government were supposed to be at the bottom of thedrop in the bonds. To defeat their schemes the Confederate agents boughtback large amounts in bonds intending to resell. The result was theexpenditure of some six million dollars with practically no effect onthe market. These "Erlanger bonds" sold slowly through 1863 and evenin 1864, and netted a considerable amount to the foreign agents of theConfederacy. 

The comparative failure of the Erlanger loan marks the downfall of KingCotton. He was an exploded superstition. He was unable, despite thecotton famine, to coerce the English workingmen into siding with acountry which they regarded, because of its support of slavery, asinimical to their interests. At home, the Government confessed thepowerlessness of King Cotton by a change of its attitude toward export. During the latter part of the war, the Government secured the meagerfunds at its disposal abroad by rushing cotton in swift ships throughthe blockade. So important did this traffic become that the Confederacypassed stringent laws to keep the control in its own hands. One morecause of friction between the Confederate and the State authorities wasthus developed: the Confederate navigation laws prevented the Statesfrom running the blockade on their own account. 

The effects of the blockade were felt at the ends of the earth. Indiabecame an exporter of cotton. Egypt also entered the competition. Thatsingular dreamer, Ismail Pasha, whose reign made Egypt briefly an exoticnation, neither eastern nor western, found one of his opportunities inthe American War and the failure of the cotton supply. 

Chapter IV. The Reaction Against Richmond

A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great period ofConfederate history--these six months of Titanic effort which embracedbetween March and September, 1862, splendid success along withcatastrophes. But there was a marked difference between the two tides ofpopular emotion. The wave of alarm which swept over the South afterthe surrender of Fort Donelson was quickly translated into such a highpassion for battle that the march of events until the day of Antietamresounded like an epic. The failure of the triple offensive which closedthis period was followed in very many minds by the appearance of a newtemper, often as valiant as the old but far more grim and deeply seamedwith distrust. And how is this distrust, of which the ConfederateAdministration was the object, to be accounted for?

Various answers to this question were made at the time. The laws ofthe spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis was heldresponsible for them and also for the slow equipment of the army. Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its business insecret session, the President was charged with a love of mystery and anunwillingness to take the people into his confidence. Arrests underthe law suspending the writ of habeas corpus were made the texts forharangues on liberty. The right of freedom of speech was dragged inwhen General Van Dorn, in the Southwest, threatened with suppressionany newspaper that published anything which might impair confidence ina commanding officer. How could he have dared to do this, was the cry, unless the President was behind him? And when General Bragg assumed asimilar attitude toward the press, the same cry was raised. Throughoutthe summer of victories, even while the thrilling stories of SevenPines, 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 tothe general lack of information on the part of Southern people as towhat the Confederate Government was doing. His proposed remedy was anend of the censorship which that Government was attempting to maintain, the abandonment of the secret sessions of its Congress, and the takingof the people into its full confidence. Now a Senator from Alabama, heattempted, at the opening of the congressional session in the autumnof 1862, to abolish secret sessions, but in his efforts he was notsuccessful. 

There seems little doubt that the Confederate Government had blunderedin being too secretive. Even from Congress, much information waswithheld. A curious incident has preserved what appeared to the militarymind the justification of this reticence. The Secretary of War refusedto comply with a request for information, holding that he could not doso "without disclosing the strength of our armies to many persons ofsubordinate position whose secrecy cannot be relied upon. " "I beg leaveto remind you, " said he, "of a report made in response to a similar onefrom the Federal Congress, communicated to them in secret session, andnow a part of our archives. "

How much the country was in the dark with regard to some vital mattersis revealed by an attack on the Confederate Administration which wasmade by the Charleston Mercury, in February. The Southern Government wasaccused of unpardonable slowness in sending agents to Europe to purchasemunitions. In point of fact, the Confederate Government had been moreprompt than the Union Government in rushing agents abroad. But thecountry was not permitted to know this. Though the Courier was agovernment organ in Charleston, it did not meet the charges of theMercury by disclosing the facts about the arduous attempts of theConfederate Government to secure arms in Europe. The reply of theCourier to the Mercury, though spirited, was all in general terms. "Toshake confidence in Jefferson Davis, " said the Courier, "is. . . Tobring 'hideous ruin and combustion' down upon our dearest hopes andinterests. " It made "Mr. Davis and his defensive policy" objects of alladmiration; called Davis "our Moses. " It was deeply indignant because ithad been "reliably informed that men of high official position amongus" were "calling for a General Convention of the Confederate Statesto depose him and set up a military Dictator in his place. " The Mercuryretorted that, as to the plot against "our Moses, " there was no evidenceof its existence except the Courier's assertion. Nevertheless, itconsidered Davis "an incubus to the cause. " The controversy between theMercury and the Courier at Charleston was paralleled at Richmond by theconstant bickering between the government organ, the Enquirer, andthe Examiner, which shares with the Mercury the first place among thenewspapers hostile to Davis. *

 * 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 considerablepower of the old-fashioned, furious sort, ever ready to foam at themouth. If he had had more restraint and less credulity, Edward A. Pollard might have become a master of the art of vituperation. Lackingthese qualities, he never rose far above mediocrity. But his fury wasso determined and his prejudice so invincible that his writings havesomething of the power of conviction which fanaticism wields. Inmidsummer, 1862, Pollard published a book entitled The First Year ofthe War, which was commended by his allies in Charleston as showingno "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 skillfullydesigned to discredit the Confederate Administration. Almost everydisaster, every fault of its management was traceable more or lessdirectly to Davis. Kentucky had been occupied by the Federal armybecause of the "dull expectation" in which the Confederate Governmenthad stood aside waiting for things somehow to right themselves. TheSouthern 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 hygieneof our camps. " According to this book, the Confederate Administrationwas solely to blame for the loss of Roanoke Island. In calling thatdisaster "deeply humiliating, " as he did in a message to Congress, Davis was trying to shield his favorite Benjamin at the cost of gallantsoldiers who had been sacrificed through his incapacity. Davis'spromotion of Benjamin to the State Department was an act of "ungraciousand reckless defiance of popular sentiment. " The President was "not theman to consult the sentiment and wisdom of the people; he desired tosignalize the infallibility of his own intellect in every measure ofthe revolution and to identify, from motives of vanity, his own personalgenius with every event and detail of the remarkable period of historyin which he had been called upon to act. This imperious conceit seemedto swallow up every other idea in his mind. " The generals "frettedunder this pragmatism" of one whose "vanity" directed the war "from hiscushioned seat in Richmond" by means of the one formula, "the defensivepolicy. "

One of Pollard's chief accusations against the Confederate Governmentwas its failure to enforce the conscription law. His paper, theExaminer, as well as the Mercury, supported Davis in the policy ofconscription, but both did their best, first, to rob him of thecredit for it and, secondly, to make his conduct of the policy appearinefficient. Pollard claimed for the Examiner the credit of havingoriginated the policy of conscription; the Mercury claimed it for Rhett. 

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

Furthermore, the issue of state sovereignty had been raised. InGeorgia a movement had begun which was distinctly different from theVirginia-Carolina movement of opposition, a movement for which Rhettand Pollard had scarcely more than disdainful tolerance, and not alwaysthat. This parallel opposition found vent, as did the other, in apolitical pamphlet. On the subject of conscription Davis and theGovernor of Georgia--that same Joseph E. Brown who had seized FortPulaski in the previous year--exchanged a rancorous correspondence. Their letters were published in a pamphlet of which Pollard saidscornfully that it was hawked about in every city of the South. Brown, taking alarm at the power given the Confederate Government by theConscription Act, eventually defined his position, and that of a largefollowing, in the extreme words: "No act of the Government of the UnitedStates prior to the secession of Georgia struck a blow at constitutionalliberty so fell as has been stricken by the conscript acts. "

There were other elements of discontent which were taking form as earlyas the autumn of 1862 but which were not yet clearly defined. But thetwo obvious sources of internal criticism just described were enoughto disquiet the most resolute administration. When the triple offensivebroke down, when the ebb-tide began, there was already everything thatwas needed to precipitate a political crisis. And now the questionarises whether the Confederate Administration had itself to blame. HadDavis proved inadequate in his great undertaking?

The one undeniable mistake of the Government previous to the autumn of1862 was its excessive secrecy. As to the other mistakes attributed toit at the time, there is good reason to call them misfortunes. Todaywe can see that the financial situation, the cotton situation, therelations with Europe, the problem of equipping the armies, were all toa considerable degree beyond the control of the Confederate Government. If there is anything to be added to its mistaken secrecy as a definitecause of irritation, it must be found in the general tone given to itsactions by its chief directors. And here there is something to be said. 

With all his high qualities of integrity, courage, faithfulness, andzeal, Davis lacked that insight into human life which marks the geniusof the supreme executive. He was not an artist in the use of men. He hadnot that artistic sense of his medium which distinguishes thestatesman from the bureaucrat. In fact, he had a dangerous bent towardbureaucracy. As Reuben Davis said of him, "Gifted with some of thehighest attributes of a statesman, he lacked the pliancy which enables aman to adapt his measures to the crisis. " Furthermore, he lacked humor;there was no safety-valve to his intense nature; and he was a manof delicate health. Mrs. Davis, describing the effects which nervousdyspepsia and neuralgia had upon him, says he would come home fromhis office "fasting, a mere mass of throbbing nerves, and perfectlyexhausted. " And it cannot be denied that his mind was dogmatic. Hereare dangerous lines for the character of a leader of revolution--thebureaucratic tendency, something of rigidity, lack of humor, physicalwretchedness, dogmatism. Taken together, they go far toward explaininghis 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 witha genius of the first rank without knowing it. But Davis does not seemever to have appreciated that the man commanding in the Seven Days'Battles was one of the world's supreme characters. The relation betweenDavis and Lee was always cordial, and it brought out Davis's characterin its best light. Nevertheless, so rooted was Davis's faith in his ownabilities 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 betweenus wrest a victory from those people. " And yet, his military experienceembraced only the minor actions of a young officer on the Indianfrontier and the gallant conduct of a subordinate in the Mexican War. Hehad never executed a great military design. His desire for the militarylife was, after all, his only ground for ranking himself with the victorof Second Manassas. Davis was also unfortunate in lacking the powerto overcome men and sweep them along with him--the power Lee showedso conspicuously. Nor was Davis averse to sharp reproof of the highestofficials when he thought them in the wrong. He once wrote to JosephE. Johnston that a letter of his contained "arguments and statementsutterly unfounded" and "insinuations as unfounded as they wereunbecoming. "

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

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

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

During the autumn of 1862 and the following winter the disputes overthe conduct of the war began to subside and two other themes becameprominent: the sovereignty of the States, which appeared to be menacedby the Government, and the personality of Davis, whom malcontentsregarded as a possible despot. Contrary to tradition, the first noteof 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 purposeof seeing the State through the "revolution. " In the Convention, in September, 1862, the question of a contest with the ConfederateGovernment on the subject of a state army was definitely raised. It wasproposed to organize a state army and to instruct the Legislatureto "take effectual measures to prevent the agents of the ConfederateGovernment from raising troops in South Carolina except by voluntaryenlistment or by applying to the Executive of the State to call out themilitia as by law organized, or some part of it to be mustered into theConfederate service. " This proposal brought about a sharp debateupon the Confederate Government and its military policy. Rhett made aremarkable address, which should of itself quiet forever the oldtale that he was animated in his opposition solely by the pique ofa disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as everagainst the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit ofthe state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the momentrendered the organization of such an army inopportune. A year earlier hewould have strongly supported the plan. In fact, in opposition to Davishe had at that time, he said, urged an obligatory army which the Statesshould be required to raise. The Confederate Administration, however, had defeated his scheme. Since then the situation had changed and hadbecome so serious that now there was no choice but to submit to militarynecessity. He regarded the general conscription law as "absolutelynecessary to save" the Confederacy "from utter devastation if not finalsubjugation. Right or wrong, the policy of the Administration had leftus no other alternative. . . . "

The dominant attitude in South Carolina in the autumn of 1862 is instrong contrast, because of its firm grasp upon fact, with the attitudeof the Brown faction in Georgia. An extended history of the Confederatemovement--one of those vast histories that delight the recluse and scareaway the man of the world--would labor to build up images of what mightbe called the personalities of the four States that continued fromthe beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederatesystem--Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to forgetthat the Confederacy was practically divided into separate units asearly as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a great history ofthe time would have a special and thrilling story of the conduct of thedetached western unit, the isolated world of Louisiana, Arkansas, andTexas--the "Department of the Trans-Mississippi"--cut off from the mainbody of the Confederacy and hemmed in between the Federal army andthe deep sea. Another group of States--Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama--became so soon, and remained so long, a debatable land, onwhich the two armies fought, that they also had scant opportunity forgenuine political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in itsgallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of soldierslarger than its voting population. 

Thus, after the loss of New Orleans, one thing with another operatedto confine the area of full political life to Virginia and her threeneighbors to the South. And yet even among these States there was nopolitical solidarity or unanimity of opinion, for the differences intheir past experience, social structure, and economic conditions madefor distinct points of view. In South Carolina, particularly, theprevailing view was that of experienced, disillusioned men who realizedfrom the start that secession had burnt their bridges, and that now theymust win the fight or change the whole current of their lives. In themidst of the extraordinary conditions of war, they never talked as iftheir 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, withHannibal at the gates, talked as if the control of the situation werestill in his own hands. 

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

Meanwhile the military authorities looked facts in the face and had adifferent tale to tell. They complained that in various parts of thecountry, especially in the mountain districts, they were unable toobtain men. Lee reported that his army melted away before his eye andasked for an increase of authority to compel stragglers to return. Atthe same time Brown was quarreling with the Administration as to whoshould name the officers of the Georgia troops. Zebulon B. Vance, thenewly elected Governor of North Carolina and an anti-Davis man, saidto the Legislature: "It is mortifying to find entire brigades of NorthCarolina soldiers commanded by strangers, and in many cases our ownbrave and war-worn colonels are made to give place to colonels fromdistant States. " In addition to such indications of discontent a vastmass of evidence makes plain the opposition to conscription toward theclose of 1862 and the looseness of various parts of the military system. 

It was a moment of intense excitement and of nervous strain. The countrywas unhappy, for it had lost faith in the Government at Richmond. Theblockade was producing its effect. European intervention was recedinginto the distance. One of the characteristics of the editorials andspeeches 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 Confederacybut did not restore buoyancy to the people of the South. TheEmancipation Proclamation, though scoffed at as a cry of impotence, nonethe less increased the general sense of crisis. 

Worst of all, because of its immediate effect upon the temper of thetime, food was very scarce and prices had risen to indefensible heights. The army was short of shoes. In the newspapers, as winter came on, wereto be found touching descriptions of Lee's soldiers standing barefoot inthe snow. A flippant comment of Benjamin's, that the shoes had probablybeen traded for whiskey, did not tend to improve matters. Even thoughshort of supplies themselves, the people as a whole eagerly subscribedto 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 peopleeverywhere to the full exercise of all the remedies allowed by law. " InAugust, 1862, the Governor of Florida wrote to the Florida delegation atRichmond urging them to take steps to meet the "nefarious smuggling"of speculators who charged extortionate prices. In September, he wroteagain begging for legislation to compel millers, tanners, and saltmakersto offer their products at reasonable rates. As these men were exemptfrom military duty because their labor was held to be a publicservice, feeling against them ran high. Governor Vance proposed a stateconvention to regulate prices for North Carolina and by proclamationforbade the export of provisions in order to prevent the seeking ofexorbitant prices in other markets. Davis wrote to various Governorsurging them to obtain state legislation to reduce extortion in the foodbusiness. In the provisioning of the army the Confederate Government hadrecourse to impressment and the arbitrary fixing of prices. Though theAttorney-General held this action to be constitutional, it led to sharpcontentions; and at length a Virginia court granted an injunction to aspeculator who had been paid by the Government for flour less than ithad cost him. 

In an attempt to straighten out this tangled situation, the ConfederateGovernment began, late, in 1862, by appointing as its new Secretary ofWar, * James A. Seddon of Virginia--at that time high in popularfavor. The Mercury hailed his advent with transparent relief, for noappointment could have seemed to it more promising. Indeed, as thenew year (1863) opened the Mercury was in better humor with theAdministration than perhaps at any other time during the war. Tothe President's message it gave praise that was almost cordial. Thisamicable temper was short-lived, however, and three months later theheavens had clouded. 

 * 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, 1868; Gustavus W. Smith (temporarily), until November 21, 1862; James A. Seddon, until February 6, 1865; General John C. Breckinridge, again, for the Government had entered upon a course that consolidated the opposition in anger and distrust. 

Early in 1863 the Confederate Government presented to the country aprogram in which the main features were three. Of these the two whichdid not rouse immediate hostility in the party of the Examiner and theMercury were the Impressment Act of March, 1863 (amended by successiveacts), and the act known as the Tax in Kind, which was approved thefollowing month. Though the Impressment Act subsequently made vasttrouble for the Government, at the time of its passage its beneficialeffects were not denied. To it was attributed by the Richmond Whig therapid fall of prices in April, 1863. Corn went down at Richmond from $12and $10 a bushel to $4. 20, and flour dropped in North Carolina from $45a barrel to $25. Under this act commissioners were appointed in eachState jointly by the Confederate President and the Governor with theduty of fixing prices for government transactions and of publishingevery two months an official schedule of the prices to be paid by theGovernment for the supplies which it impressed. 

The new Tax Act attempted to provide revenues which should not be paidin depreciated currency. With no bullion to speak of, the ConfederateCongress could not establish a circulating medium with even anapproximation to constant value. Realizing this situation, Memminger hadadvised falling back on the ancient system of tithes and the supportof the Government by direct contributions of produce. After licensing agreat 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 thislaw the Mercury pronounced a benediction in an editorial on The Fall ofPrices, which it attributed to "the healthy influence of the tax billwhich has just become law. " *

 * 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, thecongressional session of the spring of 1863 would have had a differentsignificance in Confederate history. But there was a third measurethat provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of theMercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bittercontroversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed "A Despotism overthe Confederate States Proposed in Congress" amounted to a declarationof war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drewsteadily further and further apart and their antagonism grew steadilymore relentless. 

What caused this irrevocable breach was a bill introduced into the Houseby Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi, an old friend of President Davis. This bill would have invested the President with authority tosuspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any part of theConfederacy, whenever in his judgment such suspension was desirable. The first act suspending the privilege of habeas corpus had longsince expired and applied only to such regions as were threatened withinvasion. It had served usefully under martial law in cleansing Richmondof its rogues, and also had been in force at Charleston. The Mercury hadapproved it and had exhorted its readers to take the matter sensibly asan inevitable detail of war. Between that act and the act now proposedthe Mercury saw no similarity. Upon the merits of the question it foughta furious journalistic duel with the Enquirer, the government organ atRichmond, which insisted that President Davis would not abuse his power. The Mercury replied that if he "were a second Washington, or an angelupon earth, the degradation such a surrender of our rights implies wouldstill be abhorrent to every freeman. " In retort the Enquirer pointedout that a similar law had been enacted by another Congress with no badresults. And in point of fact the Enquirer was right, for in October, 1862, after the expiration of the first act suspending the privilegeof the writ of habeas corpus, Congress passed a second giving to thePresident the immense power which was now claimed for him again. Thissecond act was in force several months. Then the Mercury made theastounding declaration that it had never heard of the second act, andthereupon proceeded to attack the secrecy of the Administration withrenewed vigor. 

On this issue of reviving the expired second Habeas Corpus Act, abattle royal was fought in the Confederate Congress. The forces ofthe Administration defended the new measure on the ground that variousregions were openly seditious and that conscription could not beenforced 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 ofTennessee. Fierce, vindictive, sometimes convincing, always shrewd, hewas a powerful leader of the rough and ready, buccaneering sort. Underhis guidance the debate was diverted into a rancorous discussion of theconduct of the general's in the execution of martial law. Foote pulledout all the stops in the organ of political rhetoric and went in for achant royal of righteous indignation. The main object of this attack wasGeneral Hindman and his doings in Arkansas. Those were still the days ofpamphleteering. Though General Albert Pike had written a severe pamphletcondemning Hindman, to this pamphlet the Confederate Government had shutits eyes. Foote, however, flourished it in the face of the House. Hethundered forth his belief that Hindman was worse even than the man mostdetested in the South, than "beast Butler himself, for the latter isonly charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of hisGovernment, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised crueltiesunnumbered" 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 arecent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, inany 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 thepillaging of the Richmond jewelry shops, a riot which Davis himself hadquelled by meeting the rioters and threatening to fire upon them. Butsarcasm proved powerless against Foote. His climax was a lurid tale ofa soldier who while marching past his own house heard that his wife wasdying, who left the ranks for a last word with her, and who on rejoiningthe command, "hoping to get permission to bury her, " was shot as adeserter. And there was no one on the Government benches to anticipateKipling and cry out "flat art!" Resolutions condemning martial law werepassed by a vote of 45 to 27. 

Two weeks later the Mercury preached a burial sermon over the BarksdaleBill, which had now been rejected by the House. Congress was about toadjourn, and before it reassembled elections for the next House wouldbe held. "The measure is dead for the present, " said the Mercury, "butpower is ever restive and prone to accumulate power; and if the warcontinues, other efforts will doubtless be made to make the Presidenta Dictator. Let the people keep their eyes steadily fixed on theirrepresentatives with respect to this vital matter; and should the effortagain be made to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, demand that a recordedvote should show those who shall strike down their liberties. "

Chapter V. The Critical Year

The great military events of the year 1863 have pushed out of men'smemories the less dramatic but scarcely less important civil events. Tobegin with, in this year two of the greatest personalities in the Southpassed from the political stage: in the summer Yancey died; and in theautumn, Rhett went into retirement. 

The ever malicious Pollard insists that Yancey's death was dueultimately to a personal encounter with a Senator from Georgia onthe floor of the Senate. The curious may find the discreditable storyembalmed in the secret journal of the Senate, where are the variousmotions designed to keep the incident from the knowledge of the world. Whether it really caused Yancey's death is another question. However, the moment of his passing has dramatic significance. Just as the battleover conscription was fully begun, when the fear that the ConfederateGovernment had arrayed itself against the rights of the States haddefinitely taken shape, when this dread had been reenforced by the alarmover the suspension of habeas corpus, the great pioneer of the secessionmovement went to his grave, despairing of the country he had failed tolead. His death occurred in the same month as the Battle of Gettysburg, at the very time when the Confederacy was dividing against itself. 

The withdrawal of Rhett from active life was an incident of thecongressional elections. He had consented to stand for Congress in theThird District of South Carolina but was defeated. The full explanationof the vote is still to be made plain; it seems clear, however, thatSouth Carolina at this time knew its own mind quite positively. Fiveof the six representatives returned to the Second Congress, includingRhett's opponent, Lewis M. Ayer, had sat in the First Congress. Thesubsequent history of the South Carolina delegation and of the StateGovernment shows that by 1863 South Carolina had become, broadlyspeaking, on almost all issues an anti-Davis State. And yet the largestpersonality and probably the ablest mind in the State was rejected asa candidate for Congress. No character in American history is a finerchallenge to the biographer than this powerful figure of Rhett, who in1861 at the supreme crisis of his life seemed the master of his worldand yet in every lesser crisis was a comparative failure. As in Yancey, so in Rhett, there was something that fitted him to one great moment butdid not fit him to others. There can be little doubt that his defeatat the polls of his own district deeply mortified him. He withdrew frompolitics, and though he doubtless, through the editorship of one ofhis sons, inspired the continued opposition of the Mercury to theGovernment, Rhett himself hardly reappears in Confederate history exceptfor a single occasion during the debate a year later upon the burningquestion of arming the slaves. 

The year was marked by very bitter attacks upon President Davis onthe part of the opposition press. The Mercury revived the issue of theconduct of the war which had for some time been overshadowed by otherissues. In the spring, to be sure, things had begun to look brighter, and Chancellorsville had raised Lee's reputation to its zenith. Thedisasters of the summer, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, were for a timeminimized by the Government and do not appear to have caused the alarmwhich their strategic importance might well have created. But when inthe latter days of July the facts became generally known, the Mercuryarraigned the President's conduct of the war as "a vast complication ofincompetence and folly"; it condemned the whole scheme of the Northerninvasion and maintained that Lee should have stood on the defensivewhile twenty or thirty thousand men were sent to the relief ofVicksburg. These two ideas it bitterly reiterated and in August wentso far as to quote Macaulay's famous passage on Parliament's dread of adecisive victory over Charles and to apply it to Davis in unrestrainedlanguage that reminds one of Pollard. 

Equally unrestrained were the attacks upon other items of the policy ofthe Confederate Government. The Impressment Law began to be a target. Farmers who were compelled to accept the prices fixed by the impressmentcommissioners cried out that they were being ruined. Men of the stamp ofToombs came to their assistance with railing accusations such asthis: "I have heard it said that we should not sacrifice libertyto independence, but I tell you, my countrymen, that the twoare inseparable. . . . If we lose our liberty we shall lose ourindependence. . . . I would rather see the whole country the cemetery offreedom than the habitation of slaves. " Protests which poured in uponthe Government insisted that the power to impress supplies did not carrywith it the power to fix prices. Worthy men, ridden by the traditionalideas of political science and unable to modify these in the light ofthe present emergency, wailed out their despair over the "usurpation" ofRichmond. 

The tax in kind was denounced in the same vein. The licensing provisionsof this law and its income tax did not satisfy the popular imagination. These provisions concerned the classes that could borrow. The classesthat could not borrow, that had no resources but their crops, felt thatthey were being driven to the wall. The bitter saying went around thatit was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. " As land and slaveswere not directly taxed, the popular discontent appeared to have groundfor its anger. Furthermore, it must never be forgotten that this was thefirst general tax that the poor people of the South were ever consciousof paying. To people who knew the tax-gatherer as little more than amythical being, he suddenly appeared like a malevolent creature whoswept off ruthlessly the tenth of their produce. It is not strangethat an intemperate reaction against the planters and their leadershipfollowed. The illusion spread that they were not doing their share ofthe fighting; and as rich men were permitted to hire substitutes torepresent them in the army, this really baseless report was easilypropped up in the public mind with what appeared to be reason. 

In North Carolina, where the peasant farmer was a larger politicalfactor than in any other State, this feeling against the ConfederateGovernment because of the tax in kind was most dangerous. In the courseof the summer, while the military fortunes of the Confederacy weretoppling at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the North Carolina farmers ina panic of self-preservation held numerous meetings of protest anddenunciation. They expressed their thoughtless terror in resolutionsasserting that the action of Congress "in secret session, withoutconsulting with their constituents at home, taking from the hardlaborers of the Confederacy one-tenth of the people's living, instead oftaking back their own currency in tax, is unjust and tyrannical. " Otherresolutions called the tax "unconstitutional, anti-republican, andoppressive"; and still others pledged the farmers "to resist to thebitter end any such monarchical tax. "

A leader of the discontented in North Carolina was found in W. W. Holden, the editor of the Raleigh Progress, who before the war hadattempted to be spokesman for the men of small property by advocatingtaxes on slaves and similar measures. He proposed as the conclusion ofthe whole matter the opening of negotiations for peace. We shall seelater how deep-seated was this singular delusion that peace could be hadfor the asking. In 1863, however, many men in North Carolina took up thesuggestion with delight. Jonathan Worth wrote in his diary, on hearingthat the influential North Carolina Standard had come out for peace:"I still abhor, as I always did, this accursed war and the wicked men, North and South, who inaugurated it. The whole country at the North andthe South is a great military despotism. " With such discontent in theair, the elections in North Carolina drew near. The feeling was intenseand riots occurred. Newspaper offices were demolished--among themHolden's, to destroy which a detachment of passing soldiers converteditself into a mob. In the western counties deserters from the army, combined in bands, were joined by other deserters from Tennessee, andterrorized the countryside. Governor Vance, alarmed at the progresswhich this disorder was making, issued a proclamation imploring hisrebellious countrymen to conduct in a peaceable manner their campaignfor the repeal of obnoxious laws. 

The measure of political unrest in North Carolina was indicated in theautumn when a new delegation to Congress was chosen. Of the ten whocomposed it, eight were new men. Though they did not stand for a clearlydefined program, they represented on the whole anti-Davis tendencies. The Confederate Administration had failed to carry the day in theNorth Carolina elections; and in Georgia there were even more sweepingevidences of unrest. Of the ten representatives chosen for the SecondCongress nine had not sat in the First, and Georgia now was in the mainfrankly anti-Davis. There had been set up at Richmond a new organ ofthe Government called the Sentinel, which was more entirely under thepresidential shadow than even the Enquirer and the Courier. Speakingof the elections, the Sentinel deplored the "upheaval of politicalelements" revealed by the defeat of so many tried representatives whoseconstituents had not returned them to the Second Congress. 

What was Davis doing while the ground was thus being cut from underhis feet? For one thing he gave his endorsement to the formationof "Confederate Societies" whose members bound themselves to takeConfederate money as legal tender. He wrote a letter to one such societyin Mississippi, praising it for attempting "by common consent to bringdown the prices of all articles to the standard of the soldiers' wages"and adding that the passion of speculation had "seduced citizens of allclasses from a determined prosecution of the war to an effort to amassmoney. " The Sentinel advocated the establishment of a law fixing maximumprices. The discussion of this proposal seems to make plain the raisond'etre for the existence of the Sentinel. Even such stanch governmentorgans as the Enquirer and the Courier shied at the idea, but theMercury denounced it vigorously, giving long extracts from Thiers, and discussed the mistakes, of the French Revolution with its "law ofmaximum. "

Davis, however, did not take an active part in the political campaign, nor did the other members of the Government. It was not because of anynotion that the President should not leave the capital that Davis didnot visit the disaffected regions of North Carolina when the startledpopulace winced under its first experience with taxation. Three timesduring his Administration Davis left Richmond on extended journeys: latein 1862, when Vicksburg had become a chief concern of the Government, hewent as far afield as Mississippi in order to get entirely in touch withthe military situation in those parts; in the month of October, 1863, when there was another moment of intense military anxiety, Davis againvisited the front; and of a third journey which he undertook in 1864, we shall hear in time. It is to be noted that each of these journeys wasprompted by a military motive; and here, possibly, we get an explanationof his inadequacy as a statesman. He could not lay aside his interest inmilitary affairs for the supremely important concerns of civil office;and he failed to understand how to ingratiate his Administration bypersonal appeals to popular imagination. 

In October, 1863, --the very month in which his old rival Rhett sufferedhis final defeat, --Davis undertook a journey because Bragg, after hisgreat victory at Chickamauga, appeared to be letting slip a goldenopportunity, and because there were reports of dissension among Bragg'sofficers and of general confusion in his army. After he had, as hethought, restored harmony in the camp, Davis turned southward on a tourof appeal and inspiration. He went as far as Mobile, and returning benthis course through Charleston, where, at the beginning of November, lessthan two weeks after Rhett's defeat, Davis was received with all dueformalities. Members of the Rhett family were among those who formallyreceived the President at the railway station. There was a parade ofwelcome, an official reception, a speech by the President from the stepsof the city hall, and much applause by friends of the Administration. But certain ominous signs were not lacking. The Mercury, for example, tucked away in an obscure column its account of the event, while itsrival, the Courier, made the President's visit the feature of the day. 

Davis returned to Richmond, early in November, to throw himself againwith his whole soul into problems that were chiefly military. He didnot realize that the crisis had come and gone and that he had failedto grasp the significance of the internal political situation. TheGovernment had failed to carry the elections and to secure a workingmajority in Congress. Never again was it to have behind it a firm andconfident support, The unity of the secession movement had passed away. Thereafter the Government was always to be regarded with suspicionby the extreme believers in state sovereignty and by those whowere sullenly convinced that the burdens of the war were unfairlydistributed. And there were not wanting men who were ready to construeeach emergency measure as a step toward a coup d'etat. 

Chapter VI. Life In The Confederacy

When the fortunes of the Confederacy in both camp and council began toebb, the life of the Southern people had already profoundly changed. The gallant, delightful, carefree life of the planter class had beenundermined by a war which was eating away its foundations. Economic noless than political forces were taking from the planter that ideal ofindividual liberty as dear to his heart as it had been, ages before, tohis feudal prototype. One of the most important details of the changingsituation had been the relation of the Government to slavery. Thehistory of the Confederacy had opened with a clash between theextreme advocates of slavery--the slavery-at-any-price men--and theAdministration. The Confederate Congress had passed a bill ostensiblyto make effective the clause in its constitution prohibiting theAfrican slave-trade. The quick eye of Davis had detected in it a mode ofevasion, for cargoes of captured slaves were to be confiscated and soldat public auction. The President had exposed this adroit subterfuge inhis message vetoing the bill, and the slavery-at-any-price men hadnot sufficient influence in Congress to override the veto, though theymuttered against it in the public press. 

The slavery-at-any-price men did not again conspicuously show theirhands until three years later when the Administration includedemancipation in its policy. The ultimate policy of emancipation wasforced upon the Government by many considerations but more particularlyby the difficulty of securing labor for military purposes. In a countrywhere the supply of fighting men was limited and the workers were aclass apart, the Government had to employ the only available laborersor confess its inability to meet the industrial demands of war. But theavailable laborers were slaves. How could their services be secured? Bypurchase? Or by conscription? Or by temporary impressment?

Though Davis and his advisers were prepared to face all the hazardsinvolved in the purchase or confiscation of slaves, the traditionalSouthern temper instantly recoiled from the suggestion. A Governmentpossessed of great numbers of slaves, whether bought or appropriated, would have in its hands a gigantic power, perhaps for industrialcompetition with private owners, perhaps even for organized militarycontrol. Besides, the Government might at any moment by emancipatingits slaves upset the labor system of the country. Furthermore, theopportunities for favoritism in the management of state-owned slaveswere beyond calculation. Considerations such as these therefore explainthe watchful jealousy of the planters toward the Government whenever itproposed to acquire property in slaves. 

It is essential not to attribute this social-political dread ofgovernment ownership of slaves merely to the clutch of a wealthy classon its property. Too many observers, strangely enough, see the lattermotive to the exclusion of the former. Davis himself was not, it wouldseem, free from this confusion. He insisted that neither slaves norland were taxed by the Confederacy, and between the lines he seemsto attribute to the planter class the familiar selfishness of massedcapital. He forgot that the tax in kind was combined with an income tax. In theory, at least, the slave and the land--even non-farming land--weretaxed. However, the dread of a slave-owning Government prevented anyeffective plan for supplying the army with labor except through thetemporary impressment of slaves who were eventually to be returned totheir owners. The policy of emancipation had to wait. 

Bound up in the labor question was the question of the control of slavesduring the war. In the old days when there were plenty of white men inthe countryside, the roads were carefully patrolled at night, andno slave ventured to go at large unless fully prepared to prove hisidentity. But with the coming of war the comparative smallness of thefighting population made it likely from the first that the countrysideeverywhere would be stripped of its white guardians. In that event, whowould be left to control the slaves? Early in the war a slave policewas provided for by exempting from military duty overseers in theratio approximately of one white to twenty slaves. But the marvelousfaithfulness of the slaves, who nowhere attempted to revolt, made theseprecautions unnecessary. Later laws exempted one overseer on everyplantation of fifteen slaves, not so much to perform patrol duty as toincrease the productivity of plantation labor. 

This "Fifteen Slave" Law was one of many instances that were caught upby the men of small property as evidence that the Government favored therich. A much less defensible law, and one which was bitterly attackedfor the same reason, was the unfortunate measure permitting the hiringof substitutes by men drafted into the army. Eventually, the clamoragainst this law caused its repeal, but before that time it had workeduntold harm as apparent evidence of "a rich man's war and a poor man'sfight. " Extravagant stories of the avoidance of military duty by theruling class, though in the main they were mere fairy tales, changed thewhole atmosphere of Southern life. The old glad confidence unitingthe planter class with the bulk of the people had been impaired. Misapprehension appeared on both sides. Too much has been said lately, however, in justification of the poorer classes who were thus wakenedsuddenly to a distrust of the aristocracy; and too little has beensaid of the proud recoil of the aristocracy in the face of a sudden, credulous perversion of its motives--a perversion inspired by thepinching of the shoe, and yet a shoe that pinched one class as hard asit did another. It is as unfair to charge the planter with selfishnessin opposing the appropriation of slaves as it is to make the same chargeagainst the small farmers for resisting tithes. In face of the record, the planter comes off somewhat the better of the two; but it must beremembered that he had the better education, the larger mental horizon. 

The Confederacy had long recognized women of all classes as the mostdauntless defenders of the cause. The women of the upper classes passedwithout a tremor from a life of smiling ease to a life of extremehardship. One day, their horizon was without a cloud; another day, their husbands and fathers had gone to the front. Their luxuries haddisappeared, and they were reduced to plain hard living, toiling in athousand ways to find provision and clothing, not only for their ownchildren but for the poorer families of soldiers. The women of the poorthroughout the South deserve similar honor. Though the physical shockof the change may not have been so great, they had to face the same deeprealities--hunger and want, anxiety over the absent soldiers, solicitudefor children, grief for the dead. One of the pathetic aspects ofConfederate life was the household composed of several families, allwomen and children, huddled together without a man or even a half-grownlad to be their link with the mill and the market. In those regionswhere there were few slaves and the exemption of overseers did notoperate, such households were numerous. 

The great privations which people endured during the Confederacy havepassed into familiar tradition. They are to be traced mainly to threecauses: to the blockade, to the inadequate system of transportation, andto the heartlessness of speculators. The blockade was the real destroyerof the South. Besides ruining the whole policy based on King Cotton, besides impeding to a vast extent the inflow of munitions from Europe, it also deprived Southern life of numerous articles which were hardto relinquish--not only such luxuries as tea and coffee, but alsosuch utter necessities as medicines. And though the native herbswere diligently studied, though the Government established medicallaboratories with results that were not inconsiderable, the shortage ofmedicines remained throughout the war a distressing feature of Southernlife. The Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond and a foundry at Selma, Alabama, were the only mills in the South capable of casting the heavyordnance necessary for military purposes. And the demand for powdermills and gun factories to provide for the needs of the army wasscarcely greater than the demand for cotton mills and commercialfoundries to supply the wants of the civil population. The Governmentworked without ceasing to keep pace with the requirements of thesituation, and, in view of the immense difficulties which it had toface, it was fairly successful in supplying the needs of the army. Powder was provided by the Niter and Mining Bureau; lead for Confederatebullets was collected from many sources--even from the window-weights ofthe houses; iron was brought from the mines of Alabama; guns came fromnewly built factories; and machines and tools were part of the preciousfreight of the blockade-runners. Though the poorly equipped mills turneda portion of the cotton crop into textiles, and though everything thatwas possible was done to meet the needs of the people, the supply ofmanufactures was sadly inadequate. The universal shortage was betrayedby the limitation of the size of most newspapers to a single sheet, andthe desperate situation clearly and completely revealed by the way inwhich, as a last resort, the Confederates were compelled to repair theirrailroads by pulling up the rails of one road in order to repair anotherthat the necessities of war rendered indispensable. 

The railway system, if such it can be called, was one of the weaknessesof the Confederacy. Before the war the South had not felt the need ofelaborate interior communication, for its commerce in the main wentseaward, and thence to New England or to Europe. Hitherto the railwaylines had seen no reason for merging their local character in extensivecombinations. Owners of short lines were inclined by tradition to resisteven the imperative necessities of war and their stubborn conservatismwas frequently encouraged by the shortsighted parochialism of the towns. The same pitiful narrowness that led the peasant farmer to threatenrebellion against the tax in kind led his counterpart in the towns tooppose the War Department in its efforts to establish through railroadlines because they threatened to impair local business interests. Astriking instance of this disinclination towards cooperation is theaction of Petersburg. Two railroads terminated at this point but did notconnect, and it was an ardent desire of the military authorities tolink the two and convert them into one. The town, however, unable tosee beyond its boundaries and resolute in its determination to save itstransfer business, successfully obstructed the needs of the army. *

 * See an article on "The Confederate Government and the Railroads" in the "American Historical Review, " July, 1917, by Charles W. Ramsdell. 

As a result of this lack of efficient organization an immense congestionresulted all along the railroads. Whether this, rather than a failure insupply, explains the approach of famine in the latter part of the war, it is today very difficult to determine. In numerous state papers of thetime, the assertion was reiterated that the yield of food was abundantand that the scarcity of food at many places, including the cities andthe battle fronts, was due to defects in transportation. Certain it isthat the progress of supplies from one point to another was intolerablyslow. 

All this want of coordination facilitated speculation. We shall seehereafter how merciless this speculation became and we shall even hearof profits on food rising to more than four hundred per cent. However, the oft-quoted prices of the later years--when, for instance, a pairof shoes cost a hundred dollars--signify little, for they rested on aninflated currency. None the less they inspired the witticism that oneshould take money to market in a basket and bring provisions home inone's pocketbook. Endless stories could be told of speculators hoardingfood and watching unmoved the sufferings of a famished people. SaidBishop Pierce, in a sermon before the General Assembly of Georgia, on Fast Day, in March, 1863: "Restlessness and discontent prevail. . . . Extortion, pitiless extortion is making havoc in the land. We aredevouring each other. Avarice with full barns puts the bounties ofProvidence under bolts and bars, waiting with eager longings for higherprices. . . . The greed of gain. . . Stalks among us unabashed by the heroicsacrifice of our women or the gallant deeds of our soldiers. Speculationin salt and bread and meat runs riot in defiance of the thunders ofthe pulpit, and executive interference and the horrors of threatenedfamine. " In 1864, the Government found that quantities of grain paid inunder the tax as new-grown were mildewed. It was grain of the previousyear which speculators had held too long and now palmed off on theGovernment to supply the army. 

Amid these desperate conditions the fate of soldiers' families becameeverywhere, a tragedy. Unless the soldier was a land-owner his familywas all but helpless. With a depreciated currency and exaggeratedprices, his pay, whatever his rank, was too little to count in providingfor his dependents. Local charity, dealt out by state and county boards, by relief associations, and by the generosity of neighbors, formed thebarrier between his family and starvation. The landless soldier, witha family at home in desperate straits, is too often overlooked whenunimaginative people heap up the statistics of "desertion" in the latterhalf of the war. 

It was in this period, too, that amid the terrible shrinkage of thedefensive lines "refugeeing" became a feature of Southern life. Fromthe districts over which the waves of war rolled back and forth helplessfamilies--women, children, slaves--found precarious safety together withgreat hardship by withdrawing to remote places which invasion was littlelikely to reach. An Odyssey of hard travel, often by night and halfsecret, is part of the war tradition of thousands of Southern families. And here, as always, the heroic women, smiling, indomitable, are thecenter of the picture. Their flight to preserve the children was nosmall test of courage. Almost invariably they had to traverse desolatecountry, with few attendants, through forests, and across rivers, wherethe arm of the law was now powerless to protect them. Outlaws, defiantof the authorities both civil and military, --ruthless men of whom weshall hear again, --roved those great unoccupied spaces so characteristicof the Southern countryside. Many a family legend preserves still thesense of breathless caution, of pilgrimage in the night-time intentlysilent for fear of these masterless men. When the remote rendezvous hadbeen reached, there a colony of refugees drew together in a steadfastdespair, unprotected by their own fighting men. What strange sad pagesin the history of American valor were filled by these women outwardlycalm, their children romping after butterflies in a glory of sunshine, while horrid tales drifted in of deeds done by the masterless men inthe forest just beyond the horizon, and far off on the soul's horizonfathers, husbands, brothers, held grimly the lines of last defense!

Chapter VII. The Turning Of The Tide

The buoyancy of the Southern temper withstood the shock of Gettysburgand was not overcome by the fall of Vicksburg. Of the far-reachingsignificance of the latter catastrophe in particular there was littleimmediate recognition. Even Seddon, the Secretary of War, in November, reported that "the communication with the Trans-Mississippi, whilerendered somewhat precarious and insecure, is found by no means cut offor even seriously endangered. " His report was the same sort of thingas those announcements of "strategic retreats" with which the world hassince become familiar. He even went so far as to argue that on the wholethe South had gained rather than lost; that the control of the river wasof no real value to the North; that the loss of Vicksburg "has on ourside liberated for general operations in the field a large army, whileit requires the enemy to maintain cooped up, inactive, in positionsinsalubrious to their soldiers, considerable detachments of theirforces. "

Seddon attempted to reverse the facts, to show that the importance ofthe Mississippi in commerce was a Northern not a Southern concern. He threw light upon the tactics of the time by his description of thefuture action of Confederate sharpshooters who were to terrorize suchcommercial crews as might attempt to navigate the river; he also toldhow light batteries might move swiftly along the banks and, atpoints commanding the channel, rain on the passing steamer unheraldeddestruction. He was silent upon the really serious matter, the patrolof the river by Federal gunboats which rendered commerce with theTrans-Mississippi all but impossible. 

This report, dated the 26th of November, gives a roseate view of the warin Tennessee and enlarges upon that dreadful battle of Chickamauga which"ranks as one of the grandest victories of the war. " But even as thereport was signed, Bragg was in full retreat after his great disasterat Chattanooga. On the 30th of November the Administration at Richmondreceived from him a dispatch that closed with these words: "I deem itdue to the cause and to myself to ask for relief from command and aninvestigation into the causes of the defeat. " In the middle of December, Joseph E. Johnston was appointed to succeed him. 

Whatever had been the illusions of the Government, they were now at anend. There was no denying that the war had entered a new stage and thatthe odds were grimly against the South. Davis recognized the gravityof the situation, and in his message to Congress in December, 1863, headmitted that the Trans-Mississippi was practically isolated. This wasindeed a great catastrophe, for hereafter neither men nor supplies couldbe drawn from the far Southwest. Furthermore, the Confederacy had nowlost its former precious advantage of using Mexico as a means of secrettrade with Europe. 

These distressing events of the four months between Vicksburg andChattanooga established also the semi-isolation of the middle region ofthe lower South. The two States of Mississippi and Alabama entered uponthe most desperate chapter of their history. Neither in nor out of theConfederacy, neither protected by the Confederate lines nor policed bythe enemy, they were subject at once to the full rigor of the financialand military demands of the Administration of Richmond and to thefull ruthlessness of plundering raids from the North. Nowhere can thecontrast between the warfare of that day and the best methods of ourown time be observed more clearly than in this unhappy region. At theopening of 1864 the effective Confederate lines drew an irregularzigzag across the map from a point in northern Georgia not far belowChattanooga to Mobile. Though small Confederate commands still operatedbravely west of this line, the whole of Mississippi and a large part ofAlabama were beyond aid from Richmond. But the average man did notgrasp the situation. When a region is dominated by mobile armies theappearance of things to the civilian is deceptive. Because the powerfulFederal armies of the Southwest, at the opening of 1864, were massed atstrategic points from Tennessee to the Gulf, and were not extended alongan obvious trench line, every brave civilian would still keep up hishope and would still insist that the middle Gulf country was farfrom subjugation, that its defense against the invader had not becomehopeless. 

Under such conditions, when the Government at Richmond called upon themen of the Southwest to regard themselves as mere sources of supply, human and otherwise, mere feeders to a theater of war that did notinclude their homes, it was altogether natural that they should resentthe demand. All the tragic confusion that was destined in the course ofthe fateful year 1864 to paralyze the Government at Richmond was alreadyapparent in the middle Gulf country when the year began. Chief amongthese was the inability of the State and Confederate Governments tocooperate adequately in the business of conscription. The two powerswere determined rivals struggling each to seize the major part of themanhood of the community. While Richmond, looking on the situation withthe eye of pure strategy, wished to draw together the full man-powerof the South in one great unit, the local authorities were bent onretaining a large part of it for home defense. 

In the Alabama newspapers of the latter half of 1863 strange incidentsare to be found throwing light on the administrative duel. The writ ofhabeas corpus, as was so often the case in Confederate history, was thebone of contention. We have seen that the second statute empowering thePresident to proclaim martial law and to suspend the operation of thewrit had expired by limitation in February, 1863. The Alabama courtswere theoretically in full operation, but while the law was in force themilitary authorities had acquired a habit of arbitrary control. Thoughwarned from Richmond in general orders that they must not take untothemselves a power vested in the President alone, they continued theirprevious course of action. It thereupon became necessary to issuefurther general orders annulling "all proclamations of martial lawby general officers and others" not invested by law with adequateauthority. 

Neither general orders nor the expiration of the statute, however, seemed able to put an end to the interference with the local courts onthe part of local commanders. The evil apparently grew during 1863. Apicturesque instance is recorded with extreme fullness by the SouthernAdvertiser in the autumn of the year. In the minutely circumstantialaccount, we catch glimpses of one Rhodes moving heaven and earth toprove himself exempt from military service. After Rhodes is enrolled bythe officers of the local military rendezvous, the sheriff attempts toturn the tables by arresting the Colonel in command. The soldiers rushto defend their Colonel, who is ill in bed at a house some distanceaway. The judge who had issued the writ is hot with anger at thismilitary interference in civil affairs. Thereupon the soldiers seizehim, but later, recognizing for some unexplained reason the majesty ofthe civil law, they release him. And the hot-tempered incident closeswith the Colonel's determination to carry the case to the Supreme Courtof the State. 

The much harassed people of Alabama had still other causes of complaintduring this same year. Again the newspapers illumine the situation. Inthe troubled autumn, Joseph Wheeler swept across the northern countiesof Alabama and in a daring ride, with Federal cavalry hot on his trail, reached safety beyond the Tennessee River. Here his pursuers turned backand, as their horses had been broken by the swiftness of the pursuit, returning slowly, they "gleaned the country" to replace their supplies. Incidentally they pounced upon the town of Huntsville. "Theirappearance here, " writes a local correspondent, "was so sudden and. . . Thecontradictory reports of their whereabouts" had been so bafflingthat the townspeople had found no time to secrete things. The wholeneighborhood was swept clean of cattle and almost clean of provision. "We have not enough left, " the report continues, "to haul and plowwith. . . And milch cows are non est. " Including "Stanley's big raid inJuly, " this was the twenty-first raid which Huntsville had endured thatyear. The report closes with a bitter denunciation of the people ofsouthern Alabama who as yet do not know what war means, who are accusedof complete hardness of heart towards their suffering fellow-countrymenand of caring only to make money out of war prices. 

When Davis sent his message to the Southern Congress at the opening ofthe session of 1864, the desperate plight of the middle Gulf country wasat once a warning and a menace to the Government. If the conditions ofthat debatable land should extend eastward, there could be little doubtthat the day of the Confederacy was nearing its close. To remedy thesituation west of the main Confederate line, to prevent the growth of asimilar condition east of it, Davis urged Congress to revive the statutepermitting martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The President told Congress that in parts of the Confederacy "publicmeetings have been held, in some of which a treasonable design is maskedby a pretense of devotion of state sovereignty, and in others is openlyavowed. . . A strong suspicion is entertained that secret leagues andassociations are being formed. In certain localities men of no meanposition do not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to ourcause, and their advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and theabolition of slavery. "

This suspicion on the part of the Confederate Government that it wasbeing opposed by organized secret societies takes us back to debatableland and to the previous year. The Bureau of Conscription submitted tothe Secretary of War a report from its Alabama branch relative to "asworn secret organization known to exist and believed to have for itsobject the encouragement of desertion, the protection of deserters fromarrest, resistance to conscription, and perhaps other designs of a stillmore dangerous character. " To the operations of this insidious foe wereattributed the shifting of the vote in the Alabama elections, the defeatof certain candidates favored by the Government, and the return in theirstead of new men "not publicly known. " The suspicions of the Governmentwere destined to further verification in the course of 1864 by theunearthing of a treasonable secret society in southwestern Virginia, themembers of which were "bound to each other for the prosecution of theirnefarious designs by the most solemn oaths. They were under obligationto encourage desertions from the army, and to pass and harbor alldeserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give information to the enemyof the movements of our troops, of exposed or weakened positions, ofinviting opportunities of attack, and to guide and assist the enemyeither in advance or retreat. " This society bore the grandiloquent name"Heroes of America" and had extended its operations into Tennessee andNorth Carolina. 

In the course of the year further evidence was collected which satisfiedthe secret service of the existence of a mysterious and nameless societywhich had ramifications throughout Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Adetective who joined this "Peace Society, " as it was called, forthe purpose of betraying its secrets, had marvelous tales to tell ofconfidential information given to him by members, of how MissionaryRidge had been lost and Vicksburg had surrendered through themachinations of this society. *

 * What classes were represented in these organizations it is difficult if not impossible to determine. They seem to have been involved in the singular "peace movement" which is yet to be considered. This fact gives a possible clue to the problem of their membership. A suspiciously large number of the "peace" men were original anti-secessionists, and though many, perhaps most, of these who opposed secession became loyal servants of the Confederacy, historians may have jumped too quickly to the assumption that the sincerity of all of these men was above reproach. 

In spite of its repugnance to the suspension of the writ of habeascorpus, Congress was so impressed by the gravity of the situation thatearly in 1864 it passed another act "to suspend the privilege of thewrit of habeas corpus in certain cases. " This was not quite the sameas that sweeping act of 1862 which had set the Mercury irrevocably inopposition. Though this act of 1864 gave the President the power toorder the arrest of any person suspected of treasonable practices, andthough it released military officers from all obligation to obey theorder of any civil court to surrender a prisoner charged with treason, the new legislation carefully defined a list of cases in which alonethis power could be lawfully used. This was the last act of the sortpassed by the Confederate Congress, and when it expired by limitationninety days after the next meeting of Congress it was not renewed. 

With regard to the administration of the army, Congress can hardly besaid to have met the President more than half way. The age of militaryservice was lowered to seventeen and was raised to fifty. But thePresident was not given--though he had asked for it--general controlover exemptions. Certain groups, such as ministers, editors, physicians, were in the main exempted; one overseer was exempted on each plantationwhere there were fifteen slaves, provided he gave bond to sell to theGovernment at official prices each year one hundred pounds of eitherbeef or bacon for each slave employed and provided he would sell all hissurplus produce either to the Government or to the families of soldiers. Certain civil servants of the Confederacy were also exempted as well asthose whom the governors of States should "certify to be necessary forthe proper administration of the State Government. " The Presidentwas authorized to detail for nonmilitary service any members ofthe Confederate forces "when in his judgment, justice, equity, andnecessity, require such details. "

This statute retained two features that had already given rise to muchfriction, and that were destined to be the cause of much more. It wasstill within the power of state governors to impede conscriptionvery seriously. By certifying that a man was necessary to the civiladministration of a State, a Governor could place him beyond the legalreach of the conscripting officers. This provision was a concession tothose who looked on Davis's request for authority over exemption as thefirst step toward absolutism. On the other hand the statute allowedthe President a free hand in the scarcely less important matter of"details. " Among the imperative problems of the Confederacy, where thewhole male population was needed in the public service, was the mosteconomical separation of the two groups, the fighters and the producers. On the one hand there was the constant demand for recruits to fill upthe wasted armies; on the other, the need for workers to keep the shopsgoing and to secure the harvest. The two interests were never fullycoordinated. Under the act of 1864, no farmer, mechanic, tradesman, between the ages of seventeen and fifty, if fit for military service, could remain at his work except as a "detail" under orders of thePresident: he might be called to the colors at a moment's notice. Weshall see, presently, how the revoking of details, toward the endof what may truly be called the terrible year, was one of the majorincidents of Confederate history. 

Together with the new conscription act, the President approved onFebruary 17, 1864, a reenactment of the tax in kind, with some slightconcessions to the convenience of the farmers. The President's appealfor a law directly taxing slaves and land had been ignored by Congress, but another of his suggestions had been incorporated in the Funding Act. The state of the currency was now so grave that Davis attributed to itall the evils growing out of the attempts to enforce impressment. As thevalue of the paper dollar had by this time shrunk to six cents inspecie and the volume of Confederate paper was upward of seven hundredmillions, Congress undertook to reduce the volume and raise the valueby compelling holders of notes to exchange them for bonds. By way ofdriving the note-holders to consent to the exchange, provision was madefor the speedy taxation of notes for one-third their face value. 

Such were the main items of the government program for 1864. Armed withthis, Davis braced himself for the great task of making head against theenemies that now surrounded the Confederacy. It is an axiom of militaryscience that when one combatant possesses the interior line, the othercan offset this advantage only by exerting coincident pressure allround, thus preventing him from shifting his forces from one frontto another. On this principle, the Northern strategists had at lastcompleted their gigantic plan for a general envelopment of the wholeConfederate defense both by land and sea. Grant opened operations bycrossing the Rapidan and telegraphing Sherman to advance into Georgia. 

The stern events of the spring of 1864 form such a famous page inmilitary history that the sober civil story of those months appears bycomparison lame and impotent. Nevertheless, the Confederate Governmentduring those months was at least equal to its chief obligation: itsupplied and recruited the armies. With Grant checked at Cold Harbor, inJune, and Sherman still unable to pierce the western line, the hopes ofthe Confederates were high. 

In the North there was corresponding gloom. This was the moment whenall Northern opponents of the war drew together in their last attempt toshatter the Lincoln Government and make peace with the Confederacy. Thevalue to the Southern cause of this Northern movement for peace atany price was keenly appreciated at Richmond. Trusted agents of theConfederacy were even then in Canada working deftly to influenceNorthern sentiment. The negotiations with those Northern secretsocieties which befriended the South belong properly in the story ofNorthern politics and the presidential election of 1864. They wereskillfully conducted chiefly by Jacob Thompson and C. C. Clay. Thereports of these agents throughout the spring and summer were allhopeful and told of "many intelligent men from the United States" whosought them out in Canada for political consultations. They discussed"our true friends from the Chicago (Democratic) convention" andeven gave names of those who, they were assured, would have seats inMcClellan's Cabinet. They were really not well informed upon Northernaffairs, and even after the tide had turned against the Democratsin September, they were still priding themselves on their diplomaticachievement, still confident they had helped organize a great politicalpower, had "given a stronger impetus to the peace party of the Norththan all other causes combined, and had greatly reduced the strength ofthe war party. "

While Clay and Thompson built their house of cards in Canada, theRichmond Government bent anxious eyes on the western battlefront. Sherman, though repulsed in his one frontal attack at Kenesaw Mountain, had steadily worked his way by the left flank of the Confederate army, until in early July he was within six miles of Atlanta. All the lowerSouth was a-tremble with apprehension. Deputations were sent to Richmondimploring the removal of Johnston from the western command. What had hedone since his appointment in December but retreat? Such was the tenorof public opinion. "It is all very well to talk of Fabian policy, " saidone of his detractors long afterward, "and now we can see we wererash to say the least. But at the time, all of us went wrong together. Everybody clamored for Johnston's removal. " Johnston and Davis were notfriends; but the President hesitated long before acting. And yet, witheach day, political as well as military necessity grew more imperative. Both at Washington and Richmond the effect that the fighting in Georgiahad on Northern opinion was seen to be of the first importance. Shermanwas staking everything to break the Confederate line and take Atlanta. He knew that a great victory would have incalculable effect on theNorthern election. Davis knew equally well that the defeat of Shermanwould greatly encourage the peace party in the North. But he had nogeneral of undoubted genius whom he could put in Johnston's place. However, the necessity for a bold stroke was so undeniable, andJohnston appeared so resolute to continue his Fabian policy, that Davisreluctantly took a desperate chance and superseded him by Hood. 

During August, though the Democratic convention at Chicago drew upits platform favoring peace at any price, the anxiety of the SouthernPresident did not abate his activities. The safety of the western linewas now his absorbing concern. And in mid-August that line was turned, in a way, by Farragut's capture of Mobile Bay. As the month closed, Sherman, despite the furious blows delivered by Hood, was plainlygetting the upper hand. North and South, men watched that tremendousduel with the feeling that the foundations of things were rocking. Atlast, on the 2d of September, Sherman, victorious, entered Atlanta. 

Chapter VIII. A Game Of Chance

With dramatic completeness in the summer and autumn of 1864, thefoundations of the Confederate hope one after another gave way. Amongthe causes of this catastrophe was the failure of the second greatattempt on the part of the Confederacy to secure recognition abroad. The subject takes us back to the latter days of 1862, when the centerof gravity in foreign affairs had shifted from London to Paris. NapoleonIII, at the height of his strange career, playing half a dozen dubiousgames at once, took up a new pastime and played at intrigue withthe Confederacy. In October he accorded a most gracious interview toSlidell. He remarked that his sympathies were entirely with the Southbut added that, if he acted alone, England might trip him up. He spokeof his scheme for joint intervention by England, France, and Russia. Then he asked why we had not created a navy. Slidell snapped at thebait. He said that the Confederates would be glad to build shipsin France, that "if the Emperor would give only some kind of verbalassurance that the police would not observe too closely when we wishedto put on guns and men we would gladly avail ourselves of it. " To this, the imperial trickster replied, "Why could you not have them built asfor the Italian Government? I do not think it would be difficult butwill consult the Minister of Marine about it. "

Slidell left the Emperor's presence confident that things would happen. And they did. First came Napoleon's proposal of intervention, which wasdeclined before the end of the year by England and Russia. Then camehis futile overtures to the Government at Washington, his offer ofmediation--which was rejected early in 1863. But Slidell remainedconfident that something else would happen. And in this expectation alsohe was not disappointed. The Emperor was deeply involved in Mexicoand was busily intriguing throughout Europe. This was the time whenErlanger, standing high in the favor of the Emperor, made his gambler'sproposal to the Confederate authorities about cotton. Another of theEmperor's friends now enters the play. On January 7, 1863, M. Arman, of Bordeaux, "the largest shipbuilder in France, " had called on theConfederate commissioner: M. Arman would be happy to build ironcladships for the Confederacy, and as to paying for them, cotton bonds mightdo the trick. 

No wonder Slidell was elated, so much so that he seems to have givenlittle heed to the Emperor's sinister intimation that the whole affairmust be subterranean. But the wily Bonaparte had not forgotten that sixmonths earlier he had issued a decree of neutrality forbidding Frenchmento take commissions from either belligerent "for the armament of vesselsof war or to accept letters of marque, or to cooperate in any waywhatsoever in the equipment or arming of any vessel of war or corsair ofeither belligerent. " He did not intend to abandon publicly this cautiousattitude--at least, not for the present. And while Slidell at Pariswas completely taken in, the cooler head of A. Dudley Mann, Confederatecommissioner at Brussels, saw what an international quicksand wasthe favor of Napoleon. It was about this time that Napoleon, havingdispatched General Forey with a fresh army to Mexico, wrote the famousletter which gave notice to the world of what he was about. Mann wrotehome in alarm that the Emperor might be expected to attempt recoveringMexico's ancient areas including Texas. Slidell saw in the Foreyletter only "views. . . Which will not be gratifying to the WashingtonGovernment. "

The adroit Arman, acting on hints from high officers of the Government, applied for permission to build and arm ships of war, alleging that heintended to send them to the Pacific and sell them to either China orJapan. To such a laudable expression of commercial enterprise, one ofhis fellows in the imperial ring, equipped with proper authority underBonaparte, hastened to give official approbation, and Erlangercame forward by way of financial backer. There were conferences ofConfederate agents; contracts were signed; plans were agreed upon; andthe work was begun. 

There was no more hopeful man in the Confederate service than Slidellwhen, in the full flush of pride after Chancellorsville, he appealedto the Emperor to cease waiting on other powers and recognize theConfederacy. Napoleon accorded another gracious interview but stillinsisted that it was impossible for him to act alone. He said thathe was "more fully convinced than ever of the propriety of a generalrecognition by the European powers of the Confederate States but thatthe commerce of France and the interests of the Mexican expedition wouldbe jeopardized by a rupture with the United States" and unless Englandwould stand by him he dared not risk such an eventuality. In point offact, he was like a speculator who is "hedging" on the stock exchange, both buying and selling, and trying to make up his mind on which cast tostake his fortune. At the same time he threw out once more the sinistercaution about the ships. He said that the ships might be built in Francebut that their destination must be concealed. 

That Napoleon's choice just then, if England had supported him, wouldhave been recognition of the Confederacy, cannot be doubted. The tangleof intrigue which he called his foreign policy was not encouraging. Hewas deeply involved in Italian politics, where the daring of Garibaldihad reopened the struggle between clericals and liberals. In Franceitself the struggle between parties was keen. Here, as in the Americanimbroglio, he found it hard to decide with which party to break. Thechimerical scheme of a Latin empire in Mexico was his spectacular deviceto catch the imagination, and incidentally the pocketbook, of everybody. But in order to carry out this enterprise he must be able to avert orwithstand the certain hostility of the United States. Therefore, as hetold Slidell, "no other power than England possessed a sufficient navy"to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. The moment was auspicious, forthere was a revival of the "Southern party" in England. The sailing ofthe Alabama from Liverpool during the previous summer had encouragedthe Confederate agents and their British friends to undertake furthershipbuilding. 

While M. Arman was at work in France, the Laird Brothers were at workin England and their dockyards contained two ironclad rams supposed tooutclass any vessels of the United States navy. Though every effort hadbeen made to keep secret the ultimate destination of these rams, thevigilance of the United States minister, reinforced by the zeal ofthe "Northern party, " detected strong circumstantial evidence pointingtoward a Confederate contract with the Lairds. A popular agitationensued along with demands upon the Government to investigate. To maskthe purposes of the Lairds, Captain James Bullock, the able specialagent of the Confederate navy, was forced to fall lack upon the sametactics that were being used across the Channel, and to sell the rams, on paper, to a firm in France. Neither he nor Slidell yet appreciatedwhat a doubtful refuge was the shadow of Napoleon's wing. 

Nevertheless the British Government, by this time practically alinedwith the North, continued its search for the real owner of the Lairdrams. The "Southern party, " however, had not quite given up hope, andthe agitation to prevent the sailing of the rams was a keen spur to itsflagging zeal. Furthermore the prestige of Lee never was higher than itwas in June, 1863, when the news of Chancellorsville was still fresh andresounding in every mind. It had given new life to the Confederate hope:Lee would take Washington before the end of the summer; the Laird ramswould go to sea; the Union would be driven to the wall. So reasonedthe ardent friends of the South. But one thing was lacking--a Europeanalliance. What a time for England to intervene!

While Slidell was talking with the Emperor, he had in his pocket aletter from J. A. Roebuck, an English politician who wished to forcethe issue in the House of Commons. As a preliminary to moving therecognition of the Confederacy, he wanted authority to deny a rumorgoing the rounds in London, to the effect that Napoleon had takenposition against intervention. Napoleon, when he had seen the letter, began a negotiation of some sort with this politician. It is needless toenter into the complications that ensued, the subsequent recriminations, and the question as to just what Napoleon promised at this time and howmany of his promises he broke. He was a diplomat of the old school, the school of lying as a fine art. He permitted Roebuck to come over toParis for an audience, and Roebuck went away with the impression thatNapoleon could be relied upon to back up a new movement for recognition. When, however, Roebuck brought the matter before the Commons at theend of the month and encountered an opposition from the Government thatseemed to imply an understanding with Napoleon which was different fromhis own, he withdrew his motion (in July). Once more the scale turnedagainst the Confederacy, and Gettysburg was supplemented by the seizureof the Laird rams by the British authorities. These events explain thebitter turn given to Confederate feeling toward England in the latterpart of 1863. On the 4th of August Benjamin wrote to Mason that "theperusal of the recent debates in 'Parliament satisfies the President"that Mason's "continued residence in London is neither conducive tothe interests nor consistent with the dignity of this government, " anddirected him to withdraw to Paris. 

Confederate feeling, as it cooled toward England, warmed toward France. Napoleon's Mexican scheme, including the offer of a ready-made imperialcrown to Maximilian, the brother of the Emperor of Austria, was fullyunderstood at Richmond; and with Napoleon's need of an American ally, Southern hope revived. It was further strengthened by a pamphlet whichwas translated and distributed in the South as a newspaper articleunder the title France, Mexico, and the Confederate States. The reputedauthor, Michel Chevalier, was an imperial senator, another member of theNapoleon ring, and highly trusted by his shifty master. The pamphlet, which emphasized the importance of Southern independence as a conditionof Napoleon's "beneficent aims" in Mexico, was held to have beeninspired, and the imperial denial was regarded as a mere matter of form. 

What appeared to be significant of the temper of the Imperial Governmentwas a decree of a French court in the case of certain merchants whosought to recover insurance on wine dispatched to America and destroyedin a ship taken by the Alabama. Their plea was that they were insuredagainst loss by "pirates. " The court dismissed their suit and assessedcosts against them. Further evidence of Napoleon's favor was thepermission given to the Confederate cruiser Florida to repair at Brestand even to make use of the imperial dockyard. The very general faith inNapoleon's promises was expressed by Davis in his message to Congressin December: "Although preferring our own government and institutionsto those of other countries, we can have no disposition to contest theexercise by them of the same right of self-government which we assertfor ourselves. If the Mexican people prefer a monarchy to a republic, it is our plain duty cheerfully to acquiesce in their decision andto evince a sincere and friendly interest in their prosperity. . . . TheEmperor of the French has solemnly disclaimed any purpose to imposeon Mexico a form of government not acceptable to the nation. . . . " InJanuary, 1864, hope of recognition through support of Napoleon's Mexicanpolicy moved the Confederate Congress to adopt resolutions providing fora Minister to the Mexican Empire and giving him instructions with regardto a presumptive treaty. To the new post Davis appointed General WilliamPreston. 

But what, while hope was springing high in America, was taking place inFrance? So far as the world could say, there was little if anything todisturb the Confederates; and yet, on the horizon, a cloud the size ofa man's hand had appeared. M. Arman had turned to another member of theLegislative Assembly, a sound Bonapartist like himself, M. Voruz, ofNantes, to whom he had sublet a part of the Confederate contract. Thetruth about the ships and their destination thus became part of thearchives of the Voruz firm. No phase of Napoleonic intrigue could govery far without encountering dishonesty, and to the confidentialclerk of M. Voruz there occurred the bright idea of doing somethingfor himself with this valuable diplomatic information. One fine daythe clerk was missing and with him certain papers. Then there ensued aperiod of months during which the firm and their employers could onlyconjecture the full extent of their loss. 

In reality, from the Confederate point of view, everything was lost. Again the episode becomes too complex to be followed in detail. Sufficeit to say that the papers were sold to the United States; that thesecret was exposed; that the United States made a determined assaultupon the Imperial Government. In the midst of this entanglement, Slidelllost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its endis a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sentto the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could nothave appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinatesmight play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire byspeaking of the ships as "now being constructed at Bordeaux and Nantesfor the government of the Confederate States" and virtually claimed ofNapoleon a promise to let them go to sea. Three days later the Ministerof Foreign Affairs took him sharply to task because of this note, reminding him that "what had passed with the Emperor was confidential"and dropping the significant hint that France could not be forced intowar by "indirection. " According to Slidell's version of the interview"the Minister's tone changed completely" when Slidell replied with "adetailed history of the affair showing that the idea originated with theEmperor. " Perhaps the Minister knew more than he chose to betray. Fromthis hour the game was up. Napoleon's purpose all along seems to havebeen quite plain. He meant to help the South to win by itself, and, after it had won, to use it for his own advantage. So precarious washis position in Europe that he dared not risk an American war withoutEngland's aid, and England had cast the die. In this way, secrecy wasthe condition necessary to continued building of the ships. Now thatthe secret was out, Napoleon began to shift his ground. He sounded theWashington Government and found it suspiciously equivocal as to Mexico. To silence the French republicans, to whom the American minister hadsupplied information about the ships, Napoleon tried at first muzzlingthe press. But as late as February, 1864, he was still carrying water onboth shoulders. His Minister of Marine notified the builders that theymust get the ships out of France, unarmed, under fictitious sale tosome neutral country. The next month, reports which the Confederatecommissioners sent home became distinctly alarming. Mann wrote fromBrussels: "Napoleon has enjoined upon Maximilian to hold no officialrelations with our commissioners in Mexico. " Shortly after this Slidellreceived a shock that was the beginning of the end: Maximilian, onpassing through Paris on his way to Mexico, refused to receive him. 

The Mexican project was now being condemned by all classes in France. Nevertheless, the Government was trying to float a Mexican loan, andit is hardly fanciful to think that on this loan the last hope of theConfederacy turned. Despite the popular attitude toward Mexico, the loanwas going well when the House of Representatives of the United Statesdealt the Confederacy a staggering blow. It passed unanimous resolutionsin the most grim terms, denouncing the substitution of monarchicalfor republican government in Mexico under European auspices. When thisaction was reported in France, the Mexican loan collapsed. 

Napoleon's Italian policy was now moving rapidly toward the crisiswhich it reached during the following summer when he surrendered to theopposition and promised to withdraw the French troops from Rome. In May, when the loan collapsed, there was nothing for it but to throw over hisdear friends of the Confederacy. Presently he had summoned Arman beforehim, "rated him severely, " and ordered him to make bona fide sales ofthe ships to neutral powers. The Minister of Marine professed surpriseand indignation at Arman's trifling with the neutrality of the ImperialGovernment. And that practically was the end of the episode. 

Equally complete was the breakdown of the Confederate negotiations withMexico. General Preston was refused recognition. In those fierce days ofJuly when the fate of Atlanta was in the balance, the pride and despairof the Confederate Government flared up in a haughty letter to Prestonreminding him that "it had never been the intention of this Governmentto offer any arguments to the new Government of Mexico. . . Nor to placeitself in any attitude other than that of complete equality, " anddirecting him to make no further overtures to the Mexican Emperor. 

And then came the debacle in Georgia. On that same 20th of Septemberwhen Benjamin poured out in a letter to Slidell his stored-up bitternessdenouncing Napoleon, Davis, feeling the last crisis was upon him, leftRichmond to join the army in Georgia. His frame of mind he had alreadyexpressed when he said, "We have no friends abroad. "

Chapter IX. Desperate Remedies

The loss of Atlanta was the signal for another conflict of authoritywithin the Confederacy. Georgia was now in the condition in whichAlabama had found herself in the previous year. A great mobile armyof invaders lay encamped on her soil. And yet there was still a stateGovernment established at the capital. Inevitably the man who thoughtof the situation from the point of view of what we should now call thegeneral staff, and the man who thought of it from the point of view ofa citizen of the invaded State, suffered each an intensification offeeling, and each became determined to solve the problem in his own way. The President of the Confederacy and the Governor of Georgia representedthese incompatible points of view. 

The Governor, Joseph E. Brown, is one of the puzzling figures ofConfederate history. We have already encountered him as a doggedopponent of the Administration. With the whole fabric of Southern lifetoppling about his ears, Brown argued, quibbled, evaded, and became arallying-point of disaffection. That more eminent Georgian, HowellCobb, applied to him very severe language, and they became engaged in acontroversy over that provision of the Conscription Act which exemptedstate officials from military service. While the Governor of Virginiawas refusing certificates of exemption to the minor civil officerssuch as justices of the peace, Brown by proclamation promised his"protection" to the most insignificant civil servants. "Will even yourExcellency, " demanded Cobb, "certify that in any county of Georgiatwenty justices of the peace and an equal number of constables arenecessary for the proper administration of the state government?"The Bureau of Conscription estimated that Brown kept out of the armyapproximately 8000 eligible men. The truth seems to be that neitherby education nor heredity was this Governor equipped to conceive largeideas. He never seemed conscious of the war as a whole, or of theConfederacy as a whole. To defend Georgia and, if that could not bedone, to make peace for Georgia--such in the mind of Brown was theaim of the war. His restless jealousy of the Administration finds itsexplanation in his fear that it would denude his State of men. Theseriousness of Governor Brown's opposition became apparent within a weekof the fall of Atlanta. Among Hood's forces were some 10, 000 Georgiamilitia. Brown notified Hood that these troops had been called outsolely with a view to the defense of Atlanta, that since Atlanta hadbeen lost they must now be permitted "to return to their homes andlook for a time after important interests, " and that therefore he did"withdraw said organizations" from Hood's command. In other words, Brownwas afraid that they might be taken out of the State. By proclamationhe therefore gave the militia a furlough of thirty days. Previous tothe issue of this proclamation, Seddon had written to Brown makingrequisition for his 10, 000 militia to assist in a pending campaignagainst Sherman. Two days after his proclamation had appeared, Brown, ina voluminous letter full of blustering rhetoric and abounding in sneersat the President, demanded immediate reinforcements by order of thePresident and threatened that, if they were not sent, he would recallthe Georgia troops from the army of Lee and would command "all the sonsof Georgia to return to their own State and within their own limits torally round her glorious flag. "

So threatening was the situation in Georgia that Davis attempted to takeit into his own hands. In a grim frame of mind he left Richmond forthe front. The resulting military arrangements do not of course belongstrictly to the subject matter of this volume; but the brief tour ofspeechmaking which Davis made in Georgia and the interior of SouthCarolina must be noticed; for his purpose seems to have been to put themilitary point of view squarely before the people. He meant them tosee how the soldier looked at the situation, ignoring all demands oflocality, of affiliation, of hardship, and considering only how to meetand beat the enemy. In his tense mood he was not always fortunate in hisexpressions. At Augusta, for example, he described Beauregard, whom hehad recently placed in general command over Georgia and South Carolina, as one who would do whatever the President told him to do. But this ideaof military self-effacement was not happily worded, and the enemies ofDavis seized on his phraseology as further evidence of his instinctiveautocracy. The Mercury compared him to the Emperor of Russia anddeclared the tactless remark to be "as insulting to General Beauregardas it is false and presumptuous in the President. "

Meanwhile Beauregard was negotiating with Brown. Though they came to anunderstanding about the disposition of the militia, Brown still triedto keep control of the state troops. When Sherman was burning Atlantapreparatory to the March to the Sea, Brown addressed to the Secretary ofWar another interminable epistle, denouncing the Confederate authoritiesand asserting his willingness to fight both the South and the North ifthey did not both cease invading his rights. But the people of Georgiawere better balanced than their Governor. Under the leadership of suchmen as Cobb they rose to the occasion and did their part in what proveda vain attempt to conduct a "people's war. " Their delegation at Richmondsent out a stirring appeal assuring them that Davis was doing for themall it was possible to do. "Let every man fly to arms, " said theappeal. "Remove your negroes, horses, cattle, and provisions from beforeSherman's army, and burn what you cannot carry. Burn all bridges andblock up the roads in his route. Assail the invader in front, flank, andrear, by night and by day. Let him have no rest. "

The Richmond Government was unable to detach any considerable forcefrom the northern front. Its contribution to the forces in Georgia wasaccomplished by such pathetic means as a general order calling to thecolors all soldiers furloughed or in hospital, "except those unable totravel"; by revoking all exemptions to farmers, planters, and mechanics, except munitions workers; and by placing one-fifth of the ordnance andmining bureau in the battle service. 

All the world knows how futile were these endeavors to stop thewhirlwind of desolation that was Sherman's march. He spent his ChristmasDay in Savannah. Then the center of gravity shifted from Georgia toSouth Carolina. Throughout the two desperate months that closed 1864 theauthorities of South Carolina had vainly sought for help from Richmond. Twice the Governor made official request for the return to SouthCarolina of some of her own troops who were at the front in Virginia. Davis first evaded and then refused the request. Lee had informed himthat if the forces on the northern front were reduced, the evacuation ofRichmond would become inevitable. 

The South Carolina Government, in December, 1864, seems to haveconcluded that the State must save itself. A State Conscription Act waspassed placing all white males between the ages of sixteen and sixty atthe disposal of the state authorities for emergency duty. An ExemptionAct set forth a long list of persons who should not be liable toconscription by the Confederate Government. Still a third act regulatedthe impressment of slaves for work on fortifications so as to enable thestate authorities to hold a check upon the Confederate authorities. Thesignificance of the three statutes was interpreted by a South Carolinasoldier, General John S. Preston, in a letter to the Secretary of Warthat was a wail of despair. "This legislation is an explicit declarationthat this State does not intend to contribute another soldier or slaveto the public defense, except on such terms its may be dictated by herauthorities. The example will speedily be followed by North Carolinaand Georgia, the Executives of those States having already assumed theposition. "

The division between the two parties in South Carolina had now becomebitter. To Preston the men behind the State Exemption Act appearedas "designing knaves. " The Mercury, on the other hand, was never morerelentless toward Davis than in the winter of 1864-1865. However, noneor almost none of the anti-Davis men in South Carolina made the leastsuggestion of giving up the struggle. To fight to the end but also toact as a check upon the central Government--as the new Governor, AndrewG. Magrath, said in his inaugural address in December, 1864, --wasthe aim of the dominant party in South Carolina. How far the StateGovernment and the Confederate Government had drifted apart is shown bytwo comments which were made in January, 1865. Lee complained that theSouth Carolina regiments, "much reduced by hard service, " were not beingrecruited up to their proper strength because of the measures adoptedin the southeastern States to retain conscripts at home. About the samedate the Mercury arraigned Davis for leaving South Carolina defenselessin the face of Sherman's coming offensive, and asked whether Davisintended to surrender the Confederacy. 

And in the midst of this critical period, the labor problem pushed tothe fore again. The revocation of industrial details, necessary as itwas, had put almost the whole male population--in theory, at least--inthe general Confederate army. How far-reaching was the effect of thisorder may be judged from the experience of the Columbia and AugustaRailroad Company. This road was building through the interior of theState a new line which was rendered imperatively necessary by Sherman'sseizure of the lines terminating at Savannah. The effect of therevocation order on the work in progress was described by the presidentof the road in a letter to the Secretary of War:

"In July and August I made a fair beginning and by October we had about600 hands. General Order No. 77 took off many of our contractors andhands. We still had increased the number of hands to about 400 whenSherman started from Atlanta. The military authorities of Augusta tookabout 300 of them to fortify that city. These contractors being fromGeorgia returned with their slaves to their homes after being dischargedat Augusta. We still have between 500 and 600 hands at work and areadding to the force every week. 

"The great difficulty has been in getting contractors exempt ordefinitely detailed since Order No. 77. I have not exceeded eight ornine contractors now detailed. The rest are exempt from other causes orover age. "

It was against such a background of economic confusion that Magrathwrote to the Governor of North Carolina making a revolutionary proposal. Virtually admitting that the Confederacy had been shattered, and knowingthe disposition of those in authority to see only the military aspectsof any given situation, he prophesied two things: that the generalswould soon attempt to withdraw Lee's army south of Virginia, and thatthe Virginia troops in that army would refuse to go. "It is naturalunder the circumstances, " said he, "that they would not. " He wouldprepare for this emergency by an agreement among the Southeastern andGulf States to act together irrespective of Richmond, and would thusweld the military power of these States into "a compact and organizedmass. "

Governor Vance, with unconscious subtlety, etched a portrait of his ownmind when he replied that the crisis demanded "particularly the skill ofthe politician perhaps more than that of the great general. " He adroitlyevaded saying what he really thought of the situation but he made twoexplicit counter-proposals. He suggested that a demand should be madefor the restoration of General Johnston and for the appointment ofGeneral Lee to "full and absolute command of all the forces of theConfederacy. " On the day on which Vance wrote to Magrath, the Mercurylifted up its voice and cried out for a Lee to take charge of theGovernment and save the Confederacy. About the same time Cobb wroteto Davis in the most friendly way, warning him that he had scarcelya supporter left in Georgia, and that, in view of the great popularreaction in favor of Johnston, concessions to the opposition were animperative necessity. "By accident, " said he, "I have become possessedof the facts in connection with the proposed action of the Governors ofcertain States. " He disavowed any sympathy with the movement but warnedDavis that it was a serious menace. 

Two other intrigues added to the general political confusion. One ofthese, the "Peace Movement, " will be considered in the next chapter. Theother was closely connected with the alleged conspiracy to depose Davisand set up Lee as dictator. If the traditional story, accepted byable historians, may be believed, William C. Rives, of the ConfederateCongress, carried in January, 1865, to Lee from a congressional cabalan invitation to accept the role of Cromwell. The greatest difficulty inthe way of accepting the tradition is the extreme improbability that anyone who knew anything of Lee would have been so foolish as to make sucha proposal. Needless to add, the tradition includes Lee's refusal tooverturn the Government. There can be no doubt, however, that all theenemies of Davis in Congress and out of it, in the opening months of1865, made a determined series of attacks upon his Administration. Norcan there be any doubt that the popular faith in Lee was used as theirtrump card. To that end, a bill was introduced to create the office ofcommanding general of the Confederate armies. The bill was generallyapplauded, and every one assumed that the new office was to be givento Lee. On the day after the bill had passed the Senate the VirginiaLegislature resolved that the appointment of General Lee to supremecommand would "reanimate the spirit of the armies as well as the peopleof the several States and. . . Inspire increased confidence in the finalsuccess of the cause. " When the bill was sent to the President, it wasaccompanied by a resolution asking him to restore Johnston. While Daviswas considering this bill, the Virginia delegation in the House, headedby the Speaker, Thomas S. Bocock, waited upon the President, informedhim what was really wanted was a change of Cabinet, and told himthat three-fourths of the House would support a resolution of want ofconfidence in the Cabinet. The next day Bocock repeated the demand in anote which Davis described as a "warning if not a threat. "

The situation of both President and country was now desperate. Theprogram with which the Government had entered so hopefully upon thisfated year had broken down at almost every point. In addition to themilitary and administrative disasters, the financial and economicsituation was as bad as possible. So complete was the financialbreakdown that Secretary Memminger, utterly disheartened, had resignedhis office, and the Treasury was now administered by a Charlestonmerchant, George A. Trenholm. But the financial chaos was wholly beyondhis control. The government notes reckoned in gold were worth aboutthree cents on the dollar. The Government itself avoided accepting them. It even bought up United States currency and used it in transacting thebusiness of the army. The extent of the financial collapse was to bemeasured by such incidents as the following which is recounted in areport that had passed under Davis's eye only a few weeks beforethe "threat" of Bocock was uttered: "Those holding the four per centcertificates complain that the Government as far as possible discreditsthem. Fractions of hundreds cannot be paid with them. I saw a widowlady, a few days since, offer to pay her taxes of $1, 271. 31 with acertificate of $1, 300. The tax-gatherer refused to give her the changeof $28. 69. She then offered the whole certificate for the taxes. Thiswas refused. This apparent injustice touched her far more than theamount of the taxes. "

A letter addressed to the President from Griffin, Georgia, containedthis dreary picture:

"Unless something is done and that speedily, there will be thousandsof the best citizens of the State and heretofore as loyal as any in theConfederacy, that will not care one cent which army is victorious inGeorgia. . . . Since August last there have been thousands of cavalryand wagon trains feeding upon our cornfields and for which ourquartermasters and officers in command of trains, regiments, battalions, companies, and squads, have been giving the farmers receipts, and wewere all told these receipts would pay our government taxes and tithing;and yet not one of them will be taken by our collector. . . . And yet weare threatened with having our lands sold for taxes. Our scrip forcorn used by our generals will not be taken. . . . How is it that we havecertified claims upon our Government, past due ten months, and when weenter the quartermaster's office we see placed up conspicuously in largeletters "no funds. " Some of these said quartermasters [who] four yearsago were not worth the clothes upon their backs, are now large dealersin lands, negroes, and real estate. "

There was almost universal complaint that government contractorswere speculating in supplies and that the Impressment Law was used byofficials to cover their robbery of both the Government and the people. Allowing for all the panic of the moment, one is forced to conclude thatthe smoke is too dense not to cover a good deal of fire. In a word, at the very time when local patriotism everywhere was drifting intoopposition to the general military command and when Congress wasreflecting this widespread loss of confidence, the Government was loudlycharged with inability to restrain graft. In all these accusations therewas much injustice. Conditions that the Government was powerless tocontrol were cruelly exaggerated, and the motives of the Government werefalsified. For all this exaggeration and falsification the press waslargely to blame. Moreover, the press, at least in dangerouslylarge proportion, was schooling the people to hold Davis personallyresponsible for all their suffering. General Bragg was informed in aletter from a correspondent in Mobile that "men have been taught to lookupon the President as an inexorably self-willed man who will see thecountry to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose. " Thisdeliberate fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less maliciousif the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis because ofhis desire to abolish the exemption of editors from conscription. Their ignoble course brings to mind one of the few sarcasms recorded ofLee--the remark that the great mistake of the South was in making allits best military geniuses editors of newspapers. But it must be addedin all fairness that the great opposition journals, such as the Mercury, took up this new issue with the President because they professed to seein his attitude toward the press a determination to suppress freedom ofspeech, so obsessed was the opposition with the idea that Davis wasa monster! Whatever explanations may be offered for the prevalence ofgraft, the impotence of the Government at Richmond contributed tothe general demoralization. In regions like Georgia and Alabama, theConfederacy was now powerless to control its agents. Furthermore, in every effort to assume adequate control of the food situation theGovernment met the continuous opposition of two groups of opponents--theunscrupulous parasites and the bigots of economic and constitutionaltheory. Of the activities of the first group, one incident is sufficientto tell the whole story. At Richmond, in the autumn of 1864, the grocerswere selling rice at two dollars and a half a pound. It happened thatthe Governor of Virginia was William Smith, one of the strong men ofthe Confederacy who has not had his due from the historians. He sawthat even under the intolerable conditions of the moment this price wasshockingly exorbitant. To remedy matters, the Governor took the State ofVirginia into business, bought rice where it was grown, imported it, andsold it in Richmond at fifty cents a pound, with sufficient profit tocover all costs of handling. 

Nevertheless, when Smith urged the Virginia Legislature to assumecontrol of business as a temporary measure, he was at once assailed bythe second group--those martinets of constitutionalism who would notgive up their cherished Anglo-Saxon tradition of complete individualismin government. The Administration lost some of its staunchest supportersthe moment its later organ, the Sentinel, began advocating the generalregulation of prices. With ruin staring them in the face, these devoteesof tradition could only reiterate their ancient formulas, nail theircolors to the mast, end go down, satisfied that, if they failed withthese principles, they would have failed still more terribly withoutthem. Confronting the practical question how to prevent speculators fromcharging 400 per cent profit, these men turned grim but did not abandontheir theory. In the latter part of 1864 they aligned themselves withthe opposition when the government commissioners of impressment fixedan official schedule that boldly and ruthlessly cut under market prices. The attitude of many such people was expressed by the Montgomery Mailwhen it said:

"The tendency of the age, the march of the American people, is towardmonarchy, and unless the tide is stopped we shall reach something worsethan monarchy. 

"Every step we have taken during the past four years has been in thedirection of military despotism. 

"Half our laws are unconstitutional. "

Another danger of the hour was the melting away of the Confederate armyunder the very eyes of its commanders. The records showed that therewere 100, 000 absentees. And though the wrathful officials of the Bureauof Conscription labeled them all "deserters, " the term covered greatnumbers who had gone home to share the sufferings of their families. 

Such in brief was the fateful background of the congressional attackupon the Administration in January, 1865. Secretary Seddon, himself aVirginian, believing that he was the main target of the hostility ofthe Virginia delegation, insisted upon resigning. Davis met thisdetermination with firmness, not to say infatuation, and in spite ofthe congressional crisis, exhausted every argument to persuade Seddonto remain in office. He denied the right of Congress to control hisCabinet, but he was finally constrained to allow Seddon to retire. Thebitterness inspired by these attempts to coerce the President may begauged by a remark attributed to Mrs. Davis. Speaking of the actionof Congress in forcing upon him the new plan for a single commandinggeneral of all the armies, she is said to have exclaimed, "I think I amthe proper person to advise Mr. Davis and if I were he, I would die orbe hung before I would submit to the humiliation. "

Nevertheless the President surrendered to Congress. On January 26, 1865, he signed the bill creating the office of commanding general and at oncebestowed the office upon Lee. It must not be supposed, however, that Leehimself had the slightest sympathy with the congressional cabal whichhad forced upon the President this reorganization of the army. Inaccepting his new position he pointedly ignored Congress by remarking, "I am indebted alone to the kindness of His Excellency, the President, for my nomination to this high and arduous office. "

The popular clamor for the restoration of Johnston had still to beappeased. Disliking Johnston and knowing that the opposition was usinga popular general as a club with which to beat himself, Davis hesitatedlong but in the end yielded to the inevitable. To make the reappointmenthimself, however, was too humiliating. He left it to the newcommander-in-chief, who speedily restored Johnston to command. 

Chapter X. Disintegration

While these factions, despite their disagreements, were making valiantefforts to carry on the war, other factions were stealthily cuttingthe ground from under them. There were two groups of men ripe fordisaffection--original Unionists unreconciled to the Confederacy andindifferentists conscripted against their will. 

History has been unduly silent about these disaffected men. At thetime so real was the belief in state rights that contemporaries werereluctant to admit that any Southerner, once his State had seceded, could fail to be loyal to its commands. Nevertheless in considerableareas--such, for example, as East Tennessee--the majority remained tothe end openly for the Union, and there were large regions in theSouth to which until quite recently the eye of the student had not beenturned. They were like deep shadows under mighty trees on the face of abrilliant landscape. When the peasant Unionist who had been forcedinto the army deserted, however, he found in these shadows a nucleusof desperate men ready to combine with him in opposition to the localauthorities. 

Thus were formed local bands of free companions who pillaged thecivilian population. The desperadoes whom the deserters joined have beendescribed by Professor Dodd as the "neglected byproducts" of the oldregime. They were broken white men, or the children of such, of the sortthat under other circumstances have congregated in the slums of greatcities. Though the South lacked great cities, nevertheless it had itsslum--a widespread slum, scattered among its swamps and forests. Inthese fastnesses were the lowest of the poor whites, in whom hatred ofthe dominant whites and vengeful malice against the negro burned likeslow fires. When almost everywhere the countryside was stripped of itsfighting men, these wretches emerged from their swamps and forests, like the Paris rabble emerging from its dens at the opening of theRevolution. But unlike the Frenchmen, they were too sodden to be capableof ideas. Like predatory wild beasts they revenged themselves upon thesociety that had cast them off, and with utter heartlessness theysmote the now defenseless negro. In the old days, with the country wellpoliced, the slaves had been protected against their fury, but war nowchanged all. The negro villages--or "streets, " as the term was--werewithout arms and without white police within call. They were ravagedby these marauders night after night, and negroes were not the onlyvictims, for in remote districts even murder of the whites became afamiliar horror. 

The antiwar factions were not necessarily, however, users ofviolence. There were some men who cherished a dream which they labeled"reconstruction"; and there were certain others who believed in separatestate action, still clinging to the illusion that any State had it inits power to escape from war by concluding a separate peace with theUnited States. 

Yet neither of these illusions made much headway in the States thathad borne the strain of intellectual leadership. Virginia and SouthCarolina, though seldom seeing things eye to eye and finally drifting inopposite directions, put but little faith in either "reconstruction"or separate peace. Their leaders had learned the truth about men andnations; they knew that life is a grim business; they knew that war hadunloosed passions that had to spend themselves and that could not betalked away. 

But there was scattered over the Confederacy a population which lackedexperience of the world and which included in the main those smallfarmers and semi-peasants who under the old regime were released fromthe burden of taxation and at the same time excluded from the benefitsof education. Among these people the illusions of the higher classeswere reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on anyprovocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understandinglife, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children to confuse the world of their owndesire with the world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fellupon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitatedimagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, thesepeople with childlike simplicity immediately became panic-stricken. Like the similar class in the North, they had measureless faith in talk. Hence for them, as for Horace Greeley and many another, sprang up thenotion that if only all their sort could be brought together for talkand talk and yet more talk, the Union could be "reconstructed" just asit used to be, and the cruel war would end. Before their eyes, as beforeGreeley in 1864, danced the fata morgana of a convention of all theStates, talking, talking, talking. 

The peace illusion centered in North Carolina, where the people wereas enthusiastic for state sovereignty as were any Southerners. They hadseceded mainly because they felt that this principle had been attacked. Having themselves little if any intention to promote slavery, theynevertheless were prompt to resent interference with the system or withany other Southern institution. Jonathan Worth said that they looked onboth abolition and secession as children of the devil, and he put theresponsibility for the secession of his State wholly upon Lincolnand his attempt to coerce the lower South. This attitude was probablycharacteristic of all classes in North Carolina. There also an unusuallylarge percentage of men lacked education and knowledge of the world. Wehave seen how the first experience with taxation produced instant andviolent reaction. The peasant farmers of the western counties and thegeneral mass of the people began to distrust the planter class. Theybegan asking if their allies, the other States, were controlled by thatsame class which seemed to be crushing them by the exaction of tithes. And then the popular cry was raised: Was there after all anything in thewar for the masses in North Carolina? Had they left the frying-pan forthe fire? Could they better things by withdrawing from association withtheir present allies and going back alone into the Union? The delusionthat they could do so whenever they pleased and on the old footingseems to have been widespread. One of their catch phrases was "theConstitution as it is and the Union as it was. " Throughout 1863, whenthe agitation against tithes was growing every day, the "conservatives"of North Carolina, as their leaders named them, were drawing togetherin a definite movement for peace. This project came to a head during thenext year in those grim days when Sherman was before Atlanta. Holden, that champion of the opposition to tithes, became a candidate forGovernor against Vance, who was standing for reelection. Holden statedhis platform in the organ of his party "If the people of North Carolinaare for perpetual conscriptions, impressments and seizures to keep upa perpetual, devastating and exhausting war, let them vote for GovernorVance, for he is for`fighting it out now; but if they believe, from thebitter experience of the last three years, that the sword can neverend it, and are in favor of steps being taken by the State to urgenegotiations by the general government for an honorable and speedypeace, they must vote for Mr. Holden. "

As Holden, however, was beaten by a vote that stood about three to one, Governor Vance continued in power, but just what he stood for and justwhat his supporters understood to be his policy would be hard to say. A year earlier he was for attempting to negotiate peace, but thoughprofessing to have come over to the war party he was never a cordialsupporter of the Confederacy. In a hundred ways he played upon thestrong local distrust of Richmond, and upon the feeling that NorthCarolina was being exploited in the interests of the remainder of theSouth. To cripple the efficiency of Confederate conscription was one ofhis constant aims. Whatever his views of the struggle in which hewas engaged, they did not include either an appreciation of Southernnationalism or the strategist's conception of war. Granted that theother States were merely his allies, Vance pursued a course that mightjustly have aroused their suspicion, for so far as he was able hedevoted the resources of the State wholly to the use of its owncitizens. The food and the manufactures of North Carolina were to beused solely by its own troops, not by troops of the Confederacy raisedin other States. And yet, subsequent to his reelection, he was not afigure in the movement to negotiate peace. 

Meanwhile in Georgia, where secession had met with powerful opposition, the policies of the Government had produced discontent not only withthe management of the war but with the war itself. And now AlexanderH. Stephens becomes, for a season, very nearly the central figure ofConfederate history. Early in 1864 the new act suspending the writ ofhabeas corpus had aroused the wrath of Georgia, and Stephens had becomethe mouthpiece of the opposition. In an address to the Legislature, hecondemned in most exaggerated language not only the Habeas Corpus Actbut also the new Conscription Act. Soon afterward he wrote a longletter to Herschel V. Johnson, who, like himself, had been an enemyof secession in 1861. He said that if Johnson doubted that the HabeasCorpus Act was a blow struck at the very "vitals of liberty, " thenhe "would not believe though one were to rise from the dead. " In thisextraordinary letter Stephens went on "most confidentially" to state hisattitude toward Davis thus "While I do not and never have regarded himas a great man or statesman on a large scale, or a man of any markedgenius, yet I have regarded him as a man of good intentions, weak andvacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate, but not firm. Amnow beginning to doubt his good intentions. . . . His whole policy on theorganization and discipline of the army is perfectly consistent with thehypothesis that he is aiming at absolute power. "

That a man of Stephens's ability should have dealt in fustian like thisin the most dreadful moment of Confederate history is a psychologicalproblem that is not easily solved. To be sure, Stephens was an extremeinstance of the martinet of constitutionalism. He reminds us of thoseold-fashioned generals of whom Macaulay said that they preferred to losea battle according to rule than win it by an exception. Such men findit easy to transform into a bugaboo any one who appears to them to beacting irregularly. Stephens in his own mind had so transformedthe President. The enormous difficulties and the wholly abnormalcircumstances which surrounded Davis counted with Stephens for nothingat all, and he reasoned about the Administration as if it were operatingin a vacuum. Having come to this extraordinary position, Stephens passedeasily into a role that verged upon treason. *

 * There can be no question that Stephens never did anything which in his own mind was in the least disloyal. And yet it was Stephens who, in the autumn of 1864, was singled out by artful men as a possible figurehead in the conduct of a separate peace negotiation with Sherman. A critic very hostile to Stephens and his faction might here raise the question as to what was at bottom the motive of Governor Brown, in the autumn of 1864, in withdrawing the Georgia militia from Hood's command. Was there something afoot that has never quite revealed itself on the broad pages of history? As ordinarily told, the story is simply that certain desperate Georgians asked Stephens to be their ambassador to Sherman to discuss terms; that Sherman had given them encouragement; but that Stephens avoided the trap, and so nothing came of it. The recently published correspondence of Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, however, contains one passage that has rather a startling sound. Brown, writing to Stephens regarding his letter refusing to meet Sherman, says, "It keeps the door open and I think this is wise. " At the same time he made a public statement that "Georgia has power to act independently but her faith is pledged by implication to her Southern sisters. . . Will triumph with her Southern sisters or sink with them in common ruin. " It is still to be discovered what "door" Stephens was supposed to have kept open. Peace talk was now in the air, and especially was there chatter about reconstruction. The illusionists seemed unable to perceive that the reelection of Lincoln had robbed them of their last card. These dreamers did not even pause to wonder why after the terrible successes of the Federal army in Georgia, Lincoln should be expected to reverse his policy and restore the Union with the Southern States on the old footing. The peace mania also invaded South Carolina and was espoused by one of its Congressmen, Mr. Boyce, but he made few converts among his own people. The Mercury scouted the idea; clear- sighted and disillusioned, it saw the only alternatives to be victory or subjugation. Boyce's argument was that the South had already succumbed to military despotism and would have to endure it forever unless it accepted the terms of the invaders. News of Boyce's attitude called forth vigorous protest from the army before Petersburg, and even went so far afield as New York, where it was discussed in the columns of the Herald. 

In the midst of the Northern elections, when Davis was hoping greatthings from the anti-Lincoln men, Stephens had said in print thathe believed Davis really wished the Northern peace party defeated, whereupon Davis had written to him demanding reasons for this astoundingcharge. To the letter, which had missed Stephens at his home and hadfollowed him late in the year to Richmond, Stephens wrote in the middleof December a long reply which is one of the most curious documentsin American history. He justified himself upon two grounds. One wasa statement which Davis had made in a speech at Columbia, in October, indicating that he was averse to the scheme of certain Northern peacemen for a convention of all the States. Stephens insisted that such aconvention would have ended the war and secured the independence of theSouth. Davis cleared himself on this charge by saying that the speechat Columbia "was delivered after the publication of McClellan'sletter avowing his purpose to force reunion by war if we declinedreconstruction when offered, and therefore warned the people againstdelusive hopes of peace from any other influence than that to be exertedby the manifestation of an unconquerable spirit. "

As Stephens professed to have independence and not reconstruction forhis aim, he had missed his mark with this first shot. He fared stillworse with the second. During the previous spring a Northern soldiercaptured in the southeast had appealed for parole on the ground that hewas a secret emissary to the President from the peace men of the North. Davis, who did not take him seriously, gave orders to have the caseinvestigated, but Stephens, whose mentality in this period is socuriously overcast, swallowed the prisoner's story without hesitation. He and Davis had a considerable amount of correspondence on the subject. In the fierce tension of the summer of 1864 the War Department wentso far as to have the man's character investigated, but the report wasunsatisfactory. He was not paroled and died in prison. This episodeStephens now brought forward as evidence that Davis had frustratedan attempt of the Northern peace party to negotiate. Davis contentedhimself with replying, "I make no comment on this. "

The next step in the peace intrigue took place at the opening ofthe next year, 1865. Stephens attempted to address the Senate on hisfavorite topic, the wickedness of the suspension of habeas corpus; washalted by a point of parliamentary law; and when the Senate sustainedan appeal from his decision, left the chamber in a pique. Hunter, nowa Senator, became an envoy to placate him and succeeded in bringing himback. Thereupon Stephens poured out his soul in a furious attack uponthe Administration. He ended by submitting resolutions which were justwhat he might have submitted four years earlier before a gun had beenfired, so entirely had his mind crystallized in the stress of war! Theseresolutions, besides reasserting the full state rights theory, assumedthe readiness of the North to make peace and called for a generalconvention of all the States to draw up some new arrangement on aconfessed state rights basis. More than a month before, Lincoln had beenreelected on an unequivocal nationalistic platform. And yet Stephenscontinued to believe that the Northerners did not mean what they saidand that in congregated talking lay the magic which would change theworld of fact into the world of his own desire. 

At this point in the peace intrigue the ambiguous figure of Napoleon theLittle reappears, though only to pass ghostlike across the back of thestage. The determination of Northern leaders to oppose Napoleon hadsuggested to shrewd politicians a possible change of front. Thatsingular member of the Confederate Congress, Henry S. Foote, thoughthe saw in the Mexican imbroglio means to bring Lincoln to terms. InNovember he had introduced into the House resolutions which intimatedthat "it might become the true policy of. . . The Confederate States toconsent to the yielding of the great principle embodied in the MonroeDoctrine. " The House referred his resolutions to the Committee onForeign Affairs, and there they slumbered until January. 

Meanwhile a Northern politician brought on the specter of Napoleon fora different purpose. Early in January, 1865, Francis P. Blair madea journey to Richmond and proposed to Davis a plan of reconciliationinvolving the complete abandonment of slavery, the reunion of all theStates, and an expedition against Mexico in which Davis was to play theleading role. Davis cautiously refrained from committing himself, thoughhe gave Blair a letter in which he expressed his willingness to enterinto negotiations for peace between "the two countries. " The visit ofBlair gave new impetus to the peace intrigue. The Confederate HouseCommittee on Foreign Affairs reported resolutions favoring an attemptto negotiate with the United States so as to "bring into view" thepossibility of cooperation between the United States and the Confederacyto maintain the Monroe Doctrine. The same day saw another singularincident. For some reason that has never been divulged Foote determinedto counterbalance Blair's visit to Richmond by a visit of his own toWashington. In attempting to pass through the Confederate lines he wasarrested by the military authorities. With this fiasco Foote passes fromthe stage of history. 

The doings of Blair, however, continued to be a topic of generalinterest throughout January. The military intrigue was now simmeringdown through the creation of the office of commanding general. Theattempt of the congressional opposition to drive the whole Cabinet fromoffice reached a compromise in the single retirement of the Secretaryof War. Before the end of the month the peace question was the paramountone before Congress and the country. Newspapers discussed the movementsof Blair, apparently with little knowledge, and some of the papersasserted hopefully that peace was within reach. Cooler heads, suchas the majority of the Virginia Legislature, rejected this idea asbaseless. The Mercury called the peace party the worst enemy of theSouth. Lee was reported by the Richmond correspondent of the Mercury asnot caring a fig for the peace project. Nevertheless the rumor persistedthat Blair had offered peace on terms that the Confederacy couldaccept. Late in the month, Davis appointed Stephens, Hunter, and JohnA. Campbell commissioners to confer with the Northern authorities withregard to peace. 

There followed the famous conference of February 3, 1865, in the cabinof a steamer at Hampton Roads, with Seward and Lincoln. TheConfederate commissioners represented two points of view: that of theAdministration, unwilling to make peace without independence; and thatof the infatuated Stephens who clung to the idea that Lincoln did notmean what he said, and who now urged "an armistice allowing the Statesto adjust themselves as suited their interests. If it would be to theirinterests to reunite, they would do so. " The refusal of Lincoln toconsider either of these points of view--the refusal so clearly foreseenby Davis--put an end to the career of Stephens. He was "hoist with hisown petard. "

The news of the failure of the conference was variously received. The Mercury rejoiced because there was now no doubt how things stood. Stephens, unwilling to cooperate with the Administration, left thecapital and went home to Georgia. At Richmond, though the snow lay thickon the ground, a great public meeting was held on the 6th of Februaryin the precincts of the African Church. Here Davis made an address whichhas been called his greatest and which produced a profound impression. A wave of enthusiasm swept over Richmond, and for a moment the Presidentappeared once more to be master of the situation. His immense audacitycarried the people with him when, after showing what might be done bymore drastic enforcement of the conscription laws, he concluded: "Let usthen unite our hands and our hearts, lock our shields together, and wemay well believe that before another summer solstice falls upon us, itwill be the enemy that will be asking us for conferences and occasionsin which to make known our demands. "

Chapter XI. An Attempted Revolution

Almost from the moment when the South had declared its independencevoices had been raised in favor of arming the negroes. The rejection ofa plan to accomplish this was one of the incidents of Benjamin's tenureof the portfolio of the War Department; but it was not until the earlydays of 1864, when the forces of Johnston lay encamped at Dalton, Georgia, that the arming of the slaves was seriously discussed bya council of officers. Even then the proposal had its determinedchampions, though there were others among Johnston's officers whoregarded it as "contrary to all true principles of chivalric warfare, "and their votes prevailed in the council by a large majority. 

From that time forward the question of arming the slaves hung like aheavy cloud over all Confederate thought of the war. It was discussed inthe army and at home around troubled firesides. Letters written from thetrenches at Petersburg show that it was debated by the soldiers, and theintense repugnance which the idea inspired in some minds was shown bythreats to leave the ranks if the slaves were given arms. 

Amid the pressing, obvious issues of 1864, this project hardly appearsupon the face of the record until it was alluded to in Davis's messageto Congress in November, 1864, and in the annual report of the Secretaryof War. The President did not as yet ask for slave soldiers. He did, however, ask for the privilege of buying slaves for government use--notmerely hiring them from their owners as had hitherto been done--and forpermission, if the Government so desired, to emancipate them at theend of their service. The Secretary of War went farther, however, andadvocated negro soldiers, and he too suggested their emancipation at theend of service. 

This feeling of the temper of the country, so to speak, produced animmediate response. It drew Rhett from his retirement and inspired aletter in which he took the Government severely to task for designingto remove from state control this matter of fundamental importance. Coinciding with the cry for more troops with which to confront Sherman, the topic of negro soldiers became at once one of the questions of thehour. It helped to focus that violent anti-Davis movement which isthe conspicuous event of December, 1864, and January, 1865. Those whobelieved the President unscrupulous trembled at the thought of puttinginto his hands a great army of hardy barbarians trained to absoluteobedience. The prospect of such a weapon held in one firm hand atRichmond seemed to those opponents of the President a greater menace totheir liberties than even the armies of the invaders. It is quite likelythat distrust of Davis and dread of the use he might make of such aweapon was increased by a letter from Benjamin to Frederick A. Porcherof Charleston, a supporter of the Government, who had made rashsuggestions as to the extra-constitutional power that the Administrationmight be justified by circumstances in assuming. Benjamin deprecatedsuch suggestions but concluded with the unfortunate remark: "If theConstitution is not to be our guide I would prefer to see it suppressedby a revolution which should declare a dictatorship during the war, after the manner of ancient Rome, leaving to the future the care ofreestablishing firm and regular government. " In the State of Virginia, indeed, the revolutionary suggestions of the President's message andthe Secretary's report were promptly taken up and made the basis of apolitical program, which Governor Smith embodied in his message to theLegislature--a document that will eventually take its place among themost interesting state papers of the Confederacy. It should be notedthat the suggestions thrown out in this way by the Administration totest public feeling involved three distinct questions: Should the slavesbe given arms? Should they, if employed as soldiers, be given theirfreedom? Should this revolutionary scheme, if accepted at all, behandled by the general Government or left to the several States? Onthe last of the three questions the Governor of Virginia was silent; byimplication he treated the matter as a concern of the States. Upon thefirst and second questions, however, he was explicit and advised armingthe slaves. He then added:

"Even if the result were to emancipate our slaves, there is not a manwho would not cheerfully put the negro into the Army rather than becomea slave himself to our hated and vindictive foe. It is, then, simply aquestion of time. Has the time arrived when this issue is fairly beforeus?. . . For my part standing before God and my country, I do not hesitateto say that I would arm such portion of our able-bodied slave populationas may be necessary, and put them in the field, so as to have them readyfor the spring campaign, even if it resulted in the freedom of thosethus organized. Will I not employ them to fight the negro force of theenemy? Aye, the Yankees themselves, who already boast that they have200, 000 of our slaves in arms against us. Can we hesitate, can we doubt, when the question is, whether the enemy shall use our slaves against usor we use them against him; when the question may be between liberty andindependence on the one hand, or our subjugation and utter ruin on theother?"

With their Governor as leader for the Administration, the Virginiansfound this issue the absorbing topic of the hour. And now the greatfigure of Lee takes its rightful place at the very center of Confederatehistory, not only military but civil, for to Lee the Virginiapoliticians turned for advice. * In a letter to a State Senator ofVirginia who had asked for a public expression of Lee's views because"a mountain of prejudices, growing out of our ancient modes of regardingthe institution of Southern slavery will have to be met and overcome" inorder to Attain unanimity, Lee discussed both the institution of slaveryand the situation of the moment. He plainly intimated that slaveryshould be placed under state control; and, assuming such control, beconsidered "the relation of master and slave. . . The best that can existbetween the black and white races while intermingled as at present inthis country. " He went on to show, however, that military necessity nowcompelled a revolution in sentiment on this subject, and he came at lastto this momentous conclusion:

 * Lee now revealed himself in his previously overlooked capacity of statesman. Whether his abilities in this respect equaled his abilities as a soldier need not here be considered; it is said that he himself had no high opinion of them. However, in the advice which he gave at this final moment of crisis, he expressed a definite conception of the articulation of civil forces in such a system as that of the Confederacy. He held that all initiative upon basal matters should remain with the separate States, that the function of the general Government was to administer, not to create conditions, and that the proper power to constrain the State Legislatures was the flexible, extra-legal power of public opinion. 

"Should the war continue under existing circumstances, the enemy may incourse of time penetrate our country and get access to a large part ofour negro population. It is his avowed policy to convert the able-bodiedmen among them into soldiers, and to emancipate all. . . . His progresswill thus add to his numbers, and at the same time destroy slavery in amanner most pernicious to the welfare of our people. Their negroes willbe used to hold them in subjection, leaving the remaining force of theenemy free to extend his conquest. Whatever may be the effect of ouremploying negro troops, it cannot be as mischievous as this. If it endin subverting slavery it will be accomplished by ourselves, and we candevise the means of alleviating the evil consequences to both races. Ithink, therefore, we must decide whether slavery shall be extinguishedby our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselvesat the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our socialinstitutions. . . "

"The reasons that induce me to recommend the employment of negro troopsat all render the effect of the measures. . . Upon slavery immaterial, andin my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelityof this auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with awell-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation. As that will bethe result of the continuance of the war, and will certainly occur ifthe enemy succeed, it seems to me most advisable to adopt it at once, and thereby obtain all the benefits that will accrue to our cause. . . "

"I can only say in conclusion, that whatever measures are to be adoptedshould be adopted at once. Every day's delay increases the difficulty. Much time will be required to organize and discipline the men, andaction may be deferred until it is too late. "

Lee wrote these words on January 11, 1865. At that time a fresh wave ofdespondency had gone over the South because of Hood's rout at Nashville;Congress was debating intermittently the possible arming of the slaves;and the newspapers were prophesying that the Administration wouldpresently force the issue. It is to be observed that Lee did not adviseVirginia to wait for Confederate action. He advocated emancipationby the State. After all, to both Lee and Smith, Virginia was their"country. "

During the next sixty days Lee rejected two great opportunities--or, if you will, put aside two great temptations. If tradition is to betrusted, it was during January that Lee refused to play the role ofCromwell by declining to intervene directly in general Confederatepolitics. But there remained open the possibility of his intervention inVirginia politics, and the local crisis was in its own way as momentousas the general crisis. What if Virginia had accepted the views of Leeand insisted upon the immediate arming of the slaves? Virginia, however, did not do so; and Lee, having made public his position, refrained fromfurther participation. Politically speaking, he maintained a splendidisolation at the head of the armies. 

Through January and February the Virginia crisis continued undetermined. In this period of fateful hesitation, the "mountains of prejudice"proved too great to be undermined even by the influence of Lee. Whenat last Virginia enacted a law permitting the arming of her slaves, noprovision was made for their manumission. 

Long before the passage of this act in Virginia, Congress had becomethe center of the controversy. Davis had come to the point where notradition however cherished would stand, in his mind, against the needsof the moment. To reinforce the army in great strength was now hissupreme concern, and he saw but one way to do it. As a last resorthe was prepared to embrace the bold plan which so many people stillregarded with horror and which as late as the previous November hehimself had opposed. He would arm the slaves. On February 10, 1865, bills providing for the arming of the slaves were introduced both in theHouse and in the Senate. 

On this issue all the forces both of the Government and the oppositionfought their concluding duel in which were involved all the other basalissues that had distracted the country since 1862. Naturally there wasa bewildering criss-cross of political motives. There were men who, like Smith and Lee, would go along with the Government on emancipation, provided it was to be carried out by the free will of the States. Therewere others who preferred subjugation to the arming of the slaves; andamong these there were clashings of motive. Then, too, there were thosewho were willing to arm the slaves but were resolved not to give themtheir freedom. 

The debate brings to the front of the political stage the figure ofR. M. T. Hunter. Hitherto his part has not been conspicuous either asSecretary of State or as Senator from Virginia. He now becomes, in thewords of Davis, "a chief obstacle" to the passage of the Senate billwhich would have authorized a levy of negro troops and provided fortheir manumission by the War Department with the consent of the State inwhich they should be at the time of the proposed manumission. Afterlong discussion, this bill was indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile a verydifferent bill had dragged through the House. While it was under debate, another appeal was made to Lee. Barksdale, who came as near as any oneto being the leader of the Administration, sought Lee's aid. Againthe General urged the enrollment of negro soldiers and their eventualmanumission, but added this immensely significant proviso:

"I have no doubt that if Congress would authorize their [the negroes']reception into service, and empower the President to call uponindividuals or States for such as they are willing to contribute, withthe condition of emancipation to all enrolled, a sufficient numberwould be forthcoming to enable us to try the experiment [of determiningwhether the slaves would make good soldiers]. If it proved successful, most of the objections to the measure would disappear, and ifindividuals still remained unwilling to send their negroes to the army, the force of public opinion in the States would soon bring about suchlegislation as would remove all obstacles. I think the matter should beleft, as far as possible, to the people and to the States, whichalone can legislate as the necessities of this particular service mayrequire. "

The fact that Congress had before it this advice from Lee explains whyall factions accepted a compromise bill, passed on the 9th of March, approved by the President on the 13th of March, and issued to thecountry in a general order on the 23d of March. It empowered thePresident to "ask for and accept from the owners of slaves" the serviceof such number of negroes as he saw fit, and if sufficient numberwere not offered to "call on each State. . . For her quota of 300, 000troops. . . To be raised from such classes of the population, irrespectiveof color, in each State as the proper authorities thereof maydetermine. " However, "nothing in this act shall be construed toauthorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall beartoward their owners, except by consent of the owners and of the Statesin which they may reside and in pursuance of the laws thereof. "

The results of this act were negligible. Its failure to offer theslave-soldier his freedom was at once seized upon by critics as evidenceof the futility of the course of the Administration. The sneer wentround that the negro was to be made to fight for his own captivity. Pollard--whose words, however, must be taken with a grain of salt--hasleft this account of recruiting under the new act: "Two companies ofblacks, organized from some negro vagabonds in Richmond, were allowed togive balls at the Libby Prison and were exhibited in fine fresh uniformson Capitol Square as decoys to obtain recruits. But the mass of theircolored brethren looked on the parade with unenvious eyes, and littleboys exhibited the early prejudices of race by pelting the fine uniformswith mud. "

Nevertheless both Davis and Lee busied themselves in the endeavor toraise black troops. Governor Smith cooperated with them. And in themind of the President there was no abandonment of the program ofemancipation, which was now his cardinal policy. Soon after the passageof the act, he wrote to Smith: "I am happy to receive your assuranceof success [in raising black troops], as well as your promise to seeklegislation to secure unmistakable freedom to the slave who shall enterthe Army, with a right to return to his old home, when he shall havebeen honorably discharged from military service. "

While this final controversy was being fought out in Congress, theenthusiasm for the Administration had again ebbed. Its recovery ofprestige had run a brief course and was gone, and now in the midst ofthe discussion over the negro soldiers' bills, the opposition oncemore attacked the Cabinet, with its old enemy, Benjamin, as thetarget. Resolutions were introduced into the Senate declaring that "theretirement of the Honorable Judah P. Benjamin from the State Departmentwill be subservient of the public interests"; in the House resolutionswere offered describing his public utterances as "derogatory to hisposition as a high public functionary of the Confederate Government, a reflection on the motives of Congress as a deliberative body, and aninsult to public opinion. "

So Congress wrangled and delayed while the wave of fire that wasSherman's advance moved northward through the Carolinas. Columbia hadgone up in smoke while the Senate debated day after day--fifteen inall--what to do with the compromise bill sent up to it from the House. It was during this period that a new complication appears to have beenadded to a situation which was already so hopelessly entangled, for thiswas the time when Governor Magrath made a proposal to Governor Vancefor a league within the Confederacy, giving as his chief reason thatVirginia's interests were parting company with those of the lowerSouth. The same doubt of the upper South appears at various times in theMercury. And through all the tactics of the opposition runs the constanteffort to discredit Davis. The Mercury scoffed at the agitation fornegro soldiers as a mad attempt on the part of the Administration toremedy its "myriad previous blunders. "

In these terrible days, the mind of Davis hardened. He became possessedby a lofty and intolerant confidence, an absolute conviction that, inspite of all appearances, he was on the threshold of success. We maysafely ascribe to him in these days that illusory state of mind whichhas characterized some of the greatest of men in their over-strained, concluding periods. His extraordinary promises in his later messages, a series of vain prophecies beginning with his speech at the AfricanChurch, remind one of Napoleon after Leipzig refusing the Rhine as aboundary. His nerves, too, were all but at the breaking point. He sentthe Senate a scolding message because of its delay in passing theNegro Soldiers' Bill. The Senate answered in a report that was sharplycritical of his own course. Shortly afterward Congress adjournedrefusing his request for another suspension of the writ of habeascorpus. 

Davis had hinted at important matters he hoped soon to be able to submitto Congress. What he had in mind was the last, the boldest, stroke ofthis period of desperation. The policy of emancipation he and Benjaminhad accepted without reserve. They had at last perceived, too late, thepower of the anti-slavery movement in Europe. Though they had alreadyfailed to coerce England through cotton and had been played with andabandoned by Napoleon, they persisted in thinking that there was still achance for a third chapter in their foreign affairs. 

The agitation to arm the slaves, with the promise of freedom, hadanother motive besides the reinforcement of Lee's army: it was intendedto serve as a basis for negotiations with England and France. To thatend D. J. Kenner was dispatched to Europe early in 1865. Passing throughNew York in disguise, he carried word of this revolutionary program tothe Confederate commissioners abroad. A conference at Paris was held byKenner, Mason, and Slidell. Mason, who had gone over to England to soundPalmerston with regard to this last Confederate hope, was received onthe 14th of March. On the previous day, Davis had accepted temporarydefeat, by signing the compromise bill which omitted emancipation. Butas there was no cable operating at the time, Mason was not aware of thisrebuff. In his own words, he "urged upon Lord P. That if the Presidentwas right in his impression that there was some latent, undisclosedobstacle on the part of Great Britain to recognition, it should befrankly stated, and we might, if in our power to do so, consent toremove it. " Palmerston, though his manner was "conciliatory and kind, "insisted that there was nothing "underlying" his previous statements, and that he could not, in view of the facts then existing, regard theConfederacy in the light of an independent power. Mason parted from himconvinced that "the most ample concessions on our part in the matterreferred to would have produced no change in the course determined onby the British Government with regard to recognition. " In a subsequentinterview with Lord Donoughmore, he was frankly told that the offer ofemancipation had come too late. 

The dispatch in which Mason reported the attitude of the BritishGovernment never reached the Confederate authorities. It was dated the31st of March. Two days later Richmond was evacuated by the ConfederateGovernment. 

Chapter XII. The Last Word

The evacuation of Richmond broke the back of the Confederate defense. Congress had adjourned. The legislative history of the Confederacy wasat an end. The executive history still had a few days to run. Afterdestroying great quantities of records, the government officials hadpacked the remainder on a long train that conveyed the President andwhat was left of the civil service to Danville. During a few days, Danville was the Confederate capital. There, Davis, still unable toconceive defeat, issued his pathetic last Address to the People of theConfederate States. His mind was crystallized. He was no longer capableof judging facts. In as confident tones as ever he promised his peoplethat they should yet prevail; he assured Virginians that even if theConfederate army should withdraw further south the withdrawal wouldbe but temporary, and that "again and again will we return until thebaffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless andimpossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free. "

The surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, compelled anothermigration of the dwindling executive company. General Johnston had notyet surrendered. A conference which he had with the President and theCabinet at Greensboro ended in giving him permission to negotiate withSherman. Even then Davis was still bent on keeping up the fight; yet, though he believed that Sherman would reject Johnston's overtures, hewas overtaken at Charlotte on his way South by the crushing news ofJohnston's surrender. There the executive history of the Confederacycame to an end in a final Cabinet meeting. Davis, still blindly resoluteto continue the struggle, was deeply distressed by the determinationof his advisers to abandon it. In imminent danger of capture, thePresident's party made its way to Abbeville, where it broke up, and eachmember sought safety as best he could. Davis with a few faithful menrode to Irwinsville, Georgia, where, in the early morning of the 10th ofMay, he was surprised and captured. But the history of the Confederacywas not quite at an end. The last gunshots were still to be fired faraway in Texas on the 13th of May. The surrender of the forces ofthe Trans-Mississippi on May 26, 1865, brought the war to a definiteconclusion. 

There remains one incident of these closing days, the significance ofwhich was not perceived until long afterward, when it immediately tookits rightful place among the determining events of American history. The unconquerable spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia found its lastexpression in a proposal which was made to Lee by his officers. If hewould give the word, they would make the war a duel to the death; itshould drag out in relentless guerrilla struggles; and there shouldbe no pacification of the South until the fighting classes had beenexterminated. Considering what those classes were, considering thequalities that could be handed on to their posterity, one realizes thatthis suicide of a whole people, of a noble fighting people, would havemaimed incalculably the America of the future. But though the heroism ofthis proposal of his men to die on their shields had its stern charmfor so brave a man as Lee, he refused to consider it. He would not admitthat he and his people had a right thus to extinguish their power tohelp mold the future, no matter whether it be the future they desired ornot. The result of battle must be accepted. The Southern spirit mustnot perish, luxuriating blindly in despair, but must find a new form ofexpression, must become part of the new world that was to be, must lookto a new birth under new conditions. In this spirit he issued to hisarmy his last address:

"After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage andfortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield tooverwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the survivors of somany hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, thatI have consented to the result from no distrust of them; but feelingthat valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensatefor the loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past serviceshave endeared them to their countrymen. . . . I bid you an affectionatefarewell. "

How inevitably one calls to mind, in view of the indomitable valor ofLee's final decision, those great lines from Tennyson:

 "Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. "

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

There is no adequate history of the Confederacy. It is rumored that adistinguished scholar has a great work approaching completion. It isalso rumored that another scholar, well equipped to do so, will soonbring out a monumental life of Davis. But the fact remains that as yetwe lack a comprehensive review of the Confederate episode set in properperspective. Standard works such as the "History of the United Statesfrom the Compromise of 1850", by J. F. Rhodes (7 vols. , 1893-1908), evenwhen otherwise as near a classic as is the work of Mr. Rhodes, treat theConfederacy so externally as to have in this respect little value. Theone searching study of the subject, "The Confederate States ofAmerica, " by J. C. Schwab (1901), though admirable in its way, is whollyovershadowed by the point of view of the economist. The same is to besaid of the article by Professor Schwab in the 11th edition of "TheEncyclopaedia Britannica. "

Two famous discussions of the episode by participants are: "The Rise andFall of the Confederate Government, " by the President of the Confederacy(2 vols. , 1881), and "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between theStates, " by Alexander H. Stephens (2 vols. , 1870). Both works, thoughinvaluable to the student, are tinged with controversy, each of theeminent authors aiming to refute the arguments of political antagonists. 

The military history of the time has so overshadowed the civil, in theminds of most students, that we are still sadly in need of careful, disinterested studies of the great figures of Confederate civil affairs. "Jefferson Davis, " by William E. Dodd ("American Crisis Biographies, "1907), is the standard life of the President, superseding older ones. Not so satisfactory in the same series is "Judah P. Benjamin, " by PierceButler (1907), and "Alexander H. Stephens, " by Louis Pendleton (1907). Older works which are valuable for the material they contain are:"Memoir of Jefferson Davis, " by his Wife (1890); "The Life and Times ofAlexander H. Stephens, " by R. M. Johnston and W. M. Browne (1878); "TheLife and Times of William Lowndes Yancey, " by J. W. Du Bose (1891);"The Life, Times, and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown, " by Herbert Fielder(1883); "Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason, "by his Daughter (1903); "The Life and Time of C. G. Memminger, " by H. D. Capers (1893). The writings of E. A. Pollard cannot be disregarded, butmust be taken as the violent expression of an extreme partisan. Theyinclude a "Life of Jefferson Davis" (1869) and "The Lost Cause" (1867). A charming series of essays is "Confederate Portraits, " by GamalielBradford (1914). Among books on special topics that are to berecommended are: "The Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy"by J. M. Callahan (1901); "France and the Confederate Navy, " by JohnBigelow (1888); and "The Secret Service of the Confederate States inEurope, " by J. D. Bulloch (2 vols. , 1884). There is a large numberof contemporary accounts of life in the Confederacy. Historians havegenerally given excessive attention to "A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at theConfederate States Capital, " by J. B. Jones (2 vols. , 1866) whichhas really neither more nor less value than a Richmond newspaper. Conspicuous among writings of this type is the delightful "Diary fromDixie, " by Mrs. Mary B. Chestnut (1905) and "My Diary, North and South, "by W. H. Russell (1861). 

The documents of the civil history, so far as they are accessible to thegeneral reader, are to be found in the three volumes forming the fourthseries of the "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies"(128 vols. , 1880-1901); the "Journals of the Congress of the ConfederateStates" (8 vols. , 1904) and "Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, "edited by J. D. Richardson (2 vols. , 1905). Four newspapers are of firstimportance: the famous opposition organs, the Richmond Examiner and theCharleston Mercury, which should be offset by the two leading organs ofthe Government, the Courier of Charleston and the Enquirer of Richmond. The Statutes of the Confederacy have been collected and published;most of them are also to be found in the fourth series of the OfficialRecords. 

Additional bibliographical references will be found appended to thearticles on the "Confederate States of America, " "Secession, " and"Jefferson Davis, " in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica, " 11th edition.