WHVERIIITV 
 
i-Yom a rcent Photograph tateji from Life 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, 
 
 WITH A 
 
 SECRET HISTORY 
 
 OP 
 
 THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY, 
 
 GATHERED 
 
 "BEHIND THE SCENES IN RICHMOND." 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 CURIOUS AND EXTRAORDINARY INFORMATION OF THE PRINCIPAL 
 SOUTHERN CHARACTERS IN THE LATE WAR, IN CONNECTION 
 WITH PRESIDENT DAVIS, AND IN RELATION TO THE 
 LUES OF HIS ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD A. POLLARD. 
 
 U 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LOST CAUSE/ ETC., ETC. 
 
 Issued by subscription only, and not for sale in the took stores. Residents of any State desiring 
 a copy should address the publishers, and an agent will call upon them. 
 
 NATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA.; CHICAGO, ILL.; ST. LOUIS, MO.; 
 
 ATLANTA, GA. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 J. R. J N E S, 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE long meditated writing the life of Jefferson 
 Davis, and divulging in this work a mass of curious 
 and extraordinary information which I have possessed, 
 concerning the private and interior history of his Gov 
 ernment, in Richmond. It was a most remarkable 
 singularity of the Southern Confederacy, that, though 
 holding out to the world the forms of Republican Gov 
 ernment, it was as closely veiled in its operations, as 
 secret and recluse as the most absolute and arrogant 
 despotism. Thus many things happened behind that 
 curtain which Mr. Davis so studiously spread before 
 his Government, of which the world has as yet no 
 knowledge, and of which even people living in Rich 
 mond, and in the shadow of that Government, have had 
 only the faintest conception, or, at best, a chequered 
 and imperfect revelation. 
 
 The writer may say, without vanity or self-assertion, 
 that he is peculiarly fitted to be the biographer of 
 Jefferson Davis. He was near him during the whole 
 war. He had occasion to study his character assidu- 
 
 (iii) 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 ously, and to pursue him in his administration with a 
 curious and critical industry; and his opportunities as 
 a journalist, in Richmond, enabled him to learn much 
 of the veiled mysteries and inner scenes of the weak 
 and anomalous government that wrecked the fortunes 
 of the Southern Confederacy. The writer thus ob 
 tained much of the secret and unwritten history of the 
 Confederacy, involving Mr. Davis ; information which, 
 for obvious causes, he could not give to the newspaper 
 press, and which, since the war, he has not yet pub 
 lished in any of his memoirs, for peculiar and im 
 pressive reasons. 
 
 The fact is, the writer has been, for a long time, 
 persuaded by friends standing between him and the 
 Confederate President, to withhold the work he now 
 contemplates, as it was thought it would give informa 
 tion concerning various conspiracies and vengeful plots 
 in the war, which might be used against Mr. Davis 
 on his expected trial, or might inflame against him a 
 fatal prejudice. For this reason alone, the writer has, 
 for a long time, deferred the publication he has now 
 determined upon ; and he may claim that in this he 
 has shown an extreme and punctilious regard for Mr. 
 Davis s safety. But he can no longer defer to this 
 solicitude for Mr. Davis ; it has become a mere punc 
 tilio, since there is no longer now a reasonable expec 
 tation that the Ex-President will ever be brought to 
 trial, or be disturbed in the foreign land, in which he 
 is reported to have descended to the commonplaces of 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 trade and an unnoticed existence. At least, it would 
 be unreasonable that the writer should longer weigh a 
 calculation so tender and remote against a debt severely 
 due to history. 
 
 Jefferson Davis should have a truthful and acute 
 biographer, one who would do something more than 
 echo the shallow clamors and interested opinions of 
 the day. Whatever the estimate of his person, he 
 performed a great part in history; and his character, 
 mixed, angular, abounding in surprises, full of caprices 
 and apparent inconsistencies, is precisely that which 
 affords the most interesting and vivid subjects for 
 biography. The writer is conscious of attempting a 
 high and difficult task an extraordinary work. He 
 comes to it not only with ample literary preparation, 
 but with an unusual animation. He has been accused 
 of personal hostility to Mr. Davis; and is to-day, 
 perhaps, in all his literary capacities, most widely 
 known to the country as censor of the Confederate 
 Chief. He repels the accusation of any prejudice, in 
 the very front of his work ; he is able and willing to 
 do exact justice to Mr. Davis; and if he ever attacked 
 him it was through supreme devotion to a great cause, 
 and from a just resentment toward the man who mis 
 guided and wrecked it. 
 
 Those who suppose that they will find in the work 
 of the writer a declamation against Mr. Davis a 
 mere amplitude of rhetoric, or an excess of passion 
 will be disappointed. The writer designs to give 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 facts, many of them new, and all of them capable of 
 distinct and impressive evidence. He proposes to 
 address himself to the serious and inevitable historical 
 question : Who were responsible for the failure of the 
 /Southern Confederacy? and on this issue he will 
 insist upon asserting that rule familiar to the world, 
 that those who assume power are responsible for its 
 discharge, according to the exact measure of their 
 assumption, and that responsibility in any great cause 
 is not to be squandered through subordinates. To do 
 this, indeed, would be to scatter and enfeeble all the 
 lessons of history ; to render impossible its unity of 
 narrative and to nullify its philosophy. Responsi 
 bility must rest somewhere in history; it naturally 
 and inevitably ascends ; and in regarding Mr. Davis as 
 the prime cause of the failure of the South in the 
 late war, the author has but simply recognized and 
 submitted to the great law of logic in historical com 
 position : that, in political affairs, where a certain 
 result is clearly not an accident or misadventure, but 
 must have come from a well defined cause, that cause 
 ultimately and inevitably rests in the head of the 
 government. 
 
 As the author has said in another historical work : 
 " Jefferson Davis cannot escape the syllogism that has 
 been applied to every public ruler since the world 
 began. However he may be plastered with < glitter 
 ing generalities ; however paltry publications may con- 
 8ult the passions of the hour; however . newspapers, 
 
PREFACE. Vli 
 
 made up of dish-water and the paste-pot, may depre 
 cate the vigorous inquiries of history and counsel the 
 suppression of unpleasant facts; however partisans 
 may dress the leaders in garish colors and the brilliant 
 and exaggerated uniform of a class, the question comes 
 at last : How are those failures of the Confederacy, 
 which are accounted errors, and not misfortunes, to be 
 ascribed, if not to the folly of rulers ? Mr. Davis was 
 supreme in his administration, and singularly unem 
 barrassed in directing and controlling public affairs. 
 There was no question of disconcerted authority. For 
 the major part of his administration he had a servile 
 Congress, a Cabinet of dummies, and a people devoted 
 to his person." 
 
 In these circumstances, the responsibility of President 
 Davis was well defined, and, taken along with his au 
 tocracy, was almost exclusive. But it is not necessary 
 to insist upon this rigidity of construction. The author 
 has simply sought to place Mr. Davis in his true logical 
 position as President of the Southern Confederacy. He 
 has not been content to rest on secondary causes, or 
 disposed to enter the province of hypothesis and over- 
 refinements ; and he has done nothing more than apply 
 to Mr. Davis s four years of Presidential life the- same 
 rule of responsibility that is familiar in all history, 
 and has been applied to every administration of public 
 affairs in the annals of America. 
 
 It is thus that the author, with no. disaffection 
 toward Mr. Davis, and with no design to discriminate 
 
V1U PREFACE. 
 
 personally against him, yet feels impelled by the 
 reasonable logic of history to make him, as it were, a 
 head and centre of responsibility in the late war, and 
 to gather around him the causes of the failure of the 
 Southern Confederacy. He risks himself upon the 
 facts of his work, not upon its ingenuity. He designs 
 a severe narrative, and he challenges the naked appli 
 cation to it of the common rules of logic. It has 
 already been said that Mr. Davis had determined to 
 reply to this work. If so, he is welcomed to the task, 
 and is challenged to the combat. He shall have facts 
 to oppose ; and in such conspicuous, stern, and unre 
 lenting contest, the world will decide who falls, who 
 retreats, or who covers himself with defeat. 
 
 Finally, the writer, careless as he is in the just 
 sense of history of the person of Mr. Davis, and dis 
 daining whatever criticisms may grow out of personal 
 feelings, is yet sensible that he has undertaken a 
 great and serious work, and protests that he ap 
 proaches it in a becoming and collected spirit. He 
 attempts no mean and evanescent commentary on the 
 late war. In betaking himself to a literary task, ex 
 celling all his former ones, and in which he is fired by 
 various desires, he proudly ventures to produce a 
 work that will not only interest these present times, 
 but that " will live " permanently and assuredly, if 
 even among the humbler monuments of the historical 
 literature of America. 
 
 EDWARD A. POLLARD. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A Theory of the Greatness of Men Two Interesting Reflections A new Rule in the Composi 
 tion of Biography Application of it to Jefferson Davis 13 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Life of Mr. Davis Anterior to the War Ilia Early Military Career Abrupt Resignation of 
 It Eight Years of Retirement An Early Insight into Mr. Davis s Character Passion 
 for Self-Culture His Student-Life An Imperfect Intellectual Character as the Result of 
 Solitude Mr. Davis s First Remarkable Adventure in Public Life The "Pons Asiu- 
 oruin" Curious Explanation of a Slander Mr. Davis and the Mississippi "Repudia 
 tion " Hia Career in the Mexican War The "V" Movement at Buena Vista Return 
 of Mr. Davis to Congress His Senatorial Career 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. Davis in the Senate of the United States Distinction as an Orator Definition of the 
 term " Eloquence" Mr. Davis in the World of Letters Brilliant Remnant of his Repu 
 tationHis Style as a Speaker His Figure and Manners in the Senate The art of" Self- 
 continence " in Oratory Reference to Stephen A. Douglas His " Specialty " Anecdotes 
 of his Life How Jefferson Davis Compared with the " Little Giant " The Former Scorns 
 " Quarter " The Kansas Controversy Mr. Davis s Reply to DjDUglas A Burst of 
 Temper A Noble Speech Th e Senatorial Career of Mr. Davis, tho Most Honorable 
 Part of his Public Life T 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Election of Abraham Lincoln, President, not the cause of the war A Peculiar Aris 
 tocracy in the South The Power of this Section in the hands of Politicians rather than 
 Slaveholders Remarkable Speeches in the Convention of South Carolina The State 
 Convention Mere Puppets Tho Centre of the Conspiracy at Washington Jefferson 
 Davis Among the Conspirators Critical Examination of His Record on the Question of "^" 
 Disunion Its Inconsistency His Early Extravagances for the Union His Conduct in 
 Congress in 1S50 Prophetic Warning of Henry Clay Mr. Davis s Ambition to succeed Cal- 
 houn His Effrontery Connection with the " Resistance" Party of Mississippi as its Can 
 didate for Governor His Remarkable Explanation of the Designs of this Party Incon 
 sistency of this Explanation Mr. Davis enters tho Cabinet of President Pierce as a Union 
 Man Repudiates the "Resistance" Party His Responsibility for the Kansas-Nebraska . 
 
 1 
 
2 CONTENTS. 
 
 Bill Union Speech in Mississippi Mr. Davis Regards the Kansas Settlement as a Trl 
 umph for the South He is Bit by the Ambition for a Presidential Nomination An 
 Electioneering Tour in New York and Maine "Slaver" of Fraternal Affection Insin 
 cerity of Mr. Da vis s Record on the Question of Disunion The Cause of the South Dis 
 figured by the Ambition of its Leaders, but not therefore to be Dishonored A Brief 
 History of Disunion The South Suffered from a General Apprehension Rather than a 
 SpicifuTJUarm The Action of her Politicians, neither a Test of Her Spirit, nor a Measure 
 of the Justice of Her Cause The Condition of Washington, in December, 1860 4? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Remarkable Effect of the Message of President Buchanan A Spectacle in the White Ilonse 
 A Singular Pause in the Movement of Secession Mr. Keitt s Remarks on the Situa 
 tion The Southern Leaders Actually Abandon the Scheme of Disunion It is Resumed 
 on Major Anderson s Occupation of Fort Sumter A Question of Concealed Importance 
 How the Question of "the Forts" determined the War Mr. Floyd s Adroitness Secret 
 History of the Junta of Fourteen in Washington A Revolutionary Council in the 
 Shadow of the Capitol Their Extraordinary Usurpations Jefferson Davis and "the 
 Committee of Throe" True Date of the Commencement of the War Why Mr. Davis 
 was Chosen Leader In the First Programme of the Southern Confederacy, R. M. T. 
 Hunter of Virginia, Designed for President How he Lost the Position of Leader A 
 Fatal Motion in the Senate Comparison of the Claims of Hunter and Davis for the 
 Position of Leader 56 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Sectional Debate in the United States Senate II^w Different from that in the House 
 of Representatives Intellectual Poverty of the Debate in Congress Explanation of 
 this A Game of Pretences A Class of Intermediate Politicians Sincerely Affected Refer 
 ences to Crittendeu and Douglas Andrew Johnson the Champion Par Excelknce of the 
 Union His Extraordinary Life Compared with Jefferson Davis Johnson s Literary 
 Style What Senator Douglas Thought of Him His Extraordinary Courage Mr.Davis a 
 Singular Criticism of Johnson Reticence of the Former in the Debate in the Senate 
 His Explanation of the Secession Sentiment Sinister Conduct He offers an Amendment 
 to the Constitution Andrew Johnson s Appeals for the Union A Curious History of the 
 Vote on the Crittenden Resolutions Colloquy of Johnson and Benjamin Mr. Davis 
 makes His Farewell Speech in the Senate Wigfull s Picture of the Dead Union Last 
 Effort in the Senate to Save the Peace of the Country A Memorable Scene <J7 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Organization of the Confederate Government, at Montgomery Mississippi Proposes a South 
 ern Confederacy Singular Instance of Rebellion Unchallenged Explanation of the Re- 
 migsness of the North The Error of Mr. Lincoln Secession as a Popular Sentiment, and 
 Secession as an Organized Fact Failure of the North to Distinguish between the Two- 
 Rapid Action of the Montgomery Government Interesting Historical Problem as to the 
 Extent of the Idea of " Reconstruction" in the Southern Mind Mr. Davis had no such 
 Idea Why not His Defiant Speeches at Montgomery Evidence of a Popular Senti 
 ment in the South for " Reconstruction" Why it was Ineffectual Extraordinary and 
 remarkable Exclusion of the Popular Element from the Southern Confederacy A Usur 
 pation almost Unparalleled in History 87 
 
CONTENTS. 3 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Causes which determined Mr. Davis s Election us President of the Confederate States 
 The claims of Ilowell Cobb Secretly considered at Montgomery Davis s Eesentment of 
 Cobb as a Possible Rival Popular Congratulations on the Selection of Mr. Davis as 
 Leader His Qualifications for such a Position Steady Line of Distinction between Davis 
 aud the South A Fatal Weakness of the New President An Attempt to Define the 
 Objects of the War Mr. Davis as a "Mixed" Character A Remarkable Presentiment at 
 Montgomery A Criticism of Mr. Davis in Anticipation of His Administration 96 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. LX 
 
 The Fire on Fort Sumter The First Shot of the War Congratulations in President Davis s 
 Cabinet The Second Secessionary Movement Fatal Mistake of Mr. Lincoln He Adds 
 a new Breadth to the War Preparations at Montgomery Mr. Davis and an Office-Seeker 
 Secret Design of Mr. Davis in his Display of Military Preparations Sudden Disappearance 
 of the Union Party Accounted for Secession of Virginia A Torch-Light Procession in 
 Richmond Robert E. Lee Appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia Forces His 
 Motives in Leaving the Federal Service His Political Opinions The Character His 
 Fallacy of "Petitio Principii" General Lee Accepting a Sword in the State-House 
 The Confederate States Government Removed to Richmond Ilowell Cobb s Pledge for 
 the Congressmen Arrival of President Davis in Richmond Popular Raptures Eloquent 
 Speeches of the President "No Surrender.".. 109 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Some Account of the City of Richmond A Provincial City before the War What its Deco 
 ration as Capital of the Confederacy cost it Early Scenes of the War in Richmond- 
 Brilliant aud Picturesque Days A Confederate Soldier aud a Little Lady The Red 
 River Men Early Clamor for Aggressive Warfare Why it was Impossible at This Time 
 " On-to- Washington" Horace Greeley wants the War Limited to a Single Battle The 
 Great Victory of Manassas The Three Stages of the Battle President Davis on the 
 Field A Curious Contretemps How Mr. Davis was disappointed by General Beauregard 
 Instance of his Personal Courage on the Field A Night Scene at General Beauregard s 
 Quarters Singular Figure of the President 129 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The South Intoxicated by the Victory of Manassas Who was Responsible for not Pursuing 
 the Enemy to Washington A Larger and more Important Question than that The Truo 
 History of a Secret and Notable Council of War President Davis Rejects the Advice of his 
 Three Principal Generals He Decides for the Policy of Dispersion or Frontier-Defence 
 A Glance at the Character of General Johnston President Davis s Quarrel with General 
 Beauregard An Interval of Infamous Intrigues at Richmond How Mr. Hunter was 
 Driven from the Cabinet Conceit of the President "Waiting for Europe" Demoraliza 
 tion of Inactive Armies Rapid Corruption of Society in Richmond " The Wickedest 
 City "Mr. Davis at a Fancy Dress Ball Unpopular Conduct of his Wife Anecdote of the 
 President Criticism of a "Tar Heel "Mr. Davis and the Faithful Sentinel of the Libby 
 Prison A Historical Parallel Connubial Fondness of Mr. Davis His Collection of Small 
 and Mean Favorites A Curious Sort of Obstinacy, and some Reflections thereon ... 144 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 President Davis playing the Adorned Conqueror Decay of the Confederacy Review of 
 the Military Situation Share of Congress in the Maladministration of Mr. Davis Weak 
 and Infamous Character of that Body How it Expelled the Best Intellect of the South 
 A Notable Rule against Military Officers How the Political Affairs of the Confederacy 
 were Entirely Surrendered to Mr. Davis and his Party Two Measures that Brought the 
 South to the Brink of Ruin The Army of Virginia almost Disbanded Protests of Gene 
 rals Johnston and Beauregard The Civil or Internal Administration of Mr. Davis Its 
 Intellectual Barrenness Not One Act of Statesmanship in the Whole History of the 
 Confederacy Richmond a Reflex of Washington A New Rule by which to Measure Mr 
 Davis s Responsibility A Literary Dyspeptic, with more Ink than Blood in his Veins- 
 Complaints Breaking Out Against Mr. Davis-His Vaunt of the Blockade as a Blessing 
 in Disguise Dethronement of King Cotton Extreme Scarcity of Arms at the South 159 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Finances of the Southern Confederacy Early Measures of Taxation at Montgomery 
 A Civil List Voted of a Million and a half Dollars The Five Million Loan Deficiency of 
 American Politicians in Finance Extreme and Grotesque Ignorance of Mr. Davis on this 
 Subject Secretary Memminger a Curiosity in his Cabinet A Race of Absurd Fancies 
 History of the Produce Loan Extravagant Expectations from it Its Complete and 
 Ludicrous Failure-Mr. De BoW a Office "To Let-The Confederate Government Aban 
 dons its First Proposition of Finance-How the Commissariat was Relieved-History of 
 a Grand Financial Scheme Proposition for the Government to Buy all the Cotton in the 
 South-Extraordinary Virtues of this Scheme It might have Decided the War How 
 Mr. Memminger Derided the Scheme Mr. Davis s After-thought in the Prison at Fort 
 ress Monroe A Shallow and Miserable Subterfuge Supplements of the Financial Policy 
 of the Confederacy Conversion of Private Debts Due in the North The Sequestra 
 tion Law-Tho Administration of Mr. Davis Challenged on it-A Scathing Denunciation 
 by Mr. Pcttigru, of South Carolina-Mr. Davis attempts to Use the Credit of the 
 States He Fails in this Recourse His Government Thrown Back to the Beginning of 
 its Financial Policy-He Proposes Paper Money as a Panacea-Distinction Between Cur 
 rency and Revenue Stupidity of Mr. Davis in Financial Matters The First Seeds of 
 Corruption Sown in the Confederate Finance Mr. Memminger s Funding Juggle 
 "Flush Times" in Richmond Silly Self-Congratulations of the President The Road to 
 Rui " 171 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 John M. Daniel s New Year s Article-A Philosopher s Mourn for the Union-No Thought 
 yet of the Subjugation of the South-Analysis of the Popular Sentiment, concerning Presi 
 dent Davis-Description of the Military Lines of the Confederacy-Reflections on the 
 Spirit and Character of the Southern People Their Conceit about the War The "Rac 
 coon Roughs, " and Mr. Lincoln s Hair-Why Mr. Davis was not Excusable for his Short 
 Vision in the War-A Train of Disasters-Alarm and Demoralization of the People-A 
 Cruel Mistake concerning General A. S. Johnston Inauguration of Mr. Davis as Perma 
 nent President-A Gloomy Scene in the Public Square at Richmond-Piteous Prayer of 
 the President-Significance of the Change from a Provisional to a Permanent Form of 
 Government Some Account of a Secret Debate at Montgomery Why the Adoption of 
 
CONTENTS. 5 
 
 a Permanent Constitution was a Mistake The New Congress at Richmond Significant 
 Speech of Speaker Bocock Who was the author of the Conscription Law? How Nar 
 rowly it Saved the Confederacy A Statement of President Davis Shamelessly False 
 Two Remarkable Men in the Confederate Congress Mr. Foote (" Gulernator Pes") ot 
 Mississippi Mr. Boyco of South Carolina A Remarkable Effort of these Two Men to 
 Impel the Confederate Armies into the North The Effort is Defeated Traces of a Re 
 markable Conspiracy 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Military Condition of the Southern Confederacy Immense Political Significance of the Con 
 scription Law It necessarily Changed the Character of the Government First Appear 
 ance of Political Parties against President Davis Some Account of Governor Jo. Brown of 
 Georgia An Infamous Underplot against the Confederacy The Conscription Law Uncon 
 stitutional, but Justifiable Mr. Davis s Boast of Superior Liberty in the South Exploded 
 How he had to Swallow his Words A Military Despotism at Richmond Two Notable 
 Sequels to the Conscription Law A Terrible Reproof from Mr. Hunter in the Senate 
 Outrages of Winder s Police A Description of the Fouche of the Southern Confederacy- 
 Anecdote of Winder Alarm inffrRichmond at McClellan s Advance The Federal Com 
 mander up a Tree Shameful and Cowardly Flight of the Confederate Congress President 
 Davis Secretly Resolves to Evacuate Richmond He Changes his Resolution A Witti 
 cism of General Lee Excitement in Richmond on account of the Destruction of the 
 Virginia-Merrimac A Littleness of Expedients as Characteristic of the Confederate 
 Administration It Advertises for Scrap Iron and Old Brass Anecdote of Secretary Mem- 
 minger Appeal of "The Old Lady" A Notable Assembly in Richmond "The Ladies 
 Gnn-Boat" and an Oyster Supper 209 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The City of Richmond Saved General Lee Appointed to Command before it Incidents and 
 Anecdotes of his previous Military Career A Private Understanding between Generals 
 Johnston and Lee The Latter Promises to Resign Changes of Military Policy of the 
 Confederacy Great Influence of Lee over President Davis How the Latter was Managed 
 The " Seven Days " Battles Terrible Scenes in Richmond Refusal of the Southern 
 People to Mourn their Dead Some Reminiscences of Richmond Hospitals Significant 
 Address of President Davis The First Experiment by the Confederacy of an Aggressive 
 Campaign Plans of the Campaign on both sides of the Alleghany The period of Greatest 
 Effulgence of the Confederate arms Results of Bragg* s Campaign in Kentucky The Dra 
 matic Battle of Sharpsburgh A Secret Agent of the Confederacy Prepared to Visit Washing 
 tonMr. Foote s Confidences with President Davis Romance of "The Lost Dispatch" 
 
 Review of the Autumnal Campaign of 1862 A Brilliant Record on the Valor of the 
 Confederate Troops Why was this Valor so Unavailing The Outcry of Wasted Blood 
 against Jefferson Davis Silly Transports of the Confederate President His Fulsome Ad 
 dress to the Mississippi Legislature A Remarkable Private Letter from General Floyd- 
 Two Notable Views of the War in Contrast 228 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 florae Account of the Secret Misgivings or Private Calculations of Mr. Davis concerning tho 
 War His Delinquency on the Subject of Retaliation A Record of Weak Threats The 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln the Supreme Act of Outrage in the War 
 Kxcited Propositions in the Confederate Congress Various Resolutions for Retaliation 
 The Response of Mr. Davis practically Nothing His Infamous Subterfuge, Suggesting 
 Retaliation by the States How Mr. Yancey Ridiculed it A Distinct Law of Retaliation 
 Passed by the Confederate Congress Mr. Davis Refuses to Execute it Curious Explana 
 tion of Mr. Davis s Unwillingness to Retaliate on the Enemy A Detestable Calculation for 
 his Personal Safety Singular Apology for Mr. Davis by South Carolina Ladies Moral 
 Cowardice of Mr. Davis Some Reflections on the True Nature of Courage Excessive 
 Admiration in the South of Mere Physical Manhood Bravado of Mr. Davis The Emancipa 
 tion Proclamation an Encouragement to the North Review of the Military Situation at 
 the Close of 1862 The South Retires to a Defensive Policy Summary of its Military 
 Plans 251 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Battles of Murfreesboro , of Fredericksburg, and of Chancellorsville A Trio of Import 
 ant Contests A Singular and Romantic Incident of the Field of Fredericksburg Stone 
 wall Jackson Makes a Proposition to Massacre the Enemy in the Night Parallel between 
 the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville Death of Jackson Mr. Davis s Tribute 
 to Him Character of Stonewall Jackson Poverty of Genius in the War Jackson and his 
 Sophomorical Admirers The Rag Tag Style of Eulogistic Criticism The Religious Cha 
 racter of Jackson not Admirable Estimate of Him as a Commander His Gloomy Ideas of 
 War He Proposes " the Black Flag " His Enormous and Consuming Ambition Descrip 
 tion of His Person In what Respects he was the Representative of the South A Par 
 ticular Description of his Last Moments 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Increased Spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia A Second Experiment of Invasion Origi 
 nated by General Lee and Opposed by Mr. Davis Some Accounts of a Secret Correspon 
 dence between the Commander and the President A Curious and perhaps Fatal 
 Misapprehension concerning the Campaign Failure of Mr. Davis to Order General 
 Beauregard to Virginia The Battle of Gettysburg the Worst Error of General Lee s Mili 
 tary Life He Makes a Disingenuous Account of it True Theory of the Action Reflec 
 tions on the Military Character of Lee Gettysburg, a Divided Name in the Calendar of 
 Battles Why there were No Popular Reproaches of Lee The Disaster of Vicksburg, a 
 Very Different Story Lee and Johnston, "Par Nobile Fratrum" of the War The 
 "President s Pots" John C. Pemberton, an Obscure Military Man Putin Command of 
 Vicksburg Extraordinary Protests against the Appointment The Influence of a Woman 
 Brought to Bear on Mr. Davis An Infamous Imposture in the Command Given to John 
 ston The President Cheats the Public Sentiment Johnston a Mere Figure-Head in the 
 West Proofs of a Dishonorable Private Correspondence of Mr. Davis in Derogation of 
 Johnston s Command The Secret Dispatch to Pemberton Consequences of the Sur 
 render of Vicksburg The Most Aggravated Disaster of the War 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A Pause in the Military History of the Confederacy, and a View thoreupon of its Internal 
 Administration Reference to the Confederate Congress Its Secret Sessions The " Col 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 lege Debating Society " In the Capitol Some of the Notable Members of Congress 
 Disgraceful Scenes in Secret Session An Episode of the Bowie-Knifo-Judge Dargan a 
 Curiosity A Hand-to-Haud Fight in the Senate Other Scandals in Congress The 
 Newspapers and "Contraband Information "Mr. Davis and his "Back-Door" Confer 
 encesAn Ill-natured Remark about General Beauregard Bad Results of the Secret 
 Sessions of Confederate Congress Multitude of Rumors In the South Comments of the 
 Richmond Examiner and the Charleston Mercury^ .Newsmongers in Richmond Two 
 Notable Characters in the Capital" Long Tom" and the Druggist Reflections on the 
 Birth and Flight of Rumors concerning the War How Mr. Davis s Pastor was Deceived 
 An Anecdote of "Recognition" The Demoralizing Consequences of False Rumors in 
 the War The Heart of the South Worn Out, Swinging from Hope to Fear How Mr. 
 Davis Uncaged Rumors How he Dulled and Destroyed Public Spirit 808 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Decay of the Patriotism of the South No Possible Explanation of it, but the Maladministra 
 tion of Mr. Davis Condition of the Confederate Armies Aversion to Military Service Mr. 
 Davis s Appeal to Absentees False Praise of the South for Devotion in the War Eighteen 
 Hundred Habeas Corpuses in Richmond How the Conscription was Dodged Humors of 
 the Habeas Corpus The Public Spirit of the South, Mean and Decayed Senator Wigfall 
 Scathes the Farmers Utter Loss of Moral Influence by President Davis Enlargement 
 of the Conscription A Thorough Military Despotism at Richmond Conscription and 
 Impressment Twin Measures The Scarcity of Food in the South, the Result of Misman 
 agement A Notable Law in the Depreciation of a Currency An Interesting Incident of 
 the First Battle of Manassas The Errors of the Impressment Law The War, a Choice of 
 Despots, One at Washington, and One at Richmond Fearful Attack of Senator Toombs 
 on Mr. Davis s Administration The South " Already Conquered." 355 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Scarcity of Food in the South in Connection with the Subsistence of Prisoners Secret 
 History of the Administration of the Confederate Prisons No Provision for Feeding Pris 
 oners A Brutal Incident at the Libby Anecdote of a Yankee Boatswain Commissary 
 Northrop Recommends that the Prisoners be Chucked into the James River Laws of tue 
 Confederacy concerning Prisoners Exceeding Humanity of Quartermaster-General Law- 
 ton Northrop defeats it His Coup d Etat on a Drove of Beeves Northrop Responsible 
 for the Maltreatment of Prisoners Sorrowful Story of Wirz " The Wrong Man" Hung 
 Measure of Mr. Davis s Responsibility for the Sufferings of the Prisoners His Extraor 
 dinary Affection for Northrop Mr. Foote on the "Pepper Doctor" Senator Orr has a 
 Flea put in his Ear The Subject of Discipline in the Confederate Prisons An Argument 
 to Relieve Mr. Davis from the Charge of Deliberate Cruelty The Authentic Version <.. 
 the Libby "Gunpowder Plot" The Spy s Story Richmond Sleeping on the Crust of a 
 Volcano Why the Prisoners were Distributed to Salisbury and Audersonville 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Brilliant Military Effects of Conscription and Impressment The Richmond Government, 
 the Harshest Despotism pf the Age New Hopes of the War The South not Deficient iu 
 Resources Pictures of Plenty The Shadow of Jefferson Davis on the Prospect The 
 Renewed Confidence of the South in the War Explained The Position of the Northern 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Democratic Party in 1864 A Great Advantage which the South had In the War What 
 a Richmond Journal Said of the Situation Why the South Failed in the War False 
 Theory of Deficient Resources Moral Desertion of the Confederate Cause Proof of it in 
 the Behavior of Southern Men since the War The Southern Character Corrupted by the 
 Misrule and Misuse of President Davis Peculiarities of the Campaign of 1864 Its Fierce 
 Battles The True Situation Around Richmond A Ton Minutes Battle Lee Better Sit 
 uated at Richmond than in the Wilderness A Maxim of Napoleon No Alarm in Rich 
 mondManners in the Filthy and Accursed City Mr. Davis s Household His Want of 
 Moral Influence in Richmond Exclamation of a Joyous Editor The Confidence of the 
 Country Healthier than that of the Capitol A Southern Lady s Pictures of Country-Life 
 Prospect of Peace on the Horizon A Picture of the Arena of the War 349 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The Situation at Atlanta, Georgia, more Favorable than that at Richmond Johnston s 
 Retreat, the Masterpiece of His Military Life Its Incidents, and its Triumph ovor 
 Sherman The Military Condition of the South one of Brilliant Promise The Confederacy 
 had now to Accomplish only " Negative" Results Mr. Davis s Private Correspondents in 
 the Chicago Convention Secrets of "the Presidential Bureau of Correspondence "A 
 Remarkable Article in the New York Tribune Compositions and Designs of the Peace 
 Party in the North Bold Declaration of the New York World The Northern Democratic 
 Party Looking to Richmond rather than to Washington How Much Depended on the 
 
 Prudence of Mr. Davis How His Course should have been Shaped in such a Crisis 
 
 General Johnston Busy at Atlanta An Opportunity to Operate in Sherman s Rear A 
 Conversation of General Johnston and Senator Wigfall An Urgent Application to Pres 
 ident Davis to Transfer Forrest s Cavalry to Sherman s Rear Important and Critical 
 Nature of this Enterprise Senator Hill Undertakes a Mission to the President He "Goes 
 Back " upon Johnston A Special Messenger Sent to Richmond Anecdote of Mrs. Davis 
 and a Washerwoman Order Removing Johnston from Command, the Death- Warrant of 
 the Confederacy Secret History of this Order The Fruit of an Intrigue in Richmond 
 The Part Played by General Bragg Underhanded Correspondence of Mr. Davis with 
 General Hood The Latter Described by General Sherman and a Richmond Wit Demora 
 lizing and Terrible Consequences of the Removal of Johnston" The Beginning of the 
 End" Reflection on the Narrow Chances which make History Bitter Remarks of a 
 Richmond Journalist > 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Mr. Davis s Idea of a "Fighting General "Hood s Battles and Mistakes Fall of Atlanta 
 A Powerful Appeal to Mr. Davis to Restore Johnston to Command Anecdote of Mr. 
 Davis and His Physician Demoralization of all the Confederate Armies One Hundred 
 Thousand Deserters Effect of the Disasters on Mr. Davis He Attempts to Re-aninmte 
 the People by Braggart Speeches A Remarkable Speech at Augusta The Error and 
 Weakness of the Policy of Inflation of Public Confidence The Temper of the South Mis 
 understood by Mr. Davis Partial Sincerity of his Expressions of Confidence in the War 
 His Over-Sanguine Temperament Some Instances of It Mr. Davis Constantly Blind to 
 the True Condition of Affairs Extraordinary Self-DelusionExtravagance of Hope, as 
 an Infirmity of Character A Shrewd Suspicion of one Motive the President had to Remove 
 Johnston His Weak Ambition to Conduct a Military Campaign How his Vanity Be- 
 
CONTENTS. 9 
 
 trayed him at Macon His Visits to the Armies Ominous The Country Surprised by 
 Hood s Eccentric Movement towards Tennessee Mr. Davis s Prophecy of Sherman s 
 Retreat Fatal Error of the Davis-Hood Campaign It is Arranged at one End, without 
 ever Looking to the other Eud General Johnston Foresees Sherman s March to the Sea 
 Interesting Extract from a Private Letter of the Former A Baptist Clergyman s 
 Evangely in Richmond Mr. Davis on " Vital Points " of the Confederacy An Error in his 
 Calculation Decline of the War Spirit in the South General Hardee at Savannah His 
 Grim Telegram to Bragg Fall of Savannah March of Sherman towards Richmond- 
 Apparition of the Army of Tennessee in the Pine Woods of North Carolina 382 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Inflamed Aspect of the War on the Side of the North The Causes which Produced it How 
 the Cruel and Inhuman Spirit of the North had Increased The Warfare of Sherman 
 His Contract with his Soldiers for Plunder His Army Re-created by the Davis-Hood Cam 
 paign The Track of his March through the Carolinas General Hampton s Reflections on 
 the Burning of Columbia Sheridan Competes with Sherman in Atrocities Devastation 
 of the Valley of Virginia Approved by Public Sentiment in the North The Last Period 
 of the War that of Revengeful Punishment of the South General Grant Involved in the 
 Savage Warfare A New Theory of the Enemy s Raids Their Extraordinary Moral Effect 
 on the South Change of Warfare on the Confederate side, Correspondent to the Increased 
 Atrocities of the Enemy Mr. Davis Refuses any Plan of Open and Manly Retaliation 
 How he Treated hia Friends, and how his Enemies A Curious Sort of Obstinacy 
 Reminiscences of General Lee in Pennsylvania General Early s Feat of Incendiarism 
 Secret Expeditions to Fire Northern Cities, etc. A Mean and Paltry Substitute for Legiti 
 mate Retaliation Curious Method of Taking Revenge upon the North Mr. Davis s Re 
 sponsibility for Firing Northern Cities and Robbing Northern Banks Revelations of the 
 St. Albans Raiders and the Cliesapeake " Pirates" One of Morgan s Men to Fire Chicago 
 To what Extent these Bad Enterprises were Countenanced by Mr. Davis Secrets of the 
 Confederate Passport Office Revelations of a Member of Congress Mr. Davis and " Con 
 fidence Men" A Peep at his Ante-Room Romantic Story of an Italian Adventurer in 
 Richmond The Carbonari and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Mr. Davis Innocent 
 of any Conspiracy against the Life of Lincoln A Playful Allusion to the Abduction of 
 the Northern President What Mr. Davis Thought of his Rival at Washington 897 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 A New Breadth and Volume of Opposition to President Davis Approach to an Internal 
 Revolution in the Confederacy A Coup d Elat Threatened in Richmond Animation of 
 the Confederate Congress Appeals to It by the Richmond Examiner and Charleston 
 Mercury Senator Wigfall on President Davis A Revolutionary Opportunity Lost by 
 Congress Movement to Make General Lee Military Dictator He Resists it In what 
 Sense he Accepted the Office of Comtnander-in-Chief His Private Understanding with 
 Mr. Davis The Secret and Curious History of a Military Dictatorship in the Con 
 federacy A Remarkable Correspondence of General Lee with the President Some Pecu 
 liarities of the Character of Lee Ilia Quiet and Negative Disposition General Lee Exces 
 sively and Servilely Admired in the South Defects in his Character A Great Man never 
 thelessWhy he Refused to be Used by the Opposition against Mr. Davis How he 
 
10 CONTENTS. 
 
 Secured the Favor of the President Their Personal Relations Mr. Davis Affects not to 
 be Sensible of the Revolutionary Design against his Administration A Remarkable and 
 Dishonorable Evasion by the President His Correspondence with the Legislature of 
 Virginia His Secret Resentment of the Revolutionary Demands Made upon Him 
 Anecdote of Mrs. Davis A Defiant Speech in the Executive Mansion Scandalous Quarrel 
 between the Pres dent and Congress A Lame Conclusion of a Revolution 416 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Resignation of Mr. Seddon from President Davis s Cabinet Ugly Developments in the 
 War Department How Mr. Seddon s Resignation was Forced by a Delegation of Con 
 gress Mr. Davis s Angry Defiance Daring Response of Congress Condition of the Con 
 federate Treasury Empirical Remedies in Congress A Frightful Tax Law The Infirm 
 Temper of Congress Heroic Appeals of the Press The South yet far from Material 
 Exhaustion Remarkable Statement of General Lee respecting the Resources of the Con 
 federacyApplication of it to Theory of the Failure of the War A Proposition to Arm 
 the Slaves a Desperate Remedy Reluctant Recommendation of it by Mr. Davis Sum 
 mary of Arguments for and against it Public Opinion Decided by a Letter from General 
 Lee A Gross Fallacy Contained in this Measure Remarkable Concession of the Con 
 federate Government to the Anti-Slavery Party of the North Jefferson Davis, as an 
 Abolitionist Reflections on the Little Regret Shown by the South for the Loss of 
 Slavery The Law of Negro Enlistments as Finally Passed A Farcical Conclusion A 
 Negro Parade in Capitol Square Congress Expiring in a Recrimination with President 
 p., v j g 439 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 An Unexpected Test of the Spirit of the South The Fortress Monroe Peace Commission 
 3Ir. Blair s Visit to Richmond Review of Peace Movements in the Confederacy Critical 
 Analysis of the Peace Party in the South Three Elements o Classes in it Mr. Davis 
 Ultimately Joins the Third Class of Peace Men Governor Vance s Exposition of this 
 Class Correspondence between him and President Davis The Idea in this Correspond 
 ence Renewo-1 a Year thereafter The Fortress Monroe Commission the Result Secret 
 Design of Mr. Davis to Kill off the Peace Movement How this Design was Served by 
 the Official Report of the Commissioners A Day of Speech-Making in Richmond- 
 Speeches of Mr. Hunter and Mr. Benjamin Unexpected Appearance of Mr. Davis in Metro 
 politan Hall The Most Eloquent Speech of his LfTe It was never Reported Summary 
 of it A Brief Excitement in the South Followed by a Failure of Resolution The Char 
 acter of the Southern People Impaired Fatal Defect of Mr. Davis as a Ruler in his Ignor 
 ance of the People His Power to Inspire the People Gone A Curious Reason for the 
 Failure to Re-animate the South after the Fortress Monroe Commission Doubts Thrown 
 on the Truth of the Report of the Commissioners Singular and Remarkable Delusion 
 of the South as to the Consequences of Submission Extent of the False Trust in the 
 Enemy s Generosity "Subjugation" Treated as a Scare-Crow Hopes of Saving Some 
 thing from the Abolition of Slavery A Singular Conversation of President Lincoln 
 An Amiable Episode of the Fortress Monroe Commission Impressive Warnings in Rich 
 mond Against a "Deceptive Reconstruction" To what Degree the South was Conquered 
 by Anticipations of the Generosity of the North A Justification of the War on Retrospect 
 Examples of the Credulity of the South How it has Lingered Since tho War 458 
 
CONTENTS. 11 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 A Cruel Rumor in Richmond Description of General Lee s Lines- The Fatal Battle of the 
 2d of April Sabbath Scenes in Richmond A Telegram Delivered in St. Paul s Church- 
 No Authentic Announcement concerning the Evacuation of Richmond A Scene on a 
 Hotel Balcony Sudden and Wild Excitement in the City Scenes of a Panic Where is 
 the President? Mr. Davis Concealed His Mean and Obscure Exit from the City 
 General Breckinridge at the War Department A Curious Scene in the Third Story of the 
 Capitol Disgraceful Conduct of the Citizens of Richmond A Mission of Mayor Mayo 
 How Richmond was Fired Responsibility of President Davis for the Conflagration Con 
 gregation of Horrors Picturesque Entree of the Federal Army The Burnt District A 
 Thronged Theatre Unnaturally Illuminated Terrible Quiet of the Night after the Fire 
 The War Virtually Ended President Davis Insensible of the Importance of the Loss of 
 Richmond His Confidence Grotesque An Issue Between Him and a Richmond Editor 
 The Picture of a Southern Confederacy Reduced to Jefferson Davis in Flight f ... 485 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Some Further Reflections on the Character of President Davis A Historical Comparison- 
 Secret History of his Flight from Richmond A Vessel Awaiting Him on the Coast of 
 Florida Concealment of Important Records of the Confederacy Trepidation of Mr. Davis a 
 Departure from Richmond What Became of the Gold in the Treasury The President s 
 Proclamation at Danville A Singular Conversation Fatuity and Blindness of Mr. DaYis 
 Continuation of his Flight to Greensboro , North Carolina Infamous and Insulting 
 Conduct of the People there The President Housed, for nearly a Week, in a Box Car A 
 Lady to the Rescue Memorable Interview of President Davis and Generals Johnston 
 and Beauregard A Bitter Speech from Johnston The President Dictates an Important 
 Letter Meditations of his Journey through North Carolina He Conceives a New Prospect 
 " Hoping Against Hope " A Dramatic and Painful Scene at Abbeville, South Carolina 
 The Last Council of the Southern Confederacy "All is Lost " Disbandment of the Con 
 federate Troops at Abbeville Mr. Davis a Misconduct on Receiving the News of the 
 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln The Presidential Party at Washington, Georgia Mr. 
 Davis Disguised as an Emigrant His Capture Wicked and Absurd Story of his being 
 Disguised in a Woman s Dress A Boody Defiance Mrs. Davis in the Scene The Presi 
 dent s Farley with His Captors A Sorrowful Cavalcade to Macon, Georgia 501 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Mistake of the Federal Government in the Imprisonment of Mi . Davis An Intrigue of 
 Secretary Stanton How Mr. Davis Repaired his Reputation in Prison Celebration of his 
 Release in Richmond A Transport of Affection for him in the South Ingenious Explana 
 tion of the Sensitiveness of the Southern People concerning Criticisms of Mr. Davis This 
 Disposition Unreasonable, and really Injurious to the Whole South Mr. Davis in Canada 
 A Commercial Errand to England The Ex-President of the Southern Confederacy as a 
 Commission-Merchant The Proposition of an Infamous and Hideous Traffic in Historical 
 Notoriety Reflections on the Employments of Confederate Leaders since the War An 
 Important Distinction Honorable Example of General Lee The Prosecution of Mr. Davis 
 Dismissed An Order of Nolle, Pi-osequi The Great Significance of this Event Imperfect 
 Commentaries of the Dull and Barren Press of the South The Discharge of Mr. Davis, the 
 Greatest Triumph the South could have Obtained after the War The Event Important 
 !n Three Aspects Exit of Mr. Davis from the Political Stage 525 
 
OF THf 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 ILIFQ**) 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 A Theory of the Greatness of Men Two interesting Eeflections A New 
 Eule in the Composition of Biography Application of it to Jefferson 
 Davis. 
 
 THE greatness of men the titles they hold to the 
 memory of mankind is generally achieved in a com 
 paratively short period of life. It would be a curious 
 and not invaluable speculation to estimate the average 
 period in which the supreme fame of men, notable 
 in the world s memory, is accomplished. Such fame 
 usually extends over but a small segment of life, al 
 though the exceptions to the rule are not a few. We 
 might indeed risk the statement that the average of 
 the historical mission scarcely exceeds a decade. The 
 career in which great names are accomplished generally 
 occurs on the plane of middle life, and is bounded, on 
 the one hand, by the obscurity of earlier years and, on 
 the other, by the natural retirement of old age. This 
 law of greatness is essentially a very general one, 
 largely qualified by exceptions ; but it certainly exists, 
 and one cannot have read history attentively, if he has 
 not observed in what comparatively brief and con 
 tracted spaces of human life, that fame which entitles 
 
 13 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 men to the memory of the world, has been achieved. 
 Two valuable and interesting reflections occur on this 
 subject. 
 
 There are many ambitious men who mourn the 
 shortness of life, and as they advance in years are 
 disposed to despair of time in which to accomplish 
 their hopes of fame. It is a common despondency of 
 eager and sensitive aspirants, reckoning their years 
 against their achievements. But it is a despondency 
 that may be cured and re-animated by observing 
 within what boundaries of years the most numerous 
 examples of historical greatness have occurred, and on 
 what short leases of time great names have been won. 
 It is a sovereign peculiarity of genius to contain always 
 in itself illimitable possibilities of greatness ; there is no 
 telling when it may assert itself and blaze forth to the 
 admiration of mankind, and its possibility and confi 
 dence of distinction it, alike, releases only with life. 
 But even men of lower faculties than genius need not 
 despair of the narrow chance of historical fame, because 
 of the accumulation of obscure years, as long as they 
 have a margin on the natural feebleness and seclusion 
 of old age. The greatest memories in history are 
 spanned but by a few years ; and the brave aspirant for 
 fame, not actually stricken by age, has no reason to 
 mourn that he has not time wherein to achieve his 
 passion for glory. 
 
 But we have another reflection on this subject be 
 sides its consolation to ambition a particular reflection, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 and one applicable to the work before us. It concerns 
 a new rule in the composition of Biography. What is 
 memorable in men s lives in a historical sense, and 
 most valuable to know, generally, as we have already 
 maintained, takes place within a limited number of 
 years ; and within this compass are to be found, we are 
 persuaded, the proper limits of Biography. The reader 
 wants to know principally the historical part which the 
 man performed ; and what of his life extends on either 
 side of -this space is really so marginal and subordinate 
 that the philosophical biographer may dwell but lightly 
 on it. If this rule diminishes the field of a particular 
 class of literature, it is really to improve it, to cultivate 
 its true value under a healthy system of contraction, 
 and to concentrate and raise its interest. We protest 
 against that tedious and jejune Biography, which re 
 lates the lives of men in the style of annals, each year 
 having its event ; which has no idea of the distribution 
 of incidents ; and which follows the subject with 
 equal detail from the cradle to the grave. Something 
 of course must be allowed for tracing the growth of 
 character and bringing up the man to the period in 
 which he is distinguished ; the career, indeed, must be 
 exhibited as a whole and in its proper relations ; we 
 only insist that in the life of the greatest men, there is 
 a particular and often contracted period wherein its 
 true interest resides, and that all outside of this crowded 
 space may be treated but slightly and subordinately as 
 scarcely different from the commonplaces of any average 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 human life. It is within the experience of almost every 
 reader of Biography how often he has been offended 
 and wearied by minuteness of details, which have 
 nothing to do with the real significance of the hero ; 
 by accounts of his childhood and early life no way dis 
 tinguished from the ordinary experience of human 
 creatures ; by a puerile faithfulness to every event from 
 the birth to the death; and by dreary relations of inci 
 dents neither memorable, nor suggestive, and not even 
 uncommon. It is against this excess of Biography we 
 protest. 
 
 We have proposed a rule to ourselves deduced from 
 general observations ; and happily it is singularly and 
 even exactly appropriate to our subject. The interest 
 of the life of Jefferson Davis lies within a remarkably 
 limited space of time. It is bounded by well-defined 
 lines, of more than ordinary clearness and severity, and 
 beyond which it is but little important or memorable 
 in the sense of history. His fame and the true signifi 
 cance of his life are chiefly compassed by the four years 
 of the late war. In this dense historical period he 
 moved as a commanding figure; but he had grown 
 suddenly to the stature of greatness, and already he has 
 sunk into obscure occupations and immeasurable neglect. 
 
 Adhering to the rule we have already adopted, we 
 may rapidly go over his life up to the threshold of the 
 war, commencing there the elaborate and justly pro 
 portioned narrative of his historical career. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Life of Mr. Davis Anterior to the War His Early Military Career Abrupt Resignation of It- 
 Eight Years of Retirement An Early Insight into Mr. Davis Character Passion for Self- 
 Culture His Student-Life An Imperfect Intellectual Character as the Result of Solitude- 
 Mr. Davis s First Remarkable Adventure in Public Life The " Pons Asinorum" Curious 
 Explanation of a Slander Mr. Davis and the Mississippi "Repudiation" His Career in the 
 Mexican War The " V " Movement at Buena Vista Return of Mr. Davis to Congress His 
 Senatorial Career. 
 
 JEFFEKSOST DAVIS was born on the 3d day of June, 1808, 
 in that portion of Kentucky which is now Todd county. 
 His family removed to the then territory of Mississippi, 
 while he was a child of tender years. He commenced his 
 education at the Transylvania University, Kentucky, but 
 left it for the West Point Academy, where he graduated in 
 1828. 
 
 He followed the fortunes of a soldier until 1835. He was 
 a cadet from 1824 to 1828 ; Second Lieutenant of Infantry 
 from 1828 to 1833 ; First Lieutenant of Dragoons from 1833 
 to 1835, serving in various campaigns against the Indians ; 
 was Adjutant of Dragoons, and at different times served in 
 the Quartermaster s Department. His military life gave 
 considerable promise of distinction ; it had already afforded 
 ample fields to gratify a passion for adventure ; there was 
 no likelihood that the command of the young officer of dra 
 goons would rust on the Western frontier, where it had 
 already chastised the Camanches and Pawnees, and where it 
 was often detailed on duties of an important and dangerous 
 character; but to the surprise of his companions in arms, 
 2 17 
 
18 LIFE OF JEFFEKSOtf DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Lieutenant Davis abruptly quitted the service, resigned hia 
 commission, and betook himself to the widely removed oc 
 cupation of a cotton-planter in Mississippi. A short while 
 afterwards, it was known that he had married the daughter 
 of Colonel Zachary Taylor after a romantic elopement, and 
 that he had founded a quiet home in the neighborhood of 
 Vicksburg, where for a long time he was withdrawn from. 
 the notice of his former friends and associates. 
 
 For eight years after his resignation from the army, Mr. 
 Davis remained in the close retirement of private life, occu 
 pying himself obscurely with domestic and personal cares. 
 He was a successful planter, living in comfort, but appa 
 rently averse to the social entertainments of that class, a man 
 known only to his immediate neighbors, recluse, inoffensive 
 and unpopular. Such a period of retirement, taking place 
 within that period of matured manhood, when life is most 
 valuable, and when the character may be said to assert itself, 
 and occupying years of which the ambitious nature is gener 
 ally jealous and eager to appropriate to particular objects, is 
 remarkable enough, in view of the former career of Mr. 
 Davis, and especially in view of its elevated and impassioned 
 sequel. He was not a man who would have been generally 
 estimated as fond of retirement. He had chosen the profes 
 sion of arms from ambition, and had confessed to an early 
 passion for public distinction. He had resigned that profes 
 sion without dishonor and without bitterness. There are no 
 traces of any private disappointment in his life which could 
 have forced him into a seclusion in which for so many years 
 he was apparently so well satisfied. It was not the retire 
 ment of a misanthrope, or of one whom fortune had offended, 
 or of yet one whom some secret necessity or pain had driven 
 into solitude. He went willingly and easily into retirement; 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 19 
 
 and for eight years, the future President of the Southern 
 Confederacy, whose name a great war was to carry to the 
 ends of the earth, lived quietly on a plantation, and gave the 
 best part of his manhood to the most peaceful and most 
 obscure pursuits of life. 
 
 But this curious interval in the life of Mr. Davis really 
 affords an insight into his character which has not generally 
 been observed. Stormy and ambitious as was his subsequent 
 career, he frequently confessed to a happiness in this period 
 of retirement which could only have proceeded from one of 
 those rare and refined natures, which, however occupied in 
 the world, or however conspicuously placed by circum 
 stances, yet finds a supreme pleasure and luxury in self-culture, 
 in the improvement of the mind, not for special effects, but 
 for the delightful consciousness of its progress in power and 
 knowledge. This disposition of Mr. Davis for intellectual 
 pleasures is remarkable throughout his life, and even in the 
 busiest of his public pursuits he is known to have indulged 
 the solitary habits of self-improvement in reading, meditation 
 and private exercises of the mind. He was a student for life, 
 and so from the necessity of his nature. He had the passion 
 for self-culture which is observed in such men a passion 
 which even the most ambitious pursuits sometimes do not 
 dull, and the most apparently foreign occupations cannot 
 entirely displace. 
 
 His retirement to which we have referred was rather that 
 of the scholar than of the planter. He improved it by 
 studies the most various ; he adorned his solitude with books; 
 he undertook a course of reading and of literary cultivation 
 of which he never wearied, and evidences of which strangely 
 appeared in his subsequent memorable career. It was in 
 these years of retirement that he mostly acquired that fund 
 
20 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of " general learning," that extensive range of culture, which 
 was remarked of him by those who knew him intimately, 
 when the public knew him only as President of the Southern 
 Confederacy; which was curiously displayed within the 
 walls of the prison where he was afterwards consigned; 
 which supported him in that weariness and solitude ; which 
 made books his only pleasures there ; and of which the most 
 interesting and affecting evidences have been given to the 
 world in the conversations of the "prison-life" of the fallen 
 and fettered chief, whose " learning," in the language of the 
 physician who attended him in pain, in sorrow, in separation 
 from the world, in partial blindness, and in apparently the 
 last infirmities of nature, was yet " almost marvellous." 
 
 Within eight years of close student-life Mr. Davis made 
 himself an accomplished scholar, but scarcely more. Here 
 he acquired the extraordinary literary culture which made 
 him in some respects so admirable; but here too he may 
 have derived much of that imperfect intellectual character, 
 which marks those who have but little practical intercourse 
 with men, and who have not mixed knowledge of the world 
 with the information of the scholar. It is this fine mixture 
 which we recognize especially in the highest types of states 
 manship, and which we observe in those happy men who 
 command the successes of the multitude along with the 
 appreciation of the few and intelligent. Whatever may be 
 the natural vigor of the mind, it may be impaired by exces 
 sive and solitary exercises ; a weak and speculative intellec 
 tual character is often the result of studies which abstract us 
 from the world ; and in the practical conduct of human aft airs, 
 the danger of over-refinement is not less than that of a blunt 
 and barren ignorance. Altogether Mr. Davis s period of 
 studious and elegant retirement was not a fortunate prepara- 
 
SECKET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 21 
 
 tion for the distinguished and momentous career on which 
 he was to enter. 
 
 In 1843, Mr. Davis emerged suddenly from his seclusion, 
 and with brilliant rapidity and a becoming ease won the 
 honors of public life. He entered the arena of politics in 
 the midst of a great excitement and at a time auspicious for 
 an adventurous candidate for distinction. The State of 
 Mississippi was then unusually agitated by a campaign for 
 Governor, and parties were also being organized for the 
 great Presidential contest of the next year. Mr. Davis was 
 placed as a Presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket; 
 and so rapid had been his progress as a popular speaker and 
 so conspicuous his part in the critical Democratic success of 
 1844 that the next year ho was sent to Congress, and in 
 December, 1845, took his seat in the House of .Representatives. 
 
 Generally an election to Congress may be taken as the 
 pons asinorum in the career of the American politician. It 
 is usually prefaced by easier problems of local advancement, 
 and the ordinary experience of the aspirant for public hon 
 ors is that of successive steps of office leading up to this con 
 siderable elevation. The common routine or order of the 
 political career is the local magistracy, the corporation office, 
 the State Legislature then Congress. Mr. Davis, however, 
 appears to have mounted to the latter place rapidly, and to 
 have disdained the pains of gradual advancement. That he 
 may have been aided in this quick ascent by accidental cir 
 cumstances is probably true as we have already suggested , 
 but it is none the less certain that he must have made a re 
 markable display of ripe and vigorous parts to have won 
 such a success so quickly, on his emerging from a profound 
 retirement, and to have made his first appearance in public 
 life as a member of Congress. 
 
22 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 His previous connection with the local politics of Missis 
 sippi could only have been of the slightest description. Al 
 most from the commencement of his career, he was on the 
 theatre of national politics. This observation is interesting 
 in view of the accusation which has become familiar in 
 Northern newspapers, that Mr. Davis was an advocate of that 
 odious measure, the repudiation of part of the State debt of 
 Mississippi, represented by the bonds of one of her banks. 
 The libel is contemptibly ignorant in point of narrative ; the 
 main fact being that at the time the bonds referred to were 
 refused payment, Mr. Davis was in the retirement we have de 
 scribed, having no connection whatever with politics, and the 
 further fact having lately appeared that at a subsequent period 
 of his life he endeavored to raise voluntary subscriptions to 
 pay off these bonds, and thus redeem the honor of Missis 
 sippi. 
 
 How such a slander could have been persistently and 
 successfully maintained in the face of these facts even to the 
 extent that many thousand persons in the North and Europe 
 to this day firmly believe and habitually assert that Jefferson 
 Davis achieved his first bad distinction in life as a disciple 
 of repudiation in Mississippi is remarkable and even curi 
 ous. It is so much so that the author may afford in this 
 place the explanation of it which has been given him. It 
 appears that in the late war there was an especial effort of 
 the Northern Government to disparage the credit of the 
 Southern Confederacy in Europe ; to break down its financial 
 schemes there, and, in proportion, to advance their own. To 
 this mission was appointed Kobert J. Walker, a Mississippian, 
 a personal enemy of Mr. Davis, a man of the doubtful trade 
 of a private " financier," and known to be the tool of any 
 pecuniary enterprise; and the first flagitious enterprise of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 23 
 
 this individual was to publish in all the money markets of 
 Europe a pamphlet representing the then President of the 
 Southern Confederacy as one of the agents of repudiation in 
 Mississippi. What he asserted he knew to be false ; but he 
 attached to it an invention of great plausibility. When Mr. 
 Davis was in the Senate of the United States, his State was 
 aspersed for repudiation ; and he answered, offering what of 
 defence or of apology he could for an act to which he had 
 been originally opposed, but the wrong of which he was not 
 willing to admit under the force of censure levelled at his 
 State, or to the extent it implied in a debate of recrimination. 
 In this he did nothing more than his duty as a representative 
 to offer all he could of justification of an act of his State, 
 even one from which he had originally dissented, but which 
 he was not therefore, willing, to submit to the unmitigated 
 censure of enemies and to the excessive and unmeasured re 
 proaches of the revilers of the South. In such a defence of 
 Mississippi, he performed the just and generous duty of a 
 representative, and made an honorable speech to urge what 
 he could of excuse for a measure which he had never advo 
 cated, which he never pretended to justify and which he wa& 
 yet impatient to see turned to excessive and distorted cen 
 sure by the enemies of his State. It was this speech from 
 which Mr. Walker obtained the color of repudiation, which 
 he published or rather garbled in the capitals of Europe, and 
 through which Mr. Davis is to this day unjustly known as a 
 party to an infamous measure of his State, It is easy to pile 
 occasions upon a fallen man ; malice has done its worst upon 
 the unsuccessful chief of the Southern Confederacy; but 
 surely he has enough of reproach to bear without the added 
 burden of those false recriminations which so readily grow 
 in the season of misfortune. Though his life should be 
 
24 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 greatly accused by the just biographer, the same should be 
 none the less ready to defend it against false accusations as to 
 expose it to truthful censure. On this principle of distribu 
 tion, thus early avowed and illustrated, the author bases his 
 work and trusts its strength and merit. 
 
 Mr. Davis was sitting in the House of Kepresentatives when 
 the war with Mexico was proclaimed. It opened a new road 
 to his ambition, and one which led back to his first passion 
 for arms. He resigned his seat in Congress, to accept the 
 command of the Mississippi Rifles a regiment of which he 
 was unanimously elected colonel overtook his men at New 
 Orleans, en route for the theatre of the war, and by midsummer 
 of 1846 reinforced General Taylor on the Eio Grande. We 
 have neither the space nor design to admit here the details of 
 his military career in Mexico. He played an important part 
 at Monterey, where he charged, without bayonets, on Fort 
 Leneria ; he led his command through the streets to within a 
 square of the Grand Plaza, suffering a storm of musketry and 
 grape ; and on the subsequent field of Buena Yista, he per 
 formed one of the most dramatic incidents of the war, receiving 
 on a suddenly conceived formation of his lines a charge of 
 cavalry, and with a plunging fire from right and left repelling 
 it, the last desperate effort of the Mexicans to break the 
 American lines at the close of the day. 
 
 Of this affair a writer, who witnessed the field, has afforded 
 the following vivid description: "A brigade of lancers, one 
 thousand strong, were seen approaching at a gallop, in beauti 
 ful array, with sounding bugles and fluttering pennons. It 
 was an appalling spectacle, but not a man flinched from his 
 position. The time between our devoted band," (the Missis 
 sippi Rifles) "and eternity seemed brief indeed. But con 
 scious that the eye of the army was upon them, that the honor 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 25 
 
 of Mississippi was at stake, and knowing that, if they gave 
 way, or were ridden down, our unprotected batteries in the 
 rear, upon which the fortunes of the day depended, would be 
 captured, each man resolved to die in his place sooner than 
 retreat. Not the Spartan martyrs at Thermoplyae not the 
 sacred battalion of Epaminondas not the Tenth Legion of 
 Julius Caesar not the Old Guard of Napoleon ever evinced 
 more fortitude than these young volunteers in a crisis when 
 death seemed inevitable. They stood like statues, as frigid 
 and motionless as the marble itself. Impressed with this ex 
 traordinary firmness, when they had anticipated panic and 
 flight, the lancers advanced more deliberately, as though they 
 saw, for the first time, the dark shadow of the fate that was 
 impending over them. Colonel Davis had thrown his men 
 into the form of a re-entering angle, (familiarly known as his 
 famous V movement,) both flanks resting on ravines, the 
 lancers coming down on the intervening ridge. This exposed 
 them to a covering fire ; and the moment they carne within 
 rifle range each man singled out his object, and the whole 
 head of the column fell. A more deadly fire never was de 
 livered, and the brilliant array recoiled and retreated, para 
 lyzed and dismayed." 
 
 On his return from the Mexican war, Mr. Davis quickly 
 reentered political life, this time with an ascent to the Senate 
 of the United States. He was elected in 1847 to fill a 
 vacancy ; but a few months before the expiration of his sena 
 torial term, he returned to the field of local politics in Missis 
 sippi, and was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor in the 
 campaign of 1850. From that contest he passed into the 
 Cabinet of President Pierce, and for four years discharged 
 with uninterrupted satisfaction to the army and to the country 
 the duties of Secretary of War. In 1857, he returned to the 
 
26 LIFE OF JEEFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Senate, and his term would have continued there until the 
 3d of March, 1863, had not the war translated him to that 
 career wherein we shall find the dominant interest of his life 
 
 It is not our purpose to examine here the political record 
 of Mr. Davis; it will appear in another and special connec 
 tion, and as bearing on the one great question of separation 
 and war. We do not purpose to burden the reader with the 
 ordinary legislative history of his Congressional terms ; we 
 simply sum here, and very briefly, the external events of his 
 life, before the war, designing hereafter to review, as from its 
 threshold, whatever is significant in them on the question of 
 Disunion. 
 
 Yet we must say something generally of his Senatorial 
 career. It was the most important part of his public life pre 
 ceding the war. For several years he sat in this body, in the 
 company of such men as Clay, Webster, Cass, Douglas, 
 Dickinson, and King; and the distinction he obtained for 
 such a time and in such an association cannot be well omitted 
 from his life especially as we think it a rightful portion of 
 his fame that should survive the war, and be justly distributed 
 to his posterity. The chief interest of his life resides, as we 
 have already suggested, within the limits of the war ; and yet 
 beyond this there is something of achievement and of 
 character that the public should remember. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF. THE CONFEDERACY. 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. Davis in the Senate of the United States Distinction as an Orator Definition of the term 
 <; Eloquence "Mr. Davis in the World of Letters Brilliant Remnant of his Reputation 
 His Style as a Speaker His Figure and Manners in the Senate The art of " Self-continence " 
 in Oratory Reference to Stephen A. Douglas His "Specialty "Anecdotes of his Life How 
 Jefferson Davis Compared with the "Little Giant "The Former Scorns " Quarter "The 
 Kansas Controversy Mr. Davis s Reply to Douglas A Burst of Temper A Noble Speech 
 The Senatorial Career of Mr. Davis, the Most Honorable Part of his Public Life. 
 
 MR. DAVIS S career in the Senate of the United States was 
 not connected with the origination of any great public mea 
 sure, and had but little of severely historical distinction. 
 He was a quiet member, illustrating in that august assembly 
 a fine eloquence, a studied and refined manner, and a habit 
 rather scholarly than popular. He never had any force as a 
 partisan ; he had no reputation as a statesman ; he had none 
 of the original resources of a great genius, a creator ; but 
 he had a characteristically senatorial manner, a mind vari 
 ously and richly stored from cultivated leisure, and an elo 
 quence which was without parallel in his times, and, in 
 fact, ascends to comparison with the best models in history 
 of public and deliberative discourse. 
 
 It is curious how words, formed at first to express single 
 and distinct things, are carried to secondary significations ; 
 how they are extended by popular use to take in adjacent or 
 similar ideas ; how special or even technical terms are made 
 at last to comprehend, in the common parlance, the whole 
 generic idea. This peculiarity of the use or abuse of lan 
 guage is well illustrated in the word "Eloquence" As a 
 
28 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 term of art, eloquence has a very distinct and severe mean 
 ing ; it denotes a quality that is the rarest of human gifts, 
 and which, however difficult of definition, is as unmis 
 takable in its effects as the mesmerism that by subtile 
 influences enchains its subject, possesses all his sympathies, 
 and makes him for the time obey the will and reflect the 
 very sense of the other. It is, in fact, a moral mesmerism : 
 the conversion of an audience into the alter ego of the indi 
 vidual, the irresistible command of a sympathy that identi 
 fies itself with the speaker, and binds up the hearts of men 
 in one common feeling and affection. It is no more possible 
 to mistake this mysterious power of eloquence than the 
 Promethean fire. It is properly sui generis, distinguished 
 from all other faculties of man, mysterious and defying 
 analysis, and so seldom possessed, that Eloquence, taking 
 it as a term of art, may be said to be the very rarest of that 
 rare gift called genius, and those who may be called orators, 
 in the highest sense of the word, may be counted by the 
 tens in the sum of all ages of the world, and in the entire 
 extent of human history. 
 
 But the term has been expanded by general use, until at 
 last those even who pretend to a critical and precise use of 
 language, are accustomed to denote as Eloquence almost 
 any kind of powerful or effective speaking. Thus, this 
 word is now generally used to characterize any discourse 
 that answers its ends, whether it be the conviction of the 
 understanding or the persuasion of the will. The vivacity 
 of the intellect is confounded with the play of the passions; 
 the ardor of conviction is mistaken for the heats of fancy 
 and imagination ; the lively harangue is termed the effort 
 of Eloquence ; and the mere intellectual animation of the 
 speaker passes for the rage of the orator. It is by these 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 29 
 
 natural processes that the term Eloquence has obtained a 
 very extensive meaning. In the literature of our country, 
 we find it freely used to denote general excellence in speak 
 ing, and appropriated as a title to fame by men of the most 
 various gifts and accomplishments. It is equally applied to 
 the massive, judicial discourse of Webster, the lively dia 
 lectics of Calhoun, the scholarly elegance of Kandolph, the 
 well-dressed, agreeable commonplaces of the over-rated Clay, 
 the skilled debate of Douglas, the fiery appeal and fierce 
 exclamations of the passionate and unequal Yancey. All 
 these are orators in the popular sense of the term ; and in 
 this sense we shall not dispute their titles to fame, and their 
 claims on the admiration of their countrymen. 
 
 Indeed, it is in this general and popular sense that we 
 accept the term Eloquence, and apply it to the subject of 
 this chapter. It would be too severe an affectation to limit 
 now a word that has grown into so large and general a 
 signification ; and, therefore, taking it to mean power and 
 excellence in speech, we shall proceed to designate the merit 
 as an orator of one whose character has been but seldom or 
 slightly discussed in this view. 
 
 The events of the past few years have not only made the 
 name of Jefferson Davis familiar to the companies of states 
 men and politicians ; it has been introduced to the world of 
 letters, and discussed there with an interest scarcely second 
 to that it has inspired in the political circle. His exhi 
 bitions of scholarship, the fine literary effects of his style, 
 his sonorous State papers, his skilled narration of the origin 
 and conduct of the war, his powerful and sometimes splendid 
 vindication with the pen of the cause of the Southern Con 
 federacy have made him, no matter whatever else of repu 
 tation he may have lost or diminished in the struggle, one 
 
30 LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of the first literary names in America. It has been said 
 that his very numerous and full state papers would make a 
 very ingenious history of the war. They might be col 
 lected in another interest, as a model of style, containing, 
 as they do, some of the best and most vigorous English 
 extant in this corrupt literary period of the country, in 
 which the language of our ancestors suffers so much from 
 the zeal of Yankee reformers. But it is as an orator that 
 we propose to regard Mr. Davis in this chapter, a view in 
 which it is remarkable he has been scarcely considered by 
 his countrymen, although discussed in so many respects, 
 and surrounded and assailed by almost every weapon of 
 criticism. Here his displays during the war were less fre 
 quent than with the pen; they were few and but very 
 imperfectly reported ; they were almost lost to fame in the 
 dingy records of the Confederate newspapers ; but what of 
 well-preserved record he has left, as an orator, in the Senate 
 of the United States is sufficient, we think, to entitle him to 
 a large measure of admiration, to repair, to some extent, 
 other parts of his reputation, and to leave him with an 
 honorable and not lightly adorned name to survive the 
 misfortunes of his purely political career. 
 
 The Senate of the United States is undoubtedly the highest 
 school of eloquence in America. It was in this school, 
 where had reigned the triumvirate of Clay, Webster, and 
 Calhoun, where had been the theatre of the greatest and 
 most dignified contests in American politics, where resided 
 the memories of the country s greatest men, that Mr. Davis 
 formed his style. It was a fit school. Of all the living 
 orators of America, Mr. Davis was best suited to address a 
 small and cultivated assembly. No one abhorred more 
 tfian he did that vulgar and detestable style of eloquence, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 31 
 
 which the world is disposed to designate as peculiarly Amer 
 ican, and of which exaggeration is the prevailing character 
 istic. His sober and classical speech had nothing in com 
 mon with that Fourth-of-July oratory which captivates the 
 masses; it rejected all extravagances; it had none of that 
 rhetorical excess which has disfigured so many American 
 statesmen. To those accustomed to the inflated style of the 
 hustings and the extravagances of American oratory, it was 
 indeed refreshing to listen to the polished yet forcible lan 
 guage of the Senator from Mississippi, to mark his apt 
 political words, and to hear the hautboy tones of his rich 
 and manly eloquence. 
 
 The qualities of Mr. Davis as an orator were of rare and 
 cultivated type. His person realized all that the popular 
 imagination pictured for an orator. His thin, spare figure, 
 his almost sorrowful cast of countenance, composed, how 
 ever, in an invariable expression of dignity, gave the idea 
 of a body worn by the action of the mind, an intellect sup 
 porting in its prison of flesh the pains of constitutional 
 disease, and triumphing over physical confinement and af 
 fliction. His cheek-bones were hollow ; the vicinity of his 
 mouth was deeply furrowed with intersecting lines ; and the 
 intensity of expression was rendered acute by angular facial 
 outline. " In face and form," said one who frequently saw 
 him in the Senate, u he represents the Norman type with 
 singular fidelity, if my conception of tha^ type be correct." 
 Observing him in a casual group of three of the then most 
 distinguished public men of the South, sitting in abstracted 
 conversation in the Chamber of the Senate, the same writer 
 thus continues his description : " Davis sat erect and com 
 posed ; Hunter, listening, rested his head on his hand ; 
 and Toombs, inclining forward, was speaking vehemently. 
 
32 
 
 Their respective attitudes were no bad illustration of their 
 individuality. Davis impressed the spectator, who observed 
 the easy but authoritative bearing with which he put aside 
 or assenteu to Toombs s suggestions, with the notion of some 
 slight superiority, some hardly acknowledged leadership ; 
 and Hunter s attentiveness and impassibility were character 
 istic of his nature, for his profundity of intellect wears the 
 guise of stolidity, and his continuous industry that of in 
 ertia ; while Toombs s quick utterance and restless head 
 bespoke his nervous temperament and activity of mind." 
 
 Mr. Davis had a personal figure which was commanding 
 in every attitude. His carriage was erect there was a 
 soldierly affectation, of which, indeed, the hero of Buena 
 Vista gave evidence through his life, having the singular 
 conceit that his genius was military, and fitter for arms 
 than for the council. He had a precise manner, and an 
 austerity that was at first forbidding ; but he had naturally 
 a fondness for society, and often displayed tenderness to 
 those with whom he was intimate. When he spoke, he was 
 always self-possessed. His style as a speaker was very de 
 liberate, sometimes with majestic slowness pouring out his 
 wealth of language, and anon with low searching tones 
 penetrating the ear even more distinctly than the strained 
 utterances of other speakers. His voice was always clear 
 and firm, without tremor ; his elocution excellent. The 
 matter of his speeches was invariably sound and sensible. 
 A scholar, but not in the pedantic sense of the term ; a man 
 remarkable for the range of his learning, though making no 
 pretensions to the doubtful reputation of the sciolist, his 
 reading was classical and varied, his fund of illustration 
 large, and his resources of imagery plentiful and always 
 apposite. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 33 
 
 But what was most remarkable in Mr. Da vis s style of 
 eloquence was a manner which we believe constitutes the 
 highest art of the orator that of apparent self-continence in 
 the expression of passion. It is by this peculiar manner, 
 this appearance of suppressing the struggling emotions of 
 the heart and only half speaking what is felt, that the con 
 summate orator often conveys more of passion to his hearers 
 than when his rage " wreaks itself upon expression," and 
 is lost in the storm and multitude of \v-ords. It is a nice 
 art, a magnetic power ; and Mr. Davis, of all the speakers 
 whom the author has ever heard in America, had it to per 
 fection, lie seldom stormed, he seldom spoke loudly or 
 impetuously ; but he often filled the hearts of his hearers 
 with unspeakable passion, and captured their entire sympa 
 thies by that evidently forced moderation of tone and lan 
 guage which leaves to the power of suggestion much that 
 expression declines to attempt, and is incapable of con 
 veying. 
 
 There was another remarkable trait of Mr. Davis as an 
 orator. His eloquence was haughty and defiant, and his 
 manners singularly imperious. He spoke as one who would 
 not brook contradiction, who delivered his statements of 
 truth as if without regard to anything said to the contrary, 
 and who disdained the challenges of debate. With an eye 
 sometimes kindling like the light that blazed on " Diomed s 
 crest ;" with a countenance engraven with passion ; with a 
 form erect but elastic, he presented the clear-cut, conspicu 
 ous front of a proud and dangerous antagonist. The author 
 recollects hirn in one of the passages of the debate in the 
 Senate on the famous Kansas bill, when he shone as the im 
 personation of defiant pride, and threw his haughty challenge 
 in the face of a political enemy. Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, 
 
34 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 had twitted some of his Democratic friends for what he de 
 clared their alleged defection, and had promised certain con 
 ditions to them when he was able to dictate their restoration 
 to the party. Mr. Davis rose suddenly to his feet, with erect 
 and dilated figure, and, striking his breast, exclaimed proudly 
 and passionately: " I scorn your quarter! 1 
 
 The Senator from Mississippi and the Little Giant of the 
 West met frequently in debate, and often with passionate 
 encounter. There were scarcely any points of comparison 
 between these two men, the first, the finest orator in the 
 Senate, and the latter, one of the ablest debaters there. 
 Great as he was in some sense, there was no man of his 
 times more over-rated than Stephen A. Douglas ; and an 
 estimate of his character here is interesting in illustration 
 of what we may have occasion to suggest elsewhere in this 
 work, that loose judgment of the public which mistakes a 
 narrow excellence for greatness, and special accomplishments 
 for unlimited capacities. 
 
 Mr. Douglas had his specialty. There was no public man 
 in the country of his high grade who was more exclusively 
 a politician. Politics was the specialty of his life, and em 
 braced all his mind. He had no literary accomplishments ; 
 he appears to have profoundly read no other history than that 
 of America ; and outside the competitions of political life he 
 was wholly unknown. There is something unpleasant in 
 this intellectual scantiness of bis life, this devotion to a 
 single pursuit. But Mr. Douglas was certainly the most 
 consummate of politicians, "the Little Giant" in his small 
 world of ambition. He had that ready and intricate skill 
 which comes from the close and narrow study of a specialty, 
 an acuteness carried to the nicest point of perfection by a 
 division of labor. He was so thoroughly a master of the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 35 
 
 political history of the country as to constantly defeat men 
 who were intellectually above him, by his superiority in 
 facts; and his great power in debate was his minute and 
 remote illustrations drawn from this special fund of know 
 ledge. He had at his fingers ends all the Congressional 
 Annals and Globes, National Eegisters, and political encyclo 
 pedias of every sort, from " Cluskey s Text-Book " to the 
 briefest vade mecum. In this intricate field of knowledge 
 he had no rival ; his illustrations gathered there were 
 weapons, and they sometimes bore down the most formid 
 able arrays of intellect, and scattered the literary ornaments 
 and flowery language of his cultivated competitors. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was a peculiar character in the political 
 literature of America. He may be described as a characteris 
 tic product of the broad and free life of the West, and his 
 career wonderfully illustrates the developing influences of 
 American institutions. He plunged into politics from the 
 time he first passed the -early struggles of poverty, and v, r as 
 free from the concern of livelihood. There are many anec 
 dotes of the perplexed poverty of his youth. .He was born 
 in Vermont, worked when he was fifteen years old as an 
 apprentice to a cabinet-maker, and wandered West in a 
 vspirit of adventure, so careless and comical as to make his 
 early life at once amusing and instructive. He describes 
 himself on one occasion of his travels in Illinois as reduced 
 in funds to thirty-seven and a half cents. With this sum in 
 his pockets he entered the town of Winchester, in Illinois, 
 and chancing to come upon an illiterate auctioneer selling 
 goods in the street, he offered to keep his accounts. In three 
 days he made six dollars, advanced his views, and on this 
 capital opened a school. The next step was a strident one, 
 and ended with a nomination to Congress. 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 He lost the election by five votes. But he was consoled 
 by an appointment to the supreme bench of Illinois, and here 
 he obtained the title of Judge, by which he was familiarly 
 known to the day of his death. In 1847 he was elected to 
 the Senate of the United States, and here he at once became 
 famous in recommending a characteristic policy in the foreign 
 affairs of the country. 
 
 It may be claimed for Mr. Douglas that he originated the 
 gushing school of " young America, 7 if he did not, in fact, 
 introduce these words for the first time in the political litera 
 ture of the country. No experiment on public sentiment 
 could have been more happy and captivating at the particu 
 lar period in which Mr. Douglas first introduced himself to 
 national attention. It was a time when the Cuban question 
 was at its heat, when our foreign relations were deranged 
 and unsatisfactory, when "Anglophobia" had again become 
 a title of popularity ; and when reports of constant searches 
 of American vessels by British cruisers on the Gulf of Mexico, 
 the mare clausum of America, were spurring public indigna 
 tion to the rowels. Mr. Douglas was at once for radical and 
 daring measures. He was ready to take possession of " the 
 gem of the Antilles," to annex Canada, and to send a national 
 war vessel on the track of the British cruisers. The party 
 supporting such measures was aptly named "Young Amer 
 ica;" it had no distinctive body or organization, but as a 
 sentiment it was definite and characteristic enough to make 
 Mr. Douglas suddenly and immensely famous, and to procure 
 for him an almost intoxicating draught of popularity. His 
 favorite rhetorical figure was an " ocean-bound republic ;" he 
 taught a rapid and inflammatory progress ; the literature of 
 the day reeked with caricatures of those who opposed this 
 Budden inflation of American pride and ambition. The "old 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 87 
 
 fogy" was a miserable wretch "sitting over the shiit-tail of 
 progress crying woe, woe !" This grotesque term has since 
 become nearly obsolete in our politics, and the afflatus of 
 " Young America " has since passed into the general patriot 
 ism of the country; but the popularity made out of the pass 
 ing transport was Mr. Douglas s first stage in fame, on which 
 ensued a long and important career. 
 
 It would be merely to repeat some very familiar history to 
 detail Mr. Douglas s record on that peculiar " territorial ques 
 tion" which preceded the late war, and, in fact, was its most 
 obvious and visible occasion. The vexed question of Slavery 
 in connection with the government of the Territories, was 
 the main topic of his public life, and furnished those theatres 
 of debate on which he was such a central and conspicuous 
 figure. The political record has become trite from repetition ; 
 but Mr. Douglas s personal history in the controversy is one 
 of vivid and dramatic interest. He realized the most various 
 experience of public opinion, the utmost shifts of adventure 
 in the changeful and intricate controversy extending from the 
 Compromise Measures of 1850 to the opening of the war in 
 the next decade. At one time, he was almost apotheosized, 
 at another time incontinently damned. It was a striking ex 
 ample of " the fickle vulgar," and of the uncertain tides in the 
 life of a great politician. At one time the City Council of 
 Chicago voted Mr. Douglas in the company of "the Benedict 
 Arnolds and Judas Iscariots of history," and thereafter, ex 
 punging the record, received him with the honors of a con 
 queror. In 1854, when he was bearing the burden of the 
 repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it was said that " he 
 could ride from Boston to Chicago by the light of his blazing 
 effigy in the night, and in sight of his hanging effigy by day." 
 On this occasion the indignation of Chicago, the tumultuous 
 
38 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 metropolis of the West, was again erect, and the Senator, re 
 turning to his home, was received by a city bristling with 
 mobs. He attempted to address a crowd from the balcony 
 of his hotel ; but they would not hear him, and they drowned 
 his struggling words with insults, and jeers and taunts and 
 shouts of defiance. It was a remarkable struggle of the per 
 sistence of a single, brave, and clear- toned speaker, with the 
 clamor of a hoarse and brutal mob. For four long hours, 
 from eight o clock in the evening, Mr. Douglas struggled for 
 a hearing, edging in a word wherever he could, expostulating, 
 defying, shaming, entreating, as the moods of the mob ap 
 peared to vary. Finally, when the hour of midnight was 
 struck, he took out his watch, looked at it very deliberately, 
 and said : " It is Sunday morning ; I have to go to church, 
 ind you may go to h 1 !" 
 
 In the Kansas controversy, and the involved question of 
 popular sovereignty, Mr. Douglas had abundant opportunities 
 of that passionate controversy which his strong and aggres 
 sive nature craved. He was never so great and powerful as 
 when spurred by controversy and baited by his political 
 opponents. He had a supreme self-confidence, and his tones 
 of defiance were clear and ringing. Although not an orator 
 in the highest sense, he had an intellectual vividness that was 
 nearly akin to eloquence, and his intrepidity was like an in 
 spiration. When the " Lecomptonites" sought to "read him 
 out of the Democratic party," and a group of Democratic 
 Senators, among whom Jefferson Davis was conspicuous, were 
 constant in their recriminations, he said, with great disdain, 
 thut he would return from Illinois a Senator for six years 
 longer, and would then take occasion of further reply to the 
 enemies confronting him, preferring to save time and unne 
 cessary fatigue by "firing upon them in a bunch." At this 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 39 
 
 remark Mr. Davis grew warm, denouncing it as unexampled 
 insolence ; and it was on an occasion in the same speech of 
 Mr. Douglas that he struck his breast in a theatrical manner, 
 and declared that he would never accept quarter" from the 
 Senator from Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Davis had his specialties as well as Mr. Douglas ; some 
 of them were, perhaps, even narrower than those of the 
 Senator from Illinois; but whatever was the force of the 
 former, in the Senate of the United States, he certainly had a 
 breadth of literary culture to which the Western man could 
 not pretend. Mr. Douglas had a ready reference in the 
 political history of the country, and was, thus, often able to 
 overthrow his opponent on particular questions of party ; but 
 Mr. Davis had an immense fund of historical and literary 
 illustration, and excelled his antagonist in the general effect 
 of his speeches taken as a whole. In the brief and ready 
 colloquy, Douglas had no superior in the Senate ; in the 
 orderly and elaborate discourse, Davis stood pre-eminent. 
 Whenever it came to the lengthened debate between the two, 
 the latter was likely to carry off the palm of superiority. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was particularly sore in the Kansas contro 
 versy under the imputation cast upon him by his removal 
 from the position he had long held of chairman of the Com 
 mittee on Territories. It was a proclamation of a Democratic 
 majority in the t Senate, that his doctrine of " squatter sov 
 ereignty " was a heresy, a defamation, in fact, of that higti 
 _ principle of popular sovereignty which Mr. Davis himself 
 had avowed in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and which breathed 
 the true spirit of American institutions. The first impression 
 of the difference between Mr. Douglas and the Southern 
 Democracy the former contending that the people in the 
 Territories were from the first date of their settlement com- 
 
40 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 petent to decide the question of slavery, and the latter con 
 tending that they could do so only when the Territory was 
 prepared to ask admission into the Union, and was in the act 
 of assuming the sovereignty of a State is that of an unim 
 portant and technical question, a mere affair of circumstance 
 and time. Bat it was a question that really went to the 
 heart of the sectional controversy. Mr. Douglas s " squatter 
 sovereignty " was in fact, a concession to the Anti-Slavery 
 sentiment of the North ; it proposed to decide the question of 
 Slavery in the new States by a hasty and disorganized action, 
 in which the facilities of the North for colonization might 
 easily stock a factitious vote and override the rights of the 
 South ; it suggested a plan by which a few " emigrant aid 
 societies" might take a " snap-judgment " on southern insti 
 tutions, even more effective than a Congressional prohibition ; 
 and it furnished to the Abolitionists an instrument practically 
 more certain and expeditious than the blunted and undis 
 guised measures with which they had formerly waged a 
 desultory war upon the institution of Slavery. 
 
 It was on this broad issue that Mr. Davis repeatedly en 
 countered the Senator from Illinois, and illustrated more than 
 one triumph of luminous and scholarly eloquence over the in 
 genious vapor of the demagogue. Mr. Davis was but seldom 
 personal or acrimonious in his speeches; when he designed to 
 wound, he was sarcastic rather than aggressive ; but more 
 than once in debate with Douglas, he lost his temper, and 
 rushed at his antagonist with an ungovernable violence. 
 There was a marked animosity between the two Senators ; 
 one of the most important contests in the politics of America 
 found them face to face ; and the combatants were ready to 
 strip their lances as in a controversy of life and death. On 
 one occasion in 1860, Mr. Douglas spoke uninterruptedly for 
 
\ 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 41 
 
 two days in the Senate, hurling defiance at those who had 
 degraded him from the position of chairman of Committee on 
 Territories. Mr. Davis replied at almost equal length ; he 
 went over the whole ground of controversy, and made the 
 most telling and complete speech of his life. He disclaimed 
 personalities but with characteristic ingenuity made his very 
 disclaimer the channel of attack, the conduit of scorn and 
 contempt. "Nothing," he declared, "but the most egregious 
 vanity, something far surpassing even the bursting condition 
 of swollen pride, could have induced the Senator from 
 Illinois to believe that I could not speak of squatter sovereignty 
 without meaning him." He scorned the narrow rule of pro 
 scription on slight differences in parties ; but at the same time 
 he accommodated to this a noble declaration concerning the 
 integrity of political opinions. He spoke of that common 
 subject in American politics, the disgraceful compromises of 
 parties for the spoils of office. He said, "I cannot respect 
 such a doctrine as that which says, you may construe the 
 Constitution your way, and I will construe it mine ; we will 
 waive the merit of these two constructions, and harmonize to 
 gether until the courts decide the question between us. A 
 man is bound to have an opinion upon any political subject 
 upon which he is called to act ; it is skulking his responsibility 
 for a citizen to say, Let us express no opinion; I will agree 
 that you may have yours, and I will have mine ; we will co 
 operate politically together ; we will beat the opposition, divide 
 the spoils, and leave it to the court to decide the question 
 between us. I do not believe that this is the path of safety ; 
 I am sure it is not the way of honor." 
 
 It was a noble speech ; and is referred to here, for much 
 of the character of Mr. Davis in debate, and for something 
 of his elevated moral tone in public life. Naturally passion- 
 
42 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ate, his temper was usually moderated by a fine and cultiva 
 ted language; ambitious, he yet disdained the low efforts 
 of the demagogue and courted popularity decorously ; suc 
 cessful in politics, a man having many propitious opportu 
 nities, he was yet never caught in a corrupt bargain, a 
 fraudulent adventure or any affair which could be counted 
 personally dishonorable, or which might not be pardoned to 
 the common spirit of intrigue in the politics of the country. 
 No shadow ever fell upon his personal honor in the Senate 
 of the United States ; and even the malign persecution of him 
 in a " lost cause " has failed to find in this part of his life 
 anything of personal reproach, moral delinquency or intellec 
 tual weakness. 
 
 The career of Mr. Davis in the Senate is undoubtedly the 
 best and most honorable part of his public life. It was 
 singularly pure, elevated, and well-sustained. In whatever 
 other times and characters he was deficient, he will, at least, 
 be known in future and just history as an orator who adorned 
 the highest councils of his country, and as a scholar who 
 has left in his literary compositions models already studied 
 and applauded in two continents. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Election of Abraham Lincoln, President, not the Cause of the War A Peculiar Aristocracy in 
 the South The Power of this Section in the hands of Politicians rather than Slaveholders 
 Remarkable Speeches in the Convention of South Carolina The State Conventions Mere 
 Puppets The Centre of the Conspiracy at Washington Jefferson Davis Among the Conspir 
 ators Critical Examination of His Record on the Question of Disunion Its Inconsistency 
 His Early Extravagances for the Union His Conduct in Congress in 1850 Prophetic Warning 
 of Henry Clay Mr. Davis Ambition to succeed Calhoun His Effrontery Connection with the 
 "Resistance" Party of Mississippi as its Candidate for Governor His Remarkable Explanation 
 ef the Designs of this Party Inconsistency of this Explanation Mr. Davis enters the Cabinet 
 of President Pierce as a Union Man Repudiates the "Resistance" Party His Responsibility 
 for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill Union Speech in Mississippi Mr. Davis Regards the Kansas 
 Settlement as a Triumph for the South He is Bit by the Ambition for a Presidential Nomi 
 nation An Electioneering Tour in New York and Maine "Slaver" of Fraternal Affection 
 Insincerity of Mr. D.ivis s Record on the Question of Disunion The Cause of the South Dis 
 figured by the Ambition of its Leaders, but not therefore to be Dishonored A Brief History 
 of Disunion The South Suffered from a General Apprehenson Rather than a Specific Alarm 
 The Action of her Politicians, neither a Test of Her Spirit, nor a Measure of the Justice of 
 Her Cause The Condition of Washington, in December, I860. 
 
 THE election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the 
 United States might have precipitated the Secessionary move 
 merit of the Southern States; but it certainly did not produce 
 it. For many years the thought of Disunion had gathered 
 in the South, and it was at last executed by a small number 
 of politicians for there is nothing more singular in the 
 history of the war, than the narrow and exclusive control, in 
 the South at least, which managed its initiation, compelled 
 the people to it, and brought upon the country the rage of 
 sectional arms. 
 
 We shall have future occasion to see how the war was 
 compelled by a few politicians, and to what extent the people 
 
4A LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 were excluded from the early drama of its inauguration. 
 How these few persons were able to do so much can only be 
 understood from the peculiar constitution of society in the 
 South. In that part of the Union there had long been a 
 singular aristocracy not that oligarchy of slaveholders gene 
 rally imputed to it but an aristocracy that was not consti 
 tuted by birth, wealth, or manners, but that rested mainly on 
 the titles and dignities of public life. The aristocracy of the 
 South is properly described as an aristocracy of politicians 
 men who had naturally other coincident claims to superiority, 
 who, perhaps, owned slaves, possessed wealth, or might assert 
 some sort of social merit, but who governed the masses and 
 reposed their superiority mainly on the eminence of public 
 office. Such an aristocracy is naturally narrow, restless, and 
 badly ambitious. It had ruled the South for many years ; in 
 that part of the Union there was not only a marked and close 
 monopoly of public office, but even some trace of hereditary 
 descent in it ; and the greater politicians of the South were as 
 distinct and imperious a class as men in any single occupation 
 have ever formed. 
 
 It was this class in the South that had long indulged the 
 thought of Disunion, and that for years had paved the way 
 to its consummation. Many of them saw in it new careers ; 
 the more ardent sought in it opportunities of ambition ; and 
 not a few old and spent politicians hoped to gratify in it a 
 mean and slothful greed of office. The war took such men 
 neither by surprise nor by force. They had plotted and de 
 sired it ; they saw in the accommodations of the contest, new 
 fortunes arid emoluments for themselves; and they seized 
 with alacrity the occasion to realize the hopes of years. 
 
 The first remarkable step of the South ensuing on the 
 election of Mr. Lincoln, was the Convention of South Caro- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 45 
 
 lina, which on the 20th of December, 1861, passed an ordi 
 nance of Secession, and declared that the State had resumed 
 her sovereignty. In the debates of this Convention there was 
 a tone of congratulation, rather than the foreboding and depre 
 cation which might have been supposed would have prefaced 
 a great and disastrous civil war. "It is no spasmodic effort 
 that has suddenly come upon us," said one of the members ; 
 " it has been gradually culminating for a long series of years. 
 " Most of us," declared another, " have had this matter under 
 consideration for the last twenty years." Others, and among 
 them those who had long led in the Disunion party, could not 
 contain their joy at the consummation of their hopes, and 
 spoke with something of the intoxication of success. Mr. 
 Keitt said : " We are performing a great act, which involves 
 not only the stirring present, but embraces the whole great 
 future of ages to come. I have been engaged in this move 
 ment ever since I entered political life. I am content with 
 what has been done to-day, and content with what will take 
 place to-morrow. We have carried the body of this Union 
 to its last resting place, and now we will drop the flag over 
 its grave." Mr. Khett said more plainly : " The secession of 
 South Carolina is not the event of a day. It is not anything 
 produced by Mr. Lincoln s election, or by the non-execution of 
 the fugitive slave law. It has been a matter which has been 
 gathering head for thirty years." The consummation of so 
 much of effort and of desire was proclaimed on the day South 
 Carolina passed an ordinance of secession ; and after such 
 speeches as those referred to, it is not surprising that the 
 audience in the hall of the Convention, on the announcement 
 of the vote rending the bonds of the Union, should have risen 
 to their feet and hailed the event with wild and impassioned 
 cheers. 
 
46 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 But we shall not linger upon the history of the several 
 State Conventions which successively and respectively severed 
 their States from the Union. The early story of the war 
 does not belong there. Its true seat and theatre were in 
 Washington City. There was the true dramatic centre of the 
 conspiracy, there the real spring of the plot ; and the State 
 Conventions passing pretentiously their ordinances of seces 
 sion, and affecting deliberation where all had already been 
 advised, were really but the puppets at the ends of the wires. 
 
 The true history of the war takes us then to Washington 
 takes us to a small but powerful company of politicians who 
 had assumed there the question of peace or war. Among 
 these brilliant conspirators stood conspicuous Jefferson Davis 
 alert, magnetic, keen in his ambition, his weak health re 
 stored by excitement, quickened with nervous transports, a 
 man having many qualities of leadership, a nature easily in 
 flated with great occasions, but without the true and robust 
 pregnancy of a real greatness. For the present, however, he 
 was the most observed of all the Southern Eepresentatives at 
 the capital, and took with facility and grace the position of 
 their leader. 
 
 Mr. Davis record on the question of Disunion was greatly 
 mixed and contradictory one of those inconsistent careers 
 which could only have been tolerated in the loose habits of 
 American politics, that care but little for the antecedents of 
 public men, have a very feeble estimate of consistency, and 
 are prone to forget whatever is of record in the past, in the 
 busy and tumultuous excitements of a strained and excessive 
 partyism. Mr. Davis had first entered Congress as a ful 
 some, young declaimer of that easy and popular theme the 
 blessings of the Union. He had the sophomorial tumour of 
 "the glorious Union" on the brain. He sought to excel in 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 47 
 
 the competitions of devotion to this idol of the populace, and 
 this commonplace of demagogues. In his first important 
 speech in the House of Eepresentatives, delivered in 1846, he 
 had said : " From sire to son has descended the love of 
 Union in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the names 
 of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga, of 
 Moultrie and Plattsburg, of Chippewa and Erie, of Bowyer 
 and Guilford, and New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Grouped 
 together, they form a monument to the common glory of our 
 common country ; and where is the Southern man who would 
 wish that that monument were less by one of the Northern 
 names that constitute the mass ?" 
 
 Yet in 1850, he had opposed the u Compromise Measures " 
 in the Senate, and was repeatedly rebuked there for the senti 
 ment of disunion. In a private conversation Henry Clay 
 had spoken to him in terms of mingled expostulation and 
 warning. " Come," said the venerable Senator from Kentucky, 
 anxious to win another vote for what he regarded as the 
 supreme work of his life, then suspended in a divided Con 
 gress, "join us in these measures of pacification, and they 
 will assure to the country thirty years of peace. By that time 
 I will be under the sod, and you, my young friend, may then 
 have trouble again" But the ardent Senator from Mississippi- 
 was intractable. He had already conceived the ambition of 
 taking the mantle of Calhoun in the Senate, and in the zeal 
 of a poor and coarse imitation he was already violently 
 affecting all the ideas of the dead statesman and champion of 
 the South. He would lower none of the demands of the 
 South. He announced its ultimatum in a high and menacing 
 tone. With a pretension that little became his relations 
 with the venerable Henry Clay, he thus spoke in the Senate, 
 in 1850 : " That I may be understood upon this question, 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 and that my position may go forth to the country in the 
 same columns that convey the sentiments of the Senator from 
 Kentucky, I here assert that never will I take less than the 
 Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, with specific 
 right to hold slaves in the territory below that line ; and that 
 before such territories are admitted into the Union as States, 
 slaves may be taken there from any of the United States at 
 the option of the owners." Certainly, John C. Calhoun could 
 not have spoken more distinctly, more imperiously, or with 
 greater arrogation of the importance of himself in the Senate 
 of the United States. 
 
 In 1851, after the passage of the " Compromise Measures " 
 Mr. Davis, as if resolved upon the utmost rok of "disunion- 
 ist," and probably spurred by his ambition to take the place 
 of Calhoun, removed his opposition to the measures referred 
 to, to the local politics of Mississippi, and had consented to 
 stand as candidate of the State Eights or "resistance" party 
 for the office of Governor of the State. He was rebuked by 
 a defeat. A short time thereafter we shall find him modify 
 ing his views, and attempting the popular current of a re 
 newed devotion, a restored allegiance to the Union. Bat in 
 advance of this mark or indentation of his record, there is a 
 passage of history connected with his party campaign of 
 Governor for Mississippi of remarkable interest, and of a 
 significance which appears not heretofore to have been per 
 ceived. 
 
 The party in Mississippi referred to, as headed by Mr. 
 Davis, was popularly known as the "resistance" party. It 
 recited a long list of grievances. It named no less than six 
 different causes, for which the people of Mississippi might 
 resort to the most extreme remedies. Yet when Mr. Davis, 
 in the month of May, 1860, a time when he was displaying 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 49 
 
 himself as a conservative supporter of President Buchanan s 
 administration, and probably attempting the new career of a 
 moderator in public life was reminded in the Senate of 
 having been formerly involved in a scheme of disunion, he 
 explained his connection with the period of Mississippi 
 politics, referred to : " The case only requires that I should 
 say that the party to which I belonged .did not then, nor at any 
 previous time, propose to go out of the Union, but to have a 
 Southern convention for consultation as to future contingencies 
 tJweatened and anticipated" Yet a few months later, the same 
 man who had professed the idea of resistance to usurpations 
 of the Federal authority, only to the extent of challenging 
 them in a convention and bringing them before a tribunal 
 of the States whicli was indeed the length and breadth of 
 Calhoun s doctrine of " nullifaction " was demanding dis 
 union for evils not greater than that which the Mississippi 
 resistants had "anticipated," and was ready to rush to the 
 arbitration of the sworcl ! 
 
 But we return to the chronological order of Mr. Davis s 
 record. In 1852, impressed by the election of the previous 
 year in Mississippi, he openly repudiated the scheme of dis 
 union, to the extent of supporting the nomination of Franklin 
 Pierce for President, and actually abandoning the party 
 which had nominated the Presidential ticket of Troup and 
 Quitman upon the distinctive platform of State Rights and 
 separation. He was rewarded with a place in President 
 Pierce s Cabinet. Here he played the part of an intense 
 Union or compromise man ; and it is a significant incident, 
 showing what views were held of his disposition in Mr. 
 Pierce s Cabinet, that he was sought by the friends of Stephen 
 A. Douglas as an intermediary to obtain the pledge of the 
 President s approval of the Kansas-Nebraska bill "the 
 4 
 
50 LIFE OF JEFPERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Pandoras box" in advance of its introduction into Congress. 
 And lie did obtain it, and thus became directly responsible 
 for a measure, which the Democratic party in the South 
 afterwards sought busiVy to disown, and to ascribe to the 
 ambition of Mr. Douglas. 
 
 In 1857 Mr. Davis returned to the Senate of the United 
 States. He marked his way to the capital by a speech 
 delivered at a small town in Mississippi, professing increased 
 devotion to the Union. He spoke with eloquence on this 
 subject, and with something of the profusion of the enthusi 
 ast. He would not disguise the profound emotion with which 
 he contemplated the possibility of disunion. The fondest 
 reminiscences of his life were associated with the Union, into 
 whose military service, while yet a boy, ne had entered. In 
 his natured manhood he had followed its flag to victory ; had 
 seen its graceful folds wave in the peaceful pageant, and again 
 its colors conspicuous amid the triumph of the battle-field; 
 he had seen that flag in the East, brightened by the sun at 
 its rising, and in the West, gilded by its declining rays and 
 the tearing of one star from its azure field would be to him 
 as the loss of a child to a bereaved parent ! 
 
 In 1858, after the battle with the Douglas party, and when 
 the South was regarding what it thought a doubtful field, 
 Jefferson Davis was among the first to re-assure those who 
 were disposed to despair of the Union, or were distrustful of 
 the prospects of the South, after a combat so hard-fought, so 
 elaborate, and through which it was so difficult to run the 
 line of victory, and to determine where success rested. lie 
 declared in a public letter to the people of his State that the 
 Kansas Conference bill" was "the triumph of all for which 
 we contended." 
 
 During the recess of Congress after the settlement of the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 51 
 
 Kansas question, Mr. Davis, bit by the ambition of u Presiden 
 tial nomination, commenced to go through all the wretched 
 affectations of a candidate for this position those demagogical 
 devices in dinners, serenades, etc., that making of occasions of 
 national significance, that traditional coquetting of sections, 
 that deprecation of partisanship, those ingenious equivocations 
 and agreeable platitudes, which have generally been taken 
 among American politicians as an unfailing sign of an aspira 
 tion to the White House at Washington. He commenced 
 the unmistakable routine of a candidate for the Presidency. 
 He travelled North. In October, 1858, he spoke in 
 Faneuil Hall, Boston. A few days later he addressed an 
 immense Democratic meeting in New York. In reply to an 
 invitation to attend the Webster Birthday Festival, held in 
 Boston, he wrote, with withering indignation, of "partisans 
 who avow the purpose of obliterating the landmarks of our 
 fathers," and of men "whose oaths to support the Constitu 
 tion had been taken with a mental reservation to disregard 
 its spirit." He asked "to be enrolled among those whose 
 mission is by fraternity and good faith to every constitutional 
 obligation, to ensure that, from the Aroostook to San Diego, 
 from Key West to Puget Sound, the grand arch of our politi 
 cal temple shall stand unshaken." He penetrated even to 
 Maine as knight- err ant of the Union, and .candidate for the 
 White House. He accepted a serenade in Portland " with 
 out distinction of party." "The occasion was," said a local 
 journal, "in every respect the expression of generous senti 
 ments, of kindness, hospitality, friendly regard, and tlu; 
 brotherhood of American citizenship." The Senator from 
 Mississippi, the head of the old "Resistance" party, the 
 qiwndam competitor for the mantle of Calhoun, had suddenly 
 become the apostle of " nationalism" and the messenger to the 
 
52 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 North of peace and of love, beyond all Southern men of his 
 day. His affection for the North ran actually into slaver. 
 .He surpassed the usual pledges of demagogues ; he loved the 
 people around him not only as brothers, but he proposed to 
 dedicate his infant son to the Portlanders. It was a singular 
 ceremony of devotion. u lf," said the orator, " at some future 
 time when I am mingled with the dust, and the arm of my 
 infant son has been nerved for deeds of manhood, the storm of 
 war should burst upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his 
 inheriting the instincts of his ancestors and mine, I may pledge 
 him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in the defence 
 of your hearth-stones." He hoped that the flag over his head 
 " would forever fly as free as the breeze which unfolds it," 
 and after this invocation, scarcely original, he sat down under 
 it amid tumultuous cheers. 
 
 Such was the man who, in December, 1860, appeared in 
 Washington, chief among the Southern Disunionists, angered 
 by disappointed ambition, and eager for a new career anxious 
 to play the grand game of compensation in his fortunes, as 
 leader of a revolutionary movement. 
 
 In the record we have recited there is an insincerity which 
 cannot be overlooked. We are not permitted to doubt that 
 Jefferson Davis, in his leading part in the Secession conspiracy 
 at Washington, was moved by personal ambition, when we 
 consider the antecedents of his public life, his recent, and yet 
 raw disappointment of a Presidential nomination, his nervous 
 and restless nature, and his passion for leadership. But to 
 these remarks the author must attach an explanation to defend 
 himself against misconstruction. The reflections which he 
 has cast upon Mr. Davis and other politicians of the South by 
 no means include the cause for which they acted, and the 
 merits and justice of it are certainly not to be confounded with 
 
SECKET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY 53 
 
 the unworthiness of some of its partisans. Because the cause 
 of the South was defaced by the personal ambition of poli 
 ticians, we have no right to conclude that it was neither just 
 nor meritorious. 
 
 Indeed, every candid historian must admit that the causes 
 of Southern complaint had accumulated up to the time of 
 President Lincoln, and that the election of this man was to a 
 certain extent, the signal of the aggravated prosecution of the 
 irrepressible conflict, which he himself had declared, between 
 the institutions of the South and the ideas of the North. Dis 
 union was not so much the speculative project of the Southern 
 mind, as it was the growing bitter fruit of Northern injustice. 
 The history of the idea of Disunion is curious and desultoiy. 
 It had first appeared in the North, and was first announced 
 in Congress in a speech of Mr. Quincy, of Massachusetts, de 
 livered in 1811 ; it was next developed in the Hartford Con 
 vention ; it was renewed on the memorable measure of the 
 Missouri Compromise, in 1819 ; it disappeared for more than 
 a decade from the politics of America ; it was violently re 
 vived by the Tariff discussions of 1831-2 ; and it thereafter 
 progressed through a multiplication and perplexity of causes, 
 which it would take too much space here to arrange in 
 detail, and of which it has well been stated, " the acts of 
 oppression could not be stated in precise words or estimated in 
 figures." In truth, any attempt at such detail must essentially 
 be defective, so various had become the forms of hostility to 
 the South which the North displayed. At the time of Presi 
 dent Lincoln s election, this hostility of the North had become 
 so pervasive and popular, that it eludes analysis, and renders 
 specifications unnecessary ; it could no longer be measured 
 by political acts ; it had become habitual through every ex 
 pression of Northern opinion; it was in its literature, its 
 
54 LIFE OF JKFFERSQX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 pulpit, its social offices, its daily conversations; it had grown 
 to such proportions, and was so reaching and subtile in its 
 ramifications, that the intelligent and philosophic historian 
 must observe that the protest of the South was not so much 
 against any particular series of political measures as against 
 the whole current of Northern sentiment, the entire animus 
 of that section on the subject of so-called slavery. 
 
 The mind of the South had really cora e to disdain specifi 
 cations on this subject. It suffered from a general appre 
 hension rather than a specific alarm ; and the election of 
 Abraham Lincoln was a vague addition to this uneasiness 
 rather than a particular cause of complaint. Whether the 
 South might have been reassured at this time by any act of 
 legislative wisdom; whether her grievances admitted of com 
 promise, and whether an adjustment could have been made 
 which would have spared the extremity of the sword, is one 
 of those questions so entirely dependent on speculation, and 
 so untried by facts, that the opinion of mankind is likely to 
 remain long divided on it. The partial action of her poli 
 ticians on this subject, affords no true test of it. They, \ve 
 repeat, were concerned at Washington, with their own schemes 
 of personal ambition, rather than with a work of public in 
 terest ; and yet in referring again to their narrow and selfish 
 control of the affairs of the South, we are forced to reflect, 
 that even under that system of aristocratic rule which badly 
 adorned public life in the South, these men could not have 
 asserted so complete a command of the issue of Disunion, had 
 there not been among the people of the South a wide and deep- 
 seated dissatisfaction to impel them, and to sustain the experi 
 ment of a new government. It is always difficult to say what 
 share personal ambition has in causing wars and revolutions ; 
 it must always be mixed more or less with general causes; 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 55 
 
 and, in the case to which we are referring, while making justly 
 prominent the motives which we believe governed those who 
 precipitated war from Washington, we by no means imply 
 that other causes did not co-operate with them, or that the 
 merit of Southern resistance is to be measured by the selfish 
 ness of a few men who assumed to represent it. 
 
 These men had come to Washington in December, 1860, 
 fall of the idea of Disunion, many of them bursting with am 
 bition, and some eager to vent their arrogance in Congress, 
 where they had before suffered anything of reproach or of 
 defeat. The South, and the whole country, were in anxious 
 and dumb expectation, rather than in the condition of posi 
 tive and pronounced ideas ; and it was precisely in this un 
 determined state of public opinion that a few politicians might 
 assume the largest control of public affairs, and determine by 
 rapid measures the destinies of a nation. Such was the con 
 dition in which a Congress, the most memorable in American 
 history, and yet the most trivial in some respects, met ; and in 
 which the message of James Buchanan, the weakest and most 
 plausible of Presidents, was given, not only to his country, but 
 to an interested and anxious world. 
 
56 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Remarkable Effect of the Message of President Buchanan A Spectacle In the White Honse--A 
 Singular Pause in the Movement of Secession Mr. Keitt s Remarks on the Situation The 
 Southern Leaders Actually Abandon the Scheme of Disunion *It is Resumed on Majox 
 Anderson s Occupation of Fort Sumter A Question of Concealed Importance How the 
 Question of " the Forts " determined the War Mr. Floyd a Adroitness Secret History of the 
 Junta of Fourteen in Washington A Revolutionary Council in the Shadow of the Capitol 
 Their Extraordinary Usurpations Jefferson Davis and "the Committee of Three" True 
 Date of the Commencement of the War Why Mr. Davis was Chosen Leader In the First 
 Programme of the Southern Confederacy, R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, Designed for President- 
 How ho Lost the Position of Leader A Fatal motion in the Senate Comparison of the 
 Claims of Hunter and Davis for the Position of Leader. 
 
 THE message of the President, delivered to Congress, in 
 December, 1860, had an effect which has not been duly 
 appreciated in history, and which was- scarcely recognized in 
 the newspapers of the day. Mr. Buchanan was timid, secre 
 tive, ingenious ; one of those time-serving politicians, who 
 had managed to keep constantly in public life, not an osten 
 tatious partisan, but a traditional office-holder, an " old public 
 functionary," one of those men who make extraordinary 
 successes in the political arena without the force of merit 
 and through the sheer ingenuity of the demagogue. He had 
 neither courage nor intellectual decision. "To see him," said 
 a distinguished Virginia politician, who visited him during 
 the impending difficulties of the country, "cowering beneath 
 the full-length portrait of Andrew Jackson on the mantel 
 piece of the reception-room of the White House, munching a 
 dry cigar, and asking querulously what he could do, or what 
 he should do, was more than human patience could endure, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 57 
 
 or human pity tolerate." This despicable old man was 
 grotesquely balancing on the question of peace aad war. He 
 was apparently resolved to trifle with the time-service of a 
 great occasion, and he was desperately anxious to save the 
 remnant of his administration from the imputation of a civil 
 war. 
 
 But perhaps his message was more artful than weak. 
 However low and unworthy the motive which dictated it, 
 nothing could have better answered the purpose of giving a 
 pause to the movement of Secession, of suspending it, and of 
 delaying, if not pacifying the excitement of the country. 
 This result it performed with admirable ingenuity ; and. his 
 message had thus a certain value in histor}^ a decided 
 appreciable effect, which has never been justly estimated 
 in the accounts of this period. It took the sting from 
 Secession ; it neutralized for a time the complaints of the 
 South, and it removed those immediate causes of alarm on 
 which the Southern leaders had calculated to agitate their 
 section and to precipitate its decision. If the country did 
 not avail itself of this season of reflection, it was not Mr. 
 Buchanan s fault. For nearly a month he held the Secession 
 conspiracy at bay, and if the interval was not improved by 
 the sober second thoughts of the people, they have themselves 
 to blame for the loss of an opportunity. 
 
 The author was in a company of Southern members of 
 Congress when the information was first obtained, some days 
 in advance of Mr. Buchanan s message, that it disclaimed 
 "coercion," that it contained nothing to interrupt or to 
 exasperate the movement of Secession, that it referred to it 
 without menaces, and had nothing about it but the tone of a 
 weak expostulation. The news had a dampening and curious 
 effect. The question at once occurred whether the South 
 
58 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 could be put out of the Union without the force of added 
 exasperation ; and indeed what reason could be urged for 
 fresh anger or alarm, when the General Government dis 
 claimed the idea of force,- and there possibly might be found 
 a provision in the Constitution to save that collision of arms, 
 which the wisest of the Southern leaders knew was necessary 
 to complete their scheme of separation, and to plant its line 
 with a permanent animosity and discord. It was a baffling 
 question. The conspirators had already lost more than half 
 their capital there was to be no coercion ; and when Mr. 
 Keitt, of South Carolina, shook himself, "tetered," and de 
 clared, in his characteristic way, from major to minor premise, 
 that the President had "blocked the game," and that they 
 must wait for contingencies, there were none of the company 
 to gainsay him. 
 
 The remarkable fact is historically certain that for several 
 weeks -after Mr. Buchanan s message, the Southern leaders 
 abandoned or suspended the scheme of disunion, and had 
 resolved simply to keep the question open as a standing 
 menace, and possibly as a means of compelling future terms. 
 They could scarcely do more than maintain an equivocal 
 attitude; they dared not pursue the idea of disunion in the 
 lace of the concessions of Mr. Buchanan, or without occasions 
 to refresh the excitement of the South. At the first meeting 
 of Congress, they were confident of an early separation of the 
 South, and almost treated it as an accomplished fact ; now 
 these same men in their private conversations, suggested the 
 possibility of a settlement, advised their constituents not to 
 sell, from alarm, property which they happened to own in 
 Washington, and gave out the idea none the less forcible 
 because it was unwilling that there might possibly be a 
 peaceful solution of the troubles of the country. Those who 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 59 
 
 lived in Washington in this period of hesitation, will well 
 remember how balanced were the rumors of that time. It 
 was a marked interval in the history of the conspiracy- of 
 disunion. Whether, on the hypotheses of certain events, the 
 Secessionists might have been baffled and overruled, is a 
 question we are not permitted to discuss ; for in this season 
 of suspense came an event, one apparently slight and acci 
 dental, which decided it at once, and, more than any single 
 incident, determined for the country the calamity of war. 
 
 This event was the surreptitious capture of Fort Sumter, 
 in Charleston Harbor, by the Federal forces under Major 
 Anderson. It occurred on the 16th of December, 1860. It 
 was on its face a slight event ; there is no evidence that there 
 was a deliberate design in it ; it had been undertaken, to be 
 sure, in contravention of the equivocal policy of the President, 
 and of his express pledge that the military status on the 
 Southern coast should not be disturbed ; it was merely the 
 transfer of a Federal garrison to a more advantageous post ; 
 and yet it was an event which was vitally significant in the 
 estimation of the Southern leaders, which interrupted all 
 efforts for peace, and which, finally, more than any thing else, 
 determined the alternative of war. 
 
 To understand the great importance of this event, and its 
 extraordinary weight on the impending issue of Secession, it 
 is necessary to make some explanations. 
 
 The Southern States were full of arsenals and forts, which 
 commanded their rivers and strategic points. The value of 
 these forts was vital, in a military point of view, and with the 
 army of the United States once transferred to them, the 
 General Government would have been put in a position that 
 might have paralyzed Secession, or secured an almost 
 decisive advantage for the Federal power at the very com- 
 
60 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 mencement of the war. A few men in the country saw this. 
 While the general public was but little concerned about the 
 Federal forts in the South, many of which had been neglected 
 for years, some of which were yet without garrisons, and not 
 a few of which were not even known by name to persons of 
 ordinary information, there had been a quiet estimate of their 
 importance by the Southern leaders at Washington from the 
 moment they had first meditated the consequences of Seces 
 sion. They saw readily enough that if the General Govern 
 ment secured possession of these forts, it could establish 
 communications with the South, which the latter could 
 scarcely cut off without the aid of a great fleet ; and that if it 
 was once determined at Washington to reinforce these 
 positions against a chance to take them by surprise, or coup 
 de main, the South would have lost an opportunity which it 
 would be impossible to regain and incurred a disadvantage 
 which it would be most difficult to repair. 
 
 The question of the forts was one of concealed importance 
 in the minds of the Southern leaders. As long as attention 
 might be diverted from them, the South could still hold 
 within reach the opportunity of possessing them and securing 
 a powerful advantage, and might thus afford to suspend the 
 question of war, and to linger some time at least in the discus 
 sion of peace measures. But the signal came at last for action. 
 The alarm which ensued on the movement of Fort Sumter 
 appeared to the public of that day very disproportionate ; a 
 huge exaggeration of an event that might be explained on the 
 commonest hypotheses ; but those who thought so did not 
 understand its terrible significance to the Southern leaders, 
 and their sudden interpretation of it as a signal that the 
 Government had at last understood the importance of the 
 forts, and might yet throw a chain from the Atlantic to the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 61 
 
 Mississippi on the dreaming genius and relaxed limbs of 
 Secession. "Had General Scott," said Mr. Floyd, in 1861, 
 "been enabled to get all the forts in the South, in the con 
 dition he desired them to be, the Southern Confederacy would 
 not now exist." 
 
 Mr. Floyd was the first to take alarm at the news from 
 Sumter. * He resigned," as a newspaper expressed it, " with a 
 clap of thunder." The Southern leaders met in sudden and 
 irregular conferences ; it was a holiday season of the year and 
 formal deliberations had to be delayed for a day or two ; but 
 Mr. Floyd in his resignation from the Cabinet had already 
 suggested the measure of the opportunity and how adroitly 
 the whole controversy might be turned on the single specifica 
 tion of the facts concerning Sumter. The conspirators awoke 
 to a sense of their position, saw the danger on one side and 
 the opportunity on the other. If they gave a week s respite 
 to a plot actually in course of execution, they might be hope 
 lessly lost. The season of delay and uncertainty was past. 
 From the day the news from Sumter reached Washington 
 the question of disunion and war was practically decided ; 
 one of the most extraordinary councils in the history of the 
 country was determined upon ; ? revolutionary body sat in 
 the shadow of the Capitol at Washington ; and in a few weeks 
 this strange authority had sent over the country the order 
 which led to the seizure of all the forts in the South except 
 two. 
 
 The council summoned on this occasion at once assumed 
 the powers of a revolutionary junta. It was composed of the 
 Senators from seven Southern States: Florida, Georgia, 
 Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. It 
 met in one of the rooms of the Capitol, on the night of the 
 5th January, 1861. The representation was full, two Sena- 
 
62 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 tors from each of the States named being present ; but a body 
 of fourteen Southern men, and those, too, properly acting in 
 a very limited representative capacity, was certainly a small 
 and extraordinary one to determine for the country the con 
 cern of peace or war, and to assume the destinies of the South. 
 It was decided to " recommend" immediate Secession of their 
 respective States, and the holding of a Convention at Mont 
 gomery, Alabama, on the 15th day of February. So much 
 of the proceedings of this extraordinary council were pub 
 lished, and were perhaps legitimate. But it was not then 
 published, and it is only fully known at this day, that this 
 council assumed to themselves the political power of the 
 South, and to control all political and military operations. 
 They seized the telegraph, they controlled the press, they 
 possessed themselves of all the avenues of information to the 
 South, they dictated the plan of seizing the forts, arsenals and 
 custom-houses, and they did the whole work of revolution at 
 Washington, while public attention was drawn to the mere 
 incidental movements that seconded the designs of these few 
 men and concealed the true seat of operations. It was even 
 doubted whether such a council had ever been held in Wash 
 ington, and whether it was^not a fiction of the newspapers. 
 But in any case few had the least suspicion of the extent of 
 their operations. It was a strange assumption of authority 
 that, in the midst of the peaceful and ordinary transactions of 
 public life, a body so small and so foreign to the purpose in 
 hand, of a representative character at once so limited and so 
 peculiar, composed of men who were every day in their ac 
 customed seats in the Senate, who were to some extent privy- 
 counsellors of the Executive, and thus acting under obliga 
 tions of peculiar confidence, should have succeeded in erecting 
 a revolutionary tribunal in a private committee-room, and 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. od 
 
 been able to dictate from there, without detection or interrup 
 tion, the plan of a great rebellion. 
 
 In the eonfusion and multitude of scenes which preface 
 wars and other great events in history the mind naturally 
 inquires for some particular body of men, some well-defined 
 scene where the operation commences, and from which may 
 be traced dramatically the succession of events. Such begin 
 nings are often found in narrow circumstances. In the pres 
 ent instance the scenes of a great war properly open in the 
 small room in Washington City, where fourteen men pledged 
 themselves to overthrow the existing government. They as 
 sumed the direction of every affair of the South, and from 
 the beginning it was evident that the people were to have no 
 calm and deliberate voice in the matter. An executive com 
 mittee was appointed, "to carry out the objects of the meet 
 ing." It consisted of three persons, and one of them was 
 Jefferson Davis. That the council was not merely " advisor} ," 
 that it represented the vigor and determination of a revolu 
 tionary purpose is proved from the fact that its programme 
 was carried out with an exactness, a minute correspondence 
 to every proposition that could only have proceeded from the 
 force of command. Every thing was done that the council 
 ordered. They did control "all political and military opera 
 tions;" they did have forts and arsenals seized, as, one by 
 one, the dispatches from Washington indicated them ; they 
 did effect a Convention at Montgomery arbitrarily appointed; 
 and, in no instance, did the movements in the South towards 
 Secession vary from the programme decided at Washington 
 on the 5th of January. Never was a conspiracy more suc 
 cessful in all its designs and in every detail; and never could 
 such a correspondence of events have been produced by mere 
 councillors, so limited in numbers and in representative 
 
64 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 capacity, unless there had been concealed in the guise of " re 
 commendations " the bold and imperious fiat of men who had 
 resolved to rule the people rather than to counsel and then 
 obey them. 
 
 The secret Senatorial council of the 5th of January can then 
 only be historically known as a revolutionary body. It 
 really dates the commencement of the war. To be sure after 
 this there was a prolonged farce of a debate in Congress, and 
 such affectations as might proceed from the tactics of parties ; 
 but Avar was practically determined when Anderson raised 
 his flag at Sumter, and turned inland the frown of his guns. 
 
 The council of the 5th of January as further evidence of the 
 extent and force of its design did not neglect the designation 
 of a leader : that, indeed, was a matter of supreme concern, 
 and one not likely to be overlooked in even a preliminary 
 conference. The views of the council or caucus were natu 
 rally imperfect ; they have never yet been correctly reported, 
 or freely given to history ; but there is no doubt of the re 
 markable fact that the programme of offices first designed for 
 the new Confederacy was K. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, Presi 
 dent, with Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War. There was, to 
 be sure, no distinct expression of such a choice, no vote, no 
 declaration ; and yet that the affections of the Southern lead 
 ers at this time were for Hunter as President, that they hesi 
 tated, and that they were afterwards governed by a special 
 circumstance do not admit of doubt. 
 
 .The reasons which determined the early choice of Mr. 
 Davis as Minister of War in the new republic, shadowed forth 
 by the conspirators, were obvious enough. He was a gradu 
 ate of West Point; he professed an aptitude for arms ; he had 
 gained considerable distinction in the Mexican war; and he 
 had had large experience in the military committee of the 
 Senate, and in the War Department. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 65 
 
 Unfortunately for the pre-eminence of Mr. Hunter, as leader 
 of the Secession movement, he fell into an act of imprudence, 
 which lowered him in the estimation of his colleagues, and 
 made him for a time an object of suspicion. The fact is, the 
 staid and circumspect Virginian was not yet advanced enough 
 in his notions ; his heart was not yet in the scheme of Dis 
 union ; and not a week after the caucus in which he had sat 
 and assented to its deliberations, he appears to have taken a 
 sudden resolution, and was either bold or rash enough to 
 propose a plan of peaceful adjustment. 
 
 This plan looked to the forts in the South on which had 
 hinged so much of secret anxiety in the minds of the con 
 spirators. It proposed a resolution authorizing the retrocession 
 of the forts within any State, upon the application of the 
 Legislature, or of a Convention of the people of such State, the 
 Federal authorities taking at the same time proper security for 
 their safe-keeping and return, or payment for the same. Mr. 
 Hunter knew the importance of the forts. He knew that on 
 them t-rembled the heart of the controversy-. It might not be 
 too late to recall the status quo before the act of Major Ander 
 son, to restore the confidence of the South, and for the Senator 
 from Virginia, to pluck a higher honor than that to which 
 he had been uncertainly appointed in the revolutionary coun 
 cil of the 5th of January. He said : " To produce reunion 
 it is essential that the Southern States should be allowed to 
 take that position, which it is obvious they are going to take, 
 in peace. You must give, too, all the time you can, and offer 
 all the opportunities you may, to those who desire to make an 
 effort for the reconstruction of this Confederacy." 
 
 The resolution cost Mr. Hunter the position which he had 
 heretofore approached, of President of the New Confederacy. 
 He was retired ; he was assailed by reproaches ; and Jefferson 
 
66 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Davis at once mounted to the unchallenged leadership of the 
 Secession party, and from that moment became the arbiter of 
 the destinies of the South. The circumstances which placed 
 Mr. Davis in the position were, as we have seen ; to some ex 
 tent, accidental ; and it was a question often occurring in the 
 course of the war and in the progress of his administration, 
 what other person in the South could have been found more 
 capable of directing its affairs, and representing its character 
 and cause. The question is a grave one, and has a supreme 
 interest in history. It may be conceded at the outset, that 
 Mr. Hunter was not the man to take precedence of Mr. Davis 
 in a command so august, and in a care so various as that of 
 the leader of a revolution. The Senator from Virginia had a 
 superior intellect ; he had a keen and worldly prudence ; he 
 had practical knowledge of men ; but he lacked the qualities 
 of leadership, the nervous temperament, the indispensable, 
 personal enthusiasm that commands men. His manners were 
 remarkable for stolidity. He was a heavy, impassive, studious 
 statesman, rather than a brilliant partisan, or an ingenious 
 conspirator. On the other hand, Mr. Davis had many of the 
 elements of leadership. He had passion, brilliancy ; there was 
 a natural arrogance in his manners ; his attitude in the Senate 
 was authoritative, self-poised and commanding ; he was as facile 
 and powerful in conversation as in debate ; he had an address 
 at once erect and pleasing ; with a face as imperious as that 
 of Calhoun, and expressions us mobile as those of Clay, he 
 appeared the impersonation of a popular leader, and wore 
 easily and grandly the air of one born to command. It was 
 a brilliant covering of great defects ; yet no one can question 
 the brightness and beauty of those colors in which Jefferson 
 Davis first concealed his true character, and stood in the eyes 
 of the South almost as the apparition of a divinely appointed 
 leader. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 67 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Sectional Debate in the United States Senate How Different from that in the House of 
 Representatives Intellectual Poverty of the Debate in Congress Explanation of this A 
 Game of Pretences A Class of Intermediate Politicians Sincerely Affected References to Crit- 
 tenden and Douglas Andrew Johnson the Champion Par Excellence of the Union His Ex 
 traordinary Life Compared with Jefferson Davis Johnson s Literary Style What Senator 
 Douglas Thought of Him His Extraordinary Courage Mr. Davis s Singular Criticism of 
 Johnson Ileticence of the Former in the Debate in the Senate His Explanation of the Se 
 cession Sentiment Sinister Conduct He offers an Amendment to the Constitution Andrew 
 Johnson s Appeals for the Union A Curious History of the Vote on the Crittenden Resolu 
 tions Colloquy of Johnson and Benjamin Mr. Davis makes His Farewell Speech in the 
 Senate Wigfalt s Picture of the Dead Union Last Effort in the Senate to Save the Peace of 
 the Country A Memorable Scene. 
 
 THE debate in Congress which preceded the war is histori 
 cal, and is a necessary part of the biography of Jefferson 
 Davis. His pla^e was in the Senate ; and it is, therefore, to 
 that branch of the national legislature that we shall confine 
 our notice, assembling around the subject of our work the 
 persons and circumstances necessary to explain his part in the 
 drama. In the House the debate was naturally larger in 
 volume and more excited than in the Senate ; the former was 
 a body more sensitive of the public impulses and convictions, 
 and its tone of debate, if more immoderate, was yet, in some 
 sense, more significant. The discussions in the Senate, pre 
 facing the war, were more tame and partial than among the 
 immediate representatives of the people, and yet scarcely su 
 perior, to the degree that might have been expected, in re 
 spect of deliberation or of dignity. 
 
68 LIFE OP JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Indeed, this whole debate in Congress, was one of the most 
 extraordinary in history, on one especial account, namely : 
 its lack of sincerity ; and this fact will, perhaps, explain its 
 comparative intellectual poverty, and the want, generally 
 speaking, of a sublime and impassioned eloquence in a his 
 torical crisis so vast and fearful. Whatever brilliant episodes 
 there were in this debate, whatever flashes of true eloquence, 
 there is no doubt that, on the whole, it was below the occa 
 sion ; and, lacking the element of earnestness, it fell into the 
 commonplaces of affectation and routine. The Southern Sena 
 tors, generally, had really no heart in the discussion ; they had 
 resolved, in secret caucus, to secede, despite whatever might 
 ensue of persuasions or propositions to compromise ; they 
 did not really desire the pacification of the country, although 
 determined to keep up a pretence of such disposition in order 
 to affect public opinion; and thus, while professing an attempt 
 for a peaceful settlement, they secretly intrigued against the 
 possibility of such a conclusion. It was a shallow affectation, 
 and was managed with but little adroitness. On the other 
 hand, the majority of Eepublican Senators were also deficient 
 in sincerity. The extreme men of that party had secretly re 
 solved that there should be no compromise; and thus the 
 two elements in debate were about equally engaged in a 
 game of pretences, and a controversy that appeared so im 
 posing in the highest council of the nation, was, in reality, 
 very destitute of earnestness, almost barren of genuine emo 
 tion. 
 
 In such a condition, the few Senators who truly and deeply 
 felt the magnitude of the crisis, and were sincerely affected in 
 the debate, were naturally those who stood midway between 
 the malcontents of the South and the extreme Republicans of 
 the North and who had not committed themselves to the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 69 
 
 secret schemes of either. The solicitude of these men was 
 real. But they were few who thus stood in true patriotic 
 concern between the two affectations that dulled and degraded 
 a debate which was to these few a matter of life and death for 
 the country. There was probably no member of the Senate 
 more sincerely affected than Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky 
 and it is said that he shed tears when his resolutions of com 
 promise were voted down, mourning in the dignity of age, as 
 an ancient Koman might have done, over the fall of the re 
 public. But Mr. Crittenden lacked vigor as a debater ; his 
 powers, as an orator, had never been great, and were now 
 impaired by years; and he was not the man to assume a 
 dramatic figure in a debate that required much more of the 
 impassioned and aggressive than the paternal style of elo 
 quence. Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, had ability enough to stand 
 between the factions, and probably sincerity enough in his 
 desire for peace ; but un fortunately his position as a pacificator 
 was vulnerable. He had lost whatever influence he had 
 ever had in the South, and his part in the last Presidential 
 election might easily be construed to accuse him as a pro 
 moter of the troubles that had befallen the nation. On one 
 occasion, when he attempted to reprove Wigfall, of Texas, as 
 a disunionist, the fierce and rugged Texan Senator turned 
 upon him, and said : " Why, I tell the Senator that that great 
 principle of his (non-intervention) disrupted the Democratic 
 party, and has now disrupted the Union ; and but for him 
 and his great principle, this day a Democrat would have been 
 President, and the Union saved. That is the fact about the 
 matter; and when a Senator, who has contributed more than 
 any other man in the Union, according to his ability, to the 
 destruction of the country, comes here and charges me with 
 complicity in dissolving the Union, and charges in terms that 
 
70 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 extremes meet, and that I and my friends, and the Free- 
 Soilers on the other hand, are co-operating for the same pur 
 pose ; that we are voting together ; and that \ve take great 
 comfort in all these exhibitions of the impossibility of saving 
 the Union : I tell him that he is not the man to come here 
 and preach to anybody !" 
 
 In this deficiency of the Senate, this want of a fitting cham 
 pion of the Union, one whose sincerity was unquestionable, 
 and whose position in politics betwen the two factions, might 
 command influence with both, a single man arose as if almost 
 providentially qualified to supply the occasion. This man, 
 this brave knight in season, was Andrew Johnson, of Ten 
 nessee. His antecedents, his position, his character as a popu 
 lar tribune, qualified him for his peculiar and dramatic mission 
 against Secession. Whatever have since been the varied and 
 august fortunes in the life of this man, he never occupied a 
 prouder position, or one of more historical sublimity than when 
 he confronted the disunionists sprung from his own section, and 
 stood against this important array of numerous and brilliant 
 intellects, throwing in their very faces the rude but stalwart 
 defiance of the patriot. 
 
 This remarkable man had already accomplished a life the 
 most romantic in political annals, essentially American in its 
 significance and interest, and replete with dramatic situations 
 and surprises a life which could only have been produced 
 in the extraordinary growths of our peculiar political system, 
 of which it was a most remarkable exponent. A boy of ten 
 years who did not know his alphabet, apprenticed to a tailor ; 
 learning spelling and grammar by picking out words in an 
 old volume o f speeches by British statesmen ; wandering as a 
 journeyman tailor to Eastern Tennessee ; obtaining a help 
 mate, whose wifely task was to read history and politics to 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 71 
 
 him as he plied the needle on his work-bench, the man at 
 last attracted attention, pleaded the rights of the working- 
 classes, was despised by the aristocracy of the little town of 
 Greenville, made his way through opposition, emerged from 
 difficulties, climbed steadily the ladder of public promotion, 
 and at last stood a peer in the highest council of the nation. 
 
 Scarcely have any two persons of equal rank in public life 
 afforded a contrast in person and in character, so sharp and 
 striking as Jefferson Davis, the leader of Secession, and 
 Andrew Johnson, the especial champion of the Union. The 
 former, a haughty and cultivated man, represented the tradi 
 tional aristocrat of the South, and illustrated that type of 
 scholarly statesmanship supposed to be nourished by the 
 institution of Slavery, in the elegant leisure which it affords 
 for literary culture and the improvement of the individual. 
 He was a model of deportment in the social circle, a picture 
 of graceful and well-poised dignity in the American Senate. 
 He formed his speeches with classical severity and elegance ; 
 he spoke easily in measured and well-cut sentences ; and the 
 thought was always complete in his exact and well-rounded 
 periods. Johnson, on the other hand, was the traditional 
 democrat, a plain, earnest man ; rough, but with a face too 
 deeply engraved with character to be accounted plebeian ; 
 scorning the pretensions of aristocracy, and yet endowed with 
 that medium and proper dignity in public life that invites 
 access and yet easily sustains its official position of superiority. 
 He was emphatically a man of the people, yet without the 
 vulgar attributes of the demagogue. He had but few of the 
 graces of the orator, and none of his virtues of language, but 
 that of deep earnestness. He scorned literary flourishes, and 
 valued chiefly the plain, coarse strength of argument. Once 
 in the Senate he explained with more of pride than of humiL 
 
72 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ity : " I have not the power to con over and get by rote and 
 memory handsomely rounded periods, and make a great dis 
 play of rhetoric. I have to seize on fugitive thoughts as they 
 pass through my mind, make the best application of them I 
 can, and express them in my own crude way." He was an 
 extempore speaker, and had the common affliction of that 
 class in a habit of repetition of his thoughts and of straining 
 for expression, quite unlike the literary style of Mr. Davis, 
 who dropped his words perfect and rotund, one by one, 
 moulding them with exquisite deliberation. As a writer, Mr. 
 Johnson had considerable finish and elevation; but in his 
 speeches he exhibited but few literary ornaments; yet in 
 real intellectual force he had scarcely his equal in the Senate. 
 A member of Congress, who sat with him in the memorable 
 session of 1860-1, has described excellently his style as a 
 speaker : " His elocution was more forcible than fine more 
 discursive than excellent ; he hammered away with stalwart 
 strength upon his thought, until he brought it into shape. 
 He rarely failed to produce the impression he intended/ 
 He suffered from the poverty of language, which is so often 
 remarked in self-educated men ; he had the common misfor 
 tune of that class, frequent self-betrayal in historical and liter 
 ary allusions ; but his strong and courageous sense was not 
 ashamed to make successive trials of expression, until at last 
 it carried conviction home to the minds of his hearers. When 
 his blundering blows did hit they told like those of a giant. 
 How effective they were in the hot conflict of ideas in 
 which he engaged Mr. Davis and his followers may be judged 
 from the fact which has been frequently attested to the 
 author that Senator Douglas deplored to the day of his 
 death that Mr. Johnson had not commenced the fight against 
 .Secession a little earlier, as he relied upon him and Crittenden 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE COXFEDERACY. 73 
 
 repelling from a Southern stand-point the aggressive debate 
 of the disunionists of the Senate, and giving the coup de grace 
 to their schemes of ambition. But the opposition was as 
 Mr. Douglas might not have known against a foregone con 
 clusion. The conspiracy had ripened before Mr. Johnson 
 spoke in the Senate ; and the only effect of his anti-secession 
 speeches there was to involve him in a severe personal con 
 troversy. 
 
 In this controversy, however, he showed striking and 
 memorable courage. Indeed there was one trait of the man 
 which always obtained for him a certain respect from the 
 Southern people, even when in the heat of the war he was 
 deemed their worst enemy. It was his high, personal courage 
 a quality which never fails of the admiration of the people 
 of the South in any shape of man. The truest courage is not 
 that which is constitutional ; it is the fruit of the harsh expe 
 rience of life, the education of self-confidence, the inspiration 
 which comes from the memories of dangers tried, misfortunes 
 conquered, and obstacles overcome. The remarkable cour 
 age of Andrew Johnson, now conceded by the world, was the 
 product of a harsh, aggressive life, at war with fortune from 
 infancy, and animated with the recollections of triumph. It 
 was no ordinary spirit that could meet the Southern Senators 
 who by concert set upon him for his opposition, to their 
 schemes of Secession, made him an especial mark for their 
 hostility, and hunted him with every weapon admitted in 
 parliamentary strife. He answered them with defiance. 
 Once driven almost to extremity by their threats and taunts, 
 he turned upon them a face not to be forgotten, and said: 
 "There are men who talk about cowardice, cowards, courage, 
 and all that kind of thing ; and in this connection I will say, 
 once for all, not boastingiy, with no anger in my bosom, that 
 
74 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 these two eyes never looked upon any being, in the shape of 
 mortal man, that this heart of mine feared !" 
 
 In some recent recollections of his old antagonist in the 
 Senate, Mr. Davis is reported to have said : 
 
 " The position of Mr. Johnson with his associates of the 
 South had never been pleasant, not from any fault or super 
 ciliousness on their side, but solely due to the intense, almost 
 morbidly sensitive, pride of Mr. Johnson. Sitting with 
 associates, many of whom he knew pretended to aristocracy, 
 Mr. Johnson seemed to set up before his own mind, and keep 
 ever present with him, his democratic or plebeian origin as a 
 bar to warm social relations." 
 
 But Mr. Davis has probably misinterpreted the separation 
 of Johnson from those who " pretended to aristocracy," as a 
 paltry matter of personal pride. It was the constitutional 
 genius of the true democrat that thus divided him from 
 associates like Mr. Davis. The key-note to the politics of the 
 former was the rights of the working-class, the virtue of the 
 popular masses ; and, perhaps, no public man of equal station 
 in America had so hated and defied the false and insolent 
 aristocracy, which would have strangled his early aspirations, 
 and, indeed, had hunted him to the summit of his career. 
 
 " What do you mean by the laboring-classes ? " was asked 
 of Andrew Johnson, tailor and statesman, standing upon the 
 floor of the United States Senate. 
 
 " I mean," replied Johnson, " those who earn their bread 
 by the sweat of their face, and not by fatiguing their ingenuity." 
 At another time : " Sir, I do not forget that I am a mechanic. 
 I am proud to own it." 
 
 Such were the two men who met in the Senate of the 
 United States at the threshold of the war, and who, more 
 than any two other men of their day, were representatives of 
 
SECRET HISTOKY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 75 
 
 the ideas that struggled there for domination. They never 
 met immediately in debate. Johnson did not make his most 
 powerful and elaborate speech for the Union until Jefferson 
 Davis had taken farewell of the Senate. As for Mr. Davis, 
 he was singularly sparing of speech in the debate that pre 
 ceded the war ; he spoke but little in the questions before the 
 Senate, and that only incidentally. His remarkable reticence 
 may, perhaps, be explained from a sentiment of delicac.y on 
 account of his selection as president of the new Confederacy, 
 which his Southern associates had already determined, and, 
 therefore, his immediate profit in Secession; or more probably 
 it may be ascribed to the supposition that he was really 
 ashamed to play the part of a hypocrite, making fulsome 
 rhetorical endeavors for pacification, well knowing that an 
 opposite conclusion had been determined in secret caucus, 
 and that he had accepted, if not already the position of leader 
 of a rebellion, the place of one of the committee to carry out 
 the design of disunion. Whatever the explanation, he did 
 not make his accustomed figure in debate, and he assumed an 
 appearance of singular impassiveuess, whatever might have 
 been the hopes and fears that swayed his breast, or the 
 ambition that consumed him. 
 
 Before the Senatorial caucus, in the first week of January, 
 and when the coercion of South Carolina was debated, Mr. 
 Davis had spoken more freely, and in a very unequivocal 
 style. Eeferring to the common threat to reclaim a sovereign 
 State by force, he had declared : " I would have this Union 
 severed into thirty-three fragments sooner than have that 
 great evil befall constitutional liberty, and republican govern 
 ment." He freely asserted that the South had long meditated 
 Secession, endorsing in effect those confessions to which we 
 have already referred in the South Carolina Convention, that 
 
76 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the secession of that State was the aspiration of years, and 
 not a sudden indisposition to Federal rule. He said : " We 
 have warned you for years that you would drive us to the 
 alternative of going out of the government, and you would 
 not heed. I believe you still look upon it as a mere passing 
 political move, as a desire to secure party ends, knowing little 
 of the deep struggle with which we have contemplated this 
 as a necessity, not as a choice, when we have brought to 
 stand before the alternative the destruction of our com 
 munity independence, or the destruction of that Union which 
 our fathers made. * * * You have believed not looking to 
 the great end to which our aims are directed that it was a 
 mere political resort, by which we would intimidate some of 
 your own voters." 
 
 But in later stages of the debate, when the Southern Sena 
 tors had actually determined on the programme of Secession, 
 Mr. Davis s freedom of speech was suddenly checked, and he 
 subsided into an almost sinister silence. He secretly knew 
 that the period for argument was passed, and any pretence 
 he made thereafter of it was very slight and brief. In his 
 brief speech of the 8th of January, 1861, commenting merely 
 on events, and vindicating the seizure of the Southern forts, 
 he had said: "Abstract argument had become among the 
 things that are past." 
 
 Had the effort for pacification been sincere on the part of 
 the Southern Senators, Mr. Davis of all men considering the 
 position he had been assigned of chief representative, should 
 have come forward in the debate, and N should have framed 
 the demands of the South. He was the man, of all others to 
 do this, if the controversy had been real. Again and again it 
 was asked by the Republican leaders in the Senate, who 
 affected to depreciate the crisis, and to twit the anxiety of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 77 
 
 others, that the South should exhibit her bill of grievances 
 and make a distinct ultimatum. " What do you want ?" said 
 Mr. Wade, of Ohio. " Many of those who supposed themselves 
 aggrieved have spoken ; but I confess that I am totally unable 
 to understand precisely what it is of which they complain." 
 Mr. Davis answered, with brief declamation. "After forty years 
 of debate," he said. " you have asked us what was the matter." 
 But it was necessary that the record should be made up for 
 history, and to save appearances, Mr. Davis could scarcely do 
 less than frame some measure which should indicate the 
 wrongs of the South and express her demands. 
 
 A few days before his retirement from the Senate, Mr. 
 Davis moved the following resolution : 
 
 "That it shall be declared by amendment to the Constitution, that 
 property in slaves, recognized as such by the local law of any of the 
 States of the Union, shall stand on the same footing in all constitu 
 tional and Federal relations as any other species of property so re 
 cognized ; and, like other property, shall not be subject to be divested 
 or impaired by the local law of any other State, either in escape 
 thereto, or of transit or sojourn of the owner therein ; and in no case 
 whatever shall such property be subject to be divested or impaired by 
 any legislative act of the United States, or of any territory thereof." 
 
 This proposition was never considered, discussed, or taken 
 from the table. It was undoubtedly intended for appearances, 
 and Mr. Davis had secretly determined to take no active part 
 in any scheme of pacification. Indeed he had given evidence 
 enough of his disposition of inactivity. When at an early 
 period of the session he had been appointed one of the Committee 
 of Thirteen to report a plan of settlement, he had asked to 
 be excused, and had explained : " The position which I am 
 known to occupy, and the position in which the State I 
 represent now stands, render it altogether impossible for me 
 to serve upon that committee with any prospect of advantage." 
 
78 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS ; WITH A 
 
 Meanwhile Andrew Johnson, although not yet fully aroused 
 to the danger of the country, and not yet knowing the extent 
 and arrogance of the conspiracy against the Union had fully 
 defined his position. As early as the 18th of December, 1860, 
 although recognizing the just fears of the South in the elec 
 tion of Abraham Lincoln, and resenting the reluctance of the 
 Republican party to offer new guaranties suggested by that 
 event, he had giyen an advice to his Southern associates that 
 possibly might have averted the war, when in manful and 
 noble phrase he exhorted them to "fight for their Constitutional 
 rights on the battlements of the Constitution." He entreated 
 Mr. Davis and other Southern Senators to remain in their 
 places, assuring them that if they thus remained firm and un 
 shaken, Mr. Lincoln could not even organize his administra 
 tion unless by their permission ; and much less could he or 
 his party do any direct injury to the Southern interests. 
 With prophetic vision, he told them that Secession would be 
 the death of Slavery, that in the blast of a sectional conflict it 
 would be swept away with the sword of destruction. He 
 gave his opinions clearly and impressively ; he thought the 
 tones of exhortation those best to be used before the move 
 ment of disunion had advanced very far ;, and raising his 
 hands to heaven, he uttered that invocation which has since 
 appeared to have been the inspiration of his life, and which 
 deserves to be inscribed in golden letters beneath his place 
 in history : " Duties are mine ; consequences are God s." 
 
 It was a remarkable speech. There was no finer burst of 
 eloquence heard in the Senate Chamber, no loftier picture of 
 the Union than ,what occurred in a passage of this speech, 
 when Mr. Johnson aptly drew a figure from the scenery of 
 his own home in Tennessee. "Who dare appropriate," he 
 said, " to the exclusion of any part of the country the capital 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 79 
 
 founded by Washington, and bearing his immortal name? 
 It is within the borders of the States I have enumerated, in 
 whose limits are found the graves of Washington, of Jackson, 
 of Polk, of Clay. From them is it supposed we will be torn 
 away ? No sir ; we will cherish these endearing associations 
 with the hope, if this Republic shall be broken, that we may 
 speak words of peace and reconciliation to a distracted, a 
 divided, I may add a maddened people. Angry waves may 
 be lashed into fury on the one hand ; on the other blustering 
 winds may rage ; but we stand immovable upon our basis, as 
 on our own native mountains presenting their craggy brows, 
 their unexplored caverns, their summits, rocked-ribbed and 
 ancient as the sun we stand speaking peace, association and 
 concert to a distracted Republic." 
 
 It would be useless and tedious to give the mere legislative 
 form of a debate, which resulted in no measures, and to give 
 seriatim the various and technical propositions on which it 
 proceeded. The most of these propositions were, as we have 
 insisted, mere affectations and shams. We have designed 
 rather to produce the true spirit of the debate, and to confront 
 in it the two most important characters Jefferson Davis and 
 Andrew Johnson. The Crittenden Resolutions really the 
 only seprate proposition of peace may be taken as the only 
 important text of the debate, and the originator of this 
 measure was not conspicuous in discussing it. 
 
 These resolutions which lingered for many weeks in the 
 Senate, and on which a vote was ominously avoided, came up 
 at last for decisive action on the 16th of January, 1861. They 
 were to the effect of re-affirming Slavery as against the 
 authority of Congress or a Territorial Legislature south of 
 the Missouri line of compromise ; denying the power of Con 
 gress over Slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the 
 
80 LIFE OF J El PERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 forts, arsenals, dock-yards, or wherever else the Federal 
 Government had exclusive jurisdiction; and strengthening 
 the Fugitive Slave Law by additional enactments. The 
 antithesis of the plan of settlement was resolutions offered by 
 Mr. Clark of New Hampshire. These resolutions declared 
 that the provisions of the Constitution were already ample 
 enough for any emergencies ; that it was to be obeyed rather 
 than amended ; and that an extrication from present dangers 
 was to be looked for in strenuous efforts to preserve the 
 peace, protect the public property, and enforce the laws; 
 rather than in new guaranties for peculiar interests, com 
 promises for particular difficulties, or concessions to unrea 
 sonable demands. 
 
 It has been said that Mr. Davis was in favor of the Critten- 
 den Eesolutions, and would have accepted them as a settle 
 ment of the grievances of the South, and that other Southern 
 Senators were similarly disposed. In a speech of Mr. Breckin- 
 ridge of Kentucky in the Senate, 16th of July, 1861, he said: 
 "I happened personally to know the fact myself that the 
 leading statesmen of the lower Southern States were willing 
 to accept the terms of settlement which were proposed by the 
 venerable Senator from Kentucky, my predecessor." But in 
 face of the facts it is impossible to accept this explanation, or 
 to consider it as other than a dishonest afterthought of the 
 Southern leaders, an attempt to forge in the record a histori 
 cal vindication of themselves. The Crittenden Eesolutions 
 came to a vote on the 16th of January, 1861. There were 
 fifty-five Senators at that time upon the floor. The vote to 
 supplant these resolutions by the proposition of Mr. Clark 
 was yeas, 25 ; nays, 23. Six Southern Senators, Mr. Benjamin, 
 of Louisiana; Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Wigfall, of Texas: Mr. 
 Iverson, of Georgia; Mr. Johnson, of Arkansas, and Mr. Slidell, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 81 
 
 of Louisiana, were in their seats, but refused to cast their votes. 
 Mr. Davis was detained in his room by a convenient sickness 
 But, as the records show, there were Southern Senators enough 
 to have carried the resolutions and to have submitted the 
 subject, as designed, to the people, "who," as Andrew 
 Johnson, in his characteristic faith, remarked, "have never 
 yet, after consideration, refused justice, for any length of 
 time, to any portion of the country." 
 
 Mr. Johnson saw the balance suspended between peace and 
 war. Watchful, brave, alert, he made the effort which 
 patriotism suggested even at the expense of personal feeling. 
 Although he had been rebuffed by the Secession leaders, who 
 had haughtily and insolently surveyed him whenever he rose 
 to speak, although he could not expect the commonest civili 
 ties from them, he was not the man to shrink from public 
 duty, either from timidity or personal delicacy. When the 
 vote was being taken on the Crittenden Eesolutions, he 
 moved near to Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, and said, with 
 earnestness : " Let us save this proposition and see if we can 
 not bring the country to it. Mr. Benjamin, vote, and show 
 yourself an honest man." He got only a scornful answer. 
 The Crittenden Eesolutions were lost ; telegrams flew to all 
 parts of the South that all hopes of compromise were gone ; 
 and Mr. Johnson, crossing the floor of the Senate to where 
 Mr. Crittenden sat, wounded, pale, in the very agony of dis 
 appointment, has since remarked : " Well do I remember the 
 sadness, the gloom, the anguish that played over his venera 
 ble face." 
 
 True, the passage of the Crittenden Resolutions in the Sen 
 ate might not have been decisive of the question of peace or 
 war. Indeed, all the plans of compromise suggested might 
 have been, as Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, expressed it, "the 
 
82 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 mere daubing of the wall with untempered mortar." But 
 partial and tentative as these resolutions were, they were yet 
 to the Senate, to the extent of their effect, the question of 
 peace and war, and thus a sufficient test of the dispositions 
 of its members. The main effort of the Union men as of 
 Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee was to get a distinct pro 
 position of peace before the people trusting to their sense of 
 justice arid committing the responsibility to them; and thus 
 the motion on the Crittenden proposition, whatever might be 
 its ultimate results, was, as far as the action of the Senate 
 could command, the complete and distinct issue of union or 
 disunion. 
 
 The farewell speech of Mr. Davis in the Senate was memo 
 rable. The State of Mississippi seceded from the Union on 
 the 9th of January, 1861, but her Senators lingered at Wash 
 ington until the 21st before they withdrew. At that time the 
 debate in Congress on the sectional question had, as we have 
 seen, very much degenerated, and was, on both sides, an 
 affectation. It had now really become an idle ceremony, a 
 waste of words, and no one knew it better than Mr. Davis. 
 Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, one of the most candid 
 members of the Republican party of that day, has since testi 
 fied, that on the 18th of December, 1860 the day the Crit 
 tenden Compromise was introduced it was determined the 
 controversy should not be settled in Congress. The season of 
 debate, when Mr. Davis bade farewell to the Senate and an 
 nounced another public career, had justly passed. The tem 
 per of the opposing party was well expressed in the savage 
 witticism of one of its most truculent members. Owen Love- 
 joy was asked what he thought of Senator Seward s speech, 
 noted somewhat for its conciliatory tone. " We want," said 
 Lovejoy, " no Melancthons now ; we want Martin Luthers. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 83 
 
 We want no one to write essays upon the Union and the sin 
 and disasters of Secession, but some one to throw the inkstand 
 right at the devil s head !" 
 
 In these circumstances of useless and affected speech in 
 Congress knowing well that debate there had become a 
 mere ceremony, and, what is worse, a deception of the public 
 Mr. Davis took leave of the councils of Washington in a 
 speech of remarkable brevity. This explanation perhaps ac 
 counts for the comparative abstinence of this address from 
 argument and historical illustration, and its literary barren 
 ness in a great conjuncture, which it might be thought would 
 have been adorned with the highest efforts of eloquence. 
 There is a brief historical vindication of the South in this 
 speech, an argument limited to the fewest words, and then a 
 fit and dignified inspiration in an appeal to Providence, " in 
 voking the Grod of our fathers who delivered them from the 
 power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear." 
 But the language was very fine, the spirit of the address 
 dignified ; and those who witnessed its delivery by Mr. Davis, 
 will recollect how the Senate hung on the slow and unimpas- 
 sioned words, and how tears even were shed when he walked 
 forth from the chamber, " released from obligation, disencum 
 bered of the memory of any injury he had received," pre 
 pared for a new career, the most important and dramatic of 
 modern times. In the close of his speech he showed an un 
 bounded personal generosity, begged pardon of all whom he 
 had ever offended, and directing his attention to the Kepubli- 
 can Senators, declared that he carried away no hostile 
 feelings, and sincerely apologized for whatever of personal 
 displeasure had ever been occasioned in debate. It is re 
 markable that after such a noble tender of personal reconcilia 
 tion, only two Eepublican Senators approached him and 
 
84 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 shook his hand at parting. They were Messrs. Hale and 
 Cameron. 
 
 When Mr. Davis took leave of the Senate, he left there but 
 little to record of controversy or debate. A few Southern 
 Senators, whose States had not yet seceded, still lingered in 
 their seats, but only to insult what they supposed to be the 
 last hours of the Union. It was already dead, said Senator 
 Wigfall ofTexas. The object of so many hopes, the Union 
 that had emerged from the mist and blood of the Kevolution, 
 the traditional love of the American people, was, as the Texan 
 Senator expressed it, only a corpse lying in state; and the 
 whole government at Washington drawing around it a few 
 tawdry ceremonies, and holding feebly the glorious memories 
 of the past, was but nursing a distempered fancy in the cold 
 sweat of death. The ghastly figure was not without signifi 
 cance. It appeared, indeed, as if the Government had lost all 
 vitality and resolution ; it had, indeed, sunk to a most abject 
 and pitiful condition ; and the Secession leaders might well 
 brandish their contempt in the face of an authority that they 
 had already openly defied, and that they had left, as they 
 imagined, on the confines of dissolution. 
 
 "What is the condition?" said Mr. Polk, of Missouri. 
 " Universal panic, prostration of credit, public and private. 
 Our government has just advertised for a loan of five millions, 
 and she could only get half of it bid for, nor even that except 
 at usurious rates of interest, running up to the extreme of 
 thirty per cent, per annum !" 
 
 It is notable that a government threatened by one of the 
 fiercest revolutions of modern times, had yet made not the 
 least provision for war. Not only was the debate we have 
 described entirely fruitless, but it is remarkable that the Con 
 gress of one branch of which we have treated here had ab- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 85 
 
 solutely not passed a single act to increase or strengthen the 
 military power of the government. The bills having that 
 object in view known as " force bills " had all been de 
 feated. The appropriations which were made were only or 
 dinary ones. The troubles of the country received no solu 
 tion at the hands of Congress, not even a temporary arrange 
 ment, not the slightest or remotest provision. It was a sin 
 gular blank, indicating that weak and almost dumb expecta 
 tion, in which the public mind of the North for a long time 
 hung vaguely on the issues of the impending conflict. 
 
 One last effort in the Senate to save the peace of the coun 
 try remains to be mentioned, and fitly concludes the chapter. 
 Through the earnest endeavors of the friends of Mr. Critten- 
 den, his proposition, once defeated, was taken up for recon 
 sideration, although Mr. Pugh, of Ohio, had, when the vote 
 was iirst announced, moved to lay the whole subject on the 
 table, as in despair of reconciliation. Finally, on motion of 
 Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania, a motion to reconsider was 
 carried. On the 3d day of March, it was announced that the 
 vote would be finally taken. It was the last day of the ses 
 sion ; the next sun would bring in a new Administration, 
 and might dash forever the hopes of those who had so long 
 struggled to preserve the peace of the country. It was a 
 critical day. A vast crowd pressed into and around the 
 Senate Chamber ; with difficulty the officers drove them from 
 the floor ; they surged in the galleries ; there was great con 
 fusion there, but something was pardoned to the anxieties of 
 the hour; many stood in spaces scarcely affording breath, 
 until night descended on the debate. They were there to wit 
 ness the tragedy of a nation s extremity. A few hours more 
 and the curtain might fall on all that there had been of the 
 glory and prosperity of a great country. The future was un- 
 
86 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 certain, alarming, hidden. Mr. Crittenden spoke in subdued 
 tones ; the galleries scarcely heard him ; even the finest rheto 
 ric would have been lost on the exhausted emotions of men 
 who had come to hear simply "yes" or " no " to the hopes and 
 fears that had agitated them for months. It was near mid 
 night when the vote was taken : 19 to 20 ; the Crittenden 
 Eesolutions finally lost by one vote ! Its announcement was 
 made without impressiveness. Bewildered, stricken, speaking 
 only in low murmurs, the vast crowd wandered out into the 
 night, and separated to meet again in front of the bayonets 
 that glittered the next noon before the new President of the 
 United States, as, in the presence of the people, and in the 
 sight of heaven, he swore to support the Constitution and as 
 sumed an office that was to be disfigured by four years of 
 war. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 87 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 Organization of the Confederate Government, at Montgomery Mississippi Proposes a Southern 
 Confederacy Singular Instance of Rebellion Unchallenged Explanation of the Remissnesa 
 of the North The Error of Mr. Lincoln Secession as a Popular Sentiment, and Secession as 
 an Organized Fact Failure of the North to Distinguish between the Two Rapid Action of 
 the Montgomery Government Interesting Historical Problem as to the Extent of the Idea 
 of " Reconstruction " in the Southern Mind Mr. Davis had no such Idea Why not His 
 Defiant Speeches at Montgomery Evidence of a Popular Sentiment in the South for 
 "Reconstruction" Why it was Ineffectual Extraordinary and remarkable Exclusion of 
 the Popular Element from the Southern Confederacy A Usurpation Almost Unparalleled in 
 History. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Lincoln delivered his inaugural speech from 
 the portico of the Washington Capitol, he stood no longer in 
 front only of a hostile and disorderly popular sentiment in 
 the South, but in front of a government organized there, an 
 actual structure of state discharging all political functions, 
 furnished for war, and inspired for a desperate encounter. 
 It was a singular and imposing spectacle a government of 
 insurgents quietly assuming power and organization without 
 a struggle, and continuing for the space of months unchal 
 lenged and uninterrupted in its operations. It had come 
 quietly into existence in the month of February. The secret 
 _ revolutionary junta had proposed a convention of the seceding 
 
 tates on the loth of this month. It assembled some days 
 earlier. Mississippi the State of Jefferson Davis was the 
 first to propose distinctly the idea of a Southern Confederacy, 
 while in the other States the call for a convention was vari 
 ously interpreted and communicated from the ambubii of 
 
LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 equivocal language. There could be no doubt of the inten 
 tion of Mississippi. In the Legislature of that State, on the 
 19th of January, a committee reported resolutions to provide 
 for a Southern Confederacy, and establish a Provisional 
 Government. The State had already seceded on the 9th 
 of January. On the llth of the same month, Alabama and 
 Florida followed ; on the 26th, Louisiana; and on the 1st of 
 February, Texas. On the 4th of February, delegates from 
 these States met at Montgomery, Alabama, organized a 
 Provisional Government, framed a "permanent" Constitution; 
 and on the 18th Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President 
 of " the Confederate States of North America." 
 
 The Union at Montgomery represented six Southern 
 States, rroin which had disappeared, in the strangest manner, 
 not only every semblance of Federal authority, but almost 
 every vestige of Federal power. All the Federal forts in 
 these States but two (Sumter and Pickens) had been taken ; 
 all the property of the United States, whether arsenals, 
 custom-house or light-houses, had been appropriated ; and not 
 a vestige of authority of the Government at Washington 
 was suffered to remain, excepting the Post-office department* 
 which the insurgents might have been considered to have 
 arrogantly kept for their convenience. These amazing re 
 sults which had swept a government from the face of so large 
 a territory, had been accomplished with supreme ease. All 
 had been done without a drop of blood having been shed, or 
 even an arm persistently raised to oppose the progress of the 
 rebellion. It had gone on without any counteraction on the 
 part of the North, and even without any preparation of the 
 Washington Government, in the shape of any act or appro 
 priation by Congress, to overthrow or check the movement. 
 
 This reinissness of the government yet claiming to be 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 89 
 
 supreme, its utter lack of preparation an instance of stark 
 improvidence almost without parallel in history was fast 
 bringing it into contempt ; and it was, perhaps, the first 
 occasion of that fatal tendency in the South to undervalue 
 the power and spirit of the North in case of war. The 
 explanation commonly formed of this remissness is that the 
 North was not seriously apprehensive of war, and that it 
 looked for Secession to disappear at last through peaceful 
 agencies, or in the natural course of events. Mr. Lincoln did 
 not expect war. He believed, as he declared on his way to 
 Washington, that " behind the cloud the sun was shining 
 still ;" that the fervid sentiment of Union in the hearts of the 
 people of the South would dispel all serious trouble. 
 
 There might have been a time when this belief in the 
 natural dispersion of Secession could have been reasonably 
 entertained ; but it is strange that Mr. Lincoln and thoughtful 
 men in the North did not distinguish between this time 
 and that in which he spoke that they failed to estimate the 
 great difference between Secession as a diffuse popular 
 sentiment, and Secession as an organized fact. When it was 
 in the first condition, there was some hope that it might be 
 overcome or scattered by peaceful means; but from the moment 
 it became organized ; from the moment a government was 
 framed at Montgomery, it acquired that certain force which 
 comes from organization ; and how, thereafter, the North 
 and even reflecting men there could have continued in the 
 same calculations of peace, is not easy to be explained. The 
 difference of the two conditions seems never to have been 
 estimated. People generally, in the North, thought peace 
 quite as probable after the Montgomery Convention as before 
 it that is, without regard to other events, considering that 
 which had taken place at Montgomery as indifferent. And 
 
90 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 yet it was that event which should have determined for the 
 North whether to treat Secession as a subject for peaceful 
 dispersion, or one for violent destruction. An idea or even a 
 purpose may be easily banished from the public mind ; but 
 when it once assumes organization, there is an actual power 
 to be disbanded, while new interests too are brought into the 
 conflict. Secession might possibly have died out in the 
 South as any other public opinion; but when it took the 
 form of a government at Montgomery, it passed that boundary 
 whence it was not likely to be reclaimed but by violence. 
 That government could not go down without carrying with it 
 the hopes and aspirations of the Southern leaders, without 
 consigning them to public shame ; and although Jefferson 
 Davis and his associates might have quitted Secession 
 when it was a mere idea, and survived the sacrifice, it was 
 obvious that they could not retract what they had done at 
 Montgomery without consigning themselves to ruin. 
 
 But the distinction between Secession as an idea and as an 
 organized fact was scarcely perceived by the North. The 
 Government at "Washington continued to lose time which 
 that at Montgomery was persistent to improve. In four 
 days the latter adopted a provisional Constitution, and im 
 mediately thereafter announced as its choice for President, 
 Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. He travelled rapidly from 
 his home; he was inaugurated the day after his arrival at 
 Montgomery, the 10th of February ; and on the 28th of this 
 month he was empowered by act of Congress to assume con 
 trol of all the military operations of the Confederate States. 
 He was thus swiftly advanced to the summit of authority; 
 he was seated in apparent security at Montgomery, before 
 Mr. Lincoln had been inaugurated at Washington ; and two 
 days after the latter had gone through this doubtful ceremony 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 91 
 
 and was yet trembling for his personal safety, Jefferson Davis 
 experienced the sense of power in dictating a call for one 
 hundred thousand men to take the field under his unquestioned 
 and supreme command. 
 
 The question has often been seriously asked whether the 
 leaders and agents of the South at Montgomery did not really 
 entertain some prospect of going back into the Union, and 
 to what extent the problem of reunion or " reconstruction " 
 was mixed with their plans. The answers given to this 
 question have been as various as the stand-points from which 
 they have been delivered. To treat the matter with historical 
 accuracy, it is necessary to observe a distinction of which we 
 have already availed ourselves in the progress of our work 
 that between the people and the politicians of the South ; and 
 yet further to distinguish between the time when the latter 
 were acting in disguise or playing an insincere part, and that 
 when they no longer thought it necessary to wear the mask 
 and found occasion to publish freely their opinions. 
 
 In the Senate of the United States, Jefferson Davis had 
 practised either equivocation or reserve on the question of re 
 union. He was part of a conspiracy there ; and although that 
 conspiracy hesitated to alarm the people of the South with the 
 idea of irrevocable separation, there is abundant evidence that 
 this conclusion was first and firm in their designs. Mr. Davis 
 knew very well that Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, had lost his 
 place in the conspiracy, and hazarded its confidence by^ a 
 proposition looking to " reconstruction " aftefr the v Southern 
 States had disbanded from f^e -Union. He was not in danger 
 of falling into the same error one so disastrous to his ambi 
 tion. Indeed, as we have already suggested, the fact of the 
 personal ambition of the leaders of the South being so identified 
 with the scheme of Secession, forbids the supposition that they 
 
92 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 could ever have had any serious thought of undoing their 
 
 work at Montgomery, and returning into a Union where 
 
 thenceforth they would have to take degraded seats, and endure 
 
 much more than the obloquy of the old Hartford Convention. 
 
 On arriving at Montgomery, Mr. Davis broke the restraints 
 
 he had worn at Washington. He threw his former prudence 
 
 to the winds, and declared for separation from the North as 
 
 eternal as human force could make it. He spoke with a 
 
 burst of temper that suggested how much he had suffered 
 
 from his continence in the Senate. In a speech to a crowd in 
 
 the streets, he declared that "the South would make those 
 
 who opposed her smell Southern powder and feel Southern 
 
 steel ;" but perhaps there was some soreness of the reporter in 
 
 this language. Yet there was no doubt of his more deliberate 
 
 words. He said : " The time for compromise has now passed, 
 
 and the South is determined to maintain her position. We 
 
 will maintain our rights and government at all hazards. We 
 
 ask nothing, we want nothing ; we will have no complications. 
 
 If the other States join our Confederation they can freely come 
 
 in on our terms. Our separation from the old Union is now 
 
 complete. No compromise, no reconstruction is now to be 
 
 entertained." Again, speaking from the balcony of his hotel : 
 
 "If war should come, if we must again baptize in blood the 
 
 principles for which our fathers bled in the Eevolution, we 
 
 shall show that we are not degenerate sons." 
 
 Such language is sufficient to disprove a theory or hypo 
 thesis which has obtained some color of history : namely 
 that Mr. Davis and his associates at Montgomery had in 
 reserve some thought of peaceful reconstruction, but that thev 
 were driven from it into the gulf of the war by the further 
 acts of the Federal Government. There can be no truth in 
 such a theory. The Southern leaders had resolved from the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 93 
 
 first on final separation, even with, the added consequence of 
 war; they had used any other pretence simply as a stepping- 
 stone to power ; and from the moment they met at Mont 
 gomery they were prepared to put the heel on every hope 
 of reconciliation. 
 
 It was different with the people of the South. The evidence 
 is as abundant as that we have just quoted to show that the 
 politicians at Montgomery were resolved on irrevocable 
 separation, to establish that the people of the South on the 
 contrary indeed up to the moment of actual bloodshed 
 cherished the design of reconstruction, either hoping for a 
 return to the old Union, or inclusion in another of the same 
 dimensions. The Montgomery Convention did not represent 
 them ; it represented the States, and only the States so far as 
 the Secession Conventions had assumed the political control 
 of each. It is a significant fact that even the call for the 
 Montgomery Convention had been made on an equivocation, 
 as if in distrust of the temper of the people for separation 
 and war. When Mississippi, after South Carolina, seceded, 
 Governor Pickens of the latter State had telegraphed that 
 delegates should be sent to Montgomery " to form immediately 
 a strong Provisional Government, as the only thing to prevent 
 war." The State of Louisiana looked openly to a reunion, 
 and published the assurance that as long as the Border 
 States remained in the Union, she might be received back 
 through their mediation. 
 
 Nor was the action of the Montgomery Convention when 
 it was seen to be driving the South into war unattended by 
 popular protests. The people became sensible of the rapid 
 movement of the wheels of revolution under them ; they were 
 hurried along in a state of bewilderment; but there were 
 those who loudly proclaimed their alarm, and cried out 
 
94: LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 against the precipitancy. Why should not the Montgomery 
 Convention try at least some demand, some possible expedi 
 ent before the ultimatum of war ? Why go so far at a single 
 step ? " Posterity," said a member from Georgia, " will con 
 demn the advocates of Secession for the single reason that the 
 seceding States in their several Conventions, made no demand 
 for the redress of grievances, but madly yea, blindly pre 
 cipitated a revolution." 
 
 But such protests were voices against the wind. The 
 Montgomery Convention carried every thing with swift and 
 irresistible force, and gave neither time for the popular alarm . 
 to take effect nor the slightest opportunity for the popular 
 judgment to recover control of its affairs. In truth what 
 the thoughtful historian must most deeply meditate of the 
 causes and origin of the late war is the extent to which the 
 popular element of the South was excluded from its inception. 
 It was in constant subjection from the moment a conspiracy 
 of Southern Senators at Washington held at arm s-length the 
 States and dictated their course. Indeed there were cases 
 where it was ignored to trie extent of States passing ordi 
 nances of Secession, even after the Legislatures calling the Con 
 ventions had forbid the effect of such ordinances until ratified 
 by the vote of the masses. It had no direct representation in 
 the Convention at Montgomery. It did not confirm their 
 work.* It had nothing to do with the early acts of the war ; 
 and briefly the astounding fact appears that the first time the 
 people of the South had direct action on their affairs since the 
 
 * The only confirmation which the Montgomery Government ever 
 received was by the State Conventions ; and that only to the extent 
 of approving the Provisional Constitution, which was to remain in 
 force for one year, then to be supplanted by a regular Constitution, 
 and officers duty elected under it. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 95 
 
 election of Abraham Lincoln was to vote for a President, after 
 Mr. Davis had been " provisional " chief or practical dictator, 
 one whole year, counting from his inauguration at Montgom 
 ery. Whether the war was right or wrong is logically not 
 involved in the question whether it was determined by the 
 many or by the few ; but certainly history has had few in 
 stances of such daring and strident usurpation as that com 
 menced by fourteen men plotting revolution in a committee- 
 room at Washington, and consummated by an irresponsible 
 Convention proclaiming a war, electing a leader, and organ 
 izing a government, without let or hindrance ! 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS WITH 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Causes which determined Mr. Davis Election as President of the Confederate States The 
 claims of Howell Cobb Secretly considered at Montgomery Davis Resentment of Cobb as a 
 Possible Rival Popular Congratulations on the Selection of Mr. Davis as Leader His Qualifi 
 cations for such a Position Steady Line of Distinction between Davis and the South A Fatal 
 Weakness of the New President An Attempt to Define the Objects of the War Mr. Davia 
 as a "Mixed" Character A Remarkable Presentiment at Montgomery A Criticism of Mr. 
 Davis in Anticipation of His Administration. 
 
 THE election of Mr. Davis to the Presidential office at 
 Montgomery was not publicly contested ; but that he was the 
 unanimous choice of the Southern people is by no means so 
 clear as has been generally supposed. The Charleston Mer 
 cury contended that the Montgomery Convention had no 
 authority to elect a President, and intimated that a " snap- 
 judgment" had been taken on the public. A party in Geor 
 gia was malcontent, and the Augusta Chronicle insisted that 
 Alexander H. Stephens should have led the movement for 
 constitutional liberty and Southern independence, because he 
 bore no " stain of the prevalent corruption." But these opin 
 ions were not brought to the test of the popular verdict, and 
 whatever their significance or value, it is unquestionable that 
 Mr. Davis had many qualities to constitute him the represen 
 tative man of the South in this crisis of her destiny, and 
 to signalize him as the leader of her movement to in 
 dependence. 
 
 A Northern member of Congress, familiar with much of 
 Mr. Davis s public and private life, and partially sympathizing 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 97 
 
 with his politics, has thus drawn his picture as leader and 
 hero of " the lost cause :" " Every revolution has a fabulous 
 or actual hero conformable to the local situation, manner, and 
 character of the people who rise. To a rustic people like the 
 Swiss, William Tell, with his cross-bow and the apple ; to an 
 aspiring race like the Americans, Washington, with his 
 sword and the law, are, as Lamartine once said, the symbols 
 standing erect at the cradles of these two distinct liberties ! 
 Jefferson Davis, haughty, self-willed, and persistent, full of 
 martial ardor and defiant eloquence, is the symbol, both in 
 his character and in his present situation, of the proud and 
 impulsive, but suppressed ardors and hopes of the Southern 
 mind." 
 
 The causes which determined the elevation of Mr. Davis to 
 the office of President of the Southern Confederacy have al 
 ready been briefly referred to. He had been chosen as chief 
 by the revolutionary cabal at Washington. In some personal 
 reminiscences of this period related after the war, and when 
 he might have been supposed to speak with humiliation, 
 Mr. Davis has explained that " one of his chief recommenda 
 tions for the chief office of the Confederacy lay in the fact 
 that after the removal of Calhoun and General Quitman by 
 death, he became the chief exponent or representative of those 
 principles of State Sovereignty which the South cherished, 
 and of which, as he claimed, the Fathers of the country had 
 been the founders, Thomas Jefferson the inspired prophet, 
 and they the eloquent apostles." But there is an egotism and 
 conceit in this scarcely tolerable. Mr. Davis, whatever his 
 other qualifications for the preference of the South, was no 
 more the representative of State Sovereignty than were Hun 
 ter, of Virginia ; Yancey of Alabama, or Toombs, of Georgia 
 certainly not more than Alexander H. Stephens, whose friends 
 
98 LIFE OF JEFFKRSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 for a time disputed for him the claim of eminence in the for 
 tunes of a new government founded on the peculiar princi 
 ples of a Southern Democracy. It is not generally known 
 that there was even another person who disputed not slightly, 
 at Montgomery with Mr. Davis, the office of leader and chief 
 magistrate. This person was already in the conspicuous 
 place of presiding officer of the Montgomery Congress ; it was 
 an office next to that of President and naturally suggested 
 promotion to it. It thus happened that in the secret confer 
 ences of the committee on Military Affairs the name of How- 
 ell Cobb was for some time considered in connection with the 
 chief office in the gift of the South, and in competition with 
 that of Jefferson Davis. 
 
 t It was a competition not canvassed in public, not brought 
 to the test of a vote and perhaps but a brief and speculative 
 suggestion in the secret conferences at Montgomery ; but that 
 there was such a consideration of Howell Cobb has been 
 testified to the author in the subsequent regrets of some of 
 the most influential members of the Provisional Congress that 
 they had neglected the man who, after all, was best qualified 
 for the office of the President of the Confederacy, and whose 
 strong practical judgment might have been a saving substi 
 tute for the showy qualities and shallow brilliancy of Mr. 
 Davis. The statesman in time of peace, and the leader of a re 
 volution have missions more distinct than the vulgar opinion 
 regards them; and who can doubt that history lias more often 
 shown the latter successful in the person of plain men of ro 
 bust character than in that of cultivated scholars and " admira 
 ble Crichtons." But Mr. Cobb was not uncultivated; and 
 those who knew him well claim that he added to the accom 
 plishments of the statesman natural virtues which summed a 
 character the most estimable and complete among his cotem- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 99 
 
 poraries in public life. He had none of the unhealthy fancies 
 or refinements of an over-cultivated mind ; he was not defi 
 cient in the information and accomplishments necessary to 
 found any great success in life ; he was plain without coarse 
 ness and learned without affectation. He had that most uncom 
 mon of gifts common sense ; a nice and rotund adjustment 
 of the faculties ; a practical and ready judgment ; and not 
 least among the qualities of great and successful men that 
 strong, complacent physique suggested by the " mens sana in 
 corpore sano " exactly that type of man which, not brilliant, 
 is yet especially powerful, dexterous and conservative in 
 revolutionary times. 
 
 Mr, Davis must have had some early intimation of the 
 suggestion imperfect as it was of Mr. Cobb s name in oppo 
 sition to his own ; and he appears to have resented it with 
 characteristic temper. The latter had not been presiding 
 officer of the Provisional Congress many weeks before he 
 mentioned to his. friends that Mr. Davis s conduct had been 
 cold and repel lant to him for some unexplained reason ; he 
 had naturally visited the President to suggest some consulta 
 tion on public affairs ; Mr. Davis had each time replied, " I 
 have no communication to make," and at last had done so 
 with such disdain that Mr. Cobb broke off all intercourse 
 with him. For the space of a year the two never exchanged 
 a word, Mr. Cobb explaining to his friends that he had been 
 wounded by the manner of the President when he approached 
 him at Montgomery. It was the first instance of that fatal 
 temper of Mr. Davis which repelled every one who might 
 possibly share with him the public regard, and stand between 
 him and the eyes of the world. 
 
 But really in the early days of the Confederacy he had but 
 little to fear that any other man in the South, either in posi- 
 
100 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 tion of rival or counsellor, could intercept the public admira 
 tion of himself; and the alarm which his vanity might have 
 taken from Mr. Cobb was unreasonable. The latter had all 
 the merit we have described. But it was a type of leadership 
 that had but little to dazzle the multitude, and it only stood 
 in momentary competition with the brilliant and diseased 
 character of Jefferson Davis. The first general impression of 
 the people of the South on the selection of Mr. Davis as 
 President was lively satisfaction and a disposition to congratu 
 late themselves as on the striking natural fitness of their 
 leader. The adjustment of affairs at Montgomery had so far 
 been apparently easy, and every thing seemed to have fallen 
 in its proper place, with a President to fit exactly the mission 
 he was to undertake. The popular congratulation was a 
 plausible one, and not without some foundation in fact. Mr. 
 Davis we repeat was in many striking respects a fit and lofty 
 representative of the proud and chivalrous people of the 
 South ; he had many good qualities as a leader ; he was a fair 
 and adequate exponent of the best civilization of the South ; 
 he illustrated in just and equal measures the political scholar 
 ship and social refinement of the land that had now imposed 
 upon him its supreme representation in sight of the world. 
 He represented the best culture of the South ; he was un 
 doubtedly one of its first gentlemen ; he was a master of 
 ceremonies in social life ; and yet, after all, he was a person 
 but thinly qualified to conduct any great enterprise, or to 
 make a conspicuous and determined mark in the history of 
 his times. 
 
 And here at the very outset of our narrative of the arms 
 of the South, we may make a brief estimate of its leader, and 
 denounce, at the start, that vulgar error which mistakes any 
 intellectual superiority for universal genius, which thinks that 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 101 
 
 the accomplished orator or the ingenious politician must also 
 be the wise statesman, and which constantly indulges the 
 vague notion that the man who excels in one career must be 
 capable of equal things in other callings. This, indeed, is 
 true of genius exceptionally true ; but there is no error more 
 dangerous in the practical conduct of affairs as that which 
 estimates men as alike able and excellent in whatever cause 
 they may choose for themselves, or circumstances determine 
 for them. In some respects, Jefferson Davis was an admirable 
 man ; in other respects, we shall be prepared to denounce him 
 as a failure, a reproach and an abomination. 
 
 And here, again, we must draw a steady line of distinction 
 between Mr. Davis and the South between the delinquencies 
 of the leader and the merits of his cause. We do it here, 
 because this distinction runs through the whole of our narra 
 tive ; because it is of the very spirit of our work, and because, 
 with this idea adjusted to some extent in advance, we shall 
 not be under the necessity of repeatedly asserting and pro 
 claiming it on particular questions. 
 
 The author, in other works, has incurred the penalty of j 
 much popular misrepresentation in insisting on the virtues 
 of the South in the past war, and yet persistently holding the 
 opinion that Jefferson Davis was not a great man ; that he 
 lacked the essential requisites of such a character ; that he was 
 merely a narrow-brained person possessed of much address, 
 and some very agreeable literary accomplishments which 
 dazzled vulgar criticism and betrayed the admiration of the 
 populace. This notion, to be sure, has been greatly resented 
 by certain declamatory eulogists of Mr. Davis, men who have 
 violently associated the virtues of his person with the merits 
 of the Confederate cause. But such an association, we insist, 
 is not proper or logical. Mr. Davis was to a great degree, an 
 
102 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 accident of the war, thrust into importance by fictitious influ 
 ences; he added nothing to its inspiration, and he mixed with 
 a great cause a game of selfishness and an experiment of 
 vanity. 
 
 The most striking quality, the most constant and signifi 
 cant event of Mr. Davis administration, will be found to be 
 his jealous repulsion of advisers and assistants, and his de 
 scent to rivalry in popularity with his subordinates and lieu 
 tenants. He had, as we shall see, a puerile eagerness to 
 appropriate all the honors of the Confederate cause, and to 
 wear them conspicuously in the sight of the world. In this 
 he departed from the true line of greatness, and fell from the 
 summit to which fortune raised him. It is the unfailing 
 characteristic of the great man that he never descends to 
 competition with his subordinates, but ingeniously takes 
 every success of theirs as the source and sustenance of his 
 own greatness. Napoleon I. had marshals whom some critics 
 have thought superior to himself in military genius ; but he 
 understood that so long as he was the central historical figure, 
 history and the common opinion of mankind would naturally 
 and logically refer their successes to himself, and bestow upon 
 him the crowning glory. This, indeed, is the true art of the 
 great man the art of utilizing those around him, on the 
 principle that the successes of his subordinates eventually 
 recur to himself as the centre, magnifying him and filling up 
 the measure of his fame, rather than the weak, jealous attempt 
 of self-assertion, which drives from itself all necessary aid and 
 counsel, and choosing a naked eminence, finds only a vanish 
 ing point. Such was the attempt of Jefferson Davis which 
 we shall follow in our narrative, and display as the essential 
 weakness of a little mind. He descended to competition with 
 his lieutenants, instead of exciting among them a generous 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 103 
 
 rivalry to serve his own central and crowning fame; lie 
 grasped at all public honors for himself; and so weak was his 
 vanity, that it is remarkable it might be disturbed by the suc 
 cesses of his smallest subordinate. 
 
 But we are not going through here with an analysis of Mr. 
 Da vis s character. We are only saying so much as we may 
 properly say in advance of our narrative designing only, in 
 this place, to appropriate to him that single characteristic of 
 egotism or excessive self-assertion which is necessary to be 
 understood just here as separating him in a severe and re 
 markable manner from the cause which he served, without 
 representing, and which he lost, without illustrating either 
 its dignity or virtue. We have thought it proper to intro 
 duce this explanation here ; to say so much of the character 
 of the man, at the date of his appointment as supreme leader 
 of the South. We have ventured to indicate the spirit of our 
 work, the basis of our narrative, without anticipating its inter 
 est, or prejudicing whatever future opinions we may advance 
 in their due order of time and circumstance. 
 
 The Southern people had in the late war a great and noble 
 cause rightly understood a cause of constitutional liberty, 
 one of national and traditional import. No cause ever com 
 manded braver men, and no men ever served a better cause. 
 It perished, but only after it had run an honorable career, 
 only after its arms had been crowned with glory, and its nim 
 ble lance had tried every link in the mail of an adverse for- 
 ( tune. However those who take afterthought of fortune may 
 now despise and deride this cause however they may use 
 the flippant and easy libel of a false nomenclature, and call 
 by the name of " rebellion " a struggle for what was perma 
 nent and traditional in American history, there is no doubt it 
 carried its arms with courage, and surrendered them with 
 dignity. 
 
104 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 It is this cause which we shall find Jefferson Davis mis- 
 representing and degrading. With him the past war might 
 have been an unworthy personal ambition, or an interest in 
 Negro Slavery, the eagerness of an old decayed aristocracy to 
 maintain its insolence and execute its menaces ; but in the 
 estimation of the just and the intelligent, the struggle had the 
 dignity of a higher and nobler cause, and was maintained in 
 the spirit of a great constitutional contest. It has been called 
 a " rebellion ;" but that is only a name, a vile word, the hiss 
 of a weak and toothless argument. It has been called a 
 "slaveholders war;" but there fought in it men of the South 
 who never owned a slave, or hoped to own one. It has been 
 called " Secession," the rent of the Union, the diminution of 
 its glories ; but the separation of the States was only the inci 
 dent of the war, and it might possibly have been overcome 
 and repaired by the force of subsequent events. Indeed 
 every explanation of the struggle fails but this : that it was 
 a manifestation of a traditional conflict in American politics, 
 which continues to the present time, and is to-day vital, erect, 
 critical, and dramatic. 
 
 Jefferson Davis was not the man to act as leader of a cause 
 so broad and august. He might have represented excellently 
 well some of its externals, some of its accidents or surround 
 ings, but he fell inimitably below an occasion so great. The 
 influences that elected him at Montgomery were accidental ; 
 they were happy in some respects ; there were conspicuous 
 and apparently fortunate coincidences in them ; but they were 
 fatal at the last. A great cause was committed to an incompe 
 tent leader. The fatal error of the Southern Confederacy be 
 fell it at the moment that a man, perverse enough to ruin all 
 that was committed to hirn, and yet plausible enough to hold 
 for a long time the public confidence, became, by a strange 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 105 
 
 fatality, the man best calculated and best able to wreck and 
 betray the cause in which he was appointed. Indeed if a sin 
 gle individual had been sought within the limits of the South 
 of such various character and temper as most effectually to 
 seduce public confidence, to dazzle it, and at last to bring it 
 to ruin, the most certain and complete, he could not have 
 been found more exactly than in the person of Jefferson 
 Davis. For such a brilliant and unequal career he had really 
 no competitors. 
 
 On one of the first pages of this work we referred to the 
 "mixed" character of Mr. Davis, and suggested what valuable 
 and vivid subjects for biography have been found in charac 
 ters of this description. Indeed our best and most interesting 
 biographical literature is to be found in the lives of those re 
 markable men, who have been apparent contradictions, who 
 have been held in estimations the most opposite, who have 
 been admired and detested by turns, not so much from the 
 fickleness of the populace or the uncertainty of criticism, as 
 from the variableness of their own characters. The popular 
 opinion is not disposed to put faith in these contradictions, to 
 accept them as facts, or to regard them as other than misap 
 prehensions the man must be either great or mean, a hero 
 or an imposter ; and yet history is constantly telling us of 
 men of great force and merit, who have yet had vices the 
 most atrocious and frailties the most detestable, of those who 
 have been at once " the wisest and meanest of mankind." A 
 shallow criticism generally resents such estimates of men; 
 and he who treats justly and independently of characters so 
 remarkable is embarrassed between the enthusiasm of their 
 friends and the extravagance of their enemies. A more 
 thoughtful review however recognizes the possible reality of 
 mixed and apparently inconsistent characters, appreciates the 
 
106 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 task of their analysis, and is satisfied to see justly distributed 
 in the biographical work their virtues and their vices. 
 
 It is thus that we shall attempt to divide the good and the 
 evil in the career of Jefferson Davis, and thus that we assert 
 in the very beginning a rule of criticism which has been 
 often neglected, and which is yet drawn from the depths of 
 nature and some traces of which are in our commonest expe 
 rience. It is only the base and diseased sensitiveness of 
 partisans, on one side or the other, that resents the discrimina 
 tions of history, and that would substitute for " skilled com 
 mendation" the vulgar eulogium, and for qualified censure 
 the rage of passion and the unmeasured words of denuncia 
 tion. 
 
 When Mr. Davis commenced the career which resulted so 
 disastrously to himself and "his people" in his address at 
 the inauguration ceremonies at Montgomery in 1861 he 
 spoke with more than the customary self-distrust in the accep 
 tance of high public office. He said : " Experience in public 
 stations of a subordinate grade to this which your kindness 
 has conferred, has taught me that care and toil and disappoint 
 ments are the price of official elevation. You will see many 
 errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate ; but you shall 
 not find in me either want of zeal or fidelity to the cause that 
 is to me the highest in hope, and of most enduring affection." 
 The presentiment and the pledge of this speech were alike 
 fulfilled. Mr. Davis did, as the author firmly believes, com 
 mit numerous and grievous errors in the administration of 
 public affairs ; but his worst enemy could never question his 
 zeal or devotion, and no hostile partisan was ever adventur 
 ous enough to cast a breath of suspicion on his fidelity to the 
 cause of which he was so truly enamored, and in which he 
 was so deeply interested. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 107 
 
 We shall see, as our narrative progresses, that he did much 
 to adorn the cause of the Confederacy by the purity of his 
 life, his accomplishments, his eloquence, his dignity, the 
 marked contrast of his mind and manners to the uncouth 
 representative of the North at Washington. We shall see 
 that in many respects he greatly honored his countrymen. We 
 shall see that in the entire progress of the war, the educated 
 opinion of Europe was inclined to the South by a strong per 
 sonal admiration of Mr. Davis, as one of the first scholars and 
 orators of America ; that it could not fail to compare his learn 
 ing, his polish, his eloquence with the rude conceits and 
 cranks, the tangled English and the literary peculiarities of 
 the Northern President. We shall see that he represented 
 some of the best virtues and accomplishments of his country 
 men ; that he raised, in some respects, the standard of South 
 ern character in the eyes of the world ; that he decorated the 
 Confederate name with many noble literary images, and that 
 he served the Confederate cause with distinguished personal 
 devotion. But we shall alsoj 3 /^ that hft T>f all m Q n in the 
 South -mmedthis cause ; that he mixed with his devotion to 
 it, animosities the most unworthy ; that he carried along and 
 bound up with his public career a secret history of spiteful 
 and mean jealousies. We shall see that his mind was unbal 
 anced ; that his judgment was at once shallow and perverse , 
 that though his life was not stained with dishonor, it was 
 often steeped in petty meannesses ; that an obstacle to wise 
 counsellors, he was yet an easy prey to flatterers ; that over 
 taxing his time and almost wearing out his life by incessant 
 labors, he had yet no faculty of business ; that zealous and 
 impertinently busy in public affairs, he was yet trifling and 
 whimsical, a creator of nothing; that haughty, persistent, re- 
 pellant of advice, the approach to his vanity was always open, 
 
108 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 and the avenues of his patronage beset by a conceit as easily 
 bribed as by an obstinacy that was inexorable. Finally, we 
 shall see how a nature, capable of better things in another and 
 quieter career, was wholly unequal to the trials of a leader of 
 a great revolution ; how an ambition intoxicated by great oppor 
 tunities, became at last mnlign and paltry ; and how Jefferson 
 Davis, who might have continued a distinguished man in a 
 lesser cause, or, at least, not have had occasion there to un 
 mask his weaknesses, fell under an accumulation of fortune, 
 and ended his career in unequalled ruin and degradation. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Fire on Fort Sumter The First Shot of the War Congratulations in President Davis s Cabi 
 net The Second Secessionary Movement Fatal mistake of Mr. Lincoln He Adds a nevf 
 Breadth to the War Preparations at Montgomery Mr. Davis and an Office-Seeker Secret 
 Design of Mr. Davis in his Display of Military Preparations Sudden Disappearance of the 
 Union Party Accounted for Secession of Virginia A Torch-Light Procession in Richmond 
 Robert E. Lee Appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia Forces His Character His 
 Motives in Leaving the Federal Service His Political Opinions The Fallacy of "Petitio 
 Principii" General Lee Accepting a Sword in the State-House The Confederate States 
 Government Removed to Richmond Howell Cobb s Pledge for the Congressmen Arrival of 
 President Davis in Richmond Popular Raptures Eloquent Speeches of the President " No 
 Surrender." 
 
 THE fire on Fort Sumter opened the war ; and from this 
 octagonal work, the main post of defence in Charleston Har 
 bor, rolled off the panoramic scene of four years of armed 
 and bloody conflict. But a day before this baleful fire, Eoger 
 A. Pryor, in a speech to the citizens of Charleston, had said : 
 "I will tell you what will put Virginia in the Southern Con 
 federation in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock. Strike 
 a blow 1" The blow was struck ; and not only Virginia was 
 added to the new Union, but there came trooping, in a second 
 secessionary movement, the States of North Carolina, Tennessee 
 and Arkansas ; and not only such accession of territory and 
 means to the government at Montgomery, but another breadth 
 to the issues of the war, an added significance to the contest, 
 and a new inspiration for the South. 
 
 The question has been made by some juvenile minds, which 
 party fired the first shot in the war. But the true responsi- 
 
110 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 bility for the commencement of hostilities is not to be found 
 in a circumstance so paltry and external. The question is 
 rather which party first indicated the purpose of hostility, 
 which made the fatal menace, which drew rather than which 
 delivered the fire at Sumter. If Jefferson Davis signed the 
 order for the reduction of the fort, Abraham Lincoln had, 
 before, signed the order to reinforce it. Under a pretence of 
 relieving a starving garrison he had thrust in the face of the 
 South the menace of an expedition, consisting of eleven ves 
 sels, with two hundred and eighty-five guns and twenty -four 
 hundred men. The reply to this was the blow that reduced 
 Fort Sumter, and cleared the way of the South to the sea. 
 
 The South did fire the first shot. " We opened fire at 4.30 
 A. M." dispatched General Beauregard to the Secretary of 
 War of the Confederate States on the 12th of April. The 
 historic shot was a shell from a howitzer battery on James 
 Island. It pursued its way to a silent fortification. A white 
 smoke floated after it, parted from its upmost curve, and mel 
 ted in the higher air of heaven, like a departing angel of 
 peace, as the missile sped on its errand of ruin and affright. 
 It was the messenger of war in the cloudless sky of a Spring 
 day. Alas, with what fortunes was fraught this missile des 
 cribing its beautiful curve through the balmy air. A mo 
 ment more, and that air was filled and smitten with the fiery 
 wings of death ; the ear was torn by fearful sounds ; several 
 miles of batteries were sending forth their wrath at the grim 
 fortress that rose so defiantly from the sea. The shrill scream, 
 the dull boom, the explosion now sharp and now spluttering, 
 wrought an expression of war to which many of those assem 
 bled in contest were utter strangers, having never heard 
 before of terrific sounds but "heaven s artillery" in their 
 native mountains. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. Ill 
 
 The grand auditorium of war was succeeded by a scene to 
 which the darkness of the night was needed to give effect. 
 The fort had held out, replying only at measured intervals, 
 and the Stars and Stripes were seen floating in the breeze at 
 twilight. When the night had descended, the Confederate 
 batteries were still in full play. The skies were darkened by 
 rain-clouds ; a wind blew in shore, and repeated with distinct 
 ness in the streets of Charleston the regular boom of the 
 guns. The horizon appeared, now and then, to lift from a 
 sheet of flamo, and the trails of the shells were now plainly 
 seen along the black skies. It was a tracery of the heavens 
 more near and more fearful than that of astronomic vision. 
 Thousands watched it from the wharves of Charleston. The 
 fire was kept up until near midnight ; and those in the city 
 who laid down to sleep before that time heard the sounds that 
 told them that war had come on the land, and that a day 
 memorable to them and their children s children was being 
 numbered, by the measured strokes of battle, in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 The next day the Confederates fired with more accuracy ; 
 and before its close, the Stars and Stripes were lowered from 
 the post where they had so long been a taunting spectacle 
 to Charleston, and a defiance to the South. The fort surren 
 dered after a contest which had continued through thirty- 
 four hours; its interior a heap of ruins, but its Avails still 
 standing with the marks of six hundred shot on them. Major 
 Anderson notified the authorities at Washington that " on 
 the afternoon of the 14th of April, he marched out of the fort, 
 with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company 
 and private property and saluting his flag with fifty guns." 
 But if his colors flew and his drums beat, it was but a sorry 
 affectation ; for he had been driven out of a defence that the 
 
112 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 North had declared impregnable, and the South, in the eyes 
 of the world, had plucked the first laurel of the war. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the transport at Montgomery, when 
 it was known that Sumter had surrendered, and there swiftly 
 followed the news that Mr. Lincoln had thereupon called for 
 seventy-five thousand men, and made a virtual proclamation 
 of war. President Davis showed all the joy that could be ex 
 pected from one afflicted with neuralgia and dyspepsia ; too 
 unwell to- appear before the crowd that clamored around his 
 hotel for a speech of congratulation, but not too feeble to in 
 dulge his triumph in his Cabinet. The call of Mr. Lincoln 
 for troops was treated there with derisive laughter. Mr. 
 Benjamin, the Secretary of State, sat at a table, and wrote in 
 verse a travesty of the call which afterwards found its way 
 into the newspapers. Mr. Davis had reason to be well pleased 
 at the turn events had taken ; he saw at once the great mis 
 take which the rival President at Washington had committed 
 in usurping powers, and in broadly translating the war of 
 Secession into a war for Liberty. 
 
 The added force and inspiration given to the war by the 
 second secessionary movement of the States, impelled by Mr. 
 Lincoln s proclamation, was the true significance of the affair 
 of Sumter. It was not only that it added so many new 
 States to the Southern Confederation ; but it superinduced a 
 new issue, and afforded a new appeal in the interest of the 
 South. It was thus that the second movement of Secession 
 took place on a basis higher than the first, on a broader issue 
 and on better principles. It answered a call to the defence 
 of liberty rather than the former feeble outcry of a complaint 
 not substantiated, the mere fear of aggression. It furnished 
 the "overt act" in an open breach of the Constitution of the 
 United States. The proclamation of Mr. Lincoln was fuel 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 113 
 
 cast on the flame of Sumter. From the time he put his foot 
 on the Constitution and proclaimed a war, \vithout the action 
 - ofjCongfiss, from that moment he appeared in the character 
 of a dictator and despot, and from that moment the war in 
 the South acquired a new inspiration. It grew, as it were, in 
 one day, into the character and dimensions of a great popular 
 revolution ; it threw off the bad name of " rebellion ;" it rid it 
 self of much that had been odious in the early history of 
 Secession; and disencumbered of the arguments and re 
 proaches of those who had clung to the Union only as a 
 guaranty of peace and even gathering many of these former 
 protestants in its ranks it henceforth unfurled its banners 
 as those of a contest for constitutional liberty.* 
 
 * It may be scarcely necessary to repeat here a thought which the 
 reader should have already recognized in previous pages, viz. : that 
 no matter how the North and South got into the war and even, if 
 the latter was immediately impelled into it by a narrow and ambi 
 tious conspiracy the question is not affected as to the real merit of 
 the South in the contest. Every thoughtful historian must recognize 
 that as the war widened and as its true volume and significance were 
 developed the South rose higher and higher in the moral estimation 
 of her cause ; and if any one at this day questions that that cause 
 was truly one of liberty the sequel of the war is perhaps the best test 
 and argument to apply to such a doubt. If the cause of Secession 
 became ultimately pregnant with the cause of the Constitution, the 
 North made it so by her violence in the war. The fact is that at the 
 last the South fought for her institutions, and fought for them under 
 cover of a contest for the constitutional and traditional liberties of the 
 country. 
 
 The distinction referred to is thus powerfully indicated in an article 
 of the Old Guard (1866) : 
 
 " Here is a torn and bleeding and lacerated thing an aggregation 
 of all fierce antagonisms a great pot of conflicting passions, interests 
 and prejudices, simmering, and boiling, and bubbling with injustice 
 8 
 
114 LIFE OF JKFFEBSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Mr. Davis saw this new breadth of the war as an increase 
 of his triumph. It was the signal for enlarged military 
 preparations. There was already a force of nearly 35,000 
 men in the field, chiefly distributed at Charleston and Pensa- 
 cola; and the rage for volunteering was furnishing troops 
 faster than the government could organize them. The requi 
 sition for fifteen hundred troops from the President s State- 
 Mississippi was answered by more than three thousand 
 
 and hate which madmen and fools would have us call a Union. 
 But we, for one, will not so call it, because we will not lie. Union 
 is concord; it is harmony. But there never can be concord, harmony 
 or Union on the basis of fanaticism, intolerance, or injustice. And 
 we pray Almighty God there never may be ! We never wish to see 
 our country fall so low as to exhibit a universal acquiescence in des 
 potism and tyranny. Better eternal strife than an hour of cowardice 
 and unmanly surrender of self-government and liberty I Better eter 
 nal strife than peace in injustice ! We are told that there was a 
 great, and radical, and necessary antagonism between the North and 
 South. Who is to blame for that antagonism ? Did the South start 
 it? When? where? how? The North answers that she had an 
 institution which we could not endure. Was the South to blame for 
 our prejudice ? She held her institutions >by a charter beyond our 
 right to meddle with, and guarantied even by the Constitution that 
 made the Union. The whole controversy is in a nut-shell, thus : 
 The North says to the South, we have prejudices against your insti 
 tutions, and you must give them up. The South replies, we hold 
 our institutions by organic and statute laws, your prejudices are the 
 vagaries of the brain, and if any thing ought to be given up for the 
 sake of peace, it is your prejudices. So it came simply to this : 
 that the South must give up its /<//<*, or the North its prejudices, 
 and as the North preferred to fight rather than give up its prejudices, 
 the conflict came. The North were fighting for its prejudices, the 
 South for its rights. Both parties may have gotten into the strife un 
 wisely, but, being in, this is the simple and ineffaceable truth of the 
 whole matter." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 115 
 
 volunteers ; and those who had the good fortune to be accep 
 ted were offered bonuses by those eager to take their places 
 in the honors and hazards of war. A Navy Department was 
 organized. Two steamers were fitted out at New Orleans ; 
 contracts were made for the casting of ordnance ; and it was 
 boasted that a single mill in South Carolina was then manu 
 facturing fifty kegs of gunpowder a day. Another proclama 
 tion of President Davis was issued two days after that of Lin 
 coln. It offered letters of marque to all persons who might 
 desire, by service in private armed vessels, to aid the govern 
 ment ; and it was exulting! j said that Mr. Davis had produced 
 by this proclamation a new arm of the South, more powerful 
 than the navies of the North, and that might scourge the 
 oceans of both hemispheres. 
 
 But even in the midst of these preparations it is wonderful 
 how little was conceived at Montgomery of the prospect of an 
 extended and elaborate war. It is now known that these 
 preparations and especially the large levies of troops were 
 designed to over- awe the North, to strike its imagination by 
 a display of superior force, rather than to conduct real opera 
 tions. It was supposed that the commercial necessities of 
 that section would make an early suit for peace. " I appre 
 hend," said a member of the Montgomery Congress, " that we 
 are conscious of the power we hold in our hands by reason 
 of our producing that staple so necessary to the world. I 
 doubt not that power will exert an influence mightier than 
 armies and navies. We know that by an embargo we could 
 soon place, not only the United States, but many of the 
 European Powers, under the necessity of electing between 
 such a recognition of our independence as we require, or 
 domestic convulsions at home." Such visions of the power 
 of "King Cotton" were the familiar imaginations at Mont- 
 
116 LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 gomery. There would be no war, or scarcely one of moit 
 than a few fields, which would determine the superior man 
 hood of the South and dismay the North from a prolonged 
 contest of arms. Mr. Davis was never done expressing this 
 opinion in secret council at Montgomery, however much he 
 might have publicly exhorted the South to display her 
 utmost strength, designing such display as a menace to the 
 enemy, or, perhaps, to some extent, as a dramatic effect of 
 his own vanity of power. A favored candidate for office ap 
 plied to him a few days after the fall of Sumter, for a situa 
 tion in the War Department, suggesting that there would be 
 an accumulation of business in that branch of the government 
 Mr. Davis smiled significantly, and remarked that the work 
 in that Department would be light so light that he recom 
 mended the candidate to apply rather for a place in the Con 
 federate Treasury, as there he would be likely to have a 
 longer tenure of office. 
 
 Yet whether or not there was to be a serious war, and no 
 matter to what length it might go, it is remarkable that 
 scarcely one intelligent man in the South and least of all 
 Mr. Davis doubted the issue of success. It is true, that since 
 the opposite conclusion of the contest, many persons in the 
 South, illustrating that common dishonesty which makes men 
 declare that they foresaw whatever has happened, and im 
 pelled in many instances by a mean desire to repair the past 
 and to conciliate present opinion, have declared that they ex 
 pected from the first the overthrow of the Southern Con 
 federacy, and prophesied in their hearts the triumph of the 
 North. But this is the bald and detestable falsehood of time- 
 service. Scarcely an intelligent person in the South, at the 
 period of which we write, doubted that the Secession of the 
 Southern States was equivalent to their independence ; that 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 117 
 
 the latter was only a question of time and effort ; and the 
 singular proof of the breadth of this delusion is the almost 
 complete disappearance of the Union party in the South a 
 disappearance which continued precisely up to that time 
 when the disasters of the Confederate arms did produce a 
 feeling of uncertainty.* But there was no such feeling in 
 
 * "And here we have the opportunity of introducing an account of 
 one of the most curious phenomena of the war the sudden exit and 
 entire disappearance of the Union party in the South on the declara 
 tion of Secession. Immediately before this event, that party had been 
 numerous and formidable ; it had a compact organization ; it con 
 tained many men who, from principle and affection, were strongly 
 attached to the Union, and who were incapable of changing their 
 opinions at the mere bidding of expediency. And yet never did a 
 political party more quickly and entirely vanish from the scene after 
 an untoward election, than did the Unionists of the South after the 
 proclamation of Secession. The explanation of this extraordinary 
 disappearance is to be found not so much in the easy virtue of politi 
 cal parties, as in the especial fact of a foregone conclusion, which 
 seemed to have taken possession of the whole mind of the South, that the 
 impending conflict would necessarily result in its favor, and that the 
 mere declaration of Secession was quite as decisive of the fate of the 
 Union as would be the last battle of the war. The Union party in 
 the South had contended for the Union up to the question of Seces 
 sion ; and that decided, it considered the controversy practically 
 determined, and prepared to accommodate itself to what it regarded 
 as the inevitable fact of assured separation. The mass of the South 
 ern people, both Secessionists and Unionists, appears at this time 
 never to have admitted even the possibility of an overthrow of the 
 Southern arms, and defeat of the Confederate cause ; and the few 
 minds that did entertain such an event were so few as only to consti 
 tute the exception which proves the rule. When the Union members 
 of the Virginia Convention sobbed at their desks, and exchanged 
 tearful sympathies as the vote for Secession was announced, it was 
 because they deemed that it was all over, and that by the .mere will 
 
118 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the commencement of the war. The Union party in the South 
 had nothing to build on ; it sunk out of sight with a sudden 
 ness that only a conviction of its despair can explain, and it 
 left the field to the foregone conclusion of the independence 
 of the South. " ISTone but the demented can doubt the issue," 
 wrote General Beauregard a few days after the affair of Sum- 
 ter. "Obstacles may retard," explained Mr. Davis, in his 
 inaugural address, "they cannot long prevent the progress 
 of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a 
 virtuous people." Nor were these boasts, nor assurances of 
 the success of the Confederacy and consummations of Dis 
 union yet opinions of but individual force : they were the ex 
 pressions of the best intelligence of the South, and the echoes 
 of the common thought of the people even where that thought 
 was not fathered by wishes, and was an unwelcome conclusion 
 rather than a glad anticipation. 
 
 of the South the dissolution of the Union was irrevocably decreed. 
 It is astonishing how universal and supreme was a conviction in the 
 South, which subsequent events were so signally to belie. If we are 
 to find an explanation for such a delusion, we perhaps need go no 
 further than that popular vanity which, embracing for once the in 
 telligent with the vulgar, appears to be the common sin of all com 
 munities in America. But whatever the cause, there is no doubt 
 that the Southern public was so generally assured of the termination 
 of the war in favor of a Southern Confederacy, that the Union party 
 within the limits of the seceded States considered that the role of 
 controversy was ended, and that nothing was left them but to submit; 
 to the f.(t, and accommodate themselves to the change. Had there 
 been in the early periods of the war any considerable doubt in the 
 South of the issue of the war, it is more than probable that the Union 
 party would have maintained its organization, asserted itself much 
 sooner than it did, and seriously disturbed the first years of the 
 government." ice and his Lieutenants. Pp. 238, 239. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 119 
 
 While Mr. Davis and his associates were making their 
 rather scenic preparations for war, events were taking place 
 on a side theatre, smaller in dimensions, but for a time more 
 important and vivid than that at Montgomery. This theatre 
 was the State of Virginia. The logical course of the story of 
 the war takes us there after Sumtcr. Virginia had loDg 
 hesitated to go out of the Union and to erect a government in 
 opposition to it ; but the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln offered 
 a provocation which she could no longer withstand, and ex 
 tended a challenge which she could not afford to waive and 
 which she was not content to brook. The Examiner had a 
 quaint and impressive figure of the secession of Virginia. 
 "She turned around, and walked out of the Union, with the 
 step of an old QUEEN." There were thousands to hail her in 
 her royal wandering and to shout "Excelsior" as she went, 
 bearing the insignia of her sovereignty from the shadow of a 
 trailing flag and turned her face, lofty and sorrowful, upon 
 the path of a new fortune. That flag was stricken down in 
 an instant ; and as if by magic a new flag, the symbol of the 
 Southern Confederacy, appeared on the Capitol, appeared on 
 all the hills of Eichmond, in the windows of houses, in the 
 hands of passengers on the street. Cannon were fired around 
 it ; giddy crowds saluted it. The capital of Virginia gave it 
 self up to the intoxication of a general joy. A torch-light 
 procession illuminated the night of the 19th of April. A 
 track of transparencies gleamed from Church Hill to the Ex 
 change Hotel, and ended there in a vast crowd which hung 
 
 n the speeches of orators speaking from balconies, imparting 
 words of fire to the head of the column that toiled for a mile 
 in one of the main thoroughfares of Eichmond. Not quite 
 four years later through that same thoroughfare reaching 
 from hill to hill, following step by step, the route of the torch- 
 
120 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 light procession of 1861, passed the Federal Army, the line 
 of conquering bayonets ; and at that same convenient stand- 
 point of the Exchange Hotel, where orators had inflamed the 
 bearers of "the Southern Cross" and pointed to flags that 
 " would float over Washington in thirty days," was collected 
 the thickest of the mob that shouted welcome to the enemy, 
 and cheered their way to the easy slopes of the Capitol. 
 
 The popular rapture on the Secession of Virginia was some 
 thing peculiar ; its sudden extent showed how repressive of 
 the true sentiment of her people had been the Convention that 
 had so long hesitated to take the course dictated at Mont 
 gomery. A correspondent of a Eichmond paper wrote: 
 
 " I can give you no idea of the military spirit of the State. 
 Augusta County, a strong Whig Union county, and Eocking- 
 ham, an equally strong Democratic Union county, lying side 
 by side with Augusta, each, contribute fifteen hundred men 
 to the war. The war spirit is not confined to the men, or to 
 the white population. The ladies are not only preparing 
 comforts for the soldiers, but arming and practising them 
 selves. Companies of boys, also, from ten to fourteen years 
 of age, fully armed and well drilled, are preparing for the fray. 
 In Petersburg three hundred free negroes offered their services, 
 either to fight under white officers, or to ditch and dig." 
 
 In estimating the contributions of Virginia to the war, it is 
 not only the spirit and resources she gave to it we have to 
 calculate, but there is place here to mention one single gift 
 she made to the South worth more than all her other princely 
 cessions. She gave to the Confederate service Eobert E. Lee. 
 Of this man, more than any other the military leader of the 
 South, and more than any other far more than Jefferson 
 Davis, its ornament we may say something here and that 
 too without decline of our narrative to a slight event. In 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 121 
 
 fact the resignation of Lee from the United States army was 
 the signal of that defection from the Federal service which 
 contributed to the Southern Confederacy nearly all it had of 
 military talents, which did more than any thing else to sus 
 tain its arms, and which gave the severest blow to the Federal 
 Government, as it was arming on the threshold of the war. 
 In resigning his commission in the Federal Army and offer 
 ing his sword to his native State, Lee was, both the herald of 
 a great event and the representative of a great principle. 
 
 Robert E. Lee was one of the few characters in the past 
 war that obtained admiration or favor on both sides. Indeed, 
 in a war which proved to be so vast and exasperated, and in 
 which the combatants became so widely and so oppositely 
 separated, it required either a transcendent genius, or a large 
 and generous breadth of character to draw from both sides 
 a common tribute of admiration, and to win a joint enco 
 mium. In the case of General Lee, we are persuaded it was 
 this second quality rather than any rare gift of genius, that 
 has obtained for him a certain community of praise, and that 
 distinguished him in the estimation of the North, as well as 
 raised him to the pinnacle of admiration in the regards of his 
 Southern countrymen. It was only a great man who could 
 achieve any thing like a common reputation in the excessive 
 heat and recrimination of the war, where there were so few 
 points of agreement in either opinion or feeling ; but " great 
 ness" is the broadest of encomiastic terms, and the interesting 
 and difficult question remains, after having conferred the 
 term, in what respect and in what degree the individual was 
 great ? This question, with reference to Robert E. Lee, is 
 not one of much intricacy, and we believe that history will 
 adjust his reputation, and settle the proportions of his figure 
 in the war, with more than usual justice and exactness. 
 
122 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 In the progress of our narrative there will be found some 
 fruitful and peculiar studies concerning the character of Gen 
 eral Lee. Whatever the works of his life, they were accumu 
 lated under that sense of duty which even more than ambition 
 taxes the public man, and fills his measure of usefulness. 
 
 The " sense of duty " is one of those virtues which partakes 
 largely of the temperament of the individual. With some it 
 is an over-delicacy of conscience ; with others a plaguing 
 and unhappy casuistry. General Lee appears, however, to 
 have had that healthful and robust sense of duty which acts 
 with decision, and marches straight to its work, which forti 
 fies the soul in all circumstances, and inculcate the virtues of 
 self-possession and readiness. His severest illustration of a 
 sense of duty, he gave, in resigning from the Federal Army, 
 and turning his sword upon the government which, for 
 twenty-five years he had served with honor and satisfac 
 tion. 
 
 Since the war General Lee has given a distinct explanation 
 of the motives which determined his action, and of the politi 
 cal theory on which he yet maintains the justification of the 
 South. Resenting a report in the newspapers, that he had 
 been "wheedled into the war," he said: "So far as I know, 
 the people of the South looked upon the action of the State 
 in withdrawing itself from the Government of the United 
 States as carrying the individuals of the State along with it ; 
 that the State was responsible for the act, not the individuals, 
 and that the ordinance of Secession so-called, or those acts of 
 the State which recognized a condition of war between the 
 State and the General Government stood as their justification 
 for bearing arms against the Government of the United 
 States." 
 
 In the estimation of many, it is a slender and technical 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 123 
 
 theory on which General Lee holds his justification ; but no 
 one can doubt the sincerity of the allegation. He has, also, 
 since the war, explained that he thought it was " unnecessary, 
 and might have been avoided, if forbearance and wisdom had 
 been exercised on both sides ;" but he denies that his own 
 individual action was at all determined by the persuasions 
 and intrigues of politicians. This is the true historical ex 
 planation given by General Lee himself of the vexed story 
 of his choice in the war a story which has had so many 
 apocryphal versions and additions ; and the reader will proba 
 bly make the commentary on it, suggested from his own 
 standpoint in the traditional controversy of State Eights, and 
 drawn from his own chosen school of political opinion. 
 
 In any view it must be confessed that, with respect to sel 
 fish consideration or worldly prudence, Lee s declination of 
 the Federal service was undoubtedly pure. He spurned am 
 bition, the bribes of office, personal interest ; and while he 
 appeared to hesitate at the outset of hostilities, it was only 
 that his conscientious and introspective mind was anxious 
 to discover the line of duty, as events developed it. The 
 Secession of Virginia left him, as he considered, no choice 
 but to obey her commands and to assure her solicitations. In 
 most of the Northern criticisms of his decision in this junc 
 ture, the fallacy of the petitio principii, ("begging the ques 
 tion ") has been ingeniously inserted in the charge that he 
 showed a narrowness of mind in pleading a partiality for his 
 State against his duty to the General Government, a mere 
 local affection opposed to "loyalty." We certainly do not 
 propose here to discuss the vexed subject of State Rights; 
 and yet we must perceive that the criticism referred to, is 
 logically unfair in ignoring that school of politics to .which 
 General Lee belonged, and in which he had been taught, that 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the Union was the creature of the States, that it had no mis 
 sion apart from their convenience, and no virtue but in rep 
 resenting their interests. If this was an error it was yet an 
 honest and traditional error, one which, for three generations, 
 had included the best minds of the South, and had been 
 illustrated by its most distinguished names. Admit that 
 Lee was misled, and yet his error was not only unstained 
 by selfishness, but a more generous one than his severe cen 
 sors have been willing to admit. 
 
 He had been taught in his slight political education that 
 the State was superior to the Federal Government in its 
 claims upon the affections of the intelligent ; that it was the 
 peculiar object of patriotism ; that it was the symbol of the 
 Jove of country, rather than the Union which, in the estima 
 tion of the school of politics referred to, was the mere geo 
 graphical designation of a league created by the States, and 
 designed for the benefit and pleasure of each. Thus think 
 ing, he went with Virginia in the war, and to her side of the 
 contest. However he valued the Union, and saw no necessity 
 for the Secession of his State, he felt bound to recognize it as 
 that political community to which, as the original and only 
 permanent element in the American system, his allegiance 
 belonged ; as his home, around which the affections of the 
 man naturally cling ; as the abode of family and friends, where 
 the protection of his arm and sword was due at the approach 
 of danger. When standing in the State-house, he accepted the 
 sword which the Convention of Virginia placed in his hand, 
 he said, with memorable solemnity : " Trusting in Almighty 
 God, an approving conscience, and the aid of my fellow-citi 
 zens, I devote myself to the service of my native State, in 
 whose behalf alone will I ever again draw the sword." 
 
 The person of the commander-in-chief of Virginia was 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE COXFEDKRACY. 125 
 
 singularly noble, and at once inspired emotions. It has been 
 thus described by this author, witnessing the scene of bestow 
 ing pn him, in the State-house at Kichmoncl, his first com 
 mand in Yirginia: "Every spectator admired the personal 
 appearance of the man, his dignified figure, his air of self- 
 poised strength, and features in which shone the steady ani 
 mation of a consciousness of power, purpose, and position. 
 He was in the full and hardy flush of ripe years and vigor 
 ous health. His figure was tall, its constituents well knit 
 together ; his head, well shaped and squarely built, gave in 
 dications of a powerful intellect ; a face not yet interlined by 
 age, still remarkable for its personal beauty, was lighted up 
 by eyes black in the shade, but brown in the full light, clear, 
 benignant, but with a deep recess of light, a curtained fire in 
 them that blazed in moments of excitement ; a countenance, 
 the natural expression of which was gentle and benevolent, 
 yet struck the beholder as masking an iron will. His man 
 ners were at once grave and kindly ; without gayety or 
 abandon, he was also without the affectation of dignity. Such 
 was the man whose stately figure, in the Capitol at Kich- 
 mond, brought to mind the old race of Virginians, and who 
 was thereafter to win the reputation, not only as the first 
 commander, but also as the fiist gentleman of the South, 
 the most perfect and beautiful model of manhood in the war. 
 The first task imposed upon General Lee, after accepting a 
 commission in the service of Yirginia, was to organize the 
 State forces, and that before President Davis had brought up 
 the effulgent front of the war from Montgomery to Kich- 
 mond. He performed this task most successfully. It has 
 been well said of him, that he made the reputation of a skil 
 ful organizer of armies before he commenced the career of 
 active commander in the field. He sat almost daily in the 
 
126 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Advisory Council of Virginia a body, the secret history of 
 which was, that it had been raised by the Secessionists in the 
 Convention to keep watch and check on Governor Letcher, 
 and which was now translated to the concern of equipping 
 and preparing the State for war. So effectually was it done, 
 that nearly fifty thousand men were in arms in Virginia to 
 meet Mr. Davis in the month of May, 1861, and to shelter his 
 government on its removal to Kichmond. 
 
 That removal had been resolved upon by President Davis 
 almost from the day it was known that Virginia had seceded. 
 It has been said that he was secretly opposed to it, that he 
 thought the seat of the government should not be so risked 
 so near the enemy ; but, in his public expressions at least, he 
 .passionately advised it, and was eager to display the advance 
 line of the Confederacy on the banks of the Potomac. On 
 the -21st May, the Montgomery Congress adjourned to meet 
 in Eichmond. Mr. Cobb, its presiding officer, gave a curious 
 explanation of its desire to advance to Richmond, and one 
 ludicrous enough in the sequel. He said " We have sent 
 our soldiers on to the posts of danger, and we wanted to be 
 there to aid and counsel our brave boys. In the progress 
 of the war, further legislation may be necessary, and we will 
 be there, that, when the hour of clanger comes, we may lay 
 aside the robes of legislation, buckle on the armor of the 
 soldier, and do battle beside the brave ones who have volun 
 teered for the defence of our beloved South." What proofs 
 ensued of this flatulent patriotism and martial ardor of the 
 Confederate legislators, remain to be told. 
 
 The Confederate Government came to Richmond in a storm 
 of popular applause, and with an exaltation of spirits almost 
 indescribable. President Davis travelled through scenes of 
 ovation. Every thing wore for him now the color of the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 127 
 
 rose. None of those unhappy personal animosities that after 
 wards degraded his administration, had yet been developed ; 
 and even Yice-President Stephens, who had not yet been in 
 volved in that quarrel with him which gave so much scandal 
 to the Confederacy, thus spoke of the " coming man" : "His 
 flag never yet trailed in the dust. This noble and true son 
 of the South goes to Eichmond to take command, in person, 
 of our soldiers there, and to lead them upon the battle-field." 
 On the 20th of May, Mr. Davis was receiving the congratu 
 lations of his friends in Kichmond, and haranguing a crowd 
 from the balcony of the Spotswood Hotel. " The President 
 of the Six Nations," as he had been called at Montgomery, 
 was now welcomed to accept an Empire extending from the 
 Potomac to the Eio Grande. His first days in Eichmond 
 were devoted to ovations, to patriotic exhortations, to re 
 views, and other animating displays. Some of the speeches 
 were the finest of his life. He exhorted his hearers to re 
 member the dignity of the contest, and, leaving to the enemy 
 the resources of plunderers and ruffians, to " smite the smiter 
 with manly arms, as did our fathers before us," To the sol 
 diers, he declared he would lay down his civil office, and take 
 command of the armies, should the extremity of the cause 
 ever demand his sword ; and, on one occasion, speaking in an 
 encampment at Eockett s, and turning his face to a regiment 
 of South Carolina troops, he said, with grand emotion, " When 
 the last line of bayonets is levelled, I will be with you I" Tha 
 public had not yet conceived the length and breadth of the 
 contest the great figure it was to make in history. Their 
 notions of the war appeared to be circumscribed by the 
 memories of Mexico ; and the crowd interrupted the august 
 speaker, exclaiming, " Tell us something of Buena Vista !" 
 Mr. Davis replied, "I can only say, we will make the battle- 
 
128 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 fields in Virginia another Buena Vista, and drench them 
 with blood more precious than that which flowed there. We 
 will make a history for ourselves. We do not ask that the 
 past shall shed our lustre upon us, bright as our past has 
 been for we can achieve our own destiny. We may point 
 to many a field, over which has floated the flag of our coun 
 try, when we were of the United States, upon which Southern 
 soldiers and Southern officers reflected their brave spirits in 
 their deeds of daring ; and without intending to cast a shadow 
 upon the courage of any portion of the United States, let me 
 call it to your remembrance, that no man who went from 
 these Confederate States has ever yet, as a general officer, sur 
 rendered to an enemy." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 129 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 Some Account of the City of Richmond A Provincial City before the War What its Decoration 
 as Capital of the Confederacy cost it Early Scenes of the War in Richmond Brilliant and 
 Picturesque Days A Confederate Soldier and a Little Lady The Red River Men Early 
 Clamor for Aggressive Warfare Why it was Impossible at This Time " On-tc- Washington" 
 Horace Greeley wants the War Limited to a Single Battle The Great Victory of Manassas 
 The Three Stages of the Battle President Davis on the Field A Curious Contretemps Hew 
 Mr. Davis was disappointed by General Beauregard Instance of his Personal Courage on the 
 Field A Night Scene at General Beauregard s Quarters Singular Figure of the President. 
 
 BEFORE the war, Richmond was a very quiet city, of only 
 inland importance, and of simple provincial manners. It 
 had neither the extent, nor the variety of a metropolis ; and 
 if it was at all deplorable that it had but few of the displays 
 and excitements of s-uch places, it was more than comforting 
 that it had none of their vices. Rowdyism was almost un 
 known in it, and its whole police establishment consisted of 
 about a dozen so-called "Watchmen," who had scarcely any 
 other occupation than to confine the few belated negroes, who 
 were found on its streets after nine o clock at night, in a de 
 cayed wooden building a terror to truants and evil-doers 
 under the name of " The Cage." There were no Police items 
 for the newspapers, except what was furnished in the Mayor s 
 Court, by the fine of a few minor malefactors collected in 
 " The Cage," or a dreary list of negro vagabonds sent to the 
 whipping-post. Richmond had no sensations no fashionable 
 dissipations no alarming vices ; it lived in an even, healthy 
 atmosphere perhaps the quietest of American cities yet 
 charming the traveller by the simplicity of its life, and de 
 taining him by the abundant hospitality that circulated in its 
 9 
 
130 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 homes. It was often noticed as a city which was as remarka 
 ble for its quiet enjoyments as for its public order. To the 
 countryman of Virginia, who visited the chief city of his 
 State perhaps once a year, to sell his crop, it was a wonderful 
 metropolis ; and, after having dined at Zetelle s, and beheld, 
 as he believed, the summit of civilization and luxury in Bal- 
 lard s Exchange, he returned home to recount its sights and 
 his adventures to circles of simple listeners. It is, indeed, 
 curious and amusing, what pride of this sort a rude and un- 
 travelled people take in their large inland towns. It is 
 one of the traditions of provincial cities. And thus, if one 
 had said, some years back, in Virginia, that Kichmond was 
 but a large, comfortable village, compared with New York, 
 Boston, or Philadelphia, he would perhaps have incurred the 
 serious resentment alike of the Lords and Commons of the 
 Old Dominion. 
 
 But, better for Kichmond had it never aspired to metro 
 politan dignity, or quitted its good old habits of Virginia 
 provincialism. The late war forced upon it an unhappy im 
 portance. It brought into a place, that had only conveniently 
 held about forty thousand people, a population of at least 
 one hundred and forty thousand. It revolutionized its man 
 ners, to an extent that only an observer of the contrast could 
 realize made of a healthful inland town, a brilliant, wicked 
 metropolis and turned its quiet, shady streets, hitherto jin- 
 vexed of crowds, into the throbbing, tumultuous avenues of 
 a crowded capital. It made this beautiful eity, as by a single 
 word of command, the unhappy capital of the Southern Con 
 federacy, and the bloody hatchblock of the war ! The Kich- 
 mond of 1861, could no longer be recognized as the Kich 
 mond of other days. It was as if there had been suddenly 
 called into existence, on the banks of the island dotted James, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 a new, monstrous, garish city of fable, decked with camps, and 
 arsenals, and furnaces full of the bustle and picturesqueness 
 of preparations for war and teeming with the new and strange 
 life that had taken possession, as by magic, of the old land 
 marks and borders of a former period. Many of the old resi 
 dents cf Eichmond would have regarded the change with dis 
 may and resentment, had they not been consoled by the thought 
 that their city was decorated by the choice of it as .the capital 
 of the new Confederacy, and the gateway to the war. 
 
 In the advent of Mr. Davis and his government, the quiet 
 capital of Virginia was quick to put on the aspects of military 
 life, the brilliant but harshly significant ornaments of war. 
 The hills on which it rested, from the gentle swells north of 
 the capital to the scarred and stone-decked acclivities about 
 Eockett s, gashed with streaks of red clay, the topmost of 
 them newly named " Chimborazo" by the troops which occu 
 pied it, were dotted with tents of soldiers ; and these new 
 and strange features of the scene, flecked the more distant 
 landscape, stretched away on the table-lands, where the green 
 corn already waved, or glanced in the thick foliage of the 
 dells. The streets of the city were alive with new spectacle s. 
 Cavaliers, with severe looks, paced through them pictur 
 esque couriers dashed to and fro the blare of military music 
 smote the ear, or died sweetly in the distance the click of 
 artillery wagons the tramp of regiments, moving compactly 
 through the thoroughfares mingled with the clatter and 
 voice of trade. For miles around the city in the forests of 
 the young oak which gird Eichmond, where formerly nothing 
 was heard but the twitter of birds, or the wheezing of the 
 squirrel, or perchance the dull chant of the Negro moping 
 through the underbrush for firewood were now the camps 
 and bivouacs of the new soldiers, the woods alive with horses 
 
132 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 and men, and vocal with the blast of the bugle, the shrill 
 neigh of the tethered charger, and the shout of the recruits, 
 amusing themselves with games, not yet having commenced 
 the terrible one of life and death in battle. 
 
 These were brilliant and picturesque days for Richmond- 
 None knew yet the dire realities, the sickness, the mutilation, 
 the sufferings, and the injuries of war. They saw only its 
 ornaments, its brilliant embroidery, its dancing plumes, and 
 its bright arms. But the Confederate capital was yet serious 
 in its joy ; it had to pass through another stage, hereafter 
 noticed, to become the most corrupt and licentious city south 
 .of the Potomac. For the present, there were no social 
 diversions, none of those interludes of fashion and frivolity 
 which happen in all great historical epochs and even the 
 common vices and dissipations which attend armies, had not 
 caught up with the quick movement of the front into Vir 
 ginia. The ladies were busy in sewing societies making 
 garments for soldiers ; and even the most frivolous of them 
 found their time sufficiently occupied in manufacturing 
 needle-cases, thread-bags, and forget-me-nots, for the sons 
 of Mars. A lady of fashion, but a most estimable one, hap 
 pened to propose, at one of the hotels, a dance to promote 
 sociability, when she was silenced by exclamations of horror 
 from her companions " What, dance !" they cried, " when 
 our brothers and husbands are courting death !" Yet, a few 
 months later, there were balls enough in Richmond, besides 
 worse festive occasions. 
 
 At the time of which we write, an earnest pre-occupation 
 with the war was the feature of society in Richmond. The 
 garb of the civilian had become unfamiliar in the streets. 
 These were filled with troops. On each night was heard the 
 tramp of new arrivals ; and nearly every sun glanced on 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 133 
 
 bayonets in the thoroughfare, many of these bayonets bearing 
 on them flowers bestowed by women, a garnish dress for that 
 murderous steel which in all language is the symbol of war. 
 The soldiers were welcomed, and feted, and lionized. The 
 finest ladies in Kichmond affected the dainty charity of 
 baking bread in the camp of a South Carolina regiment. 
 The reviews were attended by the most fashionable persons, 
 and seldom a day passed, in the early summer of 1861, when 
 the ladies were not called to the windows to wave their hand 
 kerchiefs amid the huzzas of some newly -arrived regiment, 
 making the streets gay with music and banners, and the new 
 gilt equipage of war not yet tried or tarnished in the furnace 
 of battle. 
 
 The intermingling of the best ladies in Kichmond with the 
 soldiers was something curious. The usual routine of social 
 life was abandoned, and a universal interest in ihe war broke 
 down the barriers of sex as well as of class. Even those 
 ladies most exclusively reared, who had formerly bristled with 
 punctilios of propriety, admitted the right of any soldier to 
 address them, to offer them attentions, and to escort them in 
 the street. The ceremony of an introduction was not re 
 quired ; the uniform was sufficient as such ; it became a pledge 
 of gallantry and woe, in female estimation, to the unlucky 
 wight who yet tarried in citizens habiliments. It is an 
 honor to these early soldiers of the Confederacy that not a 
 single instance is known of their freedom of accosting the 
 ladies of Eichmond a most dangerous liberty surely being 
 abused by an insult, or an indignity, or one improper word. 
 On the other hand, the author knew of but one instance of 
 displeasure at such liberty on the part of a lady and that a 
 very little lady. A child of eight years, who had already 
 learned something of the usual manners of society, was 
 
134 LIFE OF JKFFKKSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 shocked at the familiarity of a soldier who had presumed to 
 caress her. Turning to her elderly companion, she exclaimed : 
 "Why, Aunt! any man that wears a stripe on his panta 
 loons thinks he can speak to any lady !" The little lady had 
 not yet learned the significance of the soldier s uniform, and, 
 considering the circumstances in which it was donned, its 
 persuasive power in the eyes of her sex. 
 
 In the first collection of troops in and around Eichmond it 
 was interesting to notice some of the early peculiarities of the 
 Confederate soldier. Nearly every State of the South was 
 represented by a regiment or more. The Hampton Legion 
 from South Carolina, generally esteemed the flower of this 
 first Army of Virginia, was remarkable for aristocratic 
 material, and the luxurious habits of their camp. It is ludic 
 rous now and especially in memory of the tatterdemallions 
 of another period of the war, who walked barefoot through 
 the snow and slush in front of the War Department to 
 think of privates going to the battle-field with trunks in the 
 army baggage, and attended by body servants. The dress- 
 parades of this regiment of gentlemen were the admiration 
 and delight of Eichmond ; and the elegant carriages that 
 crowded the skirts of the manoeuvres were as gay and numer 
 ous as on a fashionable race-course. Eanged not far from 
 this envied regiment were the hardier sons of Southern 
 Chivalry, presenting, indeed, every variety of the Southern 
 man. There were the Louisiana Zouaves, Wheat s command, 
 small tough men with gleaming eyes fierce-looking warri 
 ors from the soldier State of Mississippi quaint and sinewy 
 Arkansas riflemen soldierly-looking Virginians and Geor 
 gians, singularly alike in their physical characteristics 
 grotesque and drawling North Carolina "tar-heels," who did 
 not need this recommendation to stick rude and dashing 
 
SECKET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 135 
 
 Texan Eangers, who had taken as a compliment General 
 Taylor s remark in the Mexican war, that they were any 
 thing but gentlemen or cowards I To look at these various 
 men, one would have been completely disabused of an idea 
 then somewhat prevalent in the North, that the Southern sol 
 dier was deficient in physique. The caricature of Harpers 
 Magazine of a sickly-looking Southerner carrying his musket 
 under an umbrella and attended by a Negro with a cock-tail 
 to replenish his strength, did not far outdo the popular notion. 
 But probably in the Northern army it would have been im 
 possible to match the Eed Eiver men a singular body of 
 soldiers distinguished by this name in the early war, and 
 coming from the northern portion of Louisiana and southern 
 portion of Arkansas, in the neighborhood of the Eed Eiver. 
 These men were easily singled out by their resemblance to 
 each other, in extraordinary stature, in brawny and muscular 
 development, and in evident powers of endurance In a regi 
 ment of these men there was scarcely one under six feet, and 
 with their massive shoulders and chests bearing not an ounce 
 of superfluous flesh, they appeared, indeed, to stand as a living 
 wall to test the shocks of battle. 
 
 In view of such a numerous and brilliant soldiery, it was 
 natural that there should have sprung up a popular passion 
 for warfare of the most aggressive kind. The first clamor in 
 Eichmond was for a war of invasion a plan of campaign 
 which should capture Washington, "the wallow of Lincoln 
 and Scott," and plant its standards of defiance on the territory 
 of the North. The Eichmond Examiner exclaimed : " From 
 mountain top and valleys to the shores of the sea, there is 
 one wild shout of fierce resolution to capture Washington 
 City, at all and every human hazard !" 
 
 But President Davis did well to set his face against that 
 
136 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 shout. For once at least "his government was entirely right 
 in quelling the popular sentiment. It was not a mean and 
 timid prudence that dictated a defensive warfare; and looking 
 back now, in the light of history, upon that early clamor for 
 a war of , invasion, we can understand how irrational it was, 
 and how wise the government was in its efforts to contain the 
 impatience of a people suddenly called to arms, and having 
 but little idea of what they had to encounter. The South 
 had already done wonders. It was an agricultural people ; 
 and that a people thus confined should in three months after 
 their organization as a nation been able to put such armies in 
 the field was a remarkable event ; but that they should be 
 able in this time to enter upon a war of invasion against a 
 commercial and manufacturing people, greatly superior in 
 numbers and resources, would have been an almost miracu 
 lous achievement. It takes the greatest and best equipped 
 nations some time to get into actual war after they have de 
 clared it ; and when that war is one of invasion, the task of 
 preparation becomes greatly more arduous and extended. 
 The North with every facility to raise and equip an army, 
 and, indeed, possessing the army and navy of the nation 
 when undivided, was yet unable to commence a movement 
 of invasion until weeks after such a movement was asked on 
 the part of the Confederate Government by the popular im 
 patience at Eichmond ; and even then the afterthought of the 
 experiment was that it had been hasty and premature. 
 How then could the South, requiring an especial length of 
 time to allow of concentration and national organization, 
 fettered by agricultural pursuits, and destitute of all facilities 
 for a strong and sustained effort have undertaken a war of 
 invasion at the time the cry of " On-to- Washington " saluted 
 the ears of a government not yet warm in its seat in 
 Richmond ? 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 137 
 
 It was a most senseless cry. Circumstances, and not Jeffer 
 son Davis, determined the character of the war on the part of 
 the Confederacy, and decided that it should be, in the main, 
 a defensive one. When, in his first message to Congress, he 
 had said, "All we ask is to be let alone," he had spoken 
 instinctively the present and immediate want of the South. 
 Time in that emergency was the only source of life to the 
 Confederacy ; and to extend the season of preparation was the 
 care of reflecting minds in opposition to the headlong passion 
 of the multitude. The new government had actually nothing 
 with which to clothe, equip or move an army, unless it had 
 been bought abroad and imported within its territory. How, 
 in the face of such stark necessities, could it have been ex 
 pected in so short a time to not only put a great war on foot, 
 but to carry into the territory of an enemy thickly planted 
 with military resources, and superior in every respect of means 
 and material ? 
 
 The cry of " On-to- Washington" found no serious response 
 in the government at Richmond. It was probably scarcely 
 more than the popular expression of a certain contemptuous 
 spirit towards the enemy. Mr. Davis wanted all the time he 
 could get for preparation ; General Lee was near him to ad 
 vise that the war-spirit needed rather to be quieted and regu 
 lated than to be further inflamed; and when, at last, it was 
 decided to give up Alexandria and Harper s Ferry, and to 
 withdraw the line of defence twenty or thirty miles south of 
 the Potomac, the wise thought the new government had ven 
 tured far enough, although the troops showed something of 
 dispirit and the newspapers had something to say of "the 
 hateful current of retreat." 
 
 But if there was such a current of retreat, it was soon to 
 turn with a brilliant crest. The surprise at Philippi, the 
 
138 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 affair of Bethel, the operations of General Wise on Scary 
 Creek, the bombardment of Pig s Point, and the disaster of 
 .Rich Mountain, made great figures in the newspapers when 
 war was novel ; but they were, in fact, the slightest preludes 
 to the contest that was to ensue, and scarcely deserved a 
 breath of exclamation. On both sides there was great popu 
 lar anxiety for a general battle, to determine the question of 
 relative manhood ; and especially on the side of the South, 
 from an impression that one distinct and large combat result 
 ing in its favor, and showing conspicuously its superior valor 
 would alarm the North sufficiently to make it abandon the 
 war. This impression had been especially given from the 
 New York Tribune, which was supposed to represent at that 
 time, more than any other journal, the temper of the North. 
 The readers of this paper at this day appear scarcely to recol 
 lect a remarkable, studious article in which in the month of 
 July, 1861, Mr. Horace Greeley wrote or dictated to the effect 
 that the North was averse to any thing like prolonged war, 
 that it would not tolerate such a supposition, that it desired 
 an early determination of the contest, to such an extent that 
 it its troops were fairly defeated in one open field, man to 
 man, he would pledge it to retire with good grace and to sur 
 render the contest !* 
 
 A field for the grand duelk was soon found ; the question 
 
 * Thus the Tribune of the 19th of July, 1861, says : " We have been 
 most anxious that this struggle should be submitted at the earliest 
 moment to the ordeal of a fair decisive battle. Give the Unionists a 
 fair field, equal weapons and equal numbers, and we ask no more. 
 Should the Eebel forces at all justify the vaunts of their journalistic 
 trumpeters we shall candidly admit the fact. If they can beat dou 
 ble the number of Unionists, they can end the struggle on their own 
 terms." 
 
. SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 139 
 
 of relative manhood was brought fairly to the test ; the battle 
 of Manassas was fought with what sequel, in contradiction 
 of Mr. Greeley s pledge, the world now knows. 
 
 Here the South won the first great victory of her arms ; 
 and although varying fortunes followed this event, and disas 
 ters, which never came from lack of Southern valor lurked in 
 the sequel although the South afterwards sunk under vast 
 accumulations of the enemy s power, but not until the cour 
 age of her soldiers, which blood had never quenched, had 
 been beaten down by the iron heel of numbers yet it is a 
 grand consolation that the glory of Manassas is her "posses 
 sion forever," that it can never be expunged from the page 
 of history, or diminished by the utmost ingenuity or zeal of 
 falsehood. The whole world knows this day ; and although 
 it may have kept blurred and indistinct recollections of other 
 periods and scenes of the war, it is remarkable how full and 
 faithful and vivid is the memory it has retained of the drama 
 of Manassas. 
 
 There is less perhaps of confusion, and conflict of evidence 
 as to the numbers displayed on the field, and the incidents of 
 the combat, than in the case of any other battle of the war. 
 It is agreed that McDowell attempted his plan of battle with 
 a force in motion of forty thousand, regulars and volunteers, 
 against a force actually engaged of only fifteen thousand vol 
 unteers. We mean to say, that only fifteen thousand Confede 
 rate troops were at any one time engaged in the battle. When 
 the column of attack first descended from Sudley Ford, only 
 five Confederate regiments and six guns breasted it ; and it 
 was here that Jackson raised his crest, as the bristling Fed 
 eral battalions came on, and, like Coleridge s Ancient Mari 
 ner, " held with glittering eye " the maddened retreat. Again 
 the scene shifts, to the plateau of the Henry House ; and here 
 
140 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 (we speak exactly from General Beauregard s official report,) 
 6500 withstood the onset. " It was then," says General Beaure- 
 gard, " I urged the men to the resolution of victory, or death 
 on the field," a modest report of the speech he made when 
 leaping from his foaming horse ; his spirit blazed out in words 
 of remembered eloquence, and he pointed his shining sword 
 to the path where he had " come to die." " Then," continues 
 Beauregard, " I felt assured of the unconquerable spirit of 
 that army, which would enable us to wrench victory from the 
 host then threatening us with destruction." The plateau is 
 won, and the third and final scene rises in succession. Here, 
 with the reinforcements of Kirby Smith and Elzey, with the 
 line of the Confederates fully developed, less than fifteen 
 thousand men prepare for the final action of the day, while 
 the enemy makes his second grand sweep by a still greater 
 circuit. Just as he makes the bend to envelop the Confed 
 erate left, the command "Forward!" runs along its whole 
 line. The field is swept as by a tempest a great army is 
 broken into a confused mass its organization, its life, gone in 
 a moment ! And half an hour later, Jackson, rising in his 
 stirrups, and looking over fields where there is nothing but 
 herds of fugitives, mutters, " Give me ten thousand men, and 
 I will be in Washington to-night !" 
 
 Such is the brief, dramatic story of the battle at every 
 point of it, in each of its three critical stages, great superiority 
 of the enemy s force ; a victory gained after the Confederate 
 troops had been twice driven to the most desperate ex 
 tremity ; a crowning evidence of what valor may accomplish 
 against the weight of numbers and the dispositions of science. 
 In the morning of the eventful day, President Davis hud 
 left Richmond for the field of battle. What carried him 
 there was never explained. It was not as President Lincoln, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. Ml 
 
 and other civil magistrates, often did in the course of the 
 war to visit a field already decided, and to review or medi 
 tate upon it. There was, indeed, a carping commentary in 
 Richmond, that President Davis should have been present at 
 Manassas on this day, and should have left his office at the 
 capital to thrust himself into a scene of actual battle, and per 
 haps to interfere with the Confederate commanders. It was 
 known only to those very intimate with him that he had left 
 Eichmond that morning to command, in person, the army ; 
 and hence the curious mistake which appeared in all the 
 newspapers of the South next day, and which the agent of 
 the Associated Press had predicated on what had been whis 
 pered to him of the intentions of Mr. Davis, that " the President 
 commanded the centre " in the action of the day. Mr. Davis 
 did not command the centre ; he arrived too late for the battle, 
 and only when the enemy was flying. It is said that he 
 never forgave General Beauregard for this contretemps, in 
 which his vanity was so disappointed, and that in this circum 
 stance originated his first disaffection towards that com 
 mander, which .was afterwards carried to every extremity of^ 
 enraged persecution. However this may be, it is certain that 
 General Beauregard had never notified the President of the 
 time when he proposed to give battle ; he was under no 
 obligation to do so, and perhaps he suspected the intention of 
 Mr. Davis to lead his army into action. All he was compelled 
 to do was to apply to the President for authority for the army 
 corps of General Johnston to join him, and it is positively 
 known that this was the only intimation Mr. Davis had that 
 a battle was to be delivered. He arrived too late to take 
 part in it, or to gather the military laurel of which he had 
 dreamed the night before. But he did not arrive too late to 
 make some display of personal heroism. 
 
142 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 He rode from the cars towards the sublime scene in which 
 the battle had culminated and broken on the horizon of even 
 ing. A cloud of smoke and dust had lifted from the plain 
 and hung sullenly in the sky ; there was the distant clamor 
 of battle ; the strokes of artillery, slow and ponderous, smote 
 the air; black masses of men, wavering, indistinguishable, 
 bounded the strained vision and perplexed it. It was impos 
 sible to tell from a distance which army had won the day, or 
 what flags rode in the mixed scene. The President galloped 
 forward to learn the state of the field. No one could tell him 
 amid the roar and confusion. As he rode swiftly through a 
 stream of stragglers, it seemed as if he was in the midst of a 
 retreat, breasting its bad and dusty current. At that moment 
 his brother, Joseph Davis, galloped to his side, and said, " the 
 day is lost ; let us go no further." " No," said the President 
 grandly, "if the army is defeated so much the greater reason 
 that I should be with my brave men and share their fate." 
 They were the words of a personal courage which nothing in 
 his life ever turned or daunted ; and they were perhaps re 
 membered when a distinguished son of Virginia recently re 
 viewing the leader of "the lost cause," declared briefly that 
 he was a man who had had many favorable chances and who 
 had attained greatness only from comparison with a race of 
 political pigmies in Mississippi and the Southwest, and who, 
 with all the advantages of fortune, had shown but two virtues 
 a devoted espousal of his cause and " indomitable pluck." 
 
 The scene changes from the grandeur and tumult of battle. 
 The night has fallen and the stars have risen above the combs 
 of the Blue Eidge, now a dusky boundary of the wide plain. 
 Jackson has gone to his tent, gloomy and reluctant, mutter 
 ing "it is not my office to advise the commander-in-chief to 
 pursue." Before another tent, larger and more pretentious, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 143 
 
 above which float in the night air the emblems of the South 
 ern Confederacy, a quiet, elderly gentleman is seated, clad in 
 simple grey, his brows shaded by a felt hat of light color and 
 ample dimensions, his mouth garnished with a fragrant cigar, 
 evidently a person taking his ease and indulging self-compla 
 cency. This man is Jefferson Davis. There is a group of 
 laced officers around him; General Beauregard sits among 
 them ; and General Johnston comes and goes, sharing the light 
 and desultory conversation, and anon retiring to perform 
 some duty. Not a man speaks of pursuit of the enemy ; not 
 one has conceived it. They speak of some incidents of the 
 field ; Mr. Davis inquires of some of his Mississippi friends ; 
 the conversation becomes general, of politics, of persons in 
 Washington, of any ftiing else but the fugitive enemy ; there 
 is an abandonment in the scene, and every one is disposed 10 
 be well pleased and sociable. A few miles farther from this 
 light recreation, there are great, broken masses of men in 
 mad retreat, the hum of their flight rising in the black hol 
 lo wness of the night, panting, struggling, pressing on in inex 
 tricable disorder, and yet with nothing at their heels but 
 their own terrors. This is the Federal Army, the "Grand 
 Army." It flies through the night ; it makes its escape ; it is 
 already shivering on the banks of the Potomac ; while Jeffer 
 son Davis picturesquely smokes his cigar, strokes his neural 
 gic parts, and tells anecdotes at the door of General Beaure- 
 gard s tent. 
 
144 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVI.S, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The South Intoxicated by the Victory of Manassas Who was Responsible for not Pursuing the 
 Enemy to Washington A Larger and more Important Question than that The True History 
 of a Secret and Notable Council of War President Davis Rejects the Advice of his Three Princi 
 pal Generals He Decides for the Policy of Dispersion or Frontier-Defence A Glance at the 
 Character of General Johnston President Davis s Quarrel with General Beauregard An In 
 terval of Infamous Intrigues at Richmond How Mr. Hunter was Driven from the Cabinet 
 Conceit of the President "Waiting for Europe" Demoralization of Inactive Armies Rapid 
 Corruption of Society in Richmond "The Wickedest City" Mr. Davis at a Fancy Dress Ball 
 Unpopular Conduct of his Wife Anecdote of the President Criticism of a "Tar Heel " Mr. 
 Davis and the Faithful Sentinel of the Libby Prison A Historical Parallel 1 Connubial Fondness 
 of Mr. Davis His Collection of Small and Mean Favorites A Curious Sort of Obstinacy, 
 and some Reflections thereon. 
 
 THE victory of Manassas was an intoxicating fruit for the 
 South. It occasioned an excessive sense of false security on 
 the part of the Confederacy, and was followed by a period of 
 neglect and supineness in the military administration of the 
 South, wherein it lost, not only all the advantages of this 
 field, but nearly all the spirit and means it had for the 
 contest. 
 
 An over-busy attempt has been made to defend President 
 Davis against the charge, once popular, that he, by his supe 
 rior orders, had prevented his Generals from pursuing the 
 enemy to Washington, or from making a forward movement 
 immediately after the battle of Manassas. But this question 
 as to what took place so shortly after the battle, is a narrow 
 and particular one we scarcely need discuss ; it certainly does 
 not cover the responsibility for that period of inaction and 
 listlessness extending through several months, and in which 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 145 
 
 the Confederacy lapsed to the disastrous close of the first 
 year of the war. The true inquiry is as to the responsibility 
 for a period of supine administration so long, in which the 
 South came nigh to ruin, rather than as to the delin 
 quency of a few days in which it lost the fruits of a single 
 field. 
 
 Months passed, in which the main army of Virginia re 
 mained without any general action or movement, rusting 
 in idleness, a huge victim of ennui, occupying a filthy and 
 unhealthy camp, and sacrificing more men to disease than 
 had fallen by the bullets of Manassas. Nothing was done 
 practically to replenish it ; nothing was done to restore its 
 animation ; it was fast sinking into demoralization, and was 
 wasting to a skeleton organization, as destitute of spirit as of 
 substance. There were no preparations even to match the 
 sounding and elaborate ones of the enemy for a renewed 
 campaign. In vain, the newspapers clamored for some 
 action, or sought to awake the Government either from a 
 lethargic indifference, or the stupid joys of a blind and exces 
 sive confidence. The golden days of autumn passed without 
 any improvement of the military situation. Besides some 
 partial affairs of arms and a brilliant campaign in Missouri, 
 the latter too exceptional and distant to affect the general 
 fortunes of the war the main armies of the Confederacy re 
 mained idle to the close of the year, and appeared to rest on 
 the idea that the main task of fighting was over, and that 
 the fruit of Southern independence was to drop with the 
 snows of winter. 
 
 It has been said, that President Davis was in favor of an 
 advance movement ; was not a willing party to the fatal in 
 action of the Confederate troops, that ensued for months aftei 
 Manassas. There has been much recrimination on the sub- 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ject as between him and his Generals, and much has been 
 written, in a confused and disputatious way, of the causes 
 which compelled the military barrenness of the latter half 
 of the first year of the war. But the truth of this matter, we 
 are persuaded, is to be found in the secret history of a certain 
 notable council of war, accounts of which never appeared in 
 the newspapers, and the existence of which was, for a long 
 time, unknown. If President Davis was really in favor of 
 an active campaign after Manassas, he had but a poor way 
 of showing it. If he really did favor a forward move 
 ment, he yet wantonly and deliberately destroyed the con 
 ditions in which such a movement might take place ; and 
 it is but a poor rule of responsibility that does not impose 
 upon a person the foreseen, necessary, and obvious results of 
 his own action. 
 
 The council referred to, was held some weeks after the 
 battle of Manassas, when President Davis was on a visit to 
 the headquarters of the army. General Johnston then sub 
 mitted a plan illustrating the value of concentration, and 
 proposing it as a preliminary for an aggressive campaign. 
 He was sustained in his views by Generals Beauregard and 
 G. W. Smith. These Generals urged the immediate concen 
 tration in that quarter of the greater part of the forces dis 
 persed along the sea-coast at Pensacola, Savannah, Norfolk, 
 Yorkto wn, and Fredericksburg, with which, added to the troops 
 already in hand, a campaign across the Potomac should be ini 
 tiated, before Gen. McClellan had completed the organization 
 of his grand army. This, they believed, might be done with 
 out risk to the positions weakened by the measure though, in 
 fact, the principles of the art of war prescribed that places of 
 such relative military unimportance should be sacrificed or 
 hazarded for the sake of the vital advantage anticipated. A 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 147 
 
 very considerable army could have been thus assembled 
 larger, perhaps, than either of those which subsequently 
 General Lee was able to lead across the border under much 
 less favorable military conditions. But the President could 
 not be induced to sanction the measure, or to give up a con 
 ceit with which he commenced the war, and which was only 
 wrung from him many months later by the force of fearful 
 disasters. 
 
 That conceit which he placed in opposition to General 
 Johnston s policy of concentration a policy that would have 
 afforded an aggressive campaign and an immediate forward 
 movement across the Potomac was to defend the entire 
 frontier of the Southern Confederacy, and to give up no foot 
 of its soil to the invader. There was something high-sound 
 ing in such a resolution ; it was a bravado to affect the 
 masses, a rhetorical afflatus about the integrity of "sacred 
 soil," and the " polluting steps " of invading armies ; and it 
 was that idea which might be expected from one who was 
 more a politician than a General, and who calculated that if 
 he uncovered any part of the South he would provoke, from 
 that quarter, a clamor against his administration, and that to 
 have all the people of the Confederacy satisfied he must protect 
 them all alike. But it was the wretched policy of dispersion 
 that policy that strung the armies of the Confederacy on 
 every imaginable line of defence, that wasted the resources 
 of the South in the attempted defence of every threatened po 
 sition, and that was abandoned by President Davis only 
 when, after a trial of six months to cover the " sacred soil " 
 of the South, he was forced to confess that " events have de 
 monstrated that the Government had attempted more than it 
 had power successfully to achieve." But this was the slow 
 lesson coming only after disaster, and only when the Con- 
 
148 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 federacy was trembling under a catastrophe which the Presi 
 dent s policy of dispersion had precipitated. In the council 
 referred to, it was impossible to bring him to reason, and all 
 the arguments of General Johnston had no effect. This com 
 mander pointed to clear and firm principles of military science 
 He argued the value of the concentration of forces in war ; that 
 such concentration was, indeed, the condition of vigorous 
 war, the necessary means of striking the enemy with effect, 
 and making decisive fields. The President heard him with 
 impatience, dismissed the council, adhered to the military 
 situation, as it then existed, and declined, as he suggested to 
 a friend, to wound any further the sensibilities of the States 
 further South, by bringing any more troops to Virginia; 
 
 If, afterwards, he did expect General Johnston to move 
 across the Potomac, that commander did right to disappoint 
 him, and was even excusable for something of sullen reticence 
 which he ever afterwards maintained concerning his plans. 
 The President s policy of dispersion decided against an aggres 
 sive campaign for 1861. It was the true logical cause of that 
 inaction which ensued after the battle of Manassas, and in 
 which the spirit of the army declined ; in which the resources 
 of the South rotted in idleness ; and in which the false idea 
 was insinuated in the public mind, that the war had been vir 
 tually decided, and that nothing remained but such scattered 
 and desultory affairs as were then taking place in Western 
 Virginia and Southern Missouri. 
 
 The radical disagreement between Mr. Davis and the 
 Generals at Manassas, appears to have founded his first dislike 
 of Johnston, and to have developed his tendency to imperi 
 ous and envious command. Johnston was never a very 
 popular commander in the South ; he was not understood by 
 the masses, and even to this day, his reputation is severely 
 
SSCRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 149 
 
 canvassed. He had not that turbulence and passion remarka 
 ble among the most popular leaders in the early stages of the 
 war; he was disposed to chasten the confidence of the South; 
 and although his severe and cold military judgment and his 
 sedate calculations gained for him the appreciation of the in 
 telligent few, there were many people in the Confederacy 
 who condemned him as tame, who interpreted his precision 
 as timidity, and who treated with suspicion and innuendo his 
 opposition to Mr. Davis s policy of frontier defence. In his 
 aversion to Johnston, the President was for a long time sus 
 tained by an ignorant populace. They did not care to inquire 
 how much there was of personal malice in the quarrel, as 
 long as the President did not offend one of their favorites, 
 and as long as the victim was a patient, silent man, who cared 
 nothing for popular sympathy or support, and did nothing to 
 excite or e n treat them. But when Mr. Davis went further, 
 gave additional proofs of his temper, and broke with General 
 Beauregard, a commander who was then prime military favor 
 ite of the South, who had a temper of his own, and who had 
 such a sensitive regard for public opinion as to commit the 
 un-omcerlike act of writing letters in the newspapers, the 
 quarrel attracted attention through the length and breadth of 
 the South, was carried into Congress, actually created two 
 parties in the Confederacy, and occasioned, indeed, the first 
 serious fluctuation of public confidence in the administration 
 of Mr. Davis. 
 
 The people were suddenly awakened to the regard of a 
 trait of character in the President which had heretofore been 
 concealed by the lacquer of his fine accomplishments, and 
 which now gaped to view at the first strain put on his vanity. 
 It was seen that he had an enormous conceit from the moment 
 he became inflated with the victory of Manassas, and consid- 
 
150 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ered his tenure of office secure from that day. The fact is, that 
 that victory became the signal for political intrigues, in which 
 all care for the "war seemed to be dismissed for an anxiety to 
 secure the offices and patronage of a government as already 
 firmly seated. It was the most indecent interlude of the 
 war. Already politicians commenced to fish for nominations 
 under the "permanent" Constitution which was shortly to be 
 inaugurated, and it was whispered to Mr. Davis that General 
 Beauregard was courting the vote of the army for the office 
 of President, and was undermining him in popularity. To 
 the alarm and grieved surprise of all his judicious friends, 
 Mr. Davis suddenly undertook a series of political proscrip 
 tions in the midst of war, planted his quarrel with General 
 Beauregard in Congress, drove Mr. Hunter, the man of great 
 est weight in his administration, from his Cabinet, and stocked 
 the public offices with creatures of his favor, who were rather 
 calculated to support him on some issue of political party 
 than to render any service in the prosecution of the war. It 
 seemed for weeks and even months that the war was forgot 
 ten, or had sunk to the mere ordinary concern of the adjust 
 ment by politicians of a new government. The topic in 
 Eichmond was no longer battles and movements of armies, 
 but the doings of politicians and the latest gossip about the 
 President s quarrels. It was reported to the disadvantage of 
 Mr. Hunter that he had voluntarily left the Cabinet to disem 
 barrass himself for a nomination for President, as against Mr. 
 Davis ; but he replied unequivocally enough that he had re 
 signed because he had wished to be Secretary of State, and 
 was not content to be " the clerk of Jefferson Davis." The 
 truth was, there had been a disgraceful quarrel in the Cabinet, 
 and when Mr. Hunter had offered some advice about the con 
 duct of the war, Mr. Davis had said with a flushed and al- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 151 
 
 most insolent manner: "Mr. Hunter, you are Secretary of 
 State, and when information is wanted of that particular de 
 partment, it will be time for you to speak." The spirited 
 Virginian next day sent in his resignation. Almost in the very 
 outset of his career, and at what should have been the sharp 
 est crisis of the war, President Davis found himself in the 
 situation of having quarreled with his principal General in 
 the field, of having dismissed the premier of his Administra 
 tion, and of having risked a trial of public confidence greater 
 than other Presidents, even in times of peace, and after a con 
 siderable term of popularity, have been willing to undertake. 
 The interval after Manassas in which took place these 
 political intrigues and these displays of the President s tem 
 per, appears almost as one of insanity when we consider the 
 thoughtless and arrogant security with which Mr. Davis as 
 serted his power, and counted the victims of his offended 
 vanity. He either folded his arms idly in the face of the 
 war "waiting for Europe" as Mr. Benjamin expressed it, 
 with the perpetual smile that basked on his Jewish lips or 
 he did worse in inspiring from his official position the popu 
 lar sentiment of security, with a contemptuous regard for the 
 enemy. It was a luxurious conceit. It not only impaired all the 
 true interests of the Confederacy, but it bred the innumerable 
 evils which exist where there is a state of war, without the 
 action of troops, where armies are kept in ostentatious idle 
 ness, and where society in such unnatural and excited condi 
 tion unemployed by the interest which grows out of active 
 ampaigns, finds its passions turned upon itself, and becomes 
 infested with a thousand vices. 
 
 Such results were seen in the South. After Manassas, the 
 capital of the Confederacy was given up to a licentious joy 
 and dissipation. These, although the President might not 
 
152 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 have shared, he yet promoted by his own disposition to tri 
 umph in the present, and to be indifferent of the future. It 
 was in this time that Bichmond made that reputation of moral 
 infamy, which marred whatever military glories it afterwards 
 won a reputation which has not only lasted, but has accumu 
 lated since the war, which in fact has suggested the title of 
 "the wickedest city" in America for a place where the houses 
 on the best streets are shops of female infamy, and where in 
 nearly every court there is kept behind the drapery of justice 
 an auction-block for bribes. In the early months of the 
 war Kichmond won the bad eminence that has since made it 
 a name of scorn in the world. The decoration of being the 
 capital of the Confederacy which its citizens had at first so 
 highly valued cost it dearly enough. It was the convenient 
 cloak by which entered into a formerly quiet and moral city 
 all the vices which follow in the train of war. The vultures 
 were soon gathered at the carcass. With the imposing and 
 grand displays of war came vices and dissipations heretofore 
 unknown in Kichmond ; various flocks of villains, adventurers, 
 gamblers, harlots, thieves in uniform, thugs, "tigers," and 
 nondescripts. The city was soon overrun with rowdyism. 
 The coarse vices of the street, however, were even less deplora 
 ble than those which affected a certain refinement, and inva 
 ded the higher ranks of society with that style of immoral 
 and fantastic luxury bred out of the vast expenditures, the 
 reckless passions, and the heedless self-gratifications in a state 
 of war. The sobriety of Old Virginia society gave way 
 completely to a new order of reckless, social amuse 
 ments, in which money was spent with a lavishness that 
 taxed fancy, and a recklessness that scorned the morrow. 
 As the war advanced, poverty and suffering, of course, 
 came into many doors, and the world has heard much his- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 153 
 
 torically of the distress in Kichmond ; but it is remarkable 
 of this city that, even to the last extremity of the war, when 
 there were hundreds of people on its streets wanting bread, 
 there yet constantly resided in it a wild fantastic luxury, 
 pouring out money in every extravagant fancy of wickedness 
 arid vice. 
 
 The gamblers reaped a harvest that will probably never 
 be told. A few months after the commencement of the war, 
 a Kichmond newspaper stated that twenty gambling-houses 
 might be counted in three or four blocks on Main street. 
 There was abundant gossip of almost fabulous sums lost in 
 these places, by quartermasters, commissaries, and pay-agents. 
 And in these <c hells" were, doubtless, concealed the traces of 
 that immense amount of defalcation in the Confederate ad 
 ministration, which has never yet been told of but in broken 
 and imperfect whispers. In every war, the frauds and pecu 
 lations of disbursing officers make a large amount ; and it is 
 curious, that no reference to this loss busily investigated as 
 it was by the North, on her side, in the late contest was 
 ever made, in any public manner, in the case of the Southern 
 Confederacy. There was a vague impression of the people 
 of the South, that there was an enormous amount to be cred 
 ited to this account ; and towards the end of the war there 
 was an uneasy report that the proportions of such fraud 
 would stagger belief, and that the discovery would terminate 
 the last breath of popular confidence in the Davis govern 
 ment. 
 
 While the war lagged, Kichmond enjoyed high carnival. 
 There were extravagant social diversions balls, parties, 
 tableaus, and nondescript revels of wanton and excessive 
 luxury. Curiously enough, considering the historical want 
 of clothing in the Confederacy, fancy-dress balls were the 
 
154 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 social rage in Kichmond. At one of these, a beautiful 
 blonde, from Baltimore, impersonated "My Maryland," her 
 slender wrists bound behind her back with miniature chains ; 
 and at the height of the festive excitement, the President of 
 the Confederacy essayed a historical tableau, approaching the 
 lady and relieving her of her bonds, amid the acclamations 
 of the revellers. The old staid society of Richmond was 
 overrun ; and mad, wild, social diversions in the Confederate 
 capital recked nothing, and reflected nothing of the suffer 
 ings, and toils, and mutilations of war. 
 
 Amid the frivolities and vicissitudes of Richmond society, 
 so early in the war, Mrs. Jefferson Davis was conspicuous for 
 an attempt to introduce into them something of the manners 
 and etiquette she had imported from certain circles in Wash 
 ington ; but it proved not only an ignominious failure, but 
 an unpleasant scandal. The Confederate President himself, 
 although recluse and haughty in his government, was demo 
 cratic enough in his personal habits, simple in his social 
 tastes, and plain, and accessible to the populace. But Mr. 
 Davis was the most uxorious of men ; and it was surprising, 
 indeed, that a man of his fine nervous organism, a very type 
 of social dilletantism, should have fallen so much under the 
 dominion of a woman, who was excessively coarse and physi 
 cal in her person, and in whom the defects of nature had 
 been repaired neither by the grace of manners nor the charms 
 of conversation. Mrs. Davis was a brawny, able-bodied 
 woman, who had much more of masculine mettle than of 
 feminine grace. Her complexion was tawny, even to the 
 point of mulattoisrn ; a woman loud and coarse in her man 
 ners ; full of social self-assertion ; not the one of her sex who 
 would have been supposed to win the deference of a delicate 
 man like Mr. Davis, whimsical in his health, a victim of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 155 
 
 "nerves," nice and morbid in his social tastes, although she 
 might well have conquered the submission of such a creature 
 by the force of her character. Mr. Davis deferred to her in 
 the social regulations she would impose upon Kichmond. 
 She demanded the etiquette of Washington, that the Presi 
 dent s lady should return no calls. She introduced what 
 were unknown in Kichmond, liveried servants ; and, when 
 every horse was impressed in the military service, the citi 
 zens, forced to go afoot, remarked, with some disdain, the 
 elegant equipage of Mrs. Davis, that paused much more be 
 fore the shops of Main street, than the aristocratic residences 
 of Grace and Franklin. 
 
 Mr. Davis himself was simple and democratic in his habits. 
 His figure, habitually clothed in Confederate grey, was famil 
 iar on the streets, or might be seen almost every evening 
 mounted on the rather mean horse on which he took regular 
 exercise. He invited the approach and freedom of the com 
 monest men, but sometimes to the disadvantage of his dignity. 
 
 A number of stories were told in Kichmond of his curio asly 
 free intercourse with his soldiers, although they lacked some 
 thing of the Napoleonic tradition. Once, when he was cross 
 ing the Capitol Square, a drunken North Carolina soldier 
 stopped him, and inquired, ll Say, mister, be ent you Jefferson 
 Davis?" "Sir," returned the President, "that is my name." 
 "I thought so," replied tar-heel, "you look so much like a 
 Confederate postage stamp." Another occasion was more 
 dramatic. The President was returning with Mrs. Davis from 
 one of the customary festivities on a flag of truce boat that 
 had come up the James ; walking the street in the night, un 
 attended by his staff, and with no indications of his import 
 ance, he had to pass the front of the Libby Prison, where a 
 sentinel paced, and, according to his orders, forced passengers 
 
156 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 from the sidewalk to take the middle of the street. As the 
 President, with his wife on his arm, approached him, he 
 ordered them off the pavement. " I am the President," replied 
 Mr. Davis; "allow us to pass." "None of your gammon," 
 replied the soldier, bringing his musket to his shoulder; "if 
 you don t get into the street I ll blow the top of your head 
 off." " But I am Jefferson Davis, man I am your President 
 no more of your insolence ;" and the President pressed for- 
 ward. He was rudely thrust back, and in a moment he had 
 drawn a sword or dagger concealed in his cane, and was 
 about to rush on the insolent sentinel, when Mrs. Davis flung 
 herself between the strange combatants, and by her screams 
 aroused the officer of the guard. Explanations were made 
 and the President went safely home. But, instead of the 
 traditional reward to the faithful sentry, that has usually 
 graced such romantic adventures, came an order next day to 
 the Libby to degrade the soldier, and give him a taste of 
 bread and water for his unwitting insult of the commander-in 
 ch ief of the Confederate armies. 
 
 The connubial fondness of President Davis suggests the 
 story of Eienzi the Last of the Eoman Tribunes ; only the 
 Nina of the Southern Tribune was a very plain and unqueenly 
 body. The strong resemblance of the character of Jefferson 
 Davis to that drawn by Gibbon of the man who attempted to 
 restore the glories of Kome the elegant orator, the weak 
 statesman, the doting and sentimental husband, the ruler 
 haughty and authoritative, yet governed by woman and small 
 favorites, the man eloquent and gaudy in the forum, yet con 
 senting to escape from the ruins of his capital in the disguise 
 of a baker, blessed by every fortune, and yet blindfolded, 
 misguided and ruined by a conceit that affected humility and 
 an obstinacy that was really the disguise of weakness. It is 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 157 
 
 not the place here to fill the parallel. The suggestion is only 
 of that singular weakness to be observed in the ingenious 
 history of many notable rulers, who, obstinate to the general 
 public, flinty and imperious, have yet been secretly governed 
 by women, jesters and fools. No one could be apparently 
 firmer than. Mr. Davis in his public intercourse; no one could 
 resent advice with greater disdain, or chill it with colder 
 courtesy, when offered by the best and wisest men in the 
 South ; and yet this man who could set his face as flint against 
 the counsels of the intelligent, was as wax in the hands of his 
 wife, and the easy prey of the most unworthy adventurers 
 who understood the approaches to his favor. It is a curious 
 fact that the harshest and most tyrannical rulers have gener 
 ally boon controlled by a few mean favorites, the intriguers 
 of a seraglio or the parasites of a court. Such weakness Mr. 
 Davis sadly illustrated. Inflexible to the counsels of Con 
 gress and his Cabinet, lofty and cold in his public intercourse, 
 he was yet ready to make a quarrel of State for the whim or 
 distemper of his wife, or to take into his political household 
 the most contemptible of lickspittles. He was constantly 
 imposed upon by "confidence-men;" he was susceptible to 
 women, preachers and adventurers ; he had for a long time 
 as chief-of-staff a newspaper-reporter who had flattered him 
 in Washington, and who boasted that he was the fruit of the 
 liason of a member of the English nobility ; and the immedi 
 ate patronage of his office was eat up by small and unprofita 
 ble knaves who knew how to amuse his vanity and seduce 
 his favors. The man who could remove the most important 
 officer in his government his Quarter master- General be 
 cause a female member of the family of the latter had pre 
 sumed to criticise Mrs. Davis s figure ; who was pleased with 
 the veriest jacks-in -office, and would take tribute to his vanity 
 
158 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 in the smallest coin ; who gave himself up to social frivolities 
 in the midst of a great war, and amused himself with intrigues 
 and shows in Eichmond when the enemy was making his 
 vastest preparations, was clearly not the one to rule and direct 
 the struggle of eight millions of people in a cause of life or 
 death. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 159 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 President Davis playing the Adorned Conqueror Decay of the Confederacy Review ^ the 
 Military Situation Share of Congress in the Maladministration of Mr. Davis Weak and 
 Infamous Character of that Body How it Expelled the Best Intellect of the South A 
 Notable Rule against Military Officers How the Political Affairs of the Confederacy were 
 Entirely Surrendered to Mr. Davis and his Party Two Measures that Brought the South 
 to the Brink of Ruin The Army of Virginia almost Disbanded Protests of Generals John 
 ston and Beauregard The Civil or Internal Administration of Mr. Davis Its Intellectual 
 Barrenness Not One Act of Statesmanship in the Whole History of the Confederacy Rich 
 mond a Reflex of Washington A New Rule by which to Measure Mr. Davis s Responsibility 
 A Literary Dyspeptic, with more Ink than Blood in his Veins Complaints Breaking Out 
 Against Mr. Davis His Vaunt of the Blockade as a Blessing in Disguise Dethronement of 
 King Cotton Extreme Scarcity of Arms at the South. 
 
 WHILE Richmond was captivated by social diversions, 
 while the South basked in a false security, and while Mr. 
 Davis was intoxicated with the sweets of power, and playing 
 the adorned conqueror in his capital, the real interests of the 
 Confederacy were going fast to wreck and ruin. Not only 
 was nothing done to meet the vast preparations upon which 
 the enemy had visibly entered, but the means of the Con 
 federacy were not even kept up to the standard which they 
 had attained before the battle of Manassas. Mr. Davis s 
 policy of dispersion had kept the whole frontier of the war 
 dull and almost barren, until the blows of the enemy, in the 
 opening months of 1862, carried away two thin sections of 
 defence one on the seacoast, and the other in the West 
 and showed how false was the system that relied on the 
 length, rather than the breadth of its defences. To the close 
 of the year 1861, the Confederacy was in a rapid decline, and 
 
160 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 only when the disease passed its stage of flushed concealment, 
 was the discovery made that it was almost in the agonies of 
 death 
 
 The campaign in Western Virginia, had ended in disaster, 
 and had surrendered an important territory. All that Price 
 had achieved in Missouri had been given up at the last, and 
 an army, in which there was no discipline, was rapidly pass 
 ing through his fingers. The action of Leesburg, or Ball s 
 Bluff, had been but a brilliant episode and a fruitless glory. 
 There were, really, no military results for the South at the 
 end of the year, no positive acquisitions ; while, on the other 
 hand, her means had been diminished, her morale impaired, 
 and her resolution relaxed in that interval of negligent re 
 pose into which the public confidence had been drugged after 
 the battle of Manassas. 
 
 In writing of the dereliction of the Confederate Govern 
 ment within the period referred to in the preceding chapter, 
 it may be thought strange that we have not drawn into the 
 account some notice of Congress, and distributed upon it some 
 of the responsibility for the decay of Confederate affairs in 
 the first year of the war. But an especial explanation at 
 taches here. We may, at once, remark upon the utter 
 inanity of that body which made a pretence of performing 
 legislative duties during the war; and if the Confederate 
 Congress has been sunk nearly out of sight in all historical 
 notices of the contest, it is because of the meagre and unim 
 portant part it performed in it. What was known as the 
 Provisional Congress, was really the most inane, unimportant, 
 incompetent and barren of public assemblies. It was com 
 posed of delegates sent to Montgomery, and afterwards to 
 Richmond, by the different State Conventions, as they re 
 spectively passed ordinances of secession. It had been de- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 161 
 
 signed as a revolutionary council, rather than as a Tegular 
 legislative body. It was a national assembly, but with the 
 defect, that, instead of being the fresh and immediate repre 
 sentatives of the popular will, it was the secondary and weak 
 creature of conventions. 
 
 Yet, it contained some distinguished names ; and, when 
 first organized, there was considerable weight of character in 
 it. Ho well Cobb, of Georgia, was its President. All the 
 Heads of the Executive Departments had seats in it, and par 
 ticipated in its debates. Among its members, were naturally 
 those politicians who had formerly distinguished themselves 
 at Washington, in leading, from there, the first movements 
 of Secession such as Toombs, Wigfall, Pryor, and Keitt. 
 But, a single measure expelled from Congress nearly all it 
 had of worth and talents, and, in a day, reduced it to an inane 
 body of mediocrities. Its most distinguished members had 
 also military commissions ; they were Generals, colonels, etc., 
 as well as legislators. It was a time when the most brilliant 
 and ambitious men of the South sought the field, and pre 
 ferred its honors ; and when, a few weeks after the first ses 
 sion of Congress in Kichmond, the objection was raised, that 
 the two careers were incompatible, and that members of Con 
 gress could not hold military commissions, the decision drove 
 from it nearly every man of merit or note. Military men, 
 who had come down from Manassas to take their places in 
 Congress, and who proposed to fill the pauses of the war 
 with legislative duties, were excluded, and compelled to re 
 join their commands leaving the work of legislation to be 
 done by common, ignorant men, who were satisfied to remain 
 in seats which soon came to be considered, as even dis 
 honorable, in comparison with the places of glory and danger 
 in the field. 
 11 
 
162 LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The decision that excluded military officers from Congress, 
 was probably just, but, in many respects, unfortunate. It 
 accounts for that extreme intellectual degradation, which 
 made the Confederate Congress a peculiar stock of shame in 
 
 the war actually one of the weakest and most inane bodies 
 
 that ever met under the title of a legislative assembly in his 
 torical times. It came, at last, to be composed chiefly of two 
 c l asses me n who were never before publicly known, or old 
 politicians, too far broken down in their fortunes to attempt 
 new careers or to be invited by the prospect of military 
 honors. This prospect, unfortunately for the South, drew 
 from its political councils too much of its best mind, and may 
 be said to have abandoned the whole government to Mr. 
 Davis and a few weak creatures surrounding him ; although, 
 in later periods of the war, some of the distinguished poli 
 ticians who had sought the field, either from disappointment 
 there, or from resentment of what they supposed Mr. Davis s 
 disfavor, returned to plague him and to assail his administra 
 tion but, unhappily, only after it had sunk almost beneath 
 reproach. Beyond this brief and exceptional animation, the 
 history of the Confederate Congress is scarcely more than 
 that of the reflection of the will and temper of President 
 j) av i s a mere servile appendage to an autocracy the most 
 supreme of modern times. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how, at one time of the war, 
 the political concerns of the Southern Confederacy were 
 almost entirely abandoned to Mr. Davis, and a Congress 
 which was scarcely more than a figure-head, unless we take 
 into account a peculiar passion in the South for military ser 
 vice that marked the first years of hostilities. There was 
 nothing like it in the North ; there the ambition for military 
 honors was not so absorbing, and the labors and aspirations 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 163 
 
 of public men were divided with singular fairness between 
 the political council and the field. But, to the prizes of the 
 latter, the ambition of the South seems to have been almost 
 exclusively directed. Scarcely any thing was attempted in 
 that career of statesmanship, which, in such great historical 
 periods, should run even with that of arms. The best men 
 of the South neglected all former fields of political ambition ; 
 they were no longer anxious to be known as statesmen, or 
 legislators, or orators, when they might be known as success 
 ful generals. It was not only that the South, probably from 
 its natural temper, placed a higher value on martial prowess 
 than did the North, but the former had a peculiar estimation 
 of the war it was pro arts et focis; and there was a public 
 sentiment that drove men into the army from every occupa 
 tion in life, and from every seat of public office, until, at last, 
 civil office was held in disrepute, and the government was 
 denuded almost to the point of stark incapacity. This in 
 flated desire for the military field, might have been admirable 
 in some respects; but none, except those who witnessed its 
 wild and sweeping operations in the South, can imagine how 
 it stripped the political arena, or estimate the injury it 
 wrought in surrendering the civil affairs of the Southern 
 Confederacy to incompetent men, and securing an easy and 
 blind toleration of Mr. Davis, and the servile Congress that 
 waited on and executed his decrees. 
 
 Indeed, for the first year of the war Mr. Davis "was actually 
 the legislator of the Confederacy, and laws, framed in the 
 Executive Office, were as regularly sent into the dingy room 
 in which Congress sat in secret session, as the common com 
 munications of information from the departments. Unfortu 
 nately, Mr. Davis had an excessive conceit that he was born 
 under the star of Mars, and that he was excellently qualified 
 
164 LIFE OF JKFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 to legislate on military subjects ; and Congress was weak 
 enough to indulge his foolish and pragmatical fancy. He 
 was really responsible (as he had not used his authority to 
 check, although busy enough with the veto in other instances,) 
 for two notable military measures, in the first year of the 
 war, which brought the Confederacy to the brink of ruin, 
 and, indeed, would have delivered her an easy prey to the 
 enemy, had the hesitating and unready McClellan known the 
 extent of his opportunity. 
 
 One of these measures was a law passed in December, 1861, 
 of which it has been well remarked, its true title would have 
 been, " To disband the armies of the Confederacy." It was 
 the fruit of the lowest demagogism. It permitted the men 
 to change their arm of the service, to elect new officers, and 
 to reorganize throughout the army. It was said that the 
 soldiers claimed the letter of their contract to leave the ser 
 vice at the expiration of one year ; and the weak legislators 
 at Eichmond thought it necessary to indulge what was called 
 their democratic sense of individuality, by allowing them to 
 reduce the organization and discipline of the army to what 
 ever standards would content them, and to convert their 
 camps into a carnival of misrule, and into the vilest scenes 
 of electioneering for commissions. This so-called " reorgani 
 zation" had gone on in the face of an enemy who, if he had 
 taken timely advantage of it, would have found little else 
 than demoralized men, disgracing the uniform of soldiers, 
 covering the most vital points of the Confederacy. Every 
 candidate who was anxious to serve his country with braid 
 on his shoulders, plied the men with the lowest arts of the 
 cross-roads politician, even to the argument of whiskey, and 
 contributed to the general demoralization until the men, 
 feeling the Dower to dethrone their present officers, lost all 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 165 
 
 respect for their authority, and became the miserable tools of 
 every adventurer and charlatan who imposed upon their con 
 fidence. 
 
 Not satisfied with demoralizing the army, another legisla 
 tive measure was passed, some months later, under the in 
 spiration of Mr. Davis, to deplete it. With the professed 
 purpose of inciting re-enlistments, it was provided that fur 
 loughs for sixty days should be granted all those soldiers who 
 would re-enlist for three vears or the war said furioughs 
 to be dealt out in lots drawn from each company. The con 
 sequence was, the Southern armies wasted away in front of 
 the enemy, and at a most critical period, when he was com 
 pleting his own elaborate and imposing preparations for the 
 spring campaign of 1862. Those who lived in Kichmond in 
 those times, will remember the flocks of soldiers passing 
 through its streets to their homes, in magnitude of numbers 
 almost an army sometimes, in a single day, an unbroken 
 throng stretching from the depot on Broad street to the 
 bridge over the James. It appeared as if the army in North 
 ern Virginia had disbanded. The newspapers could not use 
 remonstrance; and, how narrow was their field for critical 
 discussion, may be understood from the fact that they were 
 enjoined to make no reference that could possibly be con 
 strued as revealing any weakness in the Confederacy, so as 
 " to give information to the enemy." This absurd rule ,was 
 practised on the press sometimes to the point of puerility ; 
 and once, it is known, that Secretary Benjamin prepared an 
 order to suppress the Kichmond Examiner, because its criti 
 cisms of public affairs gave information to the enemy. Mr. 
 Davis prudently declined to sign the order, and Mr. Benja 
 min, or his successors, never dared to repeat the experiment 
 on a free and virile press. But though, in the instance of 
 
166 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 public danger referred to, the press was dumb, the Generals 
 commanding in the field were not. They took the alarm be 
 fore it was too late. Generals Johnston and Beauregard 
 united in letters of protest, and it was only when they inti 
 mated that they would resign their commands, before their 
 forces should be spirited away by foolish legislation, that Con 
 gress repealed the disastrous law ; or, rather, unwilling to 
 incur the appearance of concession, suffered its operations to 
 be withheld by military orders. 
 
 In the civil or internal administration of Confederate affairs, 
 Mr. Davis was not more happy than in the conduct of the 
 war. He had created a great scandal in his Cabinet ; the 
 support of the public was slipping from him ; his government 
 was weak and insecure of the confidence of the people. It is 
 remarkable of the civil administration of the Confederacy that 
 in the entire history of it there is not to be pointed out one 
 act, of statesmanship. There was no breadth in any of its 
 measures; they were partial and halting, make-shifts and 
 afterthoughts ; and he- who writes truly of the war, whatever 
 he may have to commemorate of the valor of Southern sol 
 diers or of the devotion of Southern leaders, must yet note the 
 sad absence of enterprise, genius and energy in the conduct 
 of public affairs. 
 
 Before the war the Southern mind was supposed to have 
 peculiarly the gift of statesmanship. It had contributed most 
 of the political literature of the country ; it had reigned in 
 the councils of the old government. But it was a speculative 
 statesmanship that achieved these honors ; the Southern mind 
 lacked the faculty of business; and in the practical art of 
 government, just that talent in which the South was supposed 
 to be superior to the North, it was beaten at every point. 
 No politician of his day could split hairs between State 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 167 
 
 Eights and the Constitution with more skill and dexterity 
 than Jefferson Davis ; but when it came to the practical cares 
 of administering the affairs of eight millions of people he was 
 as ignorant as a child, and had nothing to offer but weak and 
 blundering imitations of the government from which he had 
 professed to depart. The summary description of his adminis 
 tration is that it was a pale reflex of what was taking place 
 at Washington. He copied the Constitution of the United 
 States with all its patches of departments and bureaus; he 
 reproduced all the old routine of Washington, and he even 
 imported men from there to assist him in various branches 
 of his government. There was no political invention in 
 Richmond. A government in the position of a seceder, if 
 not of a rebel, was so utterly destitute of statesmanship, so 
 devoid of intellectual force and originality, as to follow with 
 halting and apish imitations upon the government it had for 
 saken and denounced. 
 
 Mr. Davis produced not one good invention of political 
 management ; and submitting that the war was a question of 
 political management as well as of arms, we have a new 
 measure of the responsibility of this single man for the loss 
 of the Southern cause. He had no talent for government. 
 This defect alone would have turned the balance of the war, 
 without the conspiracy of other causes. He had every thing 
 at command : a willing and docile people, brave soldiers, com 
 petent officers, a territory large and difficult to conquer. It 
 is against all these we must measure his responsibility. As 
 we enumerate advantage after advantage of the South, we 
 narrow the hypothesis as to the cause of its failure, until at 
 last it must come down by logical reduction to one man he 
 the ruler who permitted these advantages to be conquered 
 through an imbecile and barren administration. The South 
 
168 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 did not need men or means : it needed statesmanship to direct 
 and employ them. The definition of what was needed at 
 Richmond was thus given in one of its journals: "the fore 
 sight that perceives, but is not appalled by coming misfor 
 tunes; the hard sense, the vigorous command, the courage 
 that flames up from defeat and rebounds unhurt from disaster, 
 the manly confidence in others, the strength of body, as well 
 as of mind, which supports and renews them all." But here 
 was a man who had no foresight; who was blind to the 
 preparations of the enemy ; who had refused fortune when it 
 had been thrust upon him at Manassas; who had allowed 
 magnificent armies that rushed forward in the first months 
 of the war to dwindle into insignificance ; who scorned com 
 mon sense ; who was vigorous only in his obstinacy ; who 
 was jealous of all intellect that had already been marked by 
 the public judgment; who had a broken physical constitution 
 and a querulous disease ; an accomplished scholar who knew 
 much more of the hieroglyphs of Egypt than of the art of 
 government, a literary dyspeptic who had more ink than 
 blood in his veins, and an intriguer who, busy with private 
 enmities, and encircled by the fire they kindled, was stinging 
 himself to death ! No wonder the South was doomed to early 
 failure under such a leader ! 
 
 Complaints were already breaking out against the adminis 
 tration of Mr. Davis as the people began to feel the actual 
 distress of the war and thus to have their eyes turned to the 
 improvidence of the government. It was seen that clothing 
 and arms were deficient for the army, when they might have 
 been easily imported before the blockade had been confirmed. 
 At Montgomery the Government had thought it quite suffi 
 cient to order eight thousand stand of small -arms from 
 Europe. When the blockade became binding, it was said 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 169 
 
 that the commercial enterprise of England would at once be 
 excited by the high prices it would establish to send forward 
 cargoes of arms, munitions, medicines and other stores most 
 needed ; but this calculation had proved delusive, and such 
 was the distress for arms that the Governors of several of the 
 Sta^s were obliged to issue appeals to tne citizens to contri 
 bute their shot guns and fowling-pieces to arm the Confeder 
 ate troops. In some cases appropriations were made to 
 manufacture pikes, and there were regiments who had no 
 weapon but shafts of tough wood pointed with steel. But 
 besides this scantiness of the very implements of war, there 
 were other complaints to be ascribed to the stupidity of the 
 government, its want of foresight and its deception of the 
 people. 
 
 Not only had the opportunity not been taken to bring in 
 supplies from Europe when the ports of the Confederacy 
 were open, but Mr. Davis had actually welcomed the block 
 ade, and vaunted it as a blessing in disguise. He had hoped 
 that the manufacturing necessities of England and France 
 would force them to a speedy recognition of the Confederacy, 
 and to an interference with the blockade. But there was no 
 evidence of these manufacturing necessities at the end of the 
 year. The supply of cotton was as large in Liverpool at the 
 beginning of 1862 as at the beginning of 1861, although the 
 blockade of the Southern ports had then existed more than 
 six months. "King Cotton" was already dethroned. Mean 
 while an agricultural people who had always relied on the 
 sale of the year s crops had found no market ; and the com 
 plaints of crippled planters were added to the volume of re 
 crimination against the government. 
 
 The financial embarrassment of the Confederacy had already 
 commenced. There could be no greater cause of alarm to 
 
170 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 those intelligent persons who understood that war required 
 money as well as men, that it could not be carried on by a 
 mere sentiment. Indeed the finance of the Confederacy was 
 a vital element of the situation, and is a distinct part of the 
 political life of Mr. Davis not to be omitted. But the subject 
 is large and distinct enough for a separate treatment, and it 
 may well fill another chapter. , 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 171 
 
 , CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Finances of the Southern Confederacy Early Measures of Taxation at Montgomery A 
 Civil List Voted of a Million and a half Dollars The Five Million Loan Deficiency of Ameri 
 can Politicians in Finance Extreme and Grotesque Ignorance of Mr. Davis on this Subject 
 Secretary Memminger a Curiosity in his Cabinet A Race of Absurd Fancies History of the 
 Produce Loan Extravagant Expectations from it Its Complete and Ludicrous Failure 
 Mr. DeBow s Office "To Let" The Confederate Government Abandons its First Proposition 
 of Finance How the Commissariat was Relieved History of a Grand Financial Scheme 
 Proposition for the Government to Buy all the Cotton in the South Extraordinary "Virtues 
 of this Scheme It might have Decided the War How Mr. Memminger Derided the Scheme 
 Mr. Davis s After-thought in the Prison at Fortress Monroe A Shallow and Miserable 
 Subterfuge Supplements of the Financial Policy of the Confederacy Conversion of Private 
 Debts Due in the North The Sequestration Law The Administration of Mr. Davis Chal 
 lenged on it A Scathing Denunciation by Mr. Pettigru, of South Carolina Mr. Davis At 
 tempts to.Use the Credit of the States Ho Fails in this Recourse His Government Thrown 
 Back to the Beginning of its Financial Policy He Proposes Paper Money as a Panacea 
 Distinction Between Currency and Revenue Stupidity of Mr. Davis in Financial Matters 
 Tho First Seeds of Corruption Sown in the Confederate Finance Mr. Meniminger s Funding 
 Juggle "Flush Times" in Richmond Silly Self-Congratulations of the President The Road 
 to Rr.in. 
 
 THE Confederate Government had commenced its career 
 with but small concern for its finances. AY hen established at 
 Montgomery, it had, mistaking the resolution of the North, 
 scarcely entertained a thought of actual war at least, the 
 anticipation of such was at once too limited and too light to 
 have founded uppn it much legislation. And, besides, the 
 authorities then were naturally anxious not to alarm, by a 
 too early apparition of taxation (perhaps the severest test of 
 the popular courage and devotion in any cause) the people 
 then being brought under the experiment of a new govern 
 ment. Indeed, we may remark by the way, that the consti 
 tutional dread of taxation inseparable from the public mind, 
 
172 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 was somewhat adroitly turned by the Montgomery Congress, 
 to decide the border States, then hesitating to enter the new 
 Confederacy, and to suggest to the North a new argument 
 against war, and a special inducement to contract early rela 
 tions of friendship and reciprocity with the new Kepublic. 
 As early as April, 1861, a stringent law had been passed, 
 exacting heavy duties on all goods coming into the then six 
 federated States from coterminous territory; and among 
 the first serious duties of Mr. Memminger, Secretary of the 
 Treasury, was to prepare elaborate circulars establishing 
 "Kevenue stations" on the land frontier, where the duties 
 and tolls were to be collected, and the railroad trains halted 
 and visited. The freedom of trade, was a concession which 
 the new government reserved, for political effect, and it was 
 undoubtedly used with some advantage in persuading the 
 reluctant Border States to throw their commercial interests, 
 as well as their political destinies, with the Confederacy. 
 
 It is in curious contrast with later experiences of the war, 
 to observe with what hesitation and closeness the Confederate 
 Government commenced, in the article of expenditures. The 
 whole civil list voted at Montgomery was but 1,468,196. 
 The first military appropriation, to be added to this, was 
 $1,323,767, for the equipment and support of three thousand 
 . troops for twelve months ! This was before Mr. Lincoln s 
 inauguration. But only two days had elapsed after he had 
 appeared officially in Washington and made that equivocal 
 speech, which the South generally interpreted as war, when 
 the Montgomery Congress, opening its eyes somewhat to the 
 width of the prospect before it, voted to raise one hundred 
 thousand volunteers. From this point the appreciation of the 
 impending crisis may be said to have enlarged, the scale of 
 finance keeping even pace with it, and thus affording a curi- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 173 
 
 ous measure of the growing volume of public expectation 
 concerning the war. 
 
 The first notable financial measure of the new government 
 was to advertise for a loan of five millions of dollars. Three 
 millions were subscribed in excess, and the whole amount 
 was taken, represented by bonds bearing eight per cent, 
 interest. When the war had become flagrant, and the Gov 
 ernment had removed to Kichmond, with a larger representa 
 tion, and an appreciation comparatively heightened of the 
 struggle in which it had now actually engaged, it became 
 necessary to found a permanent scheme of finance ; and the 
 Provisional Congress was early perplexed with this, at once 
 the most difficult and delicate problem of new governments. 
 
 There is nothing in which the Confederate Government 
 halted and blundered worse, even from the first stages in its 
 career, and wherein it more strongly illustrated its puerility 
 of device, than its financial policy. It has been generally 
 remarked, how sadly deficient the public men of America are 
 in finance a branch of statesmanship which the European 
 politician is taught to consider the most important part of 
 his education, and his most available fund of popularity. 
 The fact is, that in our government, preceding the war, so 
 little did it know of pecuniary necessities a distress com 
 mon to European governments with a revenue generally in 
 excess of its expenditures, and with an almost nominal public 
 debt, that our politicians were satisfied to be ignorant of 
 finance, and scarcely ever felt such want of knowledge in 
 their speeches and canvasses of popular favor. The single 
 phase of this subject in our politics, was the tariff; and that 
 was exceptional, and scarcely ever treated as an independent 
 measure of finance, outside of its sectional relations as be 
 tween North and South. Its significance was sectional rather 
 
174 LIFE OF JEFFERSON TJAVI^, WITH A 
 
 than financial. Among our most accomplished politicians, 
 before the war, it was rare to find one who had a head for 
 figures, or who would venture before a popular audience on 
 a subject which he esteemed so dry, and so incapable of 
 rhetorical effects. Jefferson Davis was not only no exception 
 to this rule, but he was a most remarkable example of it. He 
 "had more than usual breadth of cultivation for an American 
 politician. His fund of historical illustration was large and fa 
 cile; he had an extensive acquaintance with general literature; 
 and his habits were those of a student. And yet, as the war 
 showed him, he was ignorant of finance, even to the point of 
 grotesqueness, and on that subject full of childish devices, 
 which can only be related now to amuse the world. Unhap 
 pily, he added to his own deficiencies in this respect by an 
 absurd, almost inexplicable choice of his Secretary of the 
 Treasury. Instead of calling to his aid, in that department, 
 one having some former experience in, or particular know 
 ledge of financial matters, who might supply his own defect 
 of education therein, he selected a man who knew even less 
 of these matters than himself who competed with him in 
 ignorance who encouraged his tendency to vagaries and 
 who redoubled that fondness of inventions and reforms, in 
 which the smatterer is characteristically bold. It was a most 
 unfortunate trait of Mr. Davis to imagine that his abilities 
 laid precisely in that direction in which he had none ; and 
 the fruit of this dangerous conceit, was a shallow and whim 
 sical character of inventions, nowhere more remarkably dis 
 played than in his various suggestions on the subject of 
 finance. Mr. Memminger had very much the same order of 
 mind, which mistakes its vocation ; and through the joined 
 conceits of the two, the field of Confederate finance was popu 
 lated with grotesque and absurd fancies. What could have 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 175 
 
 determined Mr. Davis to make this man Secretary of the 
 Treasury, has not been discovered to the author. He had 
 been known in South Carolina only as a lawyer. He had 
 the hard, unsympathizing face of that profession, manners 
 almost rude, and an unpleasant eccentricity a curious man 
 a zealot in religion, who had an almost insane passion for 
 controversial theology and who appeared much more in 
 character, poking among the bookstores of Kichmond and 
 hunting recondite works on the religious beliefs of a former 
 age, than performing the duties of financier of the Confederate 
 States, and supplying its vulgar needs of money. 
 
 The first fruit of the financial consultations in Eichmond 
 was what was popularly known as "the Produce Loan." Mr. 
 Davis, with an effort at modesty, has referred to this measure 
 as "one happily devised by the superior wisdom of Congress;" 
 but it is certain that he inspired it, accepting the consumma 
 tion by Congress of his wishes on this subject with unusual 
 affability. The scheme was a singular one, ingeniously par 
 taking both of the character of a patriotic contribution and 
 a thrifty loan. It was proposed that the producers of the 
 Confederacy, particularly those of cotton and tobacco, should 
 subscribe portions of their annual crops to the government, 
 not in the sense of segregating it in kind, or of actual delivery, 
 but on condition that when the crop was sold in regular way 
 a particular day designated for the sale so as to give cer 
 tainty to the contract the factor or commission merchant 
 should invest a part o the proceeds corresponding to the 
 amount of subscription, in bonds of the government bearing 
 eight per cent, interest. The plan looked excellent on paper. 
 The planter was not to part with his crop ; there was to be no 
 inconvenience of delivery in kind ; the whole scheme rested 
 on the assumption that the subscriptions might be used by 
 
176 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the government as credits, and thus sustain the value of its 
 promises to pay in shape of currency. The government re 
 garded it as a model of financial wisdom, appealing to the 
 patriotism of the producer, as well as consulting his selfish 
 ness, by offering him a good investment ; and, for some time, 
 it appeared, indeed, to have reason to congratulate itself on 
 its ingenuity. 
 
 Commissioners were appointed to canvass every square 
 mile of territory in the Confederacy. A separate bureau to 
 manage the loan was organized in Eichmond, the lamented 
 J. D. B. De Bow being its head. The progress of subscrip 
 tions was watched with the greatest solicitude by the public; 
 the reporters of the newspapers visited almost every day the 
 office of the chief commissioner and published the list of sub 
 scriptions to excite the competition of particular districts. 
 On the 20th of July, 1861, it was announced by the govern 
 ment with ill-restrained delight, and to the lively gratification 
 of the public, that the Produce Loan, estimated by values, had 
 already reached fifty millions of dollars, and by the close of 
 the year might be expected to touch the magnificent sum of 
 one hundred millions. 
 
 When the year did close, the Produce Loan had disappeared ; 
 no one knew of it, no one inquired of it, no one cared for it. 
 In reality it had ceased to exist ; it had already passed into 
 history as one of the most complete failures and notable 
 absurdities of the Confederacy. The bureau, which had been 
 so ostentatiously constructed was discontinued; the office- 
 rooms which Mr. De Bow had so handsomely furnished, and 
 which had been the rendezvous of politicians and reporters, 
 were closed and " to let ;" and actually all that remained of 
 this magnificent loan were the dead leaves of paper on which 
 its figures had been marshalled. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 177 
 
 "What had become of it? It had died strangely, quietly 
 but surely, of defects inherent in the scheme. Of these defects 
 the dull government had, after its usual fashion of discovery, 
 been convinced only on experiment; and its first important 
 proposition of finance it utterly abandoned without explana 
 tion or excuses to the rjublic. It had failed to perceive 
 until experience demonstrated the obvious consideration that 
 without markets the cotton and tobacco were not available as 
 it had designed them ; and that in proportion as they were 
 not so available, the credits founded solely on the prospect of 
 sale, represented in the planters subscriptions, were of no ac 
 count. There were other fatal difficulties. The essential vir 
 tue of the contract between the government and the planter 
 was that the crop should be sold at some certain even if dis 
 tant day; the certainty of the sale founding the credit, the 
 time in which an obligation is to run rather improving than 
 impairing it in financial estimation as long as it is sure of 
 performance. But it was impossible to guaranty such cer 
 tainty, and thus obtain credit for the transaction. The crop 
 might be burned, or otherwise destroyed, in the ravages of the 
 war; the planter might become bankrupt; if he refused to 
 sell on a falling or disadvantageous market, the government 
 had practically no power to compel him, and, indeed it would 
 have incurred a great moral guilt and shame in forcing a sale 
 in circumstances which might be ruinous to a patriotic citi 
 zen standing in the light of its benefactor and creditor. A 
 scheme hedged with such uncertainties could, of course, not 
 be used as a source of credit; it was defective in almost every 
 particular ; and the government, after a short trial, abandoned 
 it, but not until it had displayed that disposition for nice and 
 paltry empiricisms which was hereafter to afflict nearly all 
 the public affairs of the Confederacy. 
 
178 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 But while the Produce Loan was thus essentially a failure 
 even to the point, as we have seen of utter abandonment 
 it was incidentally not without benefits. Where the crops 
 were other than cotton or tobacco, such as grain, meat, etc., 
 special arrangements were effected to take the subscriptions 
 in kind, aiid they were made immediately available as army 
 supplies. In this way the Confederate commissariat was con 
 siderably relieved, and the greater part of the subsistence of 
 the army was obtained at first hand without the intervention 
 of purchasers. This, to some extent was an advantage ; but a 
 more considerable benefit of the Produce Loan was its sug 
 gestion of a much larger scheme in which what there -was of 
 virtue in this loan was logically extended to a wider conclu 
 sion, and whereon might have been founded one of the most 
 admirable financial systems of modern times. This imperfect 
 loan was the germ in fact of an idea which might have saved 
 the financial integrity of the Confederacy, and not remotely 
 turned the balance of the war. 
 
 The subscriptions of the planters to the Produce Loan 
 naturally furnished, in their estimation, some ground for re 
 clamation on the government/ Those men, in want of a 
 market, soon became distressed for ready means ; they applied 
 to the government for assistance in the nature of advances ; 
 this was properly refused as invidious to others of the public ; 
 and out of these embarrassments, ultimately and naturally 
 grew the proposition that the government should take abso 
 lute possession and control of the whole cotton crop of the 
 South, at a stipulated price, the minimum of the market. It 
 was to employ and control the crop in its own right, as 
 purchaser, unfettered, as in the Produce Loan, by uncertain 
 and speculative agreements with the planter. 
 
 A grand scheme was offered the government thus to utilize 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 179 
 
 the main bulk of the wealth of the South ; and under this 
 arrangement cotton, indeed, instead of remaining an idle hoard 
 in the war, might have asserted something of that regal in 
 fluence, which the early politicians of the Confederacy had 
 ascribed to it. The newspaper press enlarged upon the idea 
 thrown out by the necessities of the planters, but commensu 
 rate with the interests of the country, and discovered in it the 
 breadth of a financial scheme, which would have answered all 
 the exigencies and expectations of the war. The Eichrnond 
 Dispatch calculated, that with the cotton crop, purchased and 
 deposited in England, the government, at the then prevailing 
 prices for this staple, might make a clear profit of six hundred 
 millions of dollars, even allowing twenty cents a pound to the 
 planter, and supposing that one-fifth of the cargoes was cap 
 tured by the enemy a balance in favor of the Confederacy 
 that would have enabled it to drain every bank in Europe 
 of specie, or if drawn upon as its need required, would have 
 made its treasury notes equal to gold. 
 
 But the planters were willing to sell at seven cents a pound, 
 and the blockade being yet unadjusted, and most of the ports 
 of the Confederacy being actually open, the proportion of 
 captures would have been slight ; and the correct basis of 
 estimate was three million and a half bales of cotton, at the 
 maximum price, as the government could have held it in 
 Europe for the highest rise of the market, which, even in the/ 
 second year of the war had advanced to seventy or eighty 
 cents a pound. The imagination is dazzled contemplating 
 the financial consequences in reach of the Confederate rulers. 
 The government commenced in such narrow pecuniary for 
 tunes, and ultimately squandered in make-shifts, had really 
 the elements of one of the most successful and elastic schemes 
 of finance that the world had seen. In its cotton it had a store 
 
180 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of wealth that might have been easily mobilized, and a basis 
 of credit which, extending as the price of the staple advanced, 
 would thus have kept progress with the war, supplied all its 
 necessities, and furnished an evidence of Southern prosperity 
 and stability, that, acting powerfully on the opinion of the 
 world and the avarice of the enemy, might have terminated 
 the contest. 
 
 It is absolutely painful to review the argument and temper 
 with which the Confederate Administration treated a propo 
 sition of finance that had really so many merits ; to observe 
 how it rejected and disdained a means of safety, that circum 
 stances had, as if providentially, thrust upon it, aided, too, by 
 reinforcements of public opinion. Mr. Memminger derided 
 the scheme. In his private conversation he spoke of it as 
 "soup-house legislation," charity to a class, which entailed 
 expense to the whole community. In an official circular on 
 the subject, dated the 17th October, 1861, he said : "No clause 
 in the Constitution can be found which would sanction so 
 stupendous a scheme as purchasing the entire crop of cotton." 
 He objected that the government might "hazard its entire 
 credit and stability. The experiment was too dangerous." 
 The argument he used against the scheme deserves a con 
 spicuous place among the curiosities of financial literature. 
 He contended, that "the cotton would do the government no 
 good, and that it would receive no benefit whatever from this 
 advance. The money is paid to each individual planter ; and 
 in exchange the government receives only his bond or note ; 
 or, if the cotton be purchased, the government receives only 
 certain bales of cotton, that is to say, the government pays 
 out money which is needful to its very existence, and receives 
 in exchange, planters notes or produce, which it does not 
 need, and cannot in any way make use of." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 181 
 
 But the mind of the Secretary, so juvenile in financial mat 
 ters, failed in this estimate to understand the simple idea oi 
 values, in the shape of credit, and he leaves out of account 
 what he appears never to have conceived in his whole financial 
 career the necessity of some basis for all forms and designs 
 of currency. The cotton, even if held in Europe and not sold, 
 would have served all the purposes of the Confederacy for 
 credit, and would have kept its no.tes at par, while the 
 " money," which Mr. Memminger regretted to see go out of 
 the Treasury for what he considered a useless acquisition, was 
 comparatively worthless, as long as it represented a promise 
 to pay without anything to support it. 
 
 We are aware that in that convenient commentary which 
 Mr. Davis is reported to have made in prison on Confederate 
 affairs, and wherein he is as wise as the most foolish may be 
 on retrospect, he has attempted to throw the discredit of the 
 rejection of the Cotton Purchase wholly on his subordinate, 
 Mr. Memminger, and to acquit himself of what he now per 
 ceives to have been an almost criminal absurdity. It is the 
 invariable resort of weak men to attempt to cure their repu 
 tation by asserting prophetic visions of the event after it has 
 happened ; and Mr. Davis appears to have been busy with 
 this work in the reflections of his prison at Fortress Monroe. 
 He is there reported to have declared that Mr. Memminger 
 defeated the financial plan referred to in opposition to his 
 wishes ; that he, the President, "privately approved it, but had 
 not time to study and take the responsibility of directing it." 
 
 But this explanation of Mr. Davis is a dishonest after 
 thought a shallow and miserable subterfuge from which he 
 may be easily driven. He was the President of the Confeder 
 acy, and he was responsible for his agents, by every known 
 rule of American Administration. Indeed this rule may be 
 
182 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 urged against him with exceptional force, considering how 
 much he was disposed to assert his individuality in his Admin 
 istration, in how many instances he removed subordinates even 
 more important than Mr. Memminger and for even compara 
 tively trifling opposition to his wishes, and how little likely he 
 was to be controlled by any man in ordinary matters, much less 
 in one that he has since protested to have felt at the time as of 
 vital moment. It is not to be believed that the Confederate 
 President, with his known habit or temper, would have 
 allowed himself to be controlled by a man like Memminger 
 remarkable for his servility, and that too in a matter which in 
 his conversation since the war as a prisoner he declares " in 
 itself would have insured victory." The attempt of Mr. Davis 
 thus to shift responsibility for his rnisgovernment in an issue 
 so important, is as weak as it is ungenerous. He summed the 
 financial history of the Confederacy plainly enough, saying : 
 K When we might have put silver in the purse, we did not put 
 it there ; when we had only silver on the tongue, our promises 
 were found to become excessive." But unhappily this ingen 
 ious contrast had never occurred to him in Richmond ; he 
 appreciated the financial situation only after it had lapsed to 
 rain; and, like many another unfortunate, he lamented lost 
 opportunities only at the end of his career, and within the walls 
 that reduced him to imprisonment and reflection. 
 
 In addition to the Produce Loan and Cotton Purchase there 
 were some other proposed measures to bring money into the 
 Confederate Treasury. They were feeble supplements of the 
 financial policy, and are chiefly remarkable for their large 
 promises on paper and the small sums they realized. These 
 financial aids the measures were designed too, somewhat in 
 a political or general sense were a charge to all those owing 
 money in the North to pay their debts into the Confederate 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 183 
 
 Treasury and thus acquit themselves, and the sequestration 
 of the property of alien enemies, as were designated not only 
 the people of the North, but all those who, since the war, had 
 left the Confederacy as malcontents. The most dazzling esti 
 mates were made of these two singular sources of revenue 
 It was said the debts due the North amounted at least 
 to two hundred millions of dollars, so accumulated had been 
 the credits between the two sections before the war ; and it 
 was hoped that at least a large portion of this sum would be 
 converted into the Confederate Treasury under the prospect 
 of debtors thus escaping their obligations. The results of the 
 sequestration law were calculated at scarcely less ; and the 
 writer recollects a careful estimate made in Congress, thai the 
 property and interests of Northern men in the city of New 
 Orleans alone falling under the operations of this law, would 
 amount to some thirty millions of dollars. 
 
 But these irregular schemes of finance, on which were en 
 tertained such visions of gain, broke down miserably and not 
 without some dishonor. But few reputable persons in the 
 South could make up their minds to compound debts, in which 
 their honor was to some extent involved, and with which per 
 haps were mixed personal obligations and sentiments, by pay 
 ing them into the Confederate Treasury to the deprivation 
 and disowning of their creditors. The results of the seques 
 tration law were yet more meagre. At the close of the year 
 1863, the fruits of this measure of large expectations were 
 .considerably less than two millions of dollars. Worse 
 han this, provisions of this law for discovering Northern 
 property by writs of " garnisheeing, " and by interroga 
 tories running into inquisitions of the private affairs of any 
 man suspected by the officers of the law, were resented as a 
 breach of the constitutional and traditional rights of the pe(A- 
 
184 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 pie, and raised perhaps the first signal of serious opposition 
 to the new government with respect to the republican charac 
 ter of its measures. The cries of this opposition were numer 
 ous enough at another period of the war ; but probably the 
 administration of Mr. Davis on its inroad into the liberties of 
 the people, never received a severer challenge than at this 
 first stage of his experiment on the popular submission. The 
 challenge in this instance was given by one of the most im 
 portant citizens of the Confederacy a declared Secessionist 
 and happily from the elevation and purity of his character, a 
 man whose motives of opposition could not be misunderstood 
 This man was J. S. Pettigru, a distinguished lawyer of Char 
 leston. In a case in which he was interested, he went into 
 open court, defied the sequestration law, spoke with surpass 
 ing eloquence for hours against it, and denounced it as "an 
 act borrowed from the darkest period of tyranny, and a relic 
 of the past dag up from the quarries of despotism." These 
 were stinging words for the hitherto soothed ear of Mr. Davis, 
 where had entered yet scarcely anything but the competing 
 voices of flattery or the pleasing tones of submission. The 
 newspapers published the speech of Mr. Pettigru with hesi 
 tation, but not without a secret sympathy with its expres 
 sions, or at least some ardor of admiration for the courage 
 that could speak thus boldy and scorn every advantage but 
 that of truth. 
 
 Meanwhile the Confederate Government was plunging 
 further into financial confusion and embarassment and on 
 this subject was actually at the end of its wits. With the 
 abandonment of the Produce Loan, the rejection of the Cot 
 ton Purchase, and the failure of other measures to replenish 
 the treasury, the government was now completely at sea in 
 its financial policy. The serious question was to obtain 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 185 
 
 means to carry on a war which was constantly enlarging. 
 The Confederate Government, having rejected the plan, re 
 ferred to, of utilizing the cotton had really no credit but what 
 was dependent on the fortune of the war. The States of 
 course as permanent political bodies which were expected to 
 survive any event of the war had their credit comparatively 
 unimpaired ; and Mr. Davis earnestly recommended that they 
 should aid the general government in the war to the extent 
 of equipping and paying their respective troops in the field. 
 But here again the argument which, moved the President to 
 this appeal, though ingenious, was weak and contained a 
 fatal fallacy. The aid thus given by the State Governments 
 to that extent enfeebled the resources of the whole people of 
 the Confederacy; it was only a devious process where the re 
 sults did not differ, and which only made more certain the 
 conclusion of general bankruptcy. As it was, the " war-debts" 
 of the States contracted by this use of their credit were in 
 considerable, and amounted only to a few millions of dollars. 
 The Confederate Government was thrown back to the be 
 ginning of its financial policy. In its bewilderment it had 
 recourse to a policy always attractive from its simplicity, but 
 universally fatal the vice of making paper money inimitably; 
 the mistake of using currency as revenue. Mr. Davis s Ad 
 ministration, we repeat, was ignorant of the most primitive 
 truths of finance ; and it never showed that ignorance more 
 recklessly than when it relied upon the manufacture of a 
 revenue out of naked paper obligations. Indeed, the science 
 of political economy on this subject is not difficult. -Tlie 
 proper use of paper money is only as a currency, a means to 
 facilitate exchanges; it is limited by the wants of the com 
 munity for a circulating medium; and all issues in excess of 
 this, in the vain illusion of creating values, is quite as fatal as 
 
186 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the empiricism which debases the coin of a country to in 
 crease the revenue of the government. There are briefly no 
 royal ways of making money out of nothing ; governments 
 must raise money in the legitimate way of taxation, loans, etc. ; 
 its paper currency is not money except as limited by the 
 necessities of exchange, and based upon values commensurate 
 in the shape of credits. 
 
 In the month of July, 1861, the Provisional Congress passed 
 a law authorizing the issue of one hundred millions of Trea 
 sury notes. At the same time it enacted a tax-bill the first 
 attempt at direct burdens on the people ; but it was calcula 
 ted to raise only fifteen millions of dollars, leaving all the 
 expenditures of the war in excess of this sum to be provided 
 for by issues of paper money, which, of course, to this extent 
 were translated from currency into revenue, and put on the 
 inevitable road to depreciation. Thus was the financial doom 
 of the Confederacy early pronounced. The door, once opened 
 to paper issues, was not easily closed ; other issues than that 
 just mentioned followed ; when the Confederacy entered the 
 second year of the war, it was already carrying a volume of 
 currency four times what were the wants of the community 
 for a circulating medium; and from this time, Treasury notes 
 fell rapidly first 20 per cent, less than gold ; 50 per cent, 
 three months later ; 225 per cent, in December, 1862 ; 400 per 
 cent in the spring of 1863, and thereafter, until 6,000 pel 
 cent, was the last measure of its value, at which Mr. Mernmin- 
 ger exchanged it at his counters. 
 
 f But we cannot anticipate here so much of the history of the 
 Confederate currency. We are writing now only of that 
 period in which the first design of paper became fixed in the 
 mind of Mr. Da vis s Administration, and referring to the law 
 which sowed the first seed of corruption. This law was 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 187 
 
 afterwards aggravated by another invention of Mr. Memmin- 
 ger that of funding the Treasury notes by a certain compul 
 sion, making arbitrary reductions of interest in case they re 
 mained unfunded after certain dates. It can be described 
 only as the very multiplication of ignorance. 
 
 It was easy to see that slight differences in rates of interest 
 would afford but feeble inducements for the conversion of the 
 treasury note into a bond, when money was easily doubled or 
 quadrupled in the active commercial speculations peculiar to 
 the condition of the South in the war, unles-s the bond could 
 be readily used as a medium of exchange ; and in that event 
 there would only be a change in the form of the paper, the 
 volume of the currency would be undiminished, and its de 
 preciation therefore remain the same. But while the analysis 
 of this system of funding showed it to be a transparent juggle, 
 it was by no means certain that it did not contain the germ 
 of many positive evils. The right of a government to make 
 arbitrary changes in any of the terms of its obligations which 
 affect their value, is questionable, and the commercial honor 
 of such an expedient is more than doubtful. Thus, with the 
 first issues of paper money, came the shadow of repudiation, 
 as if the Government had determined to make double assur 
 ance of the financial wreck of the country. 
 
 There could be no doubt of the final event of ruin. The 
 Government had nothing, owned nothing ; it had laid only 
 inconsiderable taxes ; it had fallen upon the mistake, fatal in 
 all financial experience of confounding the two distinct 
 topics of currency and revenue. The history of the paper 
 money of the Confederacy is briefly that of all schemes of re 
 dundant currency commencing with a great show of factitious 
 prosperity, and thus cheating for a time the imagination, but 
 invariably ending in universal bankruptcy and ruin. 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 For the present Mr. Davis saw only the first of these con 
 ditions. He was delighted, and even gleeful, at the easy way 
 of making money.* The printers and the engravers, and the 
 five hundred women who clipped the notes, were kept busy 
 in Kichmond ; all business appeared to improve, activity was 
 everywhere visible ; the fever of a redundant currency was 
 mistaken for high health, and Mr. Davis congratulating himself 
 on his experiment, pointed with derision to the slow and 
 painful financial tasks of the North. What extravagances 
 he uttered on this subject, when he officially summed the 
 events of the first year of the war, we shall elsewhere notice. 
 It is unnecessary to anticipate. There could be but one end 
 to the system of Confederate finance; its final condition of 
 collapse was as certain as the first of inflation. The law of 
 supply and demand is as applicable to money as to anything 
 else; it punishes all who violate it, and, however it may 
 operate unseen by the tyro or empiric, it is as certain, as 
 supreme, and as inexorable as the law of gravitation. 
 
 * If any one doubts the financial ignorance of Mr. Davis, or questions 
 the extent of his responsibility for the excessive paper money of the 
 Confederacy, let him read his Message as late as August, 1862, advis 
 ing Congress to issue yet more Treasury notes, without fear of their 
 depreciation, viz.:" The legislation of the last session provided for 
 the purchase of supplies with the bonds of the government, but the 
 preference of the people for Treasury notes has been so marked, that 
 legislation is recommended to authorize an increase in the issue of 
 Treasury notes, which the public service seems to require, ^"o grave 
 inconvenience need be apprehended from this increased issue, as the 
 provision of law by which these notes are convertible into eight per 
 cent, bonds, forms an efficient and permanent safeguard against any 
 serious depreciation of the currency." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 John M. Daniel s New Year s Article A Philosopher s Mourn for the Union No Thought yot of 
 the Subjugation of the South Analysis of the Popular Sentiment, concerning President Davis 
 Description of the Military Lines of the Confederacy Reflections on the Spirit and Charac 
 ter of the Southern People Their Conceit about the War The "Raccoon Roughs," and Mr. 
 Lincoln s Hair Why Mr. Davis was not Excusable for his Short Vision in the War A Train 
 of Disasters Alarm and Demoralization of the People A Cruel Mistake concerning General 
 A. S. Johnston Inauguration of Mr. Davis as Permanent President A Gloomy Scene in the 
 Public Square at Richmond Piteous Prayer of the President Significance of the Change*from 
 a Provisional to a Permanent Form of Government Some Account of a Secret Debate at 
 Montgomery Why the Adoption of a Permanent Constitution was a Mistake The New Con 
 gress at Richmond Significant Speech of Speaker Bocock Who was the author of the Con 
 scription Law? How Narrowly it Saved the Confederacy A Statement of President Davis 
 Shamelessly False Two Remarkable Men in the Confederate Congress Mr. Foote (" Guber- 
 nator Pes") of Mississippi Mr. Boyco of South Carolina A Remarkable Effort of these Two 
 Men to Impel the Confederate Armies into the North The Effort is Defeated Traces ol a Re 
 markable Conspiracy. 
 
 JOHN M. DANIEL, the famous editor of Virgiana, wrote but 
 seldom in the columns ot the Richmond Examiner, and was 
 the actual author of but few of the articles in his paper. He 
 always insisted, however, on writing a New Year s article, 
 summing events in an historical tone, and bestowing on them 
 some reflections of philosophy. That which he wrote on the 
 1st of January, 1862, we have always thought the finest com 
 position of his pen, an example of lofty and elaborate style ; 
 yet most remarkable for its thoughtful sorrow on the events 
 of the past year. It was the mourn of a philosopher, on what 
 he imagined to be the ruins of a once great and happy 
 government. 
 
 He wrote : " The end of the year just passed fills thq mind 
 " with melancholy reflections on the vanity of human wishes 
 
190 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS ; WITH A 
 
 " the instability of human creations, and the frivolity of all the 
 "thoughts of man. Where now is that wonderful country 
 "which realized the political dream of philosophers and 
 "patriots; that grand temple of liberty, built for eternal 
 "duration ; that perfect commonwealth, which gave the lie to 
 " all the ages, and proved the self-government of nations to be 
 " something more than the fable of a noble, but irrational, 
 " imagination ? What has become of that splendid illusion 
 " which shed its lustre on the opening mind of the American 
 "youth the lofty thought, that he was born and would live 
 "in a glorious republic of heroic States and free citizens, 
 11 whose title was above the royal rank, and whose birth-right 
 " was the envy of the world ? One short year has ended both 
 " alike. The star-pointing-pyramid has proven a tower of 
 " Babel ; that noble faith in the virtue and intelligence of the 
 "soil s sons has given place to a disgust and indignation, too 
 " deep for utterance in words ; and on the plains where per- 
 " petual peace was supposed to have made her settled seat, 
 " war, with all its original savagery, reigns undisputed. The 
 " catastrophe, brought by the year that ended yesterday, leaves 
 " us not even the sombre consolation of the grandeur that has 
 "attended the ruin of other empires. The majestic fabric fell 
 "not beneath the giant hand of an invading race, or before 
 the blazing ambition of a secular genius. Enfeebled by the 
 "cankers of inaction, and gnawed by the teeth of vermin, it 
 " has gone down like a ship, whose timbers have been the un- 
 suspected prey of worms and mice. Few, who meditated 
 yesterday on these things, have not felt the justice of that 
 "contempt for the conceited animal called man, his pursuits 
 "and his projects, which religion and philosophy inculcate, 
 * but few have realized before." 
 The paragraph quoted, expressed the almost universal 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 191 
 
 thought of the South, to the effect that the Union was hope 
 lessly gone, irrevocably destroyed that this fabric of govern 
 ment, once esteemed so fair, had fallen to shapeless ruin, 
 and that it remained only to construct out of the foregone 
 conclusion of the war, a new political experiment. But few 
 persons yet doubted the ultimate conclusion of the contest in 
 the independence and separate government of the South. So 
 far all that was feared or complained of in the Administration 
 of Mr. Davis, was that it delayed the inevitable result of the 
 war, and that it might unnecessarily increase the price that 
 the South was to pay for her independence. This was the 
 extent of uneasiness in the Confederacy. The ultimate faith 
 in its successful emergence from the war was not yet seriously 
 diminished ; the popular outcry was only that the Eichmond 
 Administration was making the war harder than was neces 
 sary ; was exasperating its evils, by errors in its policy, and 
 was enlarging its sufferings and sacrifices, by trials of its own 
 creation. The thought of subjugation and of a ro-affirmation 
 of the Union had not yet, to any considerable extent, entered 
 the Southern mind ; and this, although the Confederacy had 
 not made any visible progress since the victory of Manassas. 
 and although the enemy was making vast preparations for the 
 second year of the war. But it must be remembered that 
 these preparations had not yet been unveiled, and even the 
 rumors of these were subjects of equivocation in the press. 
 On the other hand, the Confederate extreme line of defence 
 was, as yet, unbroken, had not yet been assailed ; and Mr. 
 Davis s policy of dispersion, while it really weakened the sub 
 stance of Confederate defence, yet made a very imposing and 
 extravagant spectacle to the populace. It was a grand task 
 for the eye to sweep a line of posts from the Atlantic ocean 
 to the Mississippi river ; a magnificent thing to be plotted 
 
192 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 on paper : a brilliant meretricious display, vastly pleasing to 
 the vulgar observation, however offensive to military calcu 
 lation. Here was a line of defence extending from Columbus, 
 Kentucky, eastward through Bowling Green, the Cumberland 
 river post, with advances on the Big Sandy and Kanawha 
 rivers, Staunton, Winchester, Leesburg, Centreville, Aquia 
 Creek, and the Potomac. This line yet rested near the verge 
 of the enemy s territory. With what force it was threatened, 
 and what powers it had to resist, were but little thought of by 
 the many persons in the South, who were imposed upon by 
 such geographical magnificence of defence ; who calculated 
 on their maps that if the Confederacy was to be conquered by 
 square miles, it would be an endless labor ; and who thus as 
 sured themselves that, however Mr. Davis, or his unworthy 
 favorites might misconduct the war, they could only add to 
 its term, they could not endanger its final result. The public 
 mind of the Confederacy had, indeed, been disturbed by the 
 maladministration of Mr. Davis, but it had not yet taken any 
 serious alarm as to the possibility of subjugation. 
 
 It is convenient here to reflect on an excuse frequent!/ 
 made by the partisans of Mr. Davis, as to his alleged over- 
 confidence in the success of the South, and his short-sighted 
 regard of the enemy. It is plausibly said that if such was 
 his fault, nearly the whole popular sentiment of the South 
 shared in it, and that in this he did nothing more than reflect 
 the prevalent opinion of the Confederate public. What is 
 here suggested of the imperfect and conceited vision of the 
 people of the South, concerning the war, is unquestionably 
 true ; but the excuse it would prefer for Mr. Davis and his 
 Administration, is, as we shall presently see, of but little avail, 
 and of an essentially fallacious nature. 
 The character of the Southern people is but little under- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 193 
 
 stood by the world, and it has so long been a show-stock to 
 mankind in the matter of slavery that it is difficult to exhibit 
 it unless through mists of prejudice. There are great defects 
 in that character peculiar defects of accident ; but there is 
 also in it the sum of many virtues. The people of the South 
 are brave to a fault, they are generous to credulity, polite, 
 hospitable, cherishing many noble virtues which the commer 
 cial spirit of the age has elsewhere outgrown ; but they have 
 all the peculiar faults of an untravelled people a people who 
 pass their lives in local neighborhoods, and who having but 
 little idea of how large and various the world is, easily take 
 conceit of their own powers and virtues. The worst faults 
 of the Southern mind are to be traced to the isolation of 
 agricultural pursuits and to peculiar habits of local attachment 
 added to that. A people untravelled have high ideas of their 
 own importance, are morbidly sensitive to criticism, and are 
 remarkable for a certain puerility measured by the standards 
 of the world. Men for whom the sun rises or sets in a par 
 ticular county or State are not apt to take just views of the 
 extent and variety of the world beyond them. It may thus 
 at least in a measure be explained why the South was so long 
 in obtaining an idea of the immense resources of the North 
 against which she had to contend in the war, and with what 
 extravagent conceit she commenced the contest. The sol 
 diers who at the commencement of the war thought their 
 flags would be flying in Washington in a few weeks, and the 
 "Raccoon Roughs" who had promised the sweet-hearts they 
 had left in their native mountains, to bring them back a lock 
 of Abraham Lincoln s hair were really honest, sincere fellows 
 They saw the hills and valleys pouring out men ; many of 
 them had never been in a Northern city ; they were unaccus 
 tomed to see large collections of people, unused to multitudes 
 13 
 
194 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 and in the simplicity of their hearts they believed the South 
 was making a display of force that could sweep the continent, 
 and that in a month would be able to exhibit Abraham Lin 
 coln in the cage that popular imagination had designed for 
 
 him. 
 
 But Jefferson Davis knew better. He had facilities of 
 knowledge which the public did not have ; he knew the exact 
 amount of the enemy s resources; he had secret agents and 
 emissaries in the North, and its preparations for the next cam 
 paign were dinned into his ears. But even omitting his offi 
 cial facilities for information as to the strength and temper of 
 the enemy, the argument that he is to be held excusable for 
 short vision and imperfect judgments of the war, because the 
 public was alike defective, is impudently fallacious, would 
 destroy the responsibility of all rulers, and would deny the 
 existence of such a thing as. the science of government. It is 
 the business and education of rulers to be superior to the 
 masses in public affairs; else government is nothing but the 
 lowest demagogism, the alter ego of the populace. The 
 specialty of the statesman is prescience ; he is supposed to be 
 able to advise and warn the common people, to see what they 
 do not see, and to direct what they do not understand. Not 
 that a miraculous gift is expected from him; only a special 
 accomplishment within the limits of human power. If the 
 person called to preside over the destinies of several millions 
 of people, and standing on the chief eminence of authority, his 
 vision increased by all possible artificial aids, could yet see no 
 more than they did, and if his ignorance is to be excused by 
 whatever of popular ignorance was extant at the same time, 
 then Jefferson Davis was a supernumerary, and had no right 
 to be in the place he had assumed. It is impossible by such 
 arguments as that referred to, to refine away the responsibility 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 195 
 
 of great historical actors, or to distribute it through the 
 multitude. Mr. Davis is to be judged as President of the 
 Southern Confederacy, and not as a single distinguished citizen. 
 As the latter, he might have pardonably erred with the major 
 ity of the people; but as the President, he is to be judged as 
 the head of every other government is judged in history, not 
 forgetting that responsibility is the correlative of trust, as duty 
 is that of power. 
 
 The alarm with which the heart of the South was smitten 
 in the beginning of 1862, came with sudden and terrible effect. 
 It was a series of disasters, the force of which the newspapers 
 could not break by their stories of " blessings in disguise " and 
 the happy losses of barren positions ; a blow to the hopes of 
 the South which could not be muffled by equivocal dispatches 
 from the War Department. The truth could no longer be 
 avoided by official circumlocution. Even the few persons in 
 the South who had foreseen and calculated the preparations 
 of the enemy were taken by surprise ; they had expected de 
 monstrations only in the next spring or summer ; they had 
 scarcely imagined that in mid- winter, when the season pro 
 claimed truce, the enemy would dare to have given a command 
 of advance, sweeping across what was almost half a continent. 
 
 First came the fall of New Orleans, an event which staggered 
 all the hopes of European recognition. Mr. Slidell wrote from 
 Paris privately to Mr. Davis : " If New Orleans had not fallen, 
 our recognition could not have been much longer delayed." 
 The disaster at Fishing Creek broke the Confederate line in 
 Kentucky. Then followed the capture of Forts Henry and 
 Donelson, the evacuation of Bowling Green and Columbus, 
 and the surrender of Nashville; the entire line of defence in 
 the West was swept away, and the next array of the Confeder 
 ates was formed on the lagoons of Mississippi. Roanoke 
 
196 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Island was captured with the army on it, and after a handfull 
 of loss on the part of the enemy. It was silly of newspapers 
 to speak of these losses as those only of mud forts and barren 
 places ; war is an affair of lines a problem in geometry ; and 
 it was obvious to men of calculation and reflection, that with 
 two sections of defence broken down, the enemy had got not 
 only a new breadth of territory, but positions of the greatest 
 value and it is curious that the Confederates never recaptured 
 anything, and that an important post once lost, was lost for 
 ever. Meanwhile the army of McClellan hung like an omin 
 ous cloud on the horizon. 
 
 There was a general alarm and demoralization of the peo 
 ple west of the Alleghanies. It is not generally known that 
 after the retreat of the Western army from Nashville, the Con 
 gressional delegation of Tennessee called on President Davis, 
 and asked him to transfer the command of General Albert 
 Sidney Johnston to some other person. It was a cruel mis 
 take ; for the protestants did not then know as Mr. Davis 
 was conveniently dumb that the wide distribution of troops 
 in the trans-Alleghany ordered by the President, had left 
 Johnston with only 11,000 effective men to oppose Buell s 
 column of 40,000 troops, while Grant s army of 60,000 had 
 nothing to prevent them from ascending the Cumberland, 
 leaving to the Confederate commander no alternative but to 
 evacuate Nashville, or sacrifice his army. 
 
 In the midst of these disasters, Jefferson Davis was inaugu 
 rated President of the Confederate States, to continue in office 
 for six years ! A worse day than the 22d of February, 1862, 
 could not have been selected for a ceremony so important. 
 Mr. Davis delivered his inaugural speech at the statue of 
 Washington, in the public square. It was the weakest and 
 most unsatisfactory speech he ever made ; and the crowd if 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 197 
 
 four or five hundred persons might be called such listened 
 gloomily to the imperfect tones of his voice. He dared not 
 draw a presage from the skies of this day. At his first inau 
 guration at Montgomery, he had spoken under smiling skies 
 and there he had said, with his rare aptitude to draw from 
 circumstances : " It may be that as this morning opened with, 
 clouds, rain and mist, we shall have to encounter incon 
 veniences at the beginning; but as the sun rose and lifted the 
 mist, it dispersed the clouds and left us to the pure sunshine 
 of heaven." But the day of the second and more important 
 inauguration was clothed with sable. There was a mean, 
 hateful rain ; the patterings on the hundred umbrellas held 
 over the crowd drowned the voice of the speaker; people, 
 sullen, damp, and drenched, did not care to stretch their ears 
 to catch the voice of the President, and only pitied his bare 
 head in the damp atmosphere. Not a single cheer broke the 
 current of his speech ; not a movement of the crowd betokened 
 its emotion. It was a piteous address. The President stretched 
 his arms towards the dark sky, and cried : " To Thee, God ! 
 I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy 
 blessing on my country and its cause." There was nothing 
 of practical human comfort in his speech ; he was forced to 
 admit the disasters that had occurred, although "the final re 
 sult in our favor was not doubtful ;" he had not a word to 
 kindle inspiration, not a reproof with which to flog the failing 
 heart of the South ; he had only this wretched nonsense to 
 offer: "The period is near at hand, when our foes must sink un 
 der the immense load of debt they have incurred!" The slouched 
 and gloomy crowd heard him sullenly; and no sooner had he 
 concluded, than from brutal curiosity, or from a desire to save 
 themselves from the weather, they rushed to the halls of Con-, 
 gress to see the next dull feature of the programme. 
 
198 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The " provisional " government of the Confederacy was now 
 displaced. It had been nothing more than a political struc 
 ture, designed merely for carrying on a war, which it was 
 supposed would continue for only a few months ; and it is a 
 fact not generally noticed or estimated, that it was designed 
 at Montgomery to determine a permanent system of govern 
 ment for the South, only after the war had concluded, and to 
 accommodate its results. The length and pre-occupation of 
 the war defeated the detail of this design, and so busy was the 
 South in its regards of the enemy in February, 1862 the 
 period appointed for a permanent organization of the govern 
 ment that there was no time for the political after-thought, 
 no time to execute a design, which possibly lurked in the 
 minds of some of the Southern leaders, to change the form of 
 government ; and thus the provisional passed into the perma 
 nent government with slight ceremony, with only the affirma 
 tion of a Constitution copied from Washington, and without 
 even a canvass or an opposing candidate to question the suc 
 cession of Mr. Davis to the Presidency, or to disturb his 
 authority. He ascended from the mere provisional chief of 
 a rebellion to the office of President of the Confederate States, 
 for the term of six years, without question, without effort or 
 concession, making no change whatever in his cabinet, or in 
 the executive branches of his government. 
 
 But this curious political translation the event of a day, 
 marked only by a tawdry ceremony in the public square at 
 Richmond had a significance which the public did not per 
 ceive. It was not known how vexed in secret council had 
 been the leaders at Montgomery, in the very outset of the 
 war, as to this single point of the time of adopting a permanent 
 .government for the South ; and it is not yet appreciated how 
 vital was this question. It is only lately that one of the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 199 
 
 principal actors at Montgomery confessed to the author, that 
 the adoption of a permanent form of Constitution by the South, 
 while the war continued, was its fatal mistake, the main 
 source of controversy that enfeebled and ruined it. At 
 Montgomery there had been a prolonged secret debate as to 
 the relative terms of the provisional and permanent govern 
 ments. The arguments on each side were singularly balanced. 
 On one side it was urged that a provisional form of govern 
 ment was necessary in a state of war, on account of its 
 elasticity ; that a strict definition of powers was impossible at 
 such a time, and that certain margins had to be allowed to 
 each department of the government ; and that if a permanent 
 Constitution was adopted while the war was still flagrant, it 
 would embarrass the government with political parties that 
 would inevitably spring up, as making various interpretations 
 of a fixed organic law. On the other side it was argued that 
 the leaders at Montgomery would confess a want of confidence 
 in the result of the war, to delay too long the adoption of a 
 permanent Constitution ; that such a Constitution would be 
 a signal to the people of faith in the cause, and would afford 
 them that immediate guaranty they desired of the permanancy 
 of their institutions. The result of the secret deliberation was 
 to displace the provisional form of government one year from 
 date, and to rely thereafter on permanent tenures of office. 
 The extent and grief of this mistake will be understood in the 
 course of our narrative. It not only inflicted upon the South 
 a permanent President, who could not be removed unless by 
 resolution ; but it was the immediate source of those parties 
 which embarrassed the conduct of the war, which raised the 
 most untimely political questions in the midst of hostilities, 
 and which, once having adjusted the Procrustean bed of consti 
 tutional scruples, insisted on measuring upon it every act of 
 
200 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the government, and compelling to its test every necessity and 
 exigency of the war. It was certainly a great error. If the 
 history of the late war proved anything clearly, it is that in 
 the vigorous prosecution of arms, the measures of consti 
 tutional organic law, provided in a time of peace, must be re 
 laxed ; and although much has been heard of that superficial 
 platitude, that one Constitution will serve for war as well as 
 for peace, that the powers of government are to be the same 
 in all cases, the experience of mankind has almost invariably 
 avowed to the contrary. The fact is, that Jefferson Davis, in 
 presuming to accept the office of President, as one of perma 
 nent nature, and in allowing himself to be fettered by the 
 fixed and unelastic law of a Constitution, stiffly copied from 
 the United States, did, in his eagerness for the gauds of official 
 title, make a mistake that he rued to the end of his career, 
 that at once beset him with political parties, and that created 
 an embarrassment of his government, from which he was 
 never relieved. What door was opened to political contro 
 versy in the midst of war, by the adoption of a permanent 
 form of Constitution at Kichmond, and the declaration, as it 
 were, of a fixed model of government, remains to be seen. 
 
 In this event, however, there was one subject of congratu 
 lationone change in the political constituents at Kichmond 
 that promised some improvement. It was the assemblage of 
 a Congress of new fashion and material, after the Provisional 
 Congress that had meanly expired on the 22d of February. 
 The latter had been but one house possibly from the idea 
 that a single legislative body was most efficient in time of war. 
 Now the Confederate Legislature was divided into a Senate 
 and House of Representatives, after the fashion of the old 
 government at Washington. 
 
 Thomas S. Bocock was elected Speaker of the House, and 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 201 
 
 on taking the chair he made a suggestive speech, indicating 
 the hard experiment of a change of organic law in the midst 
 of war, and calling Congress up to an elevated standard of 
 duty. He declared that the gaze of the world was fixed upon 
 Richmond, in another interest than that of military campaigns. 
 "Nations," he said, " look on, curious to see how this new sys 
 tem of government will move off, and what manner of men have 
 been chosen to guide its earliest movements. It is, indeed, 
 a new system, for, though coinciding in many particulars with 
 that under which we lived so long, it yet differs from it in many 
 essentials. When the Constitution of 1787 was put in oper 
 ation, the war of the Revolution had been successfully closed. 
 Peace prevailed throughout the whole land, and hallowed all 
 its borders. The case with our Constitution is very different. 
 It is put into operation in time of war, and its first movements 
 are disturbed by the shock of battle. Its trial is one created 
 by the urgencies of this contest. The question to be decided 
 is, whether, without injury to its own integrity, it can supply 
 the machinery, and afford the means requisite to conduct this 
 war to that successful conclusion which the people, in their 
 heart of hearts, have resolved on, and which, I trust, has been 
 decreed in that higher court from whose decisions there is no 
 appeal. The solution of this question is in the bosom of the 
 
 future Can our political system legitimately afford 
 
 the means to carry the war to a successful conclusion ? If 
 not, it must perish; but a successful result must be achieved. 
 But it must be destroyed, not by the hand of violence, or by 
 the taint of perjury ; it must go out peacefully, and in pursu 
 ance of its own provisions. Better submit to momentary in 
 convenience than to injure representative honor, or violate 
 public faith. In the whole book of expedients there is no 
 place for falsehood or perjury." 
 
202 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 It was a brave manly voice in Congress. There was nope 
 now that there would be an infusion of new blood and vigor 
 in this withered branch of the Government. It commenced 
 well, with the passage of a conscription law, in place of the 
 old system of volunteers. The critical value of this law may 
 be estimated from the fact that nearly two-thirds of the forces 
 with which General Lee, some months later, saved Richmond 
 from the hosts of McClellan, were gathered under its opera 
 tions. It saved the Confederacy for the time, and gave a 
 new lease to the war. But it is to be remarked that the con 
 scription law was not properly produced by Congress, but 
 had been prepared for it before it met, by the press, even to 
 details, Congress only adopting it from the columns of the 
 newspapers, and only after the latter had carefully brought 
 public opinion up to the necessary point of sacrifice. If any 
 one is to stand as author of this law, it is the Richmond 
 .Examiner. When it first proposed such a measure, another 
 journal, popularly known as Mr. Davis s organ, opposed it, 
 and actually scoffed it as a reflection on the patriotism of 
 the South. Mr. Davis who had that wretched and danger 
 ous vanity which resents the tone of suggestion, no matter 
 what the value of the counsel it would impart, and who, 
 besides, had his own reasons to hate the Examiner was 
 long in being brought to the conscription ; and he at last 
 ungracefully and imperfectly yielded the recommendation 
 which the necessity of the case extorted from his pride of 
 opinion. He referred to it only in weak and partial phrases, 
 but with a remarkable Jesuitism, having at once the shame- 
 lessness and the shallowness to pretend that the conscription, 
 instead of testifying to any necessity in the South for troops, 
 was really intended to moderate the rage for volunteering. 
 He wrote a paltry and detestable falsehood rather than an 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 203 
 
 ingenious statement. In his message to Congress lie de 
 clared : " The operation of the various laws now in force for 
 raising armies has exhibited the necessity for reform. . . . 
 The vast preparations made by the enemy for a combined 
 assault at numerous points on our frontier and seaboard, 
 have produced results that might have been expected. 
 They have animated the people with a spirit of resistance so 
 general, so resolute, and so self-sacrificing, that it requires 
 rather to be regulated than stimulated!" 
 
 In the conscription law, Congress demanded from the 
 people the greatest of sacrifices ; and it followed the act by 
 resolutions, offered by Mr. Kawles, of Alabama, and unani 
 mously adopted, announcing to the world that "it is the 
 unalterable determination of the people of the Confederate 
 States to suffer all the calamities of the most protracted war, 
 but that they will never, on any terms, politically affiliate 
 with a people who are guilty of an invasion of their soil and 
 the butchery of their citizens." Would it be believed that 
 after such testimonies, this Congress would, a few weeks 
 later, give, in the person of its own members, an exhibition 
 of the most arrant cowardice and the meanest selfishness 
 an exhibition almost incredible, and unparalleled, perhaps, in 
 similar historical circumstances in modern times ! 
 
 But we reserve this exhibition for the course of time; and 
 we turn for a moment to a most remarkable incident in this 
 Congress on which the reader may build all the romantic 
 speculations he pleases. 
 
 There were two notable men returned to the Congress 
 meeting at the inauguration of President Davis. One of 
 them was Mr. Foote of Mississippi, a man who had been for 
 a long time a curiosity in the politics of the country. Mr. ( 
 Davis is reported to have described his fellow-citizen, as " a 
 
204 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 man of no account or credit ;" and here we may remark 
 that whatever the truth of his estimate in this instance, his 
 freedom of animadversion on the character of persons around 
 his administration, as illustrated in the "Prison Conversa 
 tions," lately published, does not suggest that abstinence of 
 criticism for the President himself, which his friends would 
 plead for him, as a broken old man who had outlived the 
 resentments of his life, and who harbored nothing but a 
 desire to die in peace. Mr. Davis since the war has spoken 
 with great bitterness of other characters in the Confederacy ; 
 yet his partisans are ever ready to raise their hands sensi 
 tively against any historical inquest of himself, and to say 
 that nothing but what is good and merciful should be spoken 
 of a man who is no more dead than Johnston, Beauregard, 
 or even the redoubtable Foote himself. But to return to 
 the curiosity of Mississippi the Gubernator Pes. He was a 
 man of learning, even erudite in historical illustrations ; he 
 was remarkable for the Latinity of his style ; but he had the 
 most indecent itch for notoriety; he was constantly grasp 
 ing at everything that promised sensation; his fidgets in 
 Congress, his sudden apparitions as jack-in-the-box, his lofty 
 combativeness (once taken down a peg by a -challenge from 
 John Mitchel) made him the amusement of the wiser mem 
 bers, the terror of timid country delegates, and the stock of 
 the newspaper reporters. He had had an old quarrel with 
 Mr. Davis in the local politics of Mississippi ; but he came 
 to the Congress at Eichmond, professing that the quarrel had 
 been completely cured, and exhibiting much more than was 
 necessary an autograph letter from Mr. Davis, tendering 
 reconciliation and expressing the highest consideration, re^ 
 gard, and friendship, for the gentleman who had so happily 
 returned from a political adventure in California, to support 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 205 
 
 Douglas for the Presidency, next to declaim against Buchanan 
 for not crushing South Carolina, and now to offer his estima 
 ble service to the cause of the Southern Confederacy ! " I m 
 on excellent terms with Mr. Davis, excellent terms, sir : only 
 see what he says of me in his letter," were words with which 
 Foote bored all comers, and the proclamation with which he 
 took his seat in Congress. 
 
 The other of the notable duo of this body, to be introduced 
 to the reader on a special occasion, was Mr. Boyce of South 
 Carolina. Apparently a cold, ascetic man ; but one who had 
 a larger record of gallantries than any other Congressman in 
 Eichmond ; a person without ambition, without any desire 
 for public distinction (and in abilities, he was really second 
 to no member of Congress) yet full of the passion of intrigue, 
 sinister, devious, amusing himself with masks and puppets, 
 a man who would make a conspiracy to relieve his ennui, if 
 for nothing else. 
 
 These two men became afterwards notorious in the South, 
 for having morally deserted the Confederate cause at a 
 certain period ; and since the war they are remembered as 
 having shown an especial aptitude for "reconstruction." 
 Mr. Foote fled from the Confederacy before the war had con 
 cluded ; and at the period of this excursion, Mr. Boyce was 
 earnestly advocating a peace convention in Congress. It is 
 in view of the subsequent histories of these two particular 
 men that what we are about to relate becomes significant. 
 
 No sooner had the new Congress of the Confederacy met 
 than Messrs. Foote and Boyce commenced a violent clamor 
 for an immediate movement from every point on the enemy s 
 lines. These two men were the only members who spoke to 
 this effect, and they spoke in evident concert. On the very 
 day the President s Message was sent in, Mr. Foote sprung to 
 
206 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 his feet in great heat, declared that Judge Harris of Missis 
 sippi had declared that Mr. Davis was willing to take the 
 military aggressive, if Congress would signify its pleasure to 
 this effect ; and in a speech, which had evidently been pre 
 pared, he exhorted members to accept a resolution that " it 
 will be the duty of the government of the Confederate States 
 to impart all possible activity to our military forces every 
 where, and to assail the forces of the enemy wherever they 
 are to be found, whether upon the land or water." He said 
 that he was in favor of a vigorous onward movement of the 
 Confederate armies ; he desired that the Yankees should be 
 made to pay the- whole expenses of the war, that the com 
 mercial magnates of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 
 should be compelled to unlock their strong boxes, and to in 
 demnify the South for losses which they had imposed upon 
 her. He desired above all things to drive the enemy "Beyond the 
 Southern borders. All this he would have, and nothing less. 
 The Confederate armies should pass into Maryland heroic 
 Maryland rescue Baltimore and Annapolis, cut off the rail 
 road communication with the North ; and if this had been 
 done months before, the independence, which the South had 
 now to purchase with a vast expenditure of blood and treasure, 
 could have been secured at less than one-fourth of what the 
 war had already cost. 
 
 Not five minutes after Mr. Foote had ceased this rhetorical 
 bravado and taken his seat, Mr. Boyce succeeded him in a yet 
 more singular speech, urging an advance upon the enemy s 
 lines. He said : " We should have pursued from the first 
 more of an aggressive policy, which would have given a po 
 sition to the Southern States ; it would have encouraged our 
 friends and discouraged our enemies, and such a policy had 
 been indicated by our distinguished President from Mississippi 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 207 
 
 when on his way to be inaugurated as President of the Pro 
 visional Government, that we should wage war on the enemy s 
 own ground. Mr. L. P. Walker, the former Secretary of 
 War, had said, at an early day, that the flag of the South 
 should float shortly over the Capitol at Washington. He, the 
 speaker, had thought the expression unwise at that time. We 
 should have talked peace and acted war; used peaceful terms, 
 but prepared for active war. Audacity ! audacity ! audacity ! 
 is the key to success. Make no show of fear ; prosecute the 
 war with great vigor. Talk of risk ! have we not risked a 
 resolution ? and shall we see it fail ? " 
 
 It is remarkable of this strenuous advice delivered by 
 .Foote and Boyce by only these two members in the whole 
 body of Congress that it would inevitably have sacrificed 
 the South, and been a short cut to its ruin. Why this sudden 
 anxiety that the Confederate lines should be advanced, ex 
 pressed by these two particular men in Congress? Must they 
 not have known that an aggressive movement of the South at 
 this time would have been to consign it to certain destruction, 
 to have thrown it into the jaws of an enemy six times its su 
 perior in strength? They must have known the obvious 
 facts of the military situation. They must have known that 
 the enlistments of the Confederate soldiers for twelve months, 
 commencing immediately upon the secession of the States to 
 which they belonged, were about expiring; they must have 
 known that Johnston s army in Northern Virginia had 
 dwindled to thirty-odd thousand men ; they must have known 
 that the operations in the West had swept the Confederate 
 line of defence from near Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi, 
 and raising the blockade of the upper portions of that river, 
 had even passed into Arkansas ; they must have known that 
 it was the period of greatest weakness in the South, when the 
 
208 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 vital concern was to recruit and to re-organize ; and at such a 
 time, and in such an exigency, to have taken advantage of 
 the vulgar flatulence, about carrying the war into the enemy s 
 country, and to have urged that the South should throw all 
 that remained of its armies on an enemy, who had brought 
 his troops into camp during the latter part of 1861 ; who had 
 already organized and drilled them ; who had prepared the 
 immense materials necessary for an active campaign ; who in 
 such preparations was, at least, four months in advance of the 
 Confederate Government, and who already outnumbered them 
 in the field, six to one, was, to say the least, a suspicious 
 counsel, and one which could scarcely have been made in the 
 sincere interest of an endangered and critical government. 
 
 But if Foote and Boyce designed the early destruction of 
 the Southern Confederacy, they were disappointed. The 
 resolution offered by the former was laid on the table. It 
 was the episode of a day; but it preserves the curious remem 
 brance, that these two men, who subsequently made such in 
 decent haste to submission, were the loudest and brazenest 
 champions for vengeance upon the North (even to the robbery 
 of banks in its cities) at a memorable period, in which the 
 severe alternative is, that they must have been either miser 
 able time-servers, or deep and infamous conspirators. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 209 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Military Condition of the Southern Confederacy Immense Political Significance of the Cotiscrip- 
 tion Law It necessarily Changed the Character of the Government First Appearance of 
 Political Parties against President Davis Some Account of Governor Jo. Brown of Georgia 
 An Infimous Underplot against the Confederacy The Conscription Law Unconstitutional, but 
 Justifiable Mr. Davis s Boast of Superior Liberty in the South Exploded How he had to 
 SwaJlow his Words A Military Despotism at Richmond Two Notable Sequels to the Con 
 scription Law A Terrible Reproof from Mr. Hunter in the Senate Outrages of Winder s 
 Police A Description of the Fouche of the Southern Confederacy Anecdote of Winder 
 Alarm in Richmond at McClellan s Advance The Federal Commander up a Tree Shameful 
 and Cowardly Flight of the Confederate Congress President Davis Secretly Resolves to 
 Evacuate Richmond He Changes his Resolution A Witticism of General Lee Excitement 
 in Richmond on account of the Destruction of the Virginia-Merrimac A Littleness of Ex 
 pedients as Characteristic of the Confederate Administration It Advertises for Scrap Iron and 
 Old Brass Anecdote of Secretary Memminger Appeal of "The Old Lady " A Notable As 
 sembly in Richmond "The Ladies Gun-Boat" and an Oyster Supper. 
 
 IF the Southern Confederacy had moved on the enemy, when 
 Messrs. Foote and Boyce urged aggression, it would have 
 been dashed to pieces. Indeed, even if it had been content to 
 wait for the attack of the enemy at this time, without a new 
 effort to recruit and to re-organize, it would have been the 
 easy prey of overwhelming numbers. The calculation was 
 thus made in a Richmond paper : " Had the Confederacy lain 
 still two months more, with the army dwindling daily under 
 the furlough system, disgusted with the inaction of stationary 
 camps, while the government was quarreling, with the Generals, 
 and the people sinking under indifference, we would have 
 been overrun between the loth of April and the 15th of 
 May." 
 
 The Conscription Law undoubtedly saved the Confederacy 
 from the armies of the enemy, and it is so far to be com- 
 14 
 
210 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 mended. But while such was its military beneficence, its 
 moral and political effects were certainly disastrous. If it 
 saved the arms of the Confederacy, it yet, of necessity, estab 
 lished at Kichmond a despotism -a rule, which, however it 
 might claim to be just and kindly in its views, was yet essen 
 tially a despotism, according to every test which distinguishes 
 forms of government. In the first place, the moral import of 
 the law was unfavorable ; it was a confession that the ardor of 
 the people of the South had ceased to be a safe medium of 
 reliance in the conduct of the war, and it was the first marked 
 occasion of those desertions from the Confederate armies, 
 which afterwards became the crying evil and shame of the 
 South. Its political significance was immense and unavoid 
 able. It necessarily established a consolidated government, 
 founded on military principles ; it was a departure from all 
 the constitutional precedents known in the country, a direct 
 assault upon State Eights, a declaration that the powers of 
 Mr. Davis, and his Congress, were henceforward to be meas 
 ured by military necessities, instead of being contained in a 
 written Constitution. 
 
 And here we are recommitted to the thought suggested in 
 the preceding chapter : that the adoption of a permanent 
 Constitution in the midst of the war was a mistake, that it 
 threw an untimely fetter on its operations, and that it was 
 likely to produce political parties that would embarrass the 
 government. In striking illustration of this thought, we find 
 that almost the first act of the government at Kichmond, after 
 adopting such a Constitution, was to break it in its most vital 
 part, under the pressure of a great necessity; and that this act, 
 of itself, created a moral distemper in the Confederacy, and 
 was, indeed, the signal of the first appearance of organized 
 parties in opposition to the government of Mr. Davis 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 211 
 
 The conscription law was at once seized as political capital, 
 and by men who had a much deeper design than that of con 
 testing a particular measure, and who had the opportunity 
 thrust into their hands of kindling popular dissatisfaction and 
 undermining the Confederate cause. Governor Joseph Brown 
 of Georgia, came out against the measure in flaming procla 
 mations and speeches ; he defied the conscript officers com 
 missioned at Richmond to touch the militia of his State ; he 
 opened a correspondence with President Davis that lasted for 
 months, had it printed in a pamphlet and hawked through 
 the streets of every city in the South. His suspicious industry 
 in this respect drew upon him the attention of the whole 
 South ; and it was asked what were really the motives of this 
 person in thus sowing the seeds of political controversy, while 
 the enemy was thundering at the gates of Eichmond, and 
 while his own State, whose troops he wished to remain at 
 home as militia for its protection, basked in security with no-t 
 an enemy within a hundred miles of it. The point of contro 
 versy was, that Governor Brown insisted that under the Con 
 stitution, the President could use the military forces of Georgia 
 only as militia and through the forms of a call on the State 
 authorities " to repel invasion." Mr. Davis replied : " If this 
 Government cannot call on its arms-bearing population more 
 than as militia, and if the militia can only be called forth to 
 repel invasion, we should be utterly helpless to vindicate our 
 honor or protect our rights. War has been styled the ter 
 rible litigation of nations. Have we formed our government 
 that in litigation we may never be plaintiffs?" 
 
 It was obvious that Governor Brown had the written pro 
 visions of the Constitution on his side. He had the advan 
 tage of appealing not only to the letter of the law, but to old 
 political prejudices against a centralization of power; it was 
 
212 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 an excellent chance for vapor ; he wrote long letters on con 
 stitutional law and the love of liberty; and he even challenged 
 the Legislature of the State to pronounce that the conscription 
 law was of no effect, and not to be obeyed within the limits 
 of Georgia. 
 
 Whatever may have been the technical merits of the posi 
 tion of this opponent of President Davis, enough is now 
 known of his subsequent conduct to support the explanation 
 that he had merely raised a false clamor with the ultimate 
 design of weakening and betraying the Confederacy. He 
 was fulsome in his declarations of devotion to the success of 
 the war ; he vied with Mr. Davis in his expressions of hostil 
 ity towards the North ; and yet this vile person, under the 
 plea for the integrity of State Eights, was secretly trying 
 to pave the way for the success of the centralized government 
 of the North, and under the color of an excessively pure and 
 hypercritical Southern party, was really marshalling the old 
 elements of the Union faction distributed through Georgia, 
 Tennessee and North Carolina, and was compassing the con 
 spiracy of a traitor. It was one of the most shameful under 
 plots of the war. Something may be said here of its infamous 
 chief, whom President Davis having first cozened and perhaps 
 misunderstood, afterward pronounced a "scoundrel" on the soil 
 of his State, whom the South has since disowned as an inflic 
 tion upon her honor, and with whom the country has been 
 recently amused as an unmasked hypocrite and superfluous 
 trifler on the stage of public life. 
 
 Joe Brown, as he was popularly named, made a great noise 
 in the war from the first time he resisted the conscription, and 
 was adroit enough to get Mr. Davis into a printed controversy 
 with him. He was the coarse, obese prince of Southern dem 
 agogues. There were various accounts of his low origin, and 
 
SECRET HISTOEY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 213 
 
 of the vulgar associations of his life before he had been ele 
 vated to the Governorship of Georgia ; but the most that is 
 certainly known of this period of his existence is that he had 
 been a "sand-hill cracker" in South Carolina, where he was 
 born, scratching a piece of poor land for subsistence, and 
 trading on the skirts of the large plantations. The person 
 who made this wonderful ascent in political life, found a no 
 toriety and advantage in the war by indulging a controversial 
 mood, and opening issues of old parties. His game with 
 President Davis was to " out-herod Herod " in the matter of 
 State Rights. In this pretence, he kept up a constant excla 
 mation of his earnest and passionate desire, even in excess of 
 Mr. Davis, to whip the enemy and accomplish independence ; 
 he excelled in " Yankeephobia," and in all the incandescent 
 sentiments of the original Secession party; but under cover 
 of these cries of excessive Southern fervor, he was doing his 
 best to embarrass the government and to disband its armies. 
 It was not without reason that Mr. Davis dictated a dispatch 
 sent to him and signed by the Secretary of War : " I think 
 we might as well drive out our common enemy before we 
 make war on each other." 
 
 In our commentary on the constitutionality of the conscrip 
 tion law, we are not to be mistaken. It did transcend the 
 Constitution adopted at Eichmond ; it was essentially a revo 
 lutionary measure ; but we are persuaded that the true dis 
 tinction as to the assumption of irregular and extraordinary 
 powers in a state of war is a moral one, to be decided by 
 good or bad effects; and as this law certainly did save the 
 Confederacy, we must consider it as a beneficent stretch of 
 power, and account opposition to it as a single measure, un 
 tenable, unwise, and unpatriotic. We respect the thought that 
 we tave elsewhere suggested, that organic laws in time of war 
 
214 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 must be stretched; the true question becomes whether the 
 enlargement of power in the government is really turned to 
 just purposes and good results. The conscription law ac 
 complished its own justification. But what was unfortunate 
 of it was that it necessarily placed the government on the basis 
 of military necessity, that it thus essentially revolutionized its 
 whole character, and that it was naturally followed by breaches 
 of the Constitution, which became successively larger, and for 
 which there was no adequate justification. When a section of 
 constitutional law is once broken down, the citadel of liberty 
 is soon taken. 
 
 And so it swiftly proved at Richmond. Heretofore Mr. 
 Davis in all his public addresses had declared that the Con 
 federate Government was established to preserve their 
 " ancient institutions ;" he constantly pointed to the disregard 
 which the North had shown of civil liberty, to its suspension 
 of habeas corpus, to bastiles filled with prisoners, arrested with 
 out legal process or indictment ; and no later than the clay of 
 his second inauguration, he had congratulated the South that 
 " through all the necessities of an unequal struggle there has 
 been no act on our part, to impair personal liberty, or the 
 freedom of speech, of thought, or of the press." This argu 
 ment of superior liberty in the Confederacy, had been ad 
 vanced on every occasion; the preservation of the civil 
 routine in a time of war, had been the habitual boast of Mr. 
 Davis. Now he was compelled to swallow this bit of glitter 
 ing stereotype. For in a few weeks there was exhibited in 
 Richmond a military tyranny that outdid "the strong 
 government " at Washington, that committed outrages of 
 which the newspapers spared accounts, and of which subse 
 quent narratives of the war have only given imperfect 
 glimpses, but which were unexcelled in the history of sudden 
 and violent usurpations. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 215 
 
 To the conscription law there were two notable sequels : - 
 one an attempt to prescribe the production of the country 
 the ultima thule of despotism ; the other the establishment of 
 a military police, of the most frightful and odious description. 
 The first usurpation failed, at least to the extent it designed, 
 but only by a slender majority in the Confederate Senate. 
 It had been at first proposed there to "advise" the planters 
 of the South to abstain from raising cotton and tobacco, so 
 as to increase the product of grain and provisions in the 
 country. For this proposition Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, 
 offered a substitute, to curtail the cotton crop ; providing in 
 detail that no planter or head of a family should sow more 
 cotton seed than would produce three bales of the staple for 
 himself, and one bale for each of the hands employed in the 
 culture during the year 1862, and that he should be sworn 
 to the extent of his crop under a penalty for perjury. It is 
 an illustration of the rapid advance of despotic ideas in 
 Richmond, that such a proposition should have been even 
 entertained. The Government, protested Mr. Hunter of 
 Virginia, had not the shadow of a right to go to any of the 
 States, and say, how much cotton should be produced. The 
 sovereignty of the States themselves hardly dare do this, 
 much less the delegated power of the Confederacy. If he 
 believed that Congress would pass any such act, or the 
 Government possessed any such power, he would pronounce 
 it a most notorious despotism, " worse even than that from 
 which the people of the South had just escaped." The in 
 famous bill failed through only three votes in the Senate ; 
 but Mr. Hunter s denunciation of it and of the tendency it 
 exhibited to despotic rule was conveniently omitted from 
 the newspapers, while it smarted in the ears of Mr. Davis. 
 The worst despotism however into which the President 
 
216 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 plunged, alarmed by the military disasters that had occurred 
 and by the now visible approach of McClellan s army to 
 Richmond was to declare martial law for ten miles around 
 the capital, and to supplant all the civil authorities by a 
 military police, of the vilest materials that could be raked 
 from the dens, or fished from the slums of his dissolute 
 capital. Every one who lived in Eichrnond in those days 
 has cause to remember "Winder s Police." The excuse 
 which Mr. Davis made for fastening on the city the atrocious 
 curse of these creatures was that a Union sentiment was 
 being developed as McClellan advanced, that summary ar 
 rests of suspected persons might become necessary, and that 
 a new vigilance was necessary to guard against political 
 conspiracies. There was, indeed, a great uneasiness in 
 Eichmond as the Federal army gathered around it; the air 
 was poisoned by rumors and suspicions ; there was a neces 
 sity for vigilance and vigor. But a police composed of 
 rowdies and gamblers imported from Baltimore as non-con- 
 scripts, the vilest of adventurers, who might without legal 
 process tear any citizen from his home, who made domicili 
 ary visits at pleasures, who could write anonymous denuncia 
 tions, who trafficked in bribes, from whom no man was safe, 
 and against whom there was no protection of sex or condi 
 tion, was not a measure calculated to re-assure the anxiety 
 of the public, or to improve its conMencrrnfur-afifeotioii for 
 Mr Jlavis. It introduced a new and terrible dimru^rirrtrje 
 community. There were two hundred spies employed in 
 Eichmond, and no man s conversation was safe from them. 
 The newspapers did not publish the arrests, or only as the 
 scantiest items; and although but few persons were actually 
 imprisoned on account of their political sentiments, the cases 
 were many where respectable citizens, among them ladies, were 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 217 
 
 conveyed to certain tribunals held in drinking-shops and the 
 " pens " of negro-traders and " warned " by police magnates 
 of the President.* 
 
 At the head of this wretched police business, which in 
 some form or other continued through the administration of 
 Mr. Davis, he placed a man than whom a fitter exponent of 
 despotism and cruelty could not be found within the limits / 
 of the South. This person was General Winder^ of Maryland^ ! 
 a name that thousands of living persons yet recall with 
 horror ; and a character that deserves an especial study in 
 
 * An incident illustrating the outrages and effrontery of this politi 
 cal police, is recollected by the author. In a boarding-house in 
 Richmond was an estimable lady, a native of Virginia, who owned a 
 large estate of negroes in Culpeper county. She had been very 
 much annoyed by the desertion of her slaves ; and hearing of the 
 flight of one of the most valuable of them, she exclaimed to a com 
 pany assembled in the parlor, "I do wish the Yankees would come 
 and take away all the negroes." It was nothing more than a petu 
 lant remark such as one living in the South might hear a hundred 
 times, when the mistress of the house was disposed to describe her 
 slaves as pests and sources of annoyance. The remark through 
 some channel, was reported to General Winder, " CoYnmanding the 
 Department of Henrico." The next day, the lady was called to the 
 door by a shabby stranger ; she came back running into the parlor, 
 weeping, and praying some gentleman in the house to protect her. 
 She had received the dread summons to attend before General 
 Winder, on a charge of uttering treasonable sentiments ! There 
 could be no opposition or escape ; the detective was at the door, im 
 portunate for his victim. It was only when this accomplished and 
 delicately nurtured lady had been compelled to walk nearly a mile 
 through the street, to enter a mean building recently used as a 
 drinking-shop, to press through a throng of rumsellers and rowdies 
 to the dirty throne of Winder, and to humbly protest there, that her 
 offence had been temper and not treason, that she was allowed to de 
 part on the brutal injunction to "hold her tongue in future." 
 
218 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS ; WITH A 
 
 the moral history of the war. At first sight this person was 
 not unpleasant. Mr. Ely, the memorable State prisoner of 
 the Libby, speaks of General Winder, then his principal 
 jailor, as an agreeable grey-headed officer, a little stiff and 
 disposed to stand on his dignity, prim and neat to scrupu 
 lousness, but having no traits of harshness in his manner or 
 countenance. But this impression was not that of a close 
 study. This man whom President Davis had found in some 
 obscure place in the old army, and kept to the end of his 
 Administration as his chief of military police, and head-jailor 
 of the Confederacy, was near sixty years of age ; his hair was 
 white and tufty ; and at a distance he had a patriarchal ap 
 pearance. But his face was a picture of cruelty, a study for 
 an artist ; a harsh dry face ; cruel eyes, not muddy as from 
 temper, but with a clear cold light in them ; a faded, poison 
 ous mouth on which a smile seemed mockery. 
 
 Under martial law proclaimed in Kichmond, this creature 
 held in his hands the powers of a viceroy. lie was responsi 
 ble to no one but Mr. Davis. lie ordered what arrests he 
 pleased; he regulated trade ; he gave permits for the trans 
 portation of goods ; he hunted conscripts through the streets. 
 As a curiuus specimen of his authority, we may quote a single 
 order: "The obtaining by conscripts of substitutes through 
 the medium of agents is strictly forbidden. When such agents 
 are employed, the principal, the substitute, and the agent, will 
 be impressed into the military service, and the money paid 
 for the substitute, and as a reward to the agent, will be confis 
 cated to the government!" It is almost incredible that such 
 despotic edicts could be issued in the capital of the Southern 
 Confederacy ; but here they were, written under the eye of 
 Mr. Davis, and put in the hands of his creature for execution. 
 Winder carried the interests of Kichmond in his pocket. If 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 219 
 
 a citizen wished to commute for military duty, if a merchant 
 desired to secure the sacrifice of his flour and bacon from the 
 tariff of prices under martial law, if a liquor-dealer wished to 
 bring into the city a lot of apple-brandy, Winder had to be 
 s^en, and his favor had to be secured. He was courted, 
 caressed ; people of all sorts sent him presents; and when an 
 acquaintance suggested to him that it was imprudent to 
 receive such testimonies of regard, and that they might be 
 coarsely interpreted as bribes, the reply was : " If the devil 
 himself chooses to send me presents, I don t see why I 
 should not accept them." He had a curious habit about 
 these offerings ; they seldom availed to obtain any return 
 from him. His peculiarity in this respect suggests a de 
 scription in Macaulay of the infamous Jeffreys, to the effect 
 that he would often carouse with the meanest men ; but 
 when he was sober on the bench, and his companions of the 
 night before would presume on the maudlin affection they 
 had contracted in their cups, he would pretend not to know 
 them, and would drown their attempts at familiarity in 
 volleys of wrath and imprecation. There was a striking 
 analogy to such behavior in the relations of Winder and his 
 gift-bearers. He invariably accepted anything sent him in 
 the shape of a present ; the ingenious wretch who had sent it, 
 perhaps to escape the conscription, or to get a permit to 
 traffic in liquors, would felicitate himself that he had secured 
 his concession, that the business was done ; but the next day 
 would come an order to clap him in the conscript camp, or 
 to impound all the whiskey on his premises. It was a feline 
 way the General had of playing with his victims, and must 
 have been intensely gratifying to a nature like his. The 
 unhappy bearer of gifts seldom escaped from his clutches 
 the gifts never. 
 
220 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 . Meanwhile McClellan continued to advance, and his white 
 / tents already gleamed on the rank banks of the Chickahominy. 
 His toilsome marches up the Peninsula had brought him 
 within sight of the house-tops of Eichmond; and he had 
 approached what appeared to be the grand consummation of 
 his hopes. As his army took its position near Richmond, he 
 climbed a lofty tree it was too near his adversary s lines to 
 send up a balloon ; from his leafy perch he saw bending 
 around the devoted city the long line of his troops, the array 
 of blue and gilt glittering in the sun, the black fangs of the 
 batteries in the forest; beyond them patches of "grey-backs" 
 half-concealed in the underbrush or peering out from sodden 
 marshes, the slovenly semblance of the army which he im 
 agined he had driven to its last imperfect cover, all that was 
 between him and victory. The commander descended from 
 the tree. It was not a dignified post of observation ; but it 
 must have afforded him a charming prospect, for, having 
 reached the ground, he threw his arms around a subordinate 
 officer, and exclaimed, " We ve got them." 
 
 And there were thousands of persons in Richmond who then 
 /believed that the grand army had "got" them, and who 
 f already seemed to feel the weight of arrest on their shoulders. 
 No assurance had yet been given by President Davis that the 
 capital was to be defended to extremity. It was a memorable 
 season of popular alarm ; there were uneasy whispers in Rich 
 mond ; a panic was threatened; and it was just that critical 
 period when the authorities were required and called upon to 
 do everything to nourish and sustain public confidence. We 
 have seen a few pages back, what declarations of desperate 
 courage the Confederate Congress had made. Now the in- 
 famous response of this body to the popular alarm was to 
 exceed it, to adjourn precipitately, and to break up in confu- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 221 
 
 sion, its members fleeing to the safety of their obscure homes, 
 amid the execrations of the press, the hootings of the populace, 
 and with even the contempt of the women thrown after them. 
 The shame of the fugacious Congress was in the mouth of 
 every one in Kichmond. It was one of the most contemptible 
 and ludicrous incidents of the war. The shop-windows were 
 filled with caricatures of it one of the most popular, and 
 which might be considered to have originated the tradition of 
 the carpet-bag, representing a fat and terrified Congressman, 
 with his slight baggage in hand, pursued by a gun-boat, the 
 apparition of a magnified insect mounted on spindle legs. 
 The cowardice of the Congress in this flight from McClellan 
 was so extravagant that the people of Richmond actually took 
 heart from its contrast to their own reasonable fears, in which 
 they had not yet lost their self-possession, and amused them 
 selves in ridiculing and lampooning it.* 
 
 The true history of this uneasiness in Richmond is, that 
 President Davis had secretly resolved to evacuate Richmond. 
 What was at that time .an. angry suspicion is now ascertained 
 to have been an actual fact. It is a remarkable circumstance 
 that up to the time General Johnston fell wounded in the 
 
 * The Richmond "TP7w/" announced the hasty adjournment and 
 its consequences in the following paragraph : 
 
 For fear of accident on the railroad, the stampeded Congress left 
 in a number of the strongest and newest canal-boats. These boats 
 are drawn by mules of approved sweetness of temper. To protect 
 the stampeders from the snakes and bull-frogs that abound along the 
 line of the canal, General Winder has detailed a regiment of ladies to 
 march in advance of the mules, and clear the tow-path of the pirates. 
 The ladies will accompany the stampeders to a secluded cave in the 
 mountains of Hepsidan, and leave them there in charge of the children 
 of the vicinage, until McClellan thinks proper to let them come forth. 
 The ladies return to the defence of their country. 
 
222 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 battle of 1 Seven Pines, Mr. Davis had obstinately refused tha 
 recommendations of this commander (with whom he seemed 
 determined never to act in concert) to draw in any consider 
 able forces from other parts of the South to defend Richmond 
 a condition which Johnston had named as essential to the 
 safety of the capital. He had sent his wife to a country re 
 treat in North Carolina ; he had bestowed the most important 
 papers of the government in boxes ticketed for Columbia, 
 South Carolina ; and whenever approached on the subject of 
 the defence of Richmond, he had shown an equivocation and 
 an anxiety from which no assurance was derived, and from 
 which the most distressful rumors were bred. A day for 
 public fasting and prayer was appointed; the President 
 betook himself to the consolations of religion. He was 
 "confirmed" in the Episcopal Church; and a circumstance 
 ordinarily so solemn and delicate, was interpreted in a curious 
 way by the fears and superstitions of the public impressed by 
 the coincidence of Mr. Davis s religious conversion and the 
 extremity of his Government. The President was represented 
 as "standing in a corner telling his beads and relying on a 
 miracle to save the country, instead of mounting his horse 
 and putting forth every human power to defeat the enemy." 
 His indecision, his religious melancholy, his equivocal speeches 
 were texts of almost savage complaint in the newspapers. 
 
 For once Mr. Davis bowed to popular opinion ; and after 
 a visit of a committee of the Virginia Legislature, it became 
 generally known that the fiat had been distinctly written out 
 that Richmond was to be defended, and that a new disposition 
 of the Confederate forces was to be made to assure its safety. 
 It was the summons of a new spirit in the army, and an occa 
 sion of congratulations among the citizens. The President 
 was for once conquered by public opinion. Looking at the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 223 
 
 after events of the war, it may perhaps be regretted that he 
 was so conquered, and that he did not adhere to his first 
 resolution to evacuate the city, and thus disembarrass the 
 main army of the Confederacy which was so long tied to the 
 one object of the safety of Richmond. True, it would have 
 excited great popular complaint; it would have risked a great 
 alarm ; but the moral spirit of the Confederacy would at that 
 time probably have sustained a misfortune which, resulting 
 three years later, was then a fatal blow to its spirit. In 1862 
 the Confederacy might have survived the fall of Richmond ; 
 in 1865 it perished under it. Further, in military estimation, 
 the defence of Richmond proved a constant fetter on the army 
 of Virginia ; for years it embarrassed all the operations of 
 General Lee on the border, and this commander once com 
 plained in his quaint way, that " he had got a creak in his neck 
 from constantly looking over his shoulder after Richmond} 1 But 
 these calculations were remote, hid in the future ; and when 
 Mr. Davis determined and announced that the city was to be 
 defended, the resolution was taken as the wisest and most 
 heroic thing that could be done in the circumstances. Hap 
 pily there was time to effect the change thus determined upon , 
 and the capital of the Confederacy, at the last, was more saved 
 through the unreadiness of McClellan, than through, the spirit 
 and providence of its defenders. While this commander, for 
 merly the superintendent of a Northern railroad, had, as Mr. 
 Aylett, one of the Richmond wits, expressed it, " accustomed 
 in peace to the indecent haste of railroad travelling, adopted 
 in war the sedate tactics of the mud-turtle," Richmond was 
 being filled with soldiers ; and the city into which he might 
 once have cut his way through the army he had driven from 
 Williamsburg, now interposed the most numerous force the 
 South ever put in a single field. 
 
224: LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 while these consultations and preparations of Mr. 
 Davis were taking place, and while popular confidence trem 
 bled on his decision, whether the Confederate capital should 
 be evacuated or defended, there came a single incident which, 
 of itself, nearly surrendered Kichmond, and which claims here 
 a curious notice. In fact, it created a public grief, so wild and 
 bitter, that at one time it was feared the building, in which 
 were collected the departments of the government, might be 
 stormed by a mob. This event was the destruction of the 
 iron-clad " Yirginia-Merrimac," in the tidewater of the James. 
 It was the most important naval structure that defended the 
 water approach to Eichmond ; it had cost nearly a year to 
 complete it; it had won the only important naval victory 
 which the Confederates ever gained ;* it had been fondly and 
 gloriously named "the iron diadem of the South," and it was 
 accounted the equivalent of an army of fifty thousand men in 
 the defence of the Confederate capital. It was fired by its 
 own crew, and blown to the four winds of heaven at a time 
 when its destr action left the water avenue to Eichmond so 
 nearly open, that only four guns defended it, in an unfinished 
 work on the upper part of the river. It has been said that 
 
 * "We make no account of the deeds of the Alabama, as naval 
 triumphs, for she went down in the first regular battle which Captain 
 Semmes, whetted by the persuasions of his friends in England, fought 
 for the especial purpose of getting a prestige on the sea for the Con 
 federacy. The destruction of merchant vessels, however effective it 
 may be in war, does not constitute exploits to boast of. "When 
 Captain Semmes was presented with a sword for them, by some of 
 his English admirers, the London Punch had a witticism on the appro 
 priateness of the gift to the hero who "cuts away." In brief, the 
 Confederate navy was an arm so vastly inferior in the war, that it 
 will scarcely claim the attention of the just historian except for re 
 cords of weakness and folly. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 225 
 
 this vessel was destroyed without the orders of the Govern 
 ment, and through the alarm of the commander, Commodore 
 Tatnall, who had never once fought it since its victory, under 
 another commander, in Hampton Eoads, and who now, instead 
 of riding it into, at least, one grand final action, that it might 
 perish gloriously, had carried it under the shelter of an island 
 and blown it into the air of midnight. 
 
 But what was most notable of this astounding shame is, 
 that at the time there was thus cleanly destroyed an iron 
 clad, which had cost the government of Mr. Davis one yea-r 
 to build, and not a bolt saved from the wreck at a time when 
 a structure so immense and elaborate was given to the winds, 
 the same Government was advertising through the length and 
 breadth of the South for scrap-iron, old brass, saucepans, and 
 even clock- weights, in its scarcity of metal for naval armor 
 and ordnance. It was a ludicrous apposition of expedients, 
 but one, characteristic of the administration of Mr. Davis. 
 The puerility of these metal contributions was ridiculous 
 enough. Here . was an Ordnance Bureau advertising for 
 church bells, out of which to make light artillery ; here were 
 ladies sending preserving kettles to assist in the dafence of 
 their beloved Confederacy. One woman in Mobile wrote that 
 she sent her " mite of old brass ; " another patriotic lady wrote 
 from Charleston, " I send you, as a contribution to the Con 
 federacy, the lead weight which was attached to the striking 
 part of my clock." These things are not mentioned for 
 amusement; they were solemnly published in the country 
 newspapers, from which we copy them. They are, indeed, 
 profoundly significant of that littleness of expedients in the 
 South, that paltriness of device in great necessities, which 
 runs as a singular and curious characteristic through the 
 whole of Mr. Davis s administration in the war. When the 
 15 
 
226 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 most elaborate iron-clad the world had yet seen was wantonly 
 blown to useless atoms ; when blockade-runners, from Europe, 
 instead of importing ordnance, were laying in cargoes of 
 champagne, and special consignments of cigars for Mr. Davis 
 and Mr. Benjamin; and when the armories and work-shops 
 were suffering for material, the Government of Mr. Davis was 
 performing the silly romance of collecting scrap-iron, and 
 publishing lists of lady-contributors of kettles and pans. 
 Some of these lists, printed for emulative excitement, are yet 
 to be found in Southern newspapers of that time. They were 
 quite on a par with a later advice of Secretary Memminger, 
 to relieve the needs of the Confederate Treasury, by patriotic 
 contributions of sugar-pots and finger rings a device, by the 
 way, which provoked Senator Wigfall to tell the anecdote of 
 Mr. Davis s wise financier, that he had at first proposed that 
 the expenses of the war should be paid by collection bags in 
 the churches. Seriously, the public necessities of a govern 
 ment require large measures, acts of provident statesmanship, 
 and Mr. Davis s idea of patching them up with such contri 
 butions as we have mentioned, was one of those silly, juvenile 
 thoughts, worthy perhaps of the minds of women, but absurdi 
 ties to statesmen. 
 
 And, indeed, this paltriness of "patriotic contributions" 
 was a little romance for the female population of the South, 
 in which Mr. Davis, of course, was the hero. It was so 
 pleasant to think of building what should be called " The 
 Ladies Gunboat," to take the place of the Yirginia-Merrimac; 
 and so, on the destruction of this vessel, the ladies of Eich- 
 mond were called to meet in one of the churches, and Mrs. 
 Judge Clopton an estimable Virginia matron, who had given 
 some noble sons to her country s service, " The Old Lady " 
 who wrote in the newspapers diatribes against Governor 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 227 
 
 Letcher was solemnly authorized to send circulars through 
 the country to collect old iron, even to the extremity of 
 nails and broken horse-shoes. It was a cheerful assembly, 
 under the circumstances ; letters were read from Mr. Davis ; 
 speeches were made, and for once Richmond had a dim per 
 ception of " woman s rights." A lady president delivered a 
 long oration, but unfortunately she died a few days thereafter 
 from the effects of a supper, which the warlike sisterhood had 
 given in honor of their enterprise. It was one of those 
 ludicrous and grotesque episodes which sometimes happen in 
 great popular excitements and yet it reflected, not a little, 
 that juvenile mind of the South, its want of commensurate 
 appreciation and just provision, so remarkable in the war, and 
 so characteristic of a people who have been always deficient 
 in the practical application of means to an end. 
 
228 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 The City of Richmond Saved General Lee Appointed to Command before it Incidents and Anec 
 dotes of his previous Military Career A Private Understanding between Generals Johnston 
 and Lee The Latter Promises to Resign Changes of Military Policy of the Confederacy- 
 Great Influence of Lee over President Davis How the Latter was Managed The " Sevea 
 Days " Battles Terrible scenes in Richmond Refusal of the Southern People to Mourn their 
 Dead Some Reminiscences of Richmond Hospitals Significant Address of President Davis 
 The First Experiment by the Confederacy of an Aggressive Campaign Plans of the Campaign on 
 both sides of the Alleghany The period of Greatest Effulgence of the Confederate arms Results 
 of Bragg s Campaign in Kentucky The Dramatic Battle of Sharpsburgh A Secret Agent of the 
 Confederacy Prepared to Yisit Washington Mr. Foote s Confidences with President Davis- 
 Romance of "The Lost Dispatch" Review of the Autumnal Campaign of 1862 A Brilliant 
 Record on the Valor of the Confederate Troops "Why was this Valor so Unavailing The 
 Outcry of Wasted Blood against Jefferson Davis Silly Transports of the Confederate President 
 His Fulsome Address to the Mississippi Legislature A Remarkable Private Letter from 
 General Floyd Two Notable Views of the War in Contrast. 
 
 EICHMOND was saved saved for a lingering death, a post 
 poned catastrophe. It was saved by a new spirit in the 
 army that defended it, and by a change in the military policy 
 of Mr. Davis. This change was fairly inaugurated on placing 
 before Kichmond a new commander, whose name was here 
 after to illustrate the brightest pages of Southern history, 
 and to be borne through all the brilliant battles of Virginia, 
 from those of the "Seven Days" to those which gilded the 
 last efforts of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 General Lee had commenced his military career in the 
 Confederate service, by a campaign in the mountains of 
 Western Virginia, in a field narrow and difficult, where he 
 obtained but scant laurels. He had returned to Eichmond 
 with a sadly diminished reputation, and for months he Ian 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 229 
 
 guished in obscurity, in nominal command of the span of 
 seacoast from Charleston to Savannah where there was yet no 
 considerable enemy. Mr. Davis has since justly remarked, 
 that under the Northern system of retiring unsuccessful com 
 manders, Lee would have been sacrificed and the genius that 
 was to illuminate so many fields in the South would have 
 been lost to the Confederacy. But happily the disasters of 
 the Confederacy had not yet become so alarming as to re 
 quire such sacrifices of officers to the passion and ignorance 
 of an unwarlike people; there was as yet no demand for 
 scape-goats, and when General Lee was appointed to take 
 command of the forces around Kichmond, beleaguered by 
 McClellan, although some of the newspapers twitted him as 
 "Letcher s pet," and the Eichmond Examiner thought to 
 discover in the appointment, a paltry game of politicians, and 
 jeered the report that a spawn of West Point, was arrogant 
 enough to aspire to be next Governor of Virginia, there was 
 no more violent expression of dissatisfaction, and even if 
 there had been a disposition to raise a popular clamor against 
 the appointment, the condition of Confederate affairs was 
 then too extreme to support criticism. 
 
 General Lee accepted the appointment modestly enough, 
 and, as is known to the author, with the private intention of 
 relinquishing the command of the Army of Virginia to 
 Johnston, as soon as the latter should recover from the 
 wound that prostrated him at Seven Pines. A message to 
 this effect was conveyed by one of Lee s family to Johnston 
 lying on his sick bed, and fretting under his wound; but, 
 although he might have been consoled by it, he responded 
 generously that he rejoiced that General Lee had command 
 of the army, since he observed that he had obtained the 
 confidence and aid of Mr. Davis s government more than he 
 
230 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 (Johnston) had been able to do. " I thus regard my wound 
 as a good providence/ said the stricken and suffering com 
 mander ; " the Government will now draw in troops to Lee 
 that it refused me, and Kichmond will be saved." Kichmond 
 was saved ; but if General Lee remembered his promise to 
 resign, events moved too fast to enable him to gratify his 
 inclinations to a less important command, and to disembarrass 
 himself of public opinion that already hailed him as a hero. 
 When Johnston had recovered from his wound, Lee had 
 mounted to the zenith of his fame at second Manassas ; had 
 closed an important campaign, with lively satisfaction to the 
 public, and had already so possessed the affections and con 
 fidence of his army, that his separation from it could no 
 longer be thought of, and indeed, if attempted, would have 
 risked the mutiny of his soldiers, and aroused the resentment 
 of the whole South. The man who a few months ago had 
 been held in mediocre estimation at best of whom an officer 
 in the Army of Virginia had said at the time Lee had been 
 banished to the " coast service " in 1861, "General Beaure- 
 gard thinks well of him " was already the first favorite of 
 the South, and had far outridden in fame the heroes of an 
 earlier period of the war who had assumed to patronize and 
 praise faintly his struggling genius. 
 
 The change of the military policy of the Confederacy from 
 that of dispersion to that of concentration a change which 
 General Johnston had been the first to propose, but which 
 General Lee, who had greater arts of persuasion, had alone 
 been able to effect saved its capital. The contraction of the 
 line of defence produced, of course, a greater capacity of re 
 sistance, and made a successful defence of Richmond almost 
 in its last extremity. Whatever General Lee s reputation for 
 independence and directness of conduct, it is remarkable of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 231 
 
 him that lie had rare insight into character, and understood 
 how to use men for his purposes, accommodating himself 
 readily to the peculiarities of the persons with whom he had 
 to deal. He must have been sensible of the peculiar weak 
 ness of Mr. Davis, to judge from his adroit interpolation in 
 his official report of the operations around Kichmond, of the 
 remark that they had been conducted under the "approving 
 presence " of the President, notwithstanding the fact that the 
 latter had never done more than ride out curiously two or 
 three miles to the battle-fields, and had had no more to do 
 with the operations than those conducted hundreds of miles 
 from the capital. But it was just such stuff as caught Mr. 
 Davis, and he was as pliant as a child to those who chose to 
 manage him with a few plums of compliment. In his whole 
 military career General Lee made it a point always to recog 
 nize an advisory relation as subsisting between him and the 
 President, and the consequence was, that he had more abso 
 lutely a carte blanche as to his operations and movements than 
 any other Confederate commander in the war. 
 
 The " seven days " of battle around Kichmond were days 
 of well-remembered glory for the South. It is not our design 
 here to enter into the military details of this, or of any other 
 battle of the war ; these do not properly belong to our work. 
 In a week the enemy was fought down to the James river, 
 twenty miles below Kichmond, a circuit of victories was 
 achieved, and although McClellan s army was not destroyed 
 or captured, there was no disposition of the Southern people 
 to carp at the extent of the results accomplished, but on the 
 contrary, a general concurrence in the sentiment of General 
 Lee, who wrote with pious moderation in his official report : 
 " Regret that more was not accomplished gives way to grati 
 tude to the Sovereign Kuler of the universe, for the results 
 
232 LIFE OF JEFFERSOST DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 achieved." The victory of Richmond was an encouragement 
 bestowed on the whole South ; it illuminated the entire Con 
 federacy ; but it exhibited to the capital city itself that reverse 
 side of the picture of the war, from which men lift the embroi 
 dery to stand face to face with the stark horrors of Death. 
 
 Richmond was filled with wounded, dying men ; the death 
 agony might be seen at any time by the passenger on the 
 street, who would pause to look, with horrifying curiosity, 
 through the plates of glass of some large store on the 
 thoroughfares, now converted into a temporary hospital, a 
 hundred pallets arranged where once had been the counters 
 of trade, and where Death was now busy in his ghastly traffic. 
 Ambulances in long lines were being driven through the 
 streets, every hour of the day. It was heart-rending to 
 hear the screams, the groans, or the peculiar chants of pain 
 from bloody and disfigured men, to whom every jolt on the 
 rough stones was as a new wound. Nearly every building in 
 Richmond was a house of mourning, or a private hospital. 
 Death became familiar. A half-dozen corpses were often put 
 in a single cart, and hurried to the burial ground, where they 
 had to await the turn of the grave-digger, it not being unusual 
 for the bodies to swell from exposure, and to burst the frail 
 shell of boards, called a coffin, while exposed for nights in 
 the cemetery, before the final resting-place was prepared for 
 them. The air was poisoned with sickening odors. The 
 hospitals were loathsome with bloated, disfigured, bodies, for 
 gangrene and erysipelas attacked many of the wounded in 
 the heat of the midsummer, and hurried them to graves from 
 which timely medical attention might have saved them. And 
 in these charnel-houses, where women attended and prayed 
 where tender ladies supplied with their ministrations the 
 oeglect and improvidence of the government each beat of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 233 
 
 artillery in the distance that came through the windows, smote 
 the imagination of the watchers with the thought that at that 
 moment their own loved ones might be stretched on the 
 bloody and cheerless sod of the battle-field, and might be 
 giving up their lives in the unattended and unsoothed agonies 
 of lingering death. 
 
 But private griefs are soon swallowed up in a great public 
 joy; and it is remarkable how readily and cheerfully the 
 people of the South accepted for their dead the consolations 
 of patriotism. Indeed regrets should be slight for men fallen 
 in any good cause ; and, considering the pain and emptiness 
 of all human life, the thought has often occurred that scarcely 
 more than the decent semblances of grief, or the tributes of a 
 tender and submissive melancholy are due to those who die 
 in the peace of God or on the path of duty. There were 
 voices of mourning in Richmond ; yet they were but slight 
 compared with the acclamations of public triumph over the 
 great victory which, though it had filled its houses with the 
 dead, had saved it from a hated enemy, and girded its adjacent 
 fields with an imperishable glory. But few persons in the 
 South wore, during the war, mourning for their dead. Nor 
 was this omission of dress due only to poverty ; for imme 
 diately after the battle of Manassas an appeal had been pub 
 lished in the newspapers, and especially to the ladies of the 
 South, that they should forbear from wearing mourning for 
 relatives fallen in the war, as such a spectacle would become 
 painful from the multitude of display, and was really an inap 
 propriate tribute to those who had freely given their lives to 
 their country s cause of liberty and honor. Of Richmond the 
 general aspect was that of joy and animation, even while its 
 hospitals groaned with the wounded and the dying ; and 
 although there might have been no impropriety in raising to 
 
234 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 some extent the voice of a great public congratulation above 
 that of private and domestic griefs, yet it was sometimes pain 
 ful to find in this vile, city, peculiarly accursed by the war, so 
 many festive and dissolute entertainments so close to scenes of 
 suffering and death. The hotels were filled with gay companies ; 
 the crash of festive music might be heard a few doors from hos 
 pitals ; and there is even a notorious scandal to this day in 
 Kichmond, that one of these abodes of suffering was actually 
 turned into a shop of the worst female characters, and afforded 
 its social dinners as regularly and as sumptuously as the finest 
 "hells" in the city. 
 
 The popular elation on the delivery of Kichmond from an 
 enemy who had come so near to possessing it, was naturally 
 great. In the shallow mind of the populace, the tumult of 
 alarm and the extravagance of hope are perhaps in the same 
 proportion easily excited; and thus Richmond passed suddenly 
 from the most depressing anxiety to the most exalted expecta 
 tions. Mr. Davis did more than share the general elation ; he 
 gave it increased volume in a fulsome address to the soldiers. 
 This address is copied below for the literary interest of its 
 style, as well as for the significance of the appeal with which 
 it concludes : 
 
 KICHMOND, July 5, 1862. 
 
 11 To the Army in Eastern Virginia : 
 
 SOLDIERS : I congratulate you on the series of brilliant victories 
 which, under the favor of Divine Providence, you have lately 
 won, and as the President of the Confederate States, do hereby tender 
 to you the thanks of the country, whose just cause you have so skill 
 fully and heroically served. Ten days ago, an invading army, vastly 
 superior to you in numbers and the material of war, closely beleagured 
 your capital and vauntingly proclaimed its speedy conquest ; you 
 inarched to attack the enemy in his intrenchments ; with well-directed 
 movements and death-defying valor you charged upon him in his 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 235 
 
 strong positions, drove him from field to field over a distance of more 
 than thirty-five miles, and despite his reinforcements, compelled him 
 to seek safety under the cover of his gun-boats, where he now lies 
 cowering before the army so lately derided and threatened with 
 entire subjugation. The fortitude with which you have borne toil 
 and privation, the gallantry with which you have entered into each 
 successive battle, must have been witnessed to be fully appreciated ; 
 but a grateful people will not fail to recognize you and to bear you in 
 loved remembrance. Well may it be said of you that you have " done 
 enough for glory ;" but duty to a suffering country and to the cause 
 of constitutional liberty claims from you yet further effort. Let it be 
 your pride to relax in nothing which can promote your future effi 
 ciency ; your one great object being to drive the invader from your 
 soil, and, carrying your standards beyond the outer boundaries of 
 the Confederacy, to wring from an unscrupulous foe the recognition 
 of your birthright, community, and independence." 
 
 This address of Mr. Davis indicated clearly enough a change 
 of military policy, and announced (even with imprudent free 
 dom to the enemy) that the Confederacy was resolved and 
 prepared to essay for the first time an aggressive campaign. 
 The policy of concentration, which had at last been under 
 taken, furnished Mr. Davis with two compact powerful armies 
 on each side of the Alleghanies the Army of Tennessee, now 
 commanded by Bragg, and that called the Army of Northern 
 Virginia, from the day it marched away from Richmond 
 under the command of Lee. With these two armies there 
 was now undertaken the grandest and widest campaign of the 
 war, stretching from the Mississippi to the Atlantic ; Lee to 
 carry the war to the foreground of Washington, and Bragg to 
 penetrate the heart of Kentucky, sweeping a tract of country 
 bounded by the enemy s posts in Alabama and Tennessee and 
 the cities of Louisville and Cincinnati. It was an instance of 
 strategy remarkable for its comprehension and unity; the object 
 being to carry the war to the enemy s frontier by combined 
 
236 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 movements, to relieve for purposes of subsistence large sections 
 of country which had been overrun, and possibly to wreak upon 
 the enemy some punishment for his own crimes of invasion, 
 and make the people of the North taste some of the bitter 
 ness of the war which had so far been to them a military 
 entertainment and a distant show. It was undoubtedly the 
 period of the greatest effulgence of the Confederate arms; and 
 the latter half of the year 1862 must take its place in the 
 history of the war as the span of greatest glory for the South. 
 The results of this most magnificent enterprise of the war 
 fell below public expectation in the South ; and yet a great 
 glory was achieved, vast acquisitions of subsistence were made, 
 and the sum of the campaign is, that it showed to the world 
 that a Confederacy which a few months before had had its 
 capital beleaguered, had been able to take its great and 
 powerful adversary at a disadvantage, and that it had nearly 
 demonstrated to civilized nations its own military strength 
 and ability to win the independence it had proclaimed. Gen 
 eral Bragg was at last forced to retire from Kentucky ; and 
 General Lee decided not to deliver a second battle in Mary 
 land, even after the victory which he has ever claimed to 
 have borne from the banks of the Antietam. The results of 
 Bragg s campaign, although it abandoned Kentucky, were 
 yet large and visible. He relieved considerable sections of 
 Tennessee and Alabama from the presence of the enemy ; he 
 recovered Cumberland Gap, the main avenue from Eichmond 
 to the heart of the Confederacy ; and although he had not ful 
 filled the hopes that he might permanently occupy Kentucky, 
 he brought from it subsistende that supported his army during 
 the whole ensuing winter; he gained the brilliant victory of 
 Perry ville ; he came back with the record of having killed, 
 wounded and captured of the enemy a number equal to half 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 237 
 
 the force of his army, and he exhibited as consequences of his 
 campaign, the recovery of the country between Nashville and 
 Chattanooga and a securer hold on a section of two hundred 
 miles of the Mississippi Eiver, extending from Yicksburg to 
 Port Hudson. The Virginia correspondent of this campaign 
 was even more successful. But Sharpsburg was a more 
 dramatic termination than Perry ville ; the avenue of conflict 
 to it more brilliant and interesting, and the final disappoint 
 ment there as keen in proportion as the expectations had been 
 high, that mounted to this the most important field in the 
 second year of the war. The victory of the Second Manassas 
 had raised the hopes of the South to the highest pitch ; and 
 there were men in Richmond who had expected that General 
 Lee would be dictating peace from Washington the day the 
 news came that he was struggling back across the fords ot 
 the Potomac. 
 
 It was not generally known to the Southern public at the 
 time of which we write and indeed a question is yet made 
 of the incident by those who believe that Mr. Davis was 
 always calm, well-advised and prescient, a perfection and a 
 sciolist that such was the exaltation of the President at the 
 prospect of Lee s advance into Maryland, that even before the 
 battle of Sharpsburg he had prepared a mission to propose 
 terms of peace at Washington. Hereafter we shall find the 
 same experiment repeated on the disposition and temper of 
 the enemy, in circumstances somewhat similar ; but what is 
 remarkable of each occasion is, that the mission was disguised 
 as the mere negotiation of a question as to the humanities of 
 the war. The design of these missions was really for a certain 
 moral effect. Mr. Davis had been persuaded that at the moment 
 the Confederate armies were so visibly superior as to carry the 
 war into the enemy s country, if he would then make any 
 
238 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 propositions showing the moderation of the designs of the 
 South, it would furnish capital to the Democratic party in the 
 North, widen the divisions of party there, and excite a politi 
 cal diversion in favor of the South, besides making a moral 
 exhibition to the world of great advantage to its cause. 
 He was thus always hasty to send peace messengers to Wash 
 ington on every possible occasion ; but in convenient disguise, 
 so that they might not convey any confession of weakness or 
 of over-anxiety for the termination of hostilities. It was no 
 sooner known that Lee s army was across the Potomac, than 
 Mr. Foote of Tennessee a person who was always prompt to 
 catch at any sensation, and ready to ride whatever hobby was 
 in career, offered a resolution in Congress for the " terms of a 
 just and honorable peace," considering how Providence had 
 " continually blessed " the arms of the Confederacy. But Mr. 
 Foote, then in relations of intimate friendship with Mr. Davis, 
 overdid the desires of the latter, and another friend of the 
 President (Mr. Holt, of Georgia,) immediately rose to his feet 
 in the House of Eepresentatives, and moved to modify the 
 resolution to the effect that a commissioner should be sent to 
 Washington to protest that " the war should be conducted in 
 the sense established by the rules of Christian and civilized 
 nations." It was privately explained that the design was 
 only to lay a foundation for negotiations to the extent of ex 
 perimenting on the Democratic party of the North ; and that 
 while the South had already sufficiently offered terms of peace 
 in Mr. Davis s first manifesto at Montgomery, to the effect that 
 eight millions of people, in the right to pursue their own hap 
 piness, should be " let alone," it would be an ingenious thing, 
 and have the appearance of great magnanimity, to offer to 
 ameliorate the war at the time that the South was manifestly 
 superior in the contest and her armies actually on the enemy s 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 239 
 
 soil. It was for these reasons that Mr. Davis proposed a mis 
 sion to Washington, and gave, besides, the most positive and 
 stringent orders that Lee s army was to protect every right 
 of private property in the North, to abstain from retaliation, 
 and to show the utmost regard for the humanities of war. It 
 was not so much to sentimentalism of " Christian warfare" 
 as the calculation of political effect the demonstration of that 
 idea which Mr. Davis cherished throughout the war, and yet 
 feebly executed, of operating on the division of parties in the 
 North, and thus weakening its resolution and temper in the 
 contest. 
 
 But the design in this instance fell tnrough almost at the 
 time it was meditated. While the Commissioner for Wash 
 ington was being prepared and clothed at Eichmond, news 
 came that Lee s army had fallen back across the Potomac, 
 after having fought the unhappy battle of Sharpsburg. This 
 battle General Lee has always claimed as a victory for his 
 army. But its true story is a peculiar one: that of a jaded 
 army ; outnumbered, 33,000 against 90,000 (taking the figures 
 from the official reports of each commander, respectively) ; its 
 plan of campaign betrayed ; suffering no defeat ; offering 
 battle the day after the main conflict ; compelled at last to 
 retire since there was no prospect of reinforcements to 
 balance against the quick reorganization of the enemy ; and 
 conducting its retreat so skilfully that not a gun or a single 
 material of war was left behind, and so bravely that (as 
 General A. P. Hill wrote in his official report) " the broad 
 surface of the Potomac was blue with the floating bodies of 
 our foe !" General Lee had designed to hold not only what 
 Mr. Davis called " heroic Maryland," but to plant the war 
 where Mr. Davis, when speaking in the Senate of the United 
 States, had declared it would be found in the wheat-fields 
 
240 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of Pennsylvania. The steps of the campaign were distinctly 
 marked out : to capture Harper s Ferry, and then to enter 
 Pennsylvania by the Cumberland Yalley. 
 
 A single incident was perhaps more fatal to Lee s cam 
 paign than the circumstance that he had been compelled to 
 leave ten thousand bare-foot or ill-shod stragglers on the 
 other side of the Potomac. The entire plan of his movement 
 drawn out to detail had been prepared by him at Frederick 
 (Maryland) and been communicated to the different corps 
 commanders. One of the latter D. H. Hill, a man of coarse 
 and brutal eccentricities had in a fit of displeasure at the 
 place assigned him, thrown the paper to the ground ; it was 
 found by a private in McClellan s army, when it occupied 
 the town and it at once made that commander master of the 
 situation. 
 
 The romance of " The Lost Dispatch " was long a subject 
 of painful gossip in the South, and it appears to have 
 founded some strong personal recriminations. It is, indeed, 
 one of these melancholy, familiar romances, where, an appa 
 rent trifle has decided the most momentous fate, defeated the 
 most elaborate hopes, and turned the balance of history. A 
 little piece of paper, neglected, given to the winds, becomes 
 the most sorrowful accident of the late war, reveals to a 
 Federal General the entire plan of a campaign, just at 
 the crisis of execution, and plucks from the commander of 
 the Confederates a victory that might have ultimately de 
 cided the immense issue of Southern independence. This is 
 not a strained imagination. It is reasonable that if D. H. 
 Hill had not been the instrument of a revelation to McClellan 
 of General Lee s designs in Maryland, the latter succeeding 
 at Harper s Ferry, might have fully collected his forces from 
 *hat dash, and precipitating them upon the enemy, might 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 241 
 
 have won a complete success, instead of being forced through 
 Hill s disclosures to deliver a battle, with his forces not up. 
 and to cover a retreat where he had hoped to gain a victory. 
 Since the war Mr. Davis is reported to have referred to 
 this strange incident as an explanation of Lee s defeat in 
 Maryland ; but to have added : " I hear that General Hill 
 protests that he never lost or misplaced the order, and that 
 in proof of this he has it yet in his possession among his 
 papers at home. If this is so, that is the end of the matter, 
 and I have no more to say of it." But it is proper to say 
 that in the explanation to which Mr. Davis refers, recently 
 developed in a controversy in the newspapers, General Hill 
 has only been able to assert that he retains a copy of the 
 the order referred to and thus " The Lost Dispatch " yet 
 remains among the myteries of the war.* 
 
 * In the controversy referred to, as of a historical question, the 
 author may place here for the interest and curiosity of the reader 
 some parts of a printed reply which he was recently constrained to 
 make to a criticism of D. H. Hill on* the now notorious statement of 
 "The Lost Dispatch :" 
 
 * * * * The whole issue is as to the loss of a certain diapatch, by 
 which D. H. Hill became the instrument of a revelation to the 
 enemy, that defeated General Lee s first campaign in Maryland in 
 1862. Here is the statement which the author made of the extraor 
 dinary accident, and here hinge the twenty pages of D. H. Hill s 
 criticism : 
 
 " A copy of the order directing the movement of the army from 
 Frederick had been sent to D. H. Hill ; and this vain and petulant 
 officer, in a moment of passion, had thrown the paper on the ground. 
 It was picked up by a Federal soldier, and McClellan thus strangely 
 became possessed of the exact detail of his adversary s plan of opera 
 tions." Lost Cause, p. 314. 
 
 * * * * ^y e i iave the evidence in our hands that, before the light 
 obtained from the "The Lost Dispatch," McClellan was completely 
 
 16 
 
242 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The last winter months of 1862 found Lee reorganizing his 
 army in the neighborhood of Winchester, Virginia, and 
 Bragg fronting Eosecrans on the lines of Nashville, Tennes- 
 
 bewildered as to General Lee s designs ; that he was in doubt 
 whether he was progressing to Pennsylvania or aiming at Baltimore ; 
 that he knew nothing of the disposition of the Confederate forces 
 beyond a vague idea that they were in the vicinity of Frederick, and 
 that "the unready Athelstane " was never less prepared to do battle 
 than he was until Hill s disclosure came to his information and re 
 lief. Here is McClellan s own account of the event, and his implied 
 estimation of its importance : 
 
 " On the 13th of September an order fell into my hands, issued by 
 General Lee, which fully disclosed his plans, and I immediately gave 
 orders for a rapid and vigorous forward movement." Report of 
 the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. 
 McCkllan, p. 352. 
 
 The author prepared his account of " The Lost Dispatch," and of 
 D. II. Hill s carelessness, productive, as it was, of the defeat of the 
 Maryland campaign, from persons singularly intelligent and disinter 
 ested, and whose commentaries were for severer than that to which 
 the irate General has chosen to respond. He should turn his pen to 
 these commentators who have spread the disgraceful story over half 
 the globe, instead of making a partial recourse, or an ingenious 
 diversion to this writer. 
 
 First we have the account of an English writer, Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Fletcher, of Scots Fusileer Guards, who has recently written a most 
 just and admirable history of the Confederate war, published by 
 Bentley, London. This intelligent officer will be remembered as 
 having travelled both North and South during the war ; as having 
 had excellent opportunities of observation; as having resided for 
 some time in the Confederate camps, and as, therefore, possessing 
 unusual claims to credit, on the score both of correct information 
 and of impartial justice. Here is his account of "The Lost Dis 
 patch :" 
 
 " General Lee directed D. Hill, with his division, to guard the 
 passes through South Mountain, and to cover the siege of Harper s 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 243 
 
 see. It was not the situation that the South had hoped for 
 when the command " forward " had rung from Eichmond to 
 the lagoons of Mississippi ; and yet we repeat there were 
 
 Ferry. To insure a distinct understanding of the plan of operations, 
 he sent written orders, to D. Hill ; and this document, detailing with 
 exactitude the proposed movements of the several portions of the 
 army, fell into the hands of General McClellan. It had been con 
 veyed to D. Hill, who, after reading it, either through a feeling of 
 impatience at its contents, or through carelessness, threw or let it 
 fall on the ground, and, lying there forgotten, it was picked up by a 
 soldier of the Federal army, and forwarded at once to McClellan, 
 who thi!s became possessed of his adversary s plan of operations. 
 This knowledge enabled General McClellan to direct the movements 
 of his army with certainty." Fletchers History. Bentley, London. 
 Vol. 2, p. 157. 
 
 We have a yet more detailed account of this unhappy disclosure to 
 the enemy, again from a foreigner, supposed to write with no parti 
 ality for the North, and certainly with no personal animosity toward 
 D. H. Hill. We quote from an article in the Quarterly Review, com 
 posed from various testimonies concerning the war : 
 . "But before D. II. Hill fell back upon South Mountain, it is now 
 notorious that a momentous incident had happened. It will be 
 necessary to give a few words of the character of this General. It 
 should be premised that the wives of D. II. Hill and Stonewall Jack 
 son are sisters, and it is generally believed (we know not with what 
 truth) that Mrs. Hill had long urged her husband to do something 
 whereby some portion of Jackson s lustrous fame might be acquired 
 by, xind accrue to D. H. Hill. * * The orders of General Lee respect 
 ing the battle, which was now imminent, were placed in General 
 Hill s hands. These orders, according to General Lee s invariable 
 practice, were full, precise and unreserved. It was, according to 
 General Lee s views, very desirable to gain a few days, in order to 
 permit General Jackson to finish his task at Harper s Ferry, and to 
 allow some of the many stragglers to get to the front. General Hill 
 was, therefore, instructed to take up a strong position at South 
 Mountain. These orders, as it happened, were displeasing to Gene- 
 
244 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 lively and visible causes of congratulation, and that the Con 
 federacy had won the highest honors for its arms in this 
 most memorable period of the war. 
 
 ral Hill. He Hung them after reading them, indignantly from him, 
 in the belief (as has been urged in his defence) that they would be 
 picked up by one of his staff, and carried safely to his quarters. Be 
 this as it may, they were left lying where they fell ; the ground was 
 shortly afterward evacuated by the Confederates, and occupied by 
 the Federals; General Lee s orders were picked up by a Federal 
 soldier, and their value being recognized, quickly carried to McClel- 
 lan. No wonder that McClellan, commanding, according to his own 
 statement, 87,164, and according to the other Federal statements, 
 110,000 men, promised himself an assured and easy victory over the 
 worn and weary troops which he knew to be before him, and as to 
 whose movements and intentions he now had full information." 
 Quarterly Review, April Number, 1864, pp. 303, 304. 
 
 It will doubtless surprise the reader that in face of these multiplied, 
 vivid and detailed evidences, D. H. Hill should deny that he lost 
 the dispatch referred to, and that it ever passed through his hands ! 
 The denial is unfortunately argumentative. He admits: "There 
 can be no doubt that such a dispatch was lost ; but it is obviously 
 unfair to assume that a paper with my name on the envelope was 
 necessarily lost by me in person." He argues that he carefully pre 
 served a copy of said dispatch, and now has it in red tape among his 
 military remains. This is not evidence, it is trash. But the \vorst 
 part of D. H. Hill s explanation is that he argues with suspicious 
 industry that, if such dispatch was lost by him, it was really of no 
 value to McClellan ; that "the loss of the order was a benefit, and 
 not an injury to the Confederate arms !" 
 
 It is a most suspicious ?/, and an absurdity so bald and insolent 
 that we scarcely know how to comment on it. Certainly, it will 
 occur to the reader that McClellan himself was the best judge of the 
 value of such a paper as a revelation ; and we have seen him in the 
 quotation from his official report made above, admitting, unwillingly, 
 and at the expense of his own penetration and genius, that the dis 
 covery of the dispatch was decisive, that it " fully disclosed" Lee s 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 245 
 
 Thus although the campaigns directed against the Potomac 
 and the Ohio fell short of their prizes, they secured a military 
 prestige for the South, almost unequalled in modern times. 
 
 plans, and enabled himself to make the movement that decided the 
 battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg. 
 
 As if in profound ignorance of all historical record of this matter, 
 and without the least reference of McClellan s own report, D. H. 
 Hill goes on complacently to argue that the Federal commander 
 might have obtained from his scouts, etc., all the information that 
 the dispatch furnished, and that, therefore, the discovery of it was 
 harmless. He says: "McClellan would have been the most ineffi 
 cient of Generals, could he not have gained that information in a 
 friendly country from his own scouts and spies." 
 
 Is it possible that this innocence of D. H. Hill is unfeigned, that 
 he never read a document so important to this whole question as 
 McClellan s official report ! The dispatch, as we have seen, came 
 into the hands of the Federal commander on the 13th of September. 
 Now, let us see what he says of the state of his information previous 
 to this : 
 
 " On the 10th of September I received from my scouts information 
 which rendered it quite probable that General Lee s army was in the 
 vicinity of Frederick, but whether his intention was to move forward 
 toward, Baltimore or Pennsylvania was not then known. 1 1 Report of 
 t]ie Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. 
 McClellan, p. 352. 
 
 He does not refer to any other source of information of General 
 Lee s movements, until he records, with sudden vivacity, the dis 
 covery of the all-important dispatch, and his "immediate" move 
 ment thereupon. Before this he was almost completely in the dark ; 
 he had not the smallest suspicion of the leaguer of Harper s Ferry ; 
 he had no plan of campaign until that dispatch, betraying not only 
 Stonewall Jackson s diversion, but the movements of every corps of 
 Lee s army, illuminated the whole field and put in his hands the 
 means of victory I 
 
 This is the whole sorrowful story, and argument ends with McClel 
 lan s own admissions. 
 
246 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 They were luminous tracks of glory ; it was the period of the 
 world s greatest admiration of the arms of the South ; they had 
 already secured a reputation, which without the recognition of 
 the Confederacy at the council-board of nations, yet placed it 
 in the front rank of heroic peoples. And here we may pause 
 to consider that one thing so remarkable in the war which the 
 enemies of the South in all their busy and daring misrepre 
 sentations have never been able to deny the one thread of 
 gold which no web of invention ventures to omit the exceed 
 ing valor of those devoted men who carried on their 
 bayonets the hopes of the South and the fortunes of Jefferson 
 Davis. 
 
 No matter how defective was the government of the South 
 ern Confederacy, no matter what of weakness or dishonor there 
 was at Richmond, the armies of that Confederacy won a re 
 nown as imperishable as history ; and no reflections on any 
 political questions can diminish or disturb the tribute to the 
 Southern soldier. Indeed that tribute is best defended on the 
 hypothesis of the unworthiness of the Confederate Government; 
 for how can we explain that a people so brave, occupying such 
 breadth of territory, in fact superior to the North in the ad 
 vantages of the contest when we come to balance against the 
 larger numbers and resources of the latter the aggregate of 
 circumstances, that the South was on the defensive, that she 
 had a superior cause and better inspiration, that she did not 
 suffer as the North did from political divisions, and that she 
 occupied an extent of territory such as the world has never 
 seen conquered, except through some decay of the spirit of its 
 defenders- should have been subjugated, and subjugated so 
 thoroughly, unless we take the supposition that the merits of 
 the Southern army and all the advantages nature had given it 
 were outweighed by the faults of its government. It is the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDEKACY. 247 
 
 theory most honorable to the Southern soldier, although the 
 one most unpleasant to Jefferson Davis.* 
 
 * There has been a very superficial, and to some people a very 
 pleasant way of accounting for the downfall of the Southern Con 
 federacy, by simply ascribing it to the great superiority of the North 
 in numbers and resources. This argument has had a great career in 
 the newspapers and in small publications ; and the vulgar mind is 
 easily imposed upon by the statistical parallel and the arithmetical 
 statement, inclined as it is to limit its comprehension of great his 
 torical problems to mere material views of the question. There is 
 no doubt that this superiority of the North in numbers had great 
 weight ; that it contributed much to the discomfiture of the Con 
 federacy ; that it must be taken largely into any explanation of the 
 results of the war but the great question, at last, remains Was this 
 numerical inequality, of itself, sufficient to determine the war in favor 
 of the North, considering the great compensation which the South 
 had in superior animation, in the circumstance of fighting on the 
 defensive, and, above all, in the great extent of her territory ? We 
 fear that the lessons and examples of history are to the contrary, and 
 we search in vain for one instance where a country of such extent as 
 the Confederacy has been so thoroughly subdued by any* amount of 
 military force, unless where popular demoralization has supervened. If 
 war was a contest on an open plain, where military forces fight a duel, 
 of course that inferior in numbers must go under. But war is an 
 intricate game, and there are elements in it far more decisive than 
 that of numbers. At the beginning of the war in America all in 
 telligent men in the world and the Southern leaders themselves knew 
 the disparity of population and consequently of military force as be 
 tween the North and South ; but they did not on that account de 
 termine that the defeat of the South was a foregone conclusion, and 
 the argument comes with a bad grace from leaders of the Confederacy 
 ^o ascribe now its failure to what stared them in the face at the com 
 mencement of the contest, and was then so lightly and even insolently 
 dismissed from their calculation. "The judgment of men who reflected, 
 was that the South would be ultimately the victor, mainly because it 
 was impossible to conquer space; that her subjection was a "geo 
 
248 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 It is in contemplating the splendid martial valor of the 
 South the bitterest thought of the war seizes us : that it 
 should after the campaign we have described have been so 
 misdirected mainly through the errors and conceits of one 
 man, and that it should have shed its blood so utterly in vain. 
 It was, indeed, this extraordinary virtue of Southern soldiers 
 that, alone, sustained for four years the unwise, capricious, and 
 incoherent government of Mr. Davis, which, without this sup 
 port, without this ornament, would have much sooner sunk 
 into contempt and ruin. In view of the volume of lost blood 
 and in view of the tens of thousands of human lives, many of 
 which must have been sacrificed to the maladministration of 
 Jefferson Davis, it is wonderful what self-complacency this 
 person is reported to display in looking back upon the war, 
 when it might be supposed that the retrospection would be 
 enough to plunge him into melancholy, if not to torture him 
 with self-reproaches for the remnant of his days. The cheer 
 fulness which Mr. Davis has shown since the war, his habits 
 of light conversation on it, and his lively assertions of satisfac 
 tion at his own part in it are not pleasant to those who look 
 back upon one of the greatest stories of human sacrifice that 
 has taken place in this age. If the thought of wasted blood 
 
 graphical impossibility "; that three millions of men could not garrison 
 
 her territory ; that a country so vast and of such peculiar features 
 
 not open as the European countries, and traversed everywhere by 
 practicable roads, but wild and difficult with river, mountain, and 
 swamp, equivalent to successive lines of military fortifications, welted, 
 as it were, with natural mounds and barriers could never be brought 
 under subjection to the military power of the North. And these 
 views were severely just ; they are true forever, now as formerly ; 
 but they proceeded on the supposition that the morale of the Con 
 federacy would be preserved, and when the hypothesis fell (mainly 
 through maladministration in Richmond} the argument fell with it." 
 The Lost Cause, pp. 727, 728. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 249 
 
 did not ride his dreams like a demon, it might at least have 
 given a shadow to his countenance, or engraved there some 
 lines of regret. It has done neither. The valor of the South 
 is its immortal ornament in the war ; but it is full of reproaches 
 and of sad reflections for those who abused it by useless sacri 
 fices, and at last betrayed it through an incompetent and 
 wanton rule. 
 
 In some periods of the history of the war and never more 
 so than at the close of the campaign of 1862 it appeared as 
 if the bravery of the soldiers of the South would accomplish 
 its independence, despite the imperfect and slattern support it 
 got from the government at Kichmond, despite the shortcomings 
 and misdeeds of Mr. Davis. This, indeed, was the only hope of 
 thoughtful persons in the South. The spirit and efficiency of 
 the soldiers, they considered, would be superior to the errors 
 of the government. But these errors as we shall Ijereafter 
 see were to become so large, so critical, that the bravest army 
 in the world could no longer struggle against them with 
 success. The blood it lost, wherever or in whatever propor 
 tion it can be traced to an unwise and dishonest administra 
 tion, will forever cry from the ground ; and it is one of the 
 bitterest wails that has ever ascended. the skies, accusing the 
 folly and inhumanity of rulers. 
 
 But in the season of success there is unhappily but little 
 place in the vulgar mind either for reflection or for criticism 
 on what has happened. The popular elation in the South 
 which ensued on the campaign of 1862, was impatient of the 
 doubts and speculations of those who suggested, that the war 
 was to be considerably prolonged, and that its issue in the 
 independence of the Confederacy was by no means yet secure. 
 The criticism of the newspapers on Mr. Davis s administration 
 was for once disarmed. The President was inflated with 
 
250 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 illimitable and unimaginable confidence. In his gale of spirits 
 at what Lee and Bragg had accomplished, he proposed a 
 pleasant visit to his native State, Mississippi, to indulge there 
 his congratulations on the success of the war. He visited the 
 Legislature of that State; he was received with unbounded 
 acclamations ; it was the occasion of rhetorical compliments ; 
 and the President, with eyes suffused, and placing his hand 
 on his heart, declared that in all the brilliant array around his 
 capital, he had looked upon Mississippi soldiers with a pride 
 and emotion that no other had inspired. He ventured a 
 memorable prophecy of the war. He had reason to believe 
 that it would soon be closed ; " in all respects, moral as well 
 as physical, the Confederacy was better prepared than it was 
 a year previous;" and, extending his arm in a theatrical 
 manner, he declared that the star of peace would soon 
 appear on the horizon of the West. 
 
 About the time the President was thus vividly prophesying 
 the approaching termination of the war, a statesman of 
 Virginia John B. Floyd, then in obscurity, to which he had 
 been consigned by Mr. Davis for the affair at Fort Donelson 
 wrote a private letter to Mr. Curry of Alabama. In that 
 letter the retired statesman exhorted one of the most thoughtful 
 and cultivated members of Congress to impress that body 
 with the view that the war was to be continued for a long 
 time yet, that it would demand enlarged sacrifices, and 
 besought him, with an earnest solicitude not intended for the 
 public eye, that he should urge increased means to meet the 
 recovered spirit of the North, then re-organizing its armies, and 
 accumulating its resources. The two views were in singular 
 contrast. The Eichmond Examine! published them in jux 
 taposition in its columns and awaited the commentary of 
 time on their relative truth and value. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 251 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 Some Account of the Secret Misgivings or Private Calculations of Mr. Davis concerning the War 
 His Delinquency on the Subject of Retaliation A Record of Weak Threats The Emancipation 
 Proclamation of President Lincoln the Supreme Act of Outrage in the War Excited Propositions 
 in the Confederate Congress Various Resolutions for Retaliation-The Response of Mr. Davia 
 practically Nothing His Infamous Subterfuge, Suggesting Retaliation by the States How Mr. 
 Yancey Ridiculed it A Distinct Law of Retaliation Passed by the Confederate Congress Mr. 
 Davis Refuses to Execute it Curious Explanation of Mr. Davis s Unwillingness to Retaliate on 
 the Enemy-A Detestable Calculation for his Personal Safety Singular Apology for Mr. Davia 
 by South Carolina Ladies Moral Cowardice of Mr. Davis Some Reflections on the True Nature 
 of Courage Excessive Admiration in the South of Meie Physical Manhood Bravado of Mr. 
 Davis The Emancipation Proclamation an Encouragement to the North Review of the Mili 
 tary Situation at the Close of 1862 The South Retires to a Defensive Policy Summary of its 
 Military Plans. * 
 
 IF President Davis was so well assured as he professed to be 
 in his speech in Mississippi, of the success of the Confederate 
 cause, he had but a poor way of showing it in one remark 
 able line of conduct in his administration. With a faith so 
 firm, it might have been supposed that the tone of his ad 
 ministration would have been high and unyielding, if not 
 positively defiant. It was, indeed, excessively so in words ; 
 but when it came to acts, and especially to retaliatory 
 measures for the outrages and atrocities of the enemy a 
 class of measures which might have given the best evidence 
 of the true resolution and spirit of his government, the best 
 test of the firm and sperate mind which he displayed in rhe 
 torical declamations he invariably blanched, broke down 
 and fell into the weakest and most contemptible negative- 
 ness. It was this delinquency on a point where the sensitive 
 ness of the Southern people was especially keen and exaspe- 
 
252 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 rated, that showed on Mr. Davis s part an extreme moral 
 timidity, or suggested his secret despair at times of a cause 
 of which he yet made, publicly, such a boastful profession 
 of confidence. 
 
 To the period of the war of which we are now treating, the 
 enemy had committed a series of outrages that had raised an 
 outcry for retaliation, or for some sort of retributive justice 
 that, apart from the satisfaction of vengeance, would attest the 
 dignity and firmness of the Confederate government. Mr. 
 Davis had replied with pronunciamentos, gloomy appeals, 
 and melodramatic threats with respect to retaliation ; but it is 
 remarkable that in not a single case had he executed the lex 
 taUonis, that he had made a record of bluster, without one 
 solitary performance to sustain the position of the Southern 
 Confederacy as an equal combatant, with the same recourse 
 to extraordinary measures as the North might claim ; that 
 when brought face to face with the stern duties of retaliation, 
 the imperious traits of his character had suddenly disappeared, 
 and been replaced by halting timidity and weak hesitation. 
 Mumford, the martyr of New Orleans, had been hung by 
 General Butler. Mr. Davis had threatened retaliation, and 
 yet dropped the whole subject after he had procured a letter 
 of protest to be written by General Lee, which was returned 
 to him by the Washington authorities, with the endorsement 
 that it was "exceedingly insulting," and therefore dismissed. 
 The " Palmyra massacre " had gone unavenged. Mr. Davis 
 had ordered the execution in retaliation of ten Federal pris 
 oners ; but when the fatal day came the order was suspended, 
 nothing was heard more of the threatened melodrama, and 
 the President, having made an unworthy show of compliance 
 with the demands of public sentiment in the South by order 
 ing the execution of ten designated prisoners, secretly went 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 253 
 
 back upon it, and wrote a private telegram to suspend the 
 sentence he had publicly pronounced. In no case had an act 
 of retaliation been performed ; in no case had a single victim 
 been demanded for the various murders committed by the 
 enemy until at last that enemy, encouraged by impunity, 
 and having no fear of retribution before his eyes, ventured 
 upon a supreme act of outrage, one that fairly crowned his 
 unparalleled boldness and atrocity in the war. 
 
 This act was the Emancipation Proclamation of President 
 Lincoln. It was to take effect on the 1st of January, 1863. 
 Here was an act aimed to destroy three thousand millions of 
 dollars of property in the South, designed to disorganize its 
 whole society, and calculated to light the flames of servile in 
 surrection in the midst of a civil war. If any thing could 
 have kindled in Mr. Davis s breast a courageous resentment, 
 and have laid a foundation for retaliatory measures, it might 
 have been supposed that this huge wickedness would have 
 done it. It occasioned an outburst of anger in the South ; 
 and proposition after proposition followed in the Confederate 
 Congress to make some response of spirit to a measure so in 
 famous and so cruel, to mark in some way the popular sense 
 of this unsurpassed outrage of the war. 
 
 The first motion in the Confederate Congress, when, after 
 the battle of Sharpsburg, the preliminary announcement was 
 made of the design of the Northern Government to declare 
 free, at a future day, the slaves of the South, was to condemn 
 it in a formal resolution as " a gross violation of the usages 
 of civilized warfare, an outrage on the rights of private pro 
 perty, and an invitation to an atrocious servile warfare." 
 This resolution proceeded to declare that the proclamation of 
 Abraham Lincoln " should be held up to the execration of 
 mankind, and counteracted by such retaliatory measures as 
 
254 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 in the judgment of the President may be best calculated to 
 secure its withdrawal or arrest its execution." Several mem 
 bers of Congress made speeches which even exceeded the 
 strong language of the resolution. Mr. Clark, of Missouri, 
 was in favor of declaring every citizen of the Southern Con 
 federacy a soldier authorized to put to death every man 
 caught on Southern soil in arms against the government. Mr. 
 Henry, of Tennessee, said that the resolution did not go far 
 enough. He favored the passage of a law providing that 
 upon any attempt being made to execute the proclamation of 
 Abraham Lincoln, the Confederates should immediately hoist 
 the " black flag," and proclaim a war of extermination upon 
 all invaders of their soil. Another member offered a resolu 
 tion as a substitute for that referred to : " That from this day 
 forth, all rules of civilized warfare should be discarded in the 
 future defence of our country, our liberties and our lives, 
 against the fell design now openly avowed by the Government 
 of the United States to annihilate or enslave us ; and that a 
 war of extermination should henceforth be waged against every 
 invader whose hostile foot shall cross the boundaries of these 
 Confederate States." 
 
 Such sentiments were undoubtedly extravagant and bad. 
 They are significant, however, of the resentment aroused in 
 the South by the Emancipation Proclamation, and of the 
 popular demand for a measure of retaliation. Yet Congress 
 was forced to perceive that the question of retaliation was 
 exclusively an Executive one ; and after indicating its own 
 passions and desires in this matter, it was compelled for a time 
 to commit it to the discretion and pleasure of President Davis. 
 The convenient disposition of the matter, for some months at 
 least, was the passage of a resolution, declaring that Congress 
 would sustain the President in such retaliatory measures as 
 he might adopt. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 255 
 
 The response of Mr. Davis was practically nothing. He 
 strained language to denounce the great act of spoliation and 
 crime in the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln ; he attempted to 
 drown public indignation in a volume of furious words ; but 
 he ventured not upon a single measure of revenge upon the 
 enemy, and could invent nothing in the way of retribution. 
 To the greatest outrage in American annals Mr. Davis never 
 had a single practical act of retribution in reply. The Eman 
 cipation Proclamation is truly an instance without parallel 
 in the history of war of an outrage so large provoking no re 
 sponsive measure, suffered without practical retort or remedy. 
 It passed off after a brief rhetorical heat on the part of Mr. 
 Davis. There could be nothing more contemptible in the 
 career of the Confederate President, than the mean patience 
 with which he submitted to an act of the enemy which de 
 spoiled a whole people of their property, and consigned 
 them to a loss and ruin unequalled in all the penalties of 
 modern war. 
 
 But there is yet something of infamous subterfuge to add 
 to this record of omission of duty on the part of President 
 Davis. At a date many months subsequent to that of the 
 Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. Davis having done nothing 
 to testify his resentment of it beyond rhetorical effusions, use 
 less expenditures of words, and at last excited by the indig 
 nation of the people, who not only saw this proclamation 
 going into effect without retaliation or check, but witnessed 
 the enlargement of it in the enlistment of Negro troops, saw 
 it carried to the consequences of employing the emancipated 
 slave either as the agent of a servile insurrection or as a 
 Federal soldier, his arms turned against his former master, 
 the Confederate President, convinced at last that something 
 should be done to appease popular clamor, invented a subter- 
 
256 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 fuge, probably the meanest of all his stock of expedients, to 
 escape the due responsibility of his office, and to captivate by 
 pretences the sentiment of the vulgar. It was only when the 
 consequences of Emancipation had been realized to the extent 
 we have described, and when more than one battle-field had 
 been disfigured by black brigades, that Mr. Davis, in the 
 later months of 1863, made the infamous proposition to re 
 lieve the Confederate Government of all responsibility for 
 retaliation, by bestowing it upon the States; suggesting that 
 under the local laws of each State, and in their courts, Federal 
 prisoners might be prosecuted as criminals, and be made 
 amenable to the statutes on the subject of Negro insurrections, 
 It was a most unworthy and superficial device ; a silly and 
 flagitious plot to relieve the Confederate Government of a 
 proper responsibility, and to saddle on the States a duty 
 growing out of the war, and belonging to the former govern 
 ment as the supreme power conducting the war, and bound 
 to declare a general law in this respect for all the States. If 
 the States might treat as criminals the soldiers armed under 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, and punish the marauders 
 as common malefactors, why might not the Confederate 
 Government do the same? And if Mr. Davis was willing to 
 remit the duty of retaliation to the States, why was h<T so 
 exclusive and jealous and retentive with respect to all other 
 
 faculties of his administration in the conduct of the war why 
 
 make an exception of this particular matter in which his 
 powers were written so plainly, and in which the jurisdiction 
 of the State was no more coincident than in any other affair 
 of the war? 
 
 This mean proposition to abdicate to the State Governments 
 retaliation upon the public enemy, was sharply reproved in 
 Congress, whicli had ; at least, sense and temper enough to re- 
 

 I UNJ* 
 
 ^^4U-C?- * X 
 
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 257 
 
 fuse to be made a party to such a trick on the demands of 
 public sentiment. In a secret session of this body it was 
 roughly ridiculed. Mr. Yancey, Senator from Alabama, ap 
 plied to it unsparingly the redudio ad absurdum. If the 
 Federal soldier might be punished in a State Court, under 
 the statute concerning Negro insurrections, then, one law of 
 the State being no more sacred than another, he might be 
 punished for equal reason under the law of trespass. If the 
 Confederate Government might shift the responsibility of re 
 taliation upon the local laws of the separate States in one case, 
 the same responsibility might be assumed by the latter in all 
 cases. The proposition of Mr. Davis, made in a special mes 
 sage, was rejected with emphasis. Congress declared plainly 
 in joint resolutions passed near the close of the year 1863, 
 that " the commissioned officers of the enemy ought not to be 
 delivered to the authorities of the respective States, as sug 
 gested in the said message, but all captives taken by the Con 
 federate forces ought to be dealt with and disposed of by the 
 Confederate Government;" it re-committed the subject of re 
 taliation to the President ; it re-affirmed its declaration that 
 the Emancipation Proclamation was "inconsistent with the 
 spirit of those usages which in modern warfare prevail among 
 civilized nations;" and it went further, and passed a distinct 
 law, as if to impose upon the President the duty of retaliation, 
 which heretofore it had been willing to leave to measures of 
 his own direction. This law was as follows : 
 
 "Every person being a commissioned officer, or acting as such in 
 the service of the enemy, who shall, during the present war, excite, 
 attempt, or cause to be excited, servile insurrection, or who shall 
 incite, or cause to be incited, a slave to rebel, shall, if captured, b6 
 put to death, or be otherwise punished, at the discretion of the court. " 
 
 This law was never executed in a single instance. It is, 
 17 
 
258 I/IFE OP JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 doubtful whether it was ever published, unless in a limited 
 range of official documents. The President paid no attention 
 to it, and never referred to its existence. He was only im 
 pressed by it to the extent that he ceased to write those gloomy 
 and vaporing messages about taking vengeance upon the 
 enemy, which he had been tolerably safe in doing, as long as 
 retaliation was an abstract speculation, a text of sentimental 
 rhetoric, and not, as now, the subject of a neglected law, and 
 likely, if disturbed, to develope an ugly record and to show to 
 the world his weakness and his infamy. 
 
 There have been many attempts to explain the remissness 
 of retaliation on the part of Mr. Davis, not only in the instance 
 of the Emancipation Proclamation and its incidents, but when 
 the atrocities of the enemy were of the darkest kind, and 
 when, from all parts of the South, the cries of anger, or the 
 wails of despair, smote his ears. Why should he have been 
 so considerate of humanity to an enemy, who constantly out 
 raged all the rules of civilized warfare, and who even insulted 
 his tenderness as the cowardice of the culprit in despair? 
 The effect of the non-retaliation policy, so studiously preserved 
 by Mr. Davis, was not only to give particular causes of com 
 plaint to those who suffered from the outrages of the enemy, 
 but in its moral influence, it was to diminish the true inspi 
 ration of the war in the South, to an extent which we believe 
 has never been justly accounted. It was to represent the 
 South constantly in the position of a moral inferior ; to create 
 the idea that its people, instead of equal belligerents, were cul 
 prits, evading and postponing the penalty of their crimes ; to 
 interpret to the world the hostilities of the North as military 
 execution and coercion ; to concede to the enemy the great 
 moral advantage and prestige which officers of the law have 
 over malefactors. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 269 
 
 Why Mr. Davis should have thus so greatly injured the 
 inspiration of the war, and the dignity of his government, is 
 a curious problem, and one that admits a number of hypo 
 theses. There was long a painful suspicion in Eichmond 
 that the President was by no means so confident of the issuo 
 of the war as he publicly professed to be, that he had secret 
 misgivings, and that in the event of failure he had plotted his 
 own safety, and that he had, therefore, feared to exact any 
 retribution from the public enemy, for which he might here 
 after be called personally to account. This explanation of 
 the non-retaliation policy was not without plausibility. If 
 the war should fail it might be to the interest of Mr. Davis 
 that he should come out of it without any blood on his hands, 
 and in the character of one who had conducted a moderate 
 warfare; while whatever vindictive measures the enemy might 
 resolve upon, in case of success, might be ingeniously diverted 
 to certain mean subordinates, for whose acts of cruelty and 
 oppression he might easily claim that he was not personally 
 responsible. It was a detestable calculation ; but it has been 
 so closely fulfilled by the actual sequel of the war, that we are 
 not permitted to regard it as a mere imaginary supposition 
 Since the termination of the war, and when victims have been 
 claimed of such inconsiderable agents of the Confederate 
 Government, as Wirz and Braine and Surratt, it is remark 
 able that the plea has been busily made for a merciful con 
 sideration of Mr. Davis, that he was averse to any acts of even 
 apparent cruelty upon the enemy, that no blood had ever been 
 shed by his direct order, even in the way of retaliation, and 
 that he had resisted the popular passion upon this point, 
 keeping his hands scrupulously clean. This ground of mercy 
 for the fallen chief of the Confederacy has appeared since the 
 war in a petition sent to Washington, by some ladies of South 
 
260 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Carolina, and in terms so distinct and ingenious as to suggest 
 that they were dictated from some quarter of calculation, such 
 as we have described. These petitioners write thus of Mr. 
 Davis : " The same firmness and calm views of policy, which 
 on repeated occasions he displayed in resisting the cries, 
 which in his region were raised, for sanguinary retaliation, we 
 hope will now be exhibited, in disregard of the unfeeling 
 agitation which seeks his life." 
 
 John M. Daniel was accustomed to say that if the war re 
 sulted against the South, Jefferson Davis would be found safe 
 in Europe. The ex-President could have no fear of any 
 indictments for murder or cruelty ; and having taken care 
 not to inculpate himself directly in those affairs which might 
 most excite the resentment of the enemy, and playing him 
 self off as a humane and chivalric combatant, he might easily 
 escape those passions likely to result should the North prove 
 victorious after the exasperation of years of hard and ex 
 pensive war. 
 
 It is not impossible that such calculations may have entered 
 the mind of Mr. Davis. The suspicion increases when we 
 find him constantly declining all acts of retaliation and yet 
 doing so by devious processes, and all the time proclaiming 
 an excessive fury of resentment for stated outrages of the 
 enemy and yet forbearing from the very acts which such 
 passion, if real, would naturally produce. There must have 
 been a game of hypocrisy somewhere in a difference so wide 
 between professions and acts the professions serving to 
 gratify the anger of the South and yet the acts (acts of 
 omission) calculated to appease whatever might be the ulti 
 mate and practical complaints of the North. No man in the 
 South could write or speak more strongly than Mr. Davis 
 did of the outrages of the enemy; yet no man could be 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. ^61 
 
 weaker or more derelict when he came to translate his words 
 into acts. The contrast between the two is so sharp and 
 wide that it is impossible not to admit in it some charge of 
 insincerity, or some supposition of a dishonest and evil calcu 
 lation. 
 
 But more than one reason may be adduced to explain Mr. 
 Davis s delinquency in the matter of retaliation ; and it is not 
 unlikely that a composition of motives governed him in his 
 declination of all harsh measures against the Washington 
 Government as equivalents of its own outrages. His natural 
 spirit was not firm enough for a policy of retaliation. He 
 had a weak sentimentalism in his character which made him 
 the prey of all artful petitioners ; a man who wept easily, 
 whose tears laid shallow, who was readily moved by appeals 
 to mercy at variance with justice. He was accessible to all 
 emotional influences. "If I ever had a point to make on 
 President Davis," said a Kichmond politician, " I always got 
 his pastor, Dr. Minnigerode, to see him." A character so 
 shallow and hesitating was not that to furnish those firm and 
 severe measures in a state of war, where there is no place for 
 the tender emotions, and where the man of iron is the type 
 of wisdom and of courage. 
 
 It is true that we have heretofore written of the courage 
 of Mr. Davis, in a certain sense as exhibited on the field of 
 Manassas and elsewhere and we are not disposed to detract 
 anything from that tribute. But the President of the Con- 
 federate States appears to us a striking example of that 
 character, which those experienced in the world sometimes 
 meet with, of persons physically brave, ready in a certain 
 exaltation of spirits to put their lives at a pin s fee, and yet 
 so utterly and woefully defective in moral courage, that the 
 meanest temptations make them their victims, and the most 
 
262 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 unworthy weaknesses display them to the world. Mr. Davis 
 was not a man who shirked physical dangers ; and yet 
 we find him the picture of shrinking timidity on every 
 appeal to moral courage, a man who wore around his Admin 
 istration a belt of preachers and women, who had no mind 
 of his own, unless to display it in obstinacy to those who 
 bluntly advised him, or to surrender it in weak acquiescences 
 to those who ingeniously cajoled him. He had "pluck," 
 combativeness ; he might have fought on any trial of physi 
 cal hardihood ; he might have ridden grandly into the tides 
 of battle with his life on his sleeve ; and yet, after all, he 
 might have had no moral courage, and been the man we 
 have described as trembling at the vision of retribution, and 
 afraid to undertake the tasks of justice which retaliation 
 upon the enemy demanded. 
 
 There is an excess of admiration in the world for the 
 courage that despises physical dangers. More than this there 
 appears to be a certain indulgence for all the weaknesses of 
 men accounted brave ; and sometimes the very fact that 
 these persons are weak in all other respects than that of facing 
 a certain amount of physical peril ; that they are slaves of 
 paltry influences ; that they are victims of the dram-shop ; that 
 they yield to the most unworthy temptations ; that the man 
 who can march to a cannon is yet, like one of Napoleon s 
 marshals, afraid of the spider in his coach; that he who can 
 draw his weapon in mortal- conflict on the slightest provoca 
 tion is yet the slave of vice and dissipation, the sport of every 
 adventurer who practices on the weak side of his character, 
 has been held as a sort of lively and interesting contrast to 
 the bellicose virtue, of the individual. The anecdotes of 
 these contradictions of character have not unfrequently been 
 taken as pleasant. The man who defies death on a battle- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 263 
 
 field, or who is willing to venture his life in a personal con 
 flict, may be a sot, or the unworthiest wretch and coward in 
 every moral relation of life, and yet a certain admiration 
 clings to him as the brave man, with foibles that are curious, 
 Aither than with faults which are detestable. The reflection 
 forces itself has not the world attached too much value to 
 the mere physical brawn which may despise danger in certain 
 shapes, and is yet coupled with equivocation and disgrace in 
 every true relation of moral courage. Especially does this 
 reflection apply to the countrymen of Mr. Davis, where a 
 coarse, untravelled people have formed an estimate of courage 
 peculiarly rude ; where the person who can give most proofs 
 of physical manhood, the hero who can fight on call with 
 bowie-knife or pistol, who can exhibit the longest list of ad 
 ventures with women, who is the best shot, the best rider, the 
 best in all contests and games of virility, is taken as the ap 
 proved pattern of courage, and is allowed almost illimitable 
 indulgences for every sort of moral cowardice that he may 
 choose to couple with his mere physical prowess. 
 
 The people of the South are excessive in their admiration 
 of a low physical courage. A certain amount of animal com- 
 bativeness has been often vulgarly taken for a type of " South 
 ern Chivalry"; but the thoughtful and manful spirit will 
 always reject such estimates of courage, or rate them at their 
 due, considering that this noble virtue is not the transport 
 of a passion, or the accident of a physical constitution, but 
 rather the balance of just and heroic icsolutions in all the 
 affairs of life. He who cannot say " No " to a temptation, who 
 cannot rule his own spirit, who cannot put the opinion of 
 men under his feet, and act in the secret light of his own con 
 victions of right and duty he who is the pallid instrument 
 of other men s designs and influences may be ready to risk 
 
264 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 his life on battle-fields, or to accept challenges to mortal con 
 flict, or to give all the vulgar exhibitions of high spirit; yet 
 he is not the brave man neither in that sense in which the 
 exalted sentences of the Christian religion have it written, 
 nor in that wherein the cultivated voice of human civilization 
 has decided the noblest title of humanity. 
 
 But we wander to reflections too distant and general, con 
 cerning the kind and degree of courage in the composition of 
 Mr. Davis. The design has been only to show his lack of a 
 real spirited response to the supreme outrage compassed in 
 the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, es 
 pecially in view of his vapors of retaliation, as a remarkable 
 evidence of the weakness and chicanery of the President of 
 the Confederacy, and of his cowardly calculation of personal 
 safety in a war, in which, on other occasions, he had breathed 
 such expressions of confidence. The whole subject is inti 
 mately connected with the character of Mr. Davis ; it illus 
 trates his weakness, his moral cowardice, his habits of decep 
 tion ; and it gives the history of at least one of his principal 
 games on the credulity of the South, and suggests a reflection 
 on its easy confidence in its public men, and its absurd ad 
 miration of pretence and bravado, in forms the most plethoric, 
 though in disguises the least ingenious. 
 
 To the mind of the North, the Emancipation Proclamation, 
 uninterrupted by any retaliation on the part of the South, 
 was the signal of renewed confidence and animation in the 
 war. Its moral effect was thus vast. To be sure, coming 
 after the autumn campaign of 1862, so splendid for the South, 
 it did not suggest a military situation of much advantage to 
 the North, one visibly calculated to support a measure which 
 could only be interpreted as one of imperious, unscrupulous 
 exaction on an adversary sure to be conquered. The results 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 265 
 
 of that campaign we have already distributed. The South 
 had been forced back to the defensive; Lee had been ex 
 pelled from Maryland, and. Bragg had retreated to Tennessee ; 
 but the balance of glory was on the side of the Con 
 federate forces ; their arms had acquired their greatest pres 
 tige, their marches had been tracked with brilliant victories, 
 their retreats or retrogrades had been encumbered with rich 
 spoils, and if the campaign had regained no political territory, 
 it had yet recovered many districts of subsistence, and was. 
 able to display the visible fruits of success. 
 
 Yet the thoughtful mind easily discovered under these ac 
 cumulations the fact that the Confederacy had strained itself 
 in this memorable campaign, that it had put forth for the time, 
 the utmost of its resources, that it had made exertions which 
 it would not readily renew, and that a period of exhaustion 
 was likely to ensue after such an extraordinary development 
 of the strength of the South. The conscription had been 
 taxed to the limits that the law allowed ; the number of able- 
 bodied men was becoming fatally reduced ; the depreciation of 
 the currency was near the verge beyond which it might be pre 
 cipitated into worthlessness ; and the condition of the South 
 was precisely that which required time for recruitment, and 
 in which the enemy might boastfully anticipate and amuse 
 his own leisure with schemes, like the Emancipation Procla 
 mation, predicated on his final success, or even with glimpses 
 of " reconstruction." 
 
 It was thus that after the campaign of the summer and fall 
 months of 1862, the South relapsed to a defensive policy. Its 
 military plans for the remainder of the" year may be generally 
 described as a habitual, common attempt to annoy the enemy, 
 a lookout for the preservation of Kichmond, and the chief 
 concern of keeping up the blockade of the Mississippi river 
 
266 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 by holding the strong positions of Yicksburg and Port Hud 
 son. In such a situation, it was to prepare for the great con- 
 test of the summer of 1863, and from such extremity it was 
 again to display its arms in another campaign a campaign 
 where we shall see raised again the balance of the war at 
 almost equal arms ; so equal that we shall find the decision 
 trembling on the edge of a battle-field, and cast by a single 
 incident that fortune threw in the hesitating scale. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 267 
 
 CHAPTER XVII, 
 
 jiae Battles of Murfreesboro , of Fredericksburg, and of Chancellorsville A Trio of Important 
 Contests A Singular and Romantic Incident of the Field of Fredericksburg Stonewall 
 Jackson Makes a Proposition to Massacre the Enemy in the Night Parallel between the 
 Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville Death of Jackson Mr.Davis s Tribute to Him 
 Character of Stonewall Jackson Poverty of Genius in the "War Jackson and his Sopho- 
 morical Admirers The Rag-Tag Style of Eulogistic Criticism The Religious Character of 
 Jackson not Admirable Estimate of Him as a Commander His Gloomy Ideas of War He Pro 
 poses " the Black Flag " His Enormous and Consuming Ambition Description of His Person 
 In what Respects, he was the Representative of the South A Particular Description of his 
 Last Moments. 
 
 THE battles of Murfreesboro , of Fredericksburg and of 
 Chancellorsville, occurring after the date to which we have 
 brought down the general story of the war, do not claim ex 
 tended notices, even in a purely military history of the Con 
 federacy (which latter it is scarcely necessary to repeat is not 
 within the limited design of our work). They were brilliant 
 incidents of arms ; they were large and bloody contests ; but 
 they are not connected with any great chain of movements, 
 they left but little impression on the fortunes of the Con 
 federacy, and the military era of greatest interest after that 
 we have placed in the autumn of 1862, when the war was 
 carried to the frontier by Lee and Bragg, may be taken as 
 occurring not until the midsummer of 1863, when two im 
 portant campaigns in the two great divisions of the Con 
 federacy culminated at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The 
 military history of the Confederacy, so far, may be divided 
 into eras: first, Manassas and its consequences; second, the 
 autumn campaign of 1862 ; and third, the movements to which 
 
268 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 we have yet to refer, as the second experiment of the invasion 
 of the enemy s country and the breaking of the line of the 
 Mississippi. We have not yet reached in the just course of 
 our narrative this third period of interest in the military 
 fortunes of the Confederacy ; but between it and the second 
 period, as referred to in a former chapter, there is a space of 
 only slight and desultory interest ; for however great were the 
 three battles we have named, they were only single incidents 
 and left but shallow traces on the general military situation. 
 
 Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville are chiefly significant 
 as defeats of the fourth and fifth attempts of the " On to Eich- 
 mond " adventure of the enemy. But these two fields and 
 that of Murfreesboro are curiously alike in illustrating the 
 barrenness of Confederate victories, and repeating the uniform 
 story of successes not followed up, of glorious "first days " of 
 contest with an invariable sequel of disappointment. After 
 all, they were repetitions of the untimely halt at Manassas : 
 a comparative estimate of mortality lists, a balance of carnage 
 in favor of the South, the escape of the enemy, while the 
 public waited to hear of the surrender or annihilation of a*n 
 army, and the fruits of victory gathered only in the dust of a 
 retreat. 
 
 The field of Fredericksburg had an interesting incident, 
 which has not appeared in the common histories of the war. 
 After night had fallen upon the contest and when the shat 
 tered remnants of Burnside s army were cowering under cover 
 of the town, Stonewall Jackson a commander who, whatever 
 he might have had of pure and admirable elements of charac 
 ter, was fierce in his notions of war almost to savagery, who 
 believed that " war meant fighting and fighting "made the 
 extraordinary and fearful proposition of stripping his men 
 to the waist and hurling them in the darkness upon the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 269 
 
 enemy, trusting to paralyze his already demoralized forces by 
 the terror and novelty of such an apparition. This story of 
 Jackson has been doubted, and has excited some unpleasant 
 criticism in the newspapers. But the incident has been re 
 lated to the author as having occurred in a council of war in 
 which Jackson dissented from the opinion of General Lee, 
 that the enemy would make another attack, and then pro 
 posed that the artillery should be collected upon the hills 
 directly in front of the town, and a heavy fire be opened 
 upon it, and that the men of his corps be stripped to the 
 waist to distinguish them from the enemy, and under cover 
 of the artillery fire force their way into the town, and 
 bayonet all who were not similarly attired. "My troops 
 shall not be allowed to fire," stipulated the grim commander; 
 "they shall use only the bayonet." There was only one 
 pontoon at the town, which would not have afforded egress 
 for one fifth of Burnside s army ; the bridges at Deep Eun 
 could have been easily secured ; and to the suggestion that 
 his own men might suffer from the artillery fire, when min 
 gled with -the enemy, Jackson replied that it should cease 
 when his troops were once in the town and that " their yells 
 would tell when they were at work." The plan for one of 
 the most horrible butcheries of the war seemed complete, 
 and the imagination can scarcely conceive the scenes that 
 might have ensued : twenty thousand men stripped for the 
 work of death doing it in darkness a fitful sheet of flame 
 on the hills to light them to their task an army pursued 
 from street to street as from one slaughter-pen to another 
 a town choked with artillery and wagons the sharp scream 
 of death in every corner of it the black womb of the night 
 giving forth the strange and piercing cries of mortal agony, 
 as untold horrors issue from it and travel in demon shapes, 
 an air indistinct and poisonous with blood ! 
 
270 LIFE OF JEFFERSON- DAVIS WITH A 
 
 But these scenes were not to occur, however sure might 
 be the destruction of the enemy. There was one suggestion 
 to which Jackson had not a ready reply. There were some 
 thousands of non-combatants yet in Fredericksburg, among 
 them women and children ; and General Lee was unwilling 
 to risk their safety by firing on the town. He must re 
 luctantly, however, have declined the proposition of Jackson, 
 for the fact is that the infantry of the First Corps (it was the 
 Second that was to strip for the attack) had been posted to 
 defend the artillery and were waiting the signal for the 
 bombardment, when the order came to them to retire within 
 their breastworks. The next night the loth of December 
 1862 a Federal army yet numbering some sixty thousand 
 men moved quietly out of the jaws of destruction, crossed 
 the river without molestation, and left the Confederates to 
 rejoice over another barren victory.* 
 
 * A Confederate officer, unknown to the author, and of course un 
 solicited by him, has recently published a communication in the 
 newpapers in reply to an attempt of these to discredit the statement, 
 which appears to have been first publicly made by this author, of 
 General Jackson s novel proposition of a night attack, as related 
 above, and in commentary on the yet more foolish attempt of some 
 sensitive country editors in the South to represent the story as a 
 slander on the memory of the illustrious dead. After testifying to 
 nearly every incident related in the text above, he says: "The 
 writer of this communication has a most profound respect for the 
 memory of General Stonewall Jackson, yet he does not believe with 
 others that the assertion made by Mr. Pollard, that the illustrious 
 hero desired to make a night attack upon the enemy with his troops 
 stripped, is a slander upon his memory, but he does believe that if 
 there had been more stripping to the waist, and night attacks, with 
 fewer days of thanksgiving and fastings and prayers, the South 
 would have less barren victories to rejoice over and less to mourn for 
 uow." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 271 
 
 Ckancellorsville was a repetition of Fredericksburg the 
 same story of the retreat of the enemy across the same river, 
 the exact reproduction of the status quo, except so many men 
 killed and wounded, the wonder of a few weeks. These two 
 great battles were thus described in the Eichmond Examiner: 
 " If this war was a tournament, we might desire nothing 
 better than the manner in which it has been conducted by 
 these two hosts up to the present time. The six months 
 they have passed between Falmouth and Fredericksburg 
 furnishes a fair specimen of their extensive intercourse. 
 After long and careful preparation, the Grand Army crosses 
 over, a hundred thousand strong; fifty or sixty thousand 
 Confederates, well posted, fight with them ; the Grand Army 
 is prodigiously whipped loses twenty thousand and then 
 marches back to camp. After a month or more of recruit 
 ing, it comes again finds the same Confederates reposing in 
 the same fields is whipped again, loses more men, and 
 marches back to camp in the same order. On the occurrence 
 of these events, great praise is given to General Lee, and 
 several Yankee Generals are dismissed the service, relieved 
 of their commands, or sent away to torture old men, or fight 
 women and little children, in some unfortunate district of the 
 country subject to the striped flag. If we could import ship 
 loads of Irish and Dutch, after each of these victories, no 
 way of carrying on this war more favorable could be desired. 
 But, while our army kills a great many Yankees, Dutch, and 
 Irish, on one of these splendid field days, it also loses a con 
 siderable number of brave men. One of these is a greater 
 loss to us than three .of the others to the enemy. If that loss 
 were counterbalanced by some military advantage which 
 might serve as the foundation for future hopes, it would not 
 be a "toss at all, but a wise expenditure. Unfortunately, such 
 
272 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS WITH A 
 
 victories change nothing. The United States and the Con 
 federacy preserve their proportions and attitudes. The war 
 will last forty years on these terms. Take the last of them, 
 Chancellorsville. What have we gained by that glorious 
 battle? The poor lands of Spottsylvania have received a 
 costly manure, and that is all. After the fight, the general 
 order for both armies might have been the musician s com 
 mand at the conclusion of a quadrille as you were ! 
 Hooker in Stafford, Lee in Spottsylvania, the Kappahannock 
 between." 
 
 But Chancellorsville has a veiled place among the victories 
 of the South. Here Stonewall Jackson gave up his life ; an 
 irreparable loss, one which the army wherein he had com 
 manded felt to the end of the war. " He fell," said Mr. Davis, 
 speaking rather sophomorically, "like the eagle, his own 
 feather on the shaft that was dripping with his life-blood." 
 He had been mortally wounded by the fire of his own men, 
 who mistook him for an enemy. His death created a black 
 day in the South that in distinctness and importance may be 
 measured as an era ; and the public mind was never divested 
 of the imagination that with him expired the most heroic 
 and fortunate spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia. 
 
 Some space should be taken here to say something of the 
 character of this commander, in view of its elevation in the 
 war, and in consideration of its exception to the general bar 
 renness of subjects of biographical interest true heroes in 
 a contest so large, so excited, and yet so destitute of appa 
 ritions of individual genius on the stage of action. It has 
 been customary in the South to speak, and not without a mix 
 ture of vanity, of the great figure this war will make when 
 the future historian comes to deal with it elaborately, and to 
 explore its operations. Yet, how meagre the biographical in- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 27# 
 
 terest of this struggle ; how scant in its illustrations of any 
 conspicuous virtues or novelties of personal character : how 
 unfruitful of great or remarkable men ! It is in the domi 
 nant feature of historical interest that the late war, of which 
 we usually speak in so many superlative phrases, is singu 
 larly and fatally deficient. It is remarkable for immense 
 physical phenomena, rather than for intellectual and moral 
 display. What is wonderful in it is the extent of physical 
 masses, the cloaca, populorum, stupendous sums of money, 
 monuments of carnage ; but how paltry and flowerless its 
 crops of men, how few its productions of genius, how slight 
 those illustrations which make up the personal, heroic inter 
 est of history ! It produced, of course, if only by the rule of 
 comparison, some military celebrities these even few, and 
 one only of surpassing fame ; but we look in vain for the ir- 
 tellectual contagion of a great excitement, for those tongues 
 of fire with which men speak in a great war, for those 
 thoughts of orator, poet, and priest, which burn along the op 
 posing lines like signal-fires, and make of modern war a con 
 flict of inspirations as well as of arms. 
 
 We do not propose to invite here invidious comparisons 
 between the military leaders on either side in the late war, 
 And yet, as we have already referred to one of them as of 
 surpassing fame, we may take this name apart, as at least one 
 conspicuous centre of biographical interest in the war. We 
 refer to STONEWALL JACKSON whose life, as we have seen, 
 paid the price of the insignificant victory of Chancellorsville. 
 Around this man, whose fame has already gone, on those 
 quick messengers, the wings of battle, to the ends of the 
 world, there must necessarily congregate, in the future, some 
 of the most impressive memories of the war ; and his biogra 
 phy especially the study of his peculiar character, becomes 
 18 
 
274 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 at once a dominant subject of historical interest, and a stand 
 point of narrative. "Whoever may hereafter write profoundly 
 and philosophically a history of the Southern Confederacy, 
 must take Jackson as a central figure ; and he must mingle 
 his biography, at least the characterization of the man, with 
 many parts of his story, thereby dramatizing, coloring it, and 
 binding up the attention of the reader with personal sympa 
 thies and heroic aspirations. 
 
 There have been a number of sophomorical pens in the 
 South which have been fleshed on the character of Stonewall 
 Jackson ; he is the easy subject of poetasters and silly young 
 men, who have a fancy for fine writing. It is painful to wit 
 ness how such characters suffer from the glare of eulogium ; 
 and it is humiliating to confess that we have had scarcely any 
 estimate of this great commander in the South, more thought 
 ful than garish verses and stilted panegyrics. An example 
 of this sort of tribute we have lately seen in a rag-tag of 
 romance and the cheap poetry of literary encyclopedias pub 
 lished under the title of " The Character of Stonewall 
 Jackson," one of the lowest and most wretched of its class 
 of juvenile daubs, unworthy to be mentioned out of the college 
 debating society, but significant of the manner in which great 
 men are usually made to suffer from a style not above the 
 composition of school boys, fulsome and silly transports pro 
 ceeding from too free a use of Anthem s hand-books, and 
 classical mythologies. It is the penalty of the great man to 
 suffer from "the dunce s puff;" and the thoughtful and 
 scholarly mind grieves at the infliction of the smatterer. The 
 character of Stonewall Jackson, having sustained so much 
 of excessive eulogy, demands indeed a sober and analy 
 tical review; it is a character rare, profound, and not to 
 be dismissed on a tide of fine writing, composed of " elegant 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 275 
 
 extracts," poetical quotations, and illustrations from the Hindoo 
 mythologies and the Viri Romee. 
 
 It will be the especial and exact task of the military histo 
 rian, the expert critic, to adjust Jackson s peculiar fame in 
 arms and to determine its details. It is just that his life 
 should be regarded from a high and critical military point of 
 view, for here is its excellent and almost exclusive interest ; 
 and, besides, it is remarkable how much he has already suf 
 fered from the inaccurate and overdrawn estimates of incom 
 petent critics. His only considerable biographer (Dr. Dab- 
 ney, a Presbyterian clergyman,) has fallen into the lamentable 
 error of regarding the religious and even sectarian character 
 of his hero as the chief interest of his life, and subordinating 
 to it his wonderful military career and his character as a 
 master of war. So far is this estimate in error, that we may 
 even venture a remark which will probably be novel and 
 distasteful to many readers that the religious element in 
 General Jackson s life has come in for an undue share of pub 
 lic attention ; that it was among the least admirable parts of 
 his character ; and that it was singularly and painfully defi 
 cient. 
 
 Of this aspect of the life of the great Southern commander, 
 the author has had occasion, in some historical sketches of the 
 war, to deliver an opinion, perhaps as unpopular as it is 
 novel. He says: "There are considerations which make 
 Jackson s piety of very partial interest. It is true that he 
 was an enthusiast in religion, that he was wonderfully atten 
 tive in his devotions, and that prayer was as the breath of 
 his nostrils. To one of his friends he declared that he had 
 cultivated the habit of l praying without ceasing, and con 
 necting a silent testimony of devotion with every familiar act 
 of the day. Thus, he said, When I take my meals, there 
 
276 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 is the grace. When I take a draught of water I always 
 pause, as my palate receives the refreshment, to lift up my 
 heart to God in thanks and prayer for the water of life. 
 Whenever I drop a letter in the box, I send a petition along 
 with it for God s blessing upon its mission, and upon the per 
 son to whom it is sent. When I break the seal of a letter 
 just received, I stop to pray to God that He may prepare me 
 for its contents, and make it a messenger of good. But, not 
 withstanding the extreme fervor of Jackson s religion, it is 
 remarkable that he kept it for certain places and companies ; 
 that he was disposed to be solitary in its exercise ; and that 
 he was singularly innocent of that Cromwellian fanaticism 
 that mixes religious invocations with orders and utterances 
 on a battle-field. He prayed in his tent ; he delighted in long 
 talks with the many clergymen who visited him ; he poured 
 out the joys and aspirations of his faith in private correspon 
 dence ; but he seldom introduced religion into the ordinary 
 conversation of his military life ; and he exhibited this side 
 of his character in the army in scarcely any thing more than 
 Sunday services in his camp, and a habitual brief line in all 
 his official reports, acknowledging the divine favor. He was 
 very attentive to these outward observances ; but his religious 
 habit was shy and solitary ; he had none of the activity of the 
 priest; we hear but little of his work in the hospitals, of pri 
 vate ministrations by the death-bed, and of walks and exer 
 cises of active charity." 
 
 Havelock distributed tracts in the British army; Vickers 
 comforted the dying in the trenches, and held prayer-meetings 
 within the range of the enemy s guns. We do not hear of 
 such noble and amiable offices performed by Jackson. His 
 religion lacked in active benevolence ; it was a cold, intro 
 spective religion, subjective in its experiences, severe, no 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 277 
 
 doubt, in its self-discipline, correct in its faith, but with few 
 works, few visible testimonies of zeal in the usual rounds of 
 Christian duty. His religion was in no way mixed with the 
 administration of his command. In his military intercourse 
 he was the military commander. On the field of battle he 
 was the passionate, distinct, harsh commander, whose sharp 
 and strident orders were inexorable as messengers of fate. He 
 had no religious appeals or exhortations to make to his men ; 
 if he prayed in action, it was in invariable silence ; he never 
 dropped a word of regret on the conquered field, such as 
 spectacles of death have often moved benevolent men to 
 utter ; he never comforted the dying, or visited the hospitals ; 
 he had no peculiar schemes of benevolence in his army 
 (beyond the usual Sunday preaching) ; he was no winner of 
 souls, no messenger of conversions and revivals ; in brief, he 
 was utterly deficient in those active and priestly offices which 
 the popular mind associates with the Christian hero. He was 
 warm enough in his self-communions, in prayer, and in inter 
 course with a few intimate friends ; but his religion was essen 
 tially a selfish, intellectual fanaticism, that seldom appeared 
 out of his meditations, where it was excessively nursed. It 
 did not go forth on the divine errands of charity. It was a 
 religion curious rather than lovable. There was probably 
 but little of philanthropy in Jackson s composition. He did 
 not have the charming amiability of Lee ; he was disposed to 
 recrimination with his officers, stern and exacting in his com 
 mands ; he was naturally of an excessive temper, harsh and 
 domineering; and we are disposed to think that it required 
 all the grace of his Christian character and the severest dis 
 cipline of his religion to keep within bounds his constitutional 
 impulses of anger. 
 
 While we thus lessen (no doubt to the surprise of many 
 
278 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 readers) the popular regards for Jackson as a Christian hero, 
 it is yet to observe him in his supreme character of a master 
 of war, the surpassing military genius of the South. Tt is 
 here where the chief interest of his life resides ; here where 
 the biographer should have pointed and held attention. He 
 was a " heaven-born General," said the London Times, a journal 
 least accustomed to extravagant phrases, and almost historical 
 in its deliberate measure of language. He was a born soldier 
 
 natus est, nonfactus, nascitur nonfit ; he had far more of the 
 
 inspiration of war than Lee. He was undoubtedly superior 
 to the latter, in the sense that genius is superior to the highest 
 intellect, that it has more self-possession and readiness, that it 
 acts with intuition and rapidity on instant combinations; 
 thus having advantage of the latter, and executing while it 
 has taken time to meditate. Jackson knew, as by intuition, 
 when and where to strike the enemy ; he had an almost in 
 fallible insight into his condition and temper ; he marched to 
 his purpose with that supreme self-confidence, that absolute 
 certainty, which always designate the efforts of genius. He 
 had the inspiration of war rather than its pedantry. He must 
 have been really deficient in military learning, for, as a pro 
 fessor at the Institute of Virginia, he would have had abun 
 dant opportunities, unavoidable occasions, no matter how un 
 fortunate and blundering he was as an instructor, to let out 
 the contents of his mind, to blurt them in some way ; but his 
 reputation there was quite as remarko ; ble for a blank mind as 
 tor a bad delivery. Yet he was not only the most brilliant 
 of Confederate commanders, but the most uniformly success 
 ful. It is remarkable of him that he was never suprised ; that 
 he was never routed in battle ; that he never had a train or 
 any organized portion of his army captured by the enemy ; 
 and that he never made intrenchments. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 279 
 
 A common error has prevailed that Jackson s military 
 faculty was a partial one ; that he was brilliant in executing 
 the parts assigned him by his superiors, but that he was 
 scarcely competent to plan and originate for himself. When 
 be fell, General Lee deplored the loss as that if his " right 
 arm," and the phrase has been too literally or narrowly taken, 
 as meaning that Jackson was chiefly valuable in executing 
 the plans of the commander-in-chief. This estimate does him 
 great injustice, and ignores some of the most important parts 
 of his career. Indeed, there was, on the Southern side in the 
 war, no military genius more complete, more diversified in its 
 accomplishments, more universal in the range of arms, and in 
 its methods of illustration. His plans were as excellent as his 
 executions. His famous campaign of 1862, in the Valley otf 
 Virginia, was of his own origination, further than that he had 
 been placed there by Johnston to draw attention from Rich- 
 mond ; but it was not expected that he would act offensively, 
 until the news electrified the country that he had defeated 
 four separate armies, marched four hundred miles in forty 
 days, neutralized a force of sixty thousand men designed to 
 operate against Richmond, and was sweeping through the 
 mountain-passes to the relief of the Confederate capital in a 
 blaze of glory. The movements that constituted this cam 
 paign were as precise as were ever adjusted by military skill, 
 and the diagram that describes them remains one of the 
 nicest strategic studies of the war Again, the great event of 
 Chancellorsville the movement on Hooker s flank, when 
 Jackson blazed from the Wilderness, sudden and consuming 
 as the lightning was his own conception, urged upon Lee ; and 
 the night before the great warrior fell, he had planned beneath 
 the pines, and by the light of a camp-fire, this masterpiece of 
 the most famous victory of the Confederates, It was the 
 
280 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 characteristic, crowning repetition of his favorite strategy on 
 the enemy s flanks; dealing those sudden and mortal blows 
 which show the nerve of a great commander, and illustrate 
 the precision of genius. 
 
 Jackson had that rare and interesting test of genius the 
 support of a weak physique by the transports of the mind. 
 In his campaigning he was as impervious to the elements, as 
 strong and grim as Charles XII. of Sweden, the iron warrior 
 of his age. At ordinary times he was weak and whimsical 
 as to health ; in the life of the professor he was dyspeptic 
 and hypochondriac ; but in the excitements of war he was 
 equal to almost incredible hardships, and the animation of 
 his genius alone seems to have made him a type of endu 
 rance. He was never absent a day from his command ; he 
 often slept without any thing but a blanket between him and 
 the mud or the snow ; he ate with almost mechanical indiffer 
 ence as to the quality of his food ; vigilant, elastic, always in 
 motion, he excelled all other Confederate commanders in 
 activity and endurance, and made his "foot-calvary" the 
 wonder of the country. When his brigade was making a 
 forced march to the first Manassas, it bivouacked near the 
 railroad, and the volunteers, unused to such fatigue, mur 
 mured at the necessity of setting guards for the night. 
 Jackson pitied their weariness ; he replied that he himself, 
 alone, would do the guard duty for that night ; and during 
 all its lonely hours, when his men were stretched on the 
 ground, worn out, the commander stalked on his rounds, 
 disdaining the least refreshment of sleep, and wrapped in un 
 known meditations. At another time, when, in the harshest 
 depths of winter, and through a raging, merciless storm, he 
 marched towards the headwaters of the Potomac; when 
 overwearied men sank by the way to die, or slipped down 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 281 
 
 the precipices overlaid with ice ; when the animals of his 
 trains gave out, or stumbled along with bleeding muzzles ; 
 when many of his shelterless troops froze dead in the night 
 time, and their gloomy comrades murmured against their 
 commander ; on the toilsome and agonizing march through 
 snow-fields and along the yawning precipices full of black, 
 jagged rock and ghostly -frosted shapes, Jackson was yet the 
 silent, grim, inexorable General, the only man in the com 
 mand who never uttered a word of suffering, although 
 sharing the hardships and privations of the commonest 
 soldier, apparently having no thoughts, no feelings, beyond 
 the victory, to which he toiled on the narrow mountain-path, 
 through the wreck of winter, the ravages of death, and the 
 defiances of nature. His constitution was naturally weak, 
 but it was braced by an extraordinary will ; and his endu 
 rance was probably an illustration of that very physical 
 strength which comes from the transports of genius. 
 
 He had another remarkable trait, which has often been ob 
 served in great military commanders : a cold method, which 
 has sometimes been taken for cruelty, but it is really nothing 
 more than the expression of the severe and supreme idea of 
 war. lie had no weak sentimentalism r and he was even 
 averse to much of the ostentation and refinement of arms. 
 "War for him had a gloomy, terrible meaning ; it was the 
 shedding of blood, wounds, death. Once an inferior officer 
 was regretting that some Federal soldiers had been killed in 
 a display of extraordinary courage when they might as readily 
 have been captured. Jackson replied, curtly, "Shoot them 
 all ; I don t want them to be brave." He had a gloomy, 
 fierce idea of war, which we are forced to confess was some 
 times almost savage in its expressions. It was testified by 
 Governor Letcher, in a distinct and authentic manner, during 
 
282 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the life-time of Jackson, that, from the opening of the war, 
 the latter favored the black flag, and thought that no prisoner 
 should be taken in a war invading the homes of the South. 
 The fact is, Jackson had no politics, not a particle of political 
 animosity in the war, and, in this respect, represented many 
 of his countrymen, who only realized that an issue of arms 
 was made, and that, they were called upon to defend their 
 homes against invaders, whom the newspapers represented to 
 be no better then marauders and incendiaries. Jackson had 
 only the idea of the soldier to fight, and to fight in the 
 most terrible manner. It was not a natural cruelty, a consti 
 tutional harshness, but a stern conception of war and its 
 dread realities the soldier s disposition for quick, decisive, 
 destructive work. 
 
 We are aware that we have disturbed some popular 
 notions about the favorite hero of the South. But we are 
 endeavoring to obtain the truth of a somewhat mysterious 
 character ; and we have yet to notice the most complete de 
 lusion that the common mind has attached to the name of 
 Jackson. It is, that he was a cold figure in a round of duty, 
 operated only by conscientious motives, deaf to praise and 
 destitute of ambition. The author recollects, on one occa 
 sion, writing some encomium on Jackson, in a Eichrnond 
 journal, and remarking thereupon that Jackson would proba 
 bly never read it, and undoubtedly cared nothing for public 
 opinion. "You are utterly mistaken," spoke up John M. 
 Daniel, the editor ; he is to-day the most ambitious man 
 within the limits of the Southern Confederacy." 
 
 A close inspection of Jackson s life, and especially of his 
 peculiar and masking manners, shows that he really had an 
 enormous, consuming ambition. It was an ambition that re 
 sided in the depths of his nature ; that ate into and honey- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 283 
 
 combed his heart ; that bounded and fluctuated in every pulse 
 of his being. He was almost fierce in the confession of this 
 secret feeling in the beginning of his military career. When 
 once asked if he had felt no trepidation when he made most 
 extraordinary exposures of his person in some of the famous 
 battles of the Mexican war, he replied that the only anxiety 
 of which he was conscious in any of these engagements was a 
 fear lest he should not meet danger enough to make his con 
 duct under it as conspicuous as he desired ; and as the peril 
 grew greater, he rejoiced in it as his opportunity for distinc 
 tion. He courted the greatest amount of danger for the 
 greatest amount of glory ; and this sentiment of the true 
 soldier survived to his last moments. 
 
 But it is to be observed that Jackson s ambition was of a 
 true, lofty sort, quite unlike that vulgar passion which 
 makes men itch for notoriety, and constantly place them 
 selves in circumstances and attitudes to attract public atten 
 tion. Such an ambition (if the term may be so profaned) is 
 the quality of mean souls ; and even its little, noisy prizes 
 are worthless, for it is remarkable tn*at mere notoriety gene 
 rally recoils upon itself, and that those who make them 
 selves notorious, at last tax public attention to find out some 
 thing disreputable or ridiculous about them. Jackson s 
 passion was that fine and ]ofty ambition which pursues 
 idealities, which looks to a name in history, and which, averse 
 to the mere noisy, evanescent gifts of popularity, actually 
 shuns notoriety, is pained by all vulgar and meretricious 
 displays, and is constantly maintaining a close and sensitive 
 reserve. Such ambition is the property of grand and noble 
 souls. It is most interesting to regard its reserves, its dis 
 guises, its taciturn moods, its apparent want of sympathy 
 with immediate surroundings, and the common mistake the 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 world makes in designating as emotionless, ascetic men, 
 those who are daily and nightly consumed by grand aspira- 
 tions. An ambition of this sort pursues only the ideal ; it 
 finds its happiness in self-culture and self-approval, in secret 
 aspiration, in communion with the historical and universal; 
 it is but the vulgar counterfeit, the low desire, that seeks th 
 coarse rewards of popularity in offices, in applause, in news 
 paper paragraphs ; that imagines mere noise is the acclama 
 tion of glory, and mistakes " a dunce s puff for fame." Jack 
 son, no doubt, valued "skilled commendation," while lie did 
 not mistake the penny-a- lines of the newspaper for the in 
 scriptions of history ; he was not entirely insensible to the 
 praise of his contemporaries; but what he mostly and chiefly 
 prized was the name in history an aspiration after the ideal, 
 and not the vulgar hunt for notoriety and its gifts. Such an 
 ambition is consonant with the most refined spirit of Chris 
 tianity ; it resides in the depths of great minds ; and it easily 
 escapes observation, because those moved by it are generally 
 silent men, of mysterious air and mechanical manners, living 
 within themselves, conscious that few can enter into sympathy 
 with them, and constantly practicing the art of impenetrable 
 reserve. 
 
 The very awkwardness of Jackson s manners, his taciturn 
 habit, his constraint in company, the readiness with which 
 he was put to embarrassment, were marks of sensitive 
 ambition, with its supreme self-confidence, which is yet not 
 vanity, its raw self-regard which is yet not conceit, rather 
 than evidences of a strained and excessive modesty, blunder 
 ing in its steps and painfully protesting its unworthiness. It 
 is a superficial, common mistake of the world to designate as 
 "modest" men, or as persons holding low opinions of them 
 selves, those who are awkward and bashful in society, who 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 285 
 
 blush easily when confronted in a general conversation, or 
 are constrained and embarrassed in the conventionalism of 
 social intercourse. But an observation more studious than 
 that of the drawing-room, and general assembly, often dis 
 covers under such manners the very sensitiveness of a su 
 preme self-appreciation, the chafe or reserve of a great, proud 
 spirit, without opportunity to assert itself. It is thus we may 
 explain how the shy and clumsy manners of Jackson, which 
 made him the butt of social companies, yet covered an 
 enormous self-regard, and masked the ambition which de 
 voured him. Mr. John Esten Cooke, who was near his 
 person in the war, declares : " The recollection is still pre 
 served by many of his personal peculiarities ; his simplicity 
 and absence of supicion when all around were laughing at 
 some of his odd ways, his grave expression and air of innocent 
 inquiry when some jest excited general merriment, and he 
 could not see the point ; his solitary habits and self-contained 
 deportment ; his absence of mind, awkwardness of gait, and 
 evident indifference to every species of amusement." 
 
 There is a common disposition to caricature great men, to 
 exaggerate their peculiarities, and to discover eccentricities. 
 It comes, probably, from a low literary adventure, a design 
 to point paragraphs at the expense of truth. Jackson has 
 suffered greatly from such caricature ; he has been represented 
 as uncouth and odd in the most various particulars, and the 
 apocrypha of the Bohemians have given the most conflicting 
 representations of his person and manners. There was noth 
 ing really very extraordinary in these ; but it is surprising 
 what different opinions have been held as to the comeliness 
 of the man. We may quote here from some of our own 
 personal recollections of Jackson, written on another occasion, 
 what we yet think the most correct description of the hero : 
 
286 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 "To the vulgar eye, be was a clumsy-looking man, and his 
 roughly-cut features obtained for him the easy epithet of an 
 ugly man. But to the eye that makes of the human face the 
 janua animi, and examines in it the traces of character and 
 spirit, the countenance of Jackson was superlatively noble and 
 interesting. The outline was coarse ; the reddish beard was 
 scraggy ; but he had a majestic brow, and in the blue eyes 
 was an introverted expression, and just sufficient expression 
 of melancholy to show the deeply-earnest man. But the 
 most striking feature, the combative sign of the face, was the 
 massive iron-bound jaw that which Bulwer declares to be 
 the mark of the conqueror, the facial characteristic of Caesar 
 and William of Normandy, the latter of whom he has brought 
 before our eyes in one of his most splendid romances. In 
 brief, while common curiosity saw nothing to admire in 
 Jackson, a closer scrutiny discovered a rare and interesting 
 study. It was not the popular picture of a bizarre and 
 austere hero ; it was that of a plain gentleman, of ordinary 
 figure, but with a lordly face, in which serious and noble 
 thoughts were written without effort or affectation." 
 
 The views the present author has taken of Jackson scarcely 
 correspond to the beaten types of the man, and their novelty 
 may be unpleasant, and provocative of criticism in some 
 quarters. But we conceive the necessity of a profound ex 
 ploration, a searching analysis of a character so central and 
 dramatic in the war, that stands in so many important his 
 torical connections. Many of the most important events of 
 the war must be grouped around Jackson, and the veins of 
 his single dominant character must run through many pages 
 of the general narrative. We cannot exaggerate the impor 
 tance of a correct study of the man. In many respects he 
 was the representative of his countrymen. His chaste and 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 287 
 
 noble ambition represented the aspirations of the best and 
 most cultivated men of the South, as opposed to a mania in 
 the North for noisy and visible distinctions ; his innocence of 
 politics was extremely characteristic of perhaps a majority of 
 the Southern soldiers, who fought more from martial instincts 
 than from political convictions ; and his superb valor illus 
 trated the sentiment of the South that thinks personal courage 
 a virtue and an ornament, and ranks it first among the titles 
 of admiration. It is indispensable that an influence that con 
 tributed so much to the war should be carefully analyzed ; 
 that a person so conspicuous in it should be correctly por 
 trayed ; and that the character of Stonewall Jackson should be 
 placed among its first historical studies. 
 
 The last moments of the great warrior have been variously 
 described. The following statement is derived from the 
 exact and literal accounts of his physician. Within two 
 hours of his death, he was told distinctly that there was no 
 hope, that he was dying ; and he answered, feebly but firmly, 
 "Very good; it is all right." A few moments before he 
 died, he cried out in his delirium, " Order A. P. Hill to pre 
 pare for action ! Pass the infantry to the front rapidly ! Tell 
 Major Hawks " then stopped, leaving the sentence unfi 
 nished. Presently a smile of ineffable sweetness spread itself 
 over his pale face, and he said, quietly, and with an expression 
 as if of relief, " Let us cross over the river, and rest under the 
 shade of the trees." And so, with these beautiful, typical 
 words trembling on his lips, the soul of the great soldier, 
 taxed with battle, and trial, ana weariness, passed through the 
 deep waters of Death, and found sweet and eternal rest. 
 
288 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Increased Spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia-A Second Experiment of Invasion Origt 
 nated by General Lee and Opposed by Mr. Davis-Some Accounts of a Secret Correspondence 
 between the Commander and the President-A Curious and perhaps Fatal Misapprehension 
 concerning the Campaign-Failure of Mr. Davis to Order General Beauregard to Virginia- 
 The Battle of Gettysburg th Worst Error of General Lee s Military Life-He Makes a Disin 
 genuous Account of it-True Theory of the Action-Reflections on the Military Character of 
 Lee-Gettysburg, a Divided Name in the Calendar of Battles-Why there were No Popular 
 Reproaches of Lee-The Disaster of Vicksburg, a Very Different Story-Lee and Johnston 
 Par Nobile Fratrum " of the War-The President s Pets "-John C. Pemberton, an Obscure 
 .ilitary Man Put in Command of Ticksburg-Extraordinary Protests against the Appoint- 
 ment-The Influence of a Woman Brought to Bear on Mr. Davis-An Infamous Imposture 
 In the Command Given to Johnston-The President Cheats the Public Sentiment-Johnston 
 Mere Figure-Kead in the West-Proofs of a Dishonorable Private Correspondence of Mr. 
 Davis in Derogation of Johnston s Command-The Secret Dispatch to Pemberton-Conse- 
 
 quences of the Surrender of Vicksburg The Most Aggravated Disaster of the War. 
 
 IN midsummer of 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia 
 reached its highest point of efficiency. The Confederacy 
 had enjoyed a season for recruiting; its affairs again wore a 
 brilliant color. ,There was a raw bloom of new hopes spring 
 ing from the battle fields we have described in the preceding 
 chapter. Recruits had flocked into camps where they might 
 hope no longer to rust in idleness, and to waste from disease, 
 but to enjoy the adventures of an active campaign, and to 
 reap the glory of swift and decisive battles. The sympathy 
 of the Confederate Army with the general public sentiment 
 of the country was singularly delicate and exact ; and it is 
 remarkable that as the hopes of the people rose in the con 
 test, as victories were won, the army was readily replenished, 
 suffered but little from desertion, and drew in an abundance 
 of recruits. Although the law to furnish troops was uniform 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 289 
 
 the same in all cases, the Confederate army appeared to vary 
 not only in spirit but in numbers with the fortunes of the 
 contest, and was as sensitive to outside influences as any 
 other congregation of people within the limits of the South. 
 
 In the month of June, 1863, General Lee found himself at 
 the head of an army ninety thousand strong ; and animated 
 by the numbers and condition of his men, rather than for any 
 other reason, he determined to make a second attempt to in 
 vade the territory of the enemy, and with a broader design 
 than when in the preceding year, he had proposed rather to 
 clear the frontiers of the Confederacy than to effect a perma 
 nent occupation of Northern soil. The project of the inva 
 sion of Pennsylvania was entirely his own. It has since been 
 discovered that President Davis was averse to it ; and an act 
 of justice should be done in relieving him entirely from re 
 sponsibility for one broad passage of disaster in the history 
 of the war. 
 
 The Pennsylvania campaign furnishes the only instance of 
 displeasure that ever took place between the President and 
 General Lee. The troops of the latter were scarcely across 
 the Potomac, when he was overtaken by a private letter from 
 Mr. Davis, making a delicate, but studied protest against the 
 movement of his army so far away from Richmond, and 
 significantly committing to his own responsibility this second 
 experiment of invasion. Worse than this, a misunderstanding 
 had grown up between the President and General Lee; of 
 which it is not saying too much that it materially spoiled the 
 campaign, and contributed largely to the catastrophe at 
 Gettysburg. General Lee had considered it of the utmost 
 importance on the wide departure of his army from Kichmond 
 that General Beauregard should be placed in command at 
 Culpepper Court House; he had thought that matter arranged, 
 19 
 
290 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 he had relied upon it as likely to produce a considerable divis 
 ion of the forces of the enemy, and calculated to distract his 
 attention. Mr. Davis did not fulfil this part of the campaign 
 from what was evidently a misapprehension ; he supposed that 
 General Lee desired an army of some magnitude to be assem 
 bled at Culpepper Court House : and the latter was across the 
 Potomac, when he received dispatches from Kichmond that 
 there were no forces at the disposal of the President to con 
 stitute such an army. General Lee hastened to correct the 
 mistake ; he explained that he only required a semblance of 
 an army at the point designated ; he argued that if nothing 
 more could be done, General Beauregard should, at least, 
 make his headquarters at Culpepper Court House, and the 
 fact be industriously reported in the newspapers, yet hoping 
 to call off some of the overmatching forces of the enemy that 
 hung on his flanks ; but before the letter, freighted with such 
 hope, and designed to correct the misapprehension of Mr. 
 Davis, reached Kichmond, the battle of Gettysburg had been 
 delivered, the army of Northern Virginia had sustained an 
 irretrievable defeat, and the Pennsylvania campaign had been 
 decided, in a brief span of days, memorable for their disaster 
 to the South. 
 
 It is wonderful, whatever the errors that led to the field of 
 Gettysburg, and in the face of inequalities which nature exag 
 gerated, placing the army of superior numbers in a position 
 almost impregnable, how near the Confederacy came to 
 winning what might have been the decisive victory of 
 the war. The narrowness of the chance makes a dramatic 
 picture the Confederacy within a stone s throw of peace- 
 nothing but the brows of brass and iron that frowned on 
 Lee s army from Cemetery Kidge to dispute its inroad into the 
 b,art of the Northern territory, nothing but a line of guns 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 291 
 
 between it and the prizes of Washington, Philadelphia and 
 New York! On the 3d of July, 1863, occurred a single 
 hour, fraught with the destinies of two countries. It was a 
 crowded, sublime hour, stocked with scenes that make the 
 history of years when Pickett s Virginians marched on 
 ground quivering under the concussion of three hundred 
 cannon, and made the last effort to pluck the victory that for 
 three days had trembled in the tangled brushwood of a 
 mountain ridge. In vain ! With ranks torn and shattered, 
 most of its officers killed or wounded, no valor able to 
 surmount impossibilities, annihilation or capture inevitable, 
 Pickett s division slowly, reluctantly falls back, and the day 
 ends. 
 
 The crest of Gettysburg was the knife balance of the war. 
 The strained confidence, the elevated expectation at Eicnmond 
 were cast to the ground in a single day. Mr. Davis was 
 inconsolable, and for weeks he withdrew himself from public 
 observation on the plea of a nervous disorder. He had not 
 only been disappointed, but he had been insulted by the 
 enemy. While Vice-President Stephens was on his way to 
 sound the Northern Government on the subject of peace a 
 second coquettish mission of Mr. Davis on the heels of an 
 army of invasion a battle was fought that shut the gates of 
 Washington in his face, and prompted the North to return an 
 insulting message to Richmond. An enemy recovered from 
 the grotesque alarms that had made it humble and ridiculous 
 when Lee s Army first appeared across the Potomac, was 
 now quick to resume its former stature and tone of insolen 
 contempt. 
 
 At Gettysburg was committed the worst error of the 
 military life of the favorite General of the South ; and, 
 although the peculiar generosity of the Southern people for- 
 
292 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 gave him, and even to this day ; is unwilling to tolerate 
 criticism of him, history must judge him severely for his 
 conduct on a field so critical. The worst reflection of the story 
 of Gettysburg on General Lee s fame, is that here, for once, 
 he has been disingenuous in his account of the field, giving 
 false and trivial reasons to excuse his impulsion to a battle 
 so unequal and disastrous. The fact was, General Lee shared 
 too much the fault of his army in despising and underrating 
 his enemy ; and thus, when he had splendid opportunities in 
 his hand, and when the fortunes of the South were mounting 
 to the climacteric, he committed a risk, which could only 
 have been pardonable in desperate circumstances, of attack 
 ing at odds and disadvantages such as had never before 
 occurred in the war, urging his troops against a rocky fortress 
 far stronger than that against which Burnside had so madly 
 dashed his army at Fredericksburg. In the way of excuse, 
 General Lee has weakly intimated that the battle was not of 
 his own choice, that it was in a measure unavoidable, that it 
 was "a matter of great difficulty to withdraw through the 
 mountains with his large trains." The statement is unfair, 
 and is unworthy of the great commander, whose reputation 
 might well have supported a free and full confession of his 
 error. He went into the fight against the protest of his Lieu 
 tenants, against his pledges at the outset of the campaign that 
 he would invite the enemy s attack and not risk an aggressive 
 movement, and with General Longstreet insisting that the 
 road to Washington was open, and that an attack upon Fred 
 erick, Maryland, would withdraw Meade to ground of their 
 own choosing. As to the difficulty of the Confederate trains, 
 the fact was that the greater portion of them was still west of 
 the mountains, and what of them had reached the field were 
 safely withdrawn after the defeat of the Confederates, in cir- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 298 
 
 cumstances more unfavorable, of course, than those in which 
 General Lee debated whether he would deliver battle. There 
 was not only no necessity for the battle, but there was even a 
 broad and obvious alternative. The fact has not been com 
 monly known or esteemed that General Lee fought the battle 
 of Gettysburg, not only when he had full opportunity of re 
 treat, but after he had actually put the right wing of his 
 army between Meade and Washington. He was probably 
 carried away by a transport of temper to attack the enemy on 
 his front, in almost impregnable position ; and in this fatal 
 action the historian will judge that he threw away the best of 
 the opportunities of the war, and dated on a field blotched 
 with useless carnage the decline of the fortunes of the Con 
 federacy. 
 
 We find General Lee twice failing to carry the war into 
 the enemy s country at Sharpsburg and at Gettysburg. The 
 thought occurs that he was unequal in aggressive warfare, 
 and suggests a conception of his abilities as a commander 
 more limited and thoughtful than the fulsome estimate of the 
 populace. Probably the best opinion of General Lee is that 
 he showed but little genius in offensive campaigns, and that 
 his excellence as a commander was almost exclusively within 
 the lines of defensive warfare. Here he was acute, prompt, 
 resourceful; he never lost his self-possession, or the command 
 of any of his faculties; he had an electric promptness in 
 acting in sudden and extreme necessities ; and what is proba 
 bly the most remarkable feature of his campaigns, was his 
 wonderful faculty of recovery when it was supposed that he 
 had been pushed to the last extremity and was impending 
 on the brink of ruin. Again and again, when the enemy 
 congratulated themselves that they had given him a death 
 blow, he would astonish them by the readiness and dexterity 
 
294 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of his resource ; and when the North was vocal with exultant 
 reports that Lee was retreating, or that his fortunes had been 
 broken or lost, it would be suddenly known that he was again 
 in the field with unabashed front, erect and plumed with new 
 resolution. 
 
 And so it happened in a measure after Gettysburg. The 
 spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia had declined, but it 
 had not been broken ; a great disaster had been suffered, but 
 only the firmness of General Lee in retreat saved it from an 
 irretrievable catastrophe; and what he preserved of the 
 morale and efficiency of his troops even after the defeat we 
 have described, was yet sufficient to check the pursuit of the 
 enemy, and to hold, though with feebler array than formerly, 
 the old defensive lines in Virginia. 
 
 But whatever was the amount of disaster at Gettysburg, 
 jind however severe was the shock which the hopes of the 
 South suffered on this field, it is to be remarked peculiarly 
 of this case of popular disappointment, that there was but 
 little of recrimination mixed with it, but few traces of the 
 bitterness of reproach. If Lee had fought unadvisedly, he had 
 yet done so from a generous transport, and with such splendid 
 bravery as to gild the page of disaster to make the story of 
 defeat one of tender regret and reverential memories, rather 
 than one of despair and shame. It was thus that the people 
 of the South accepted, and to this day maintain the memory 
 of Gettysburg as of a field unhappy but adorned. In the 
 calendar of the battles of the war, the name is yet a divided 
 one for the Confederacy, mentioned perhaps as often with a 
 noble and sorrowful pride by the Southerner for the valor 
 displayed on it, as with keen regrets and tantalized reflections 
 for the narrow loss upon it of a victory that might have been 
 decisive of the war. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 295 
 
 Far different was the story of another disaster in another 
 part of the Confederacy, the news of which reached Eichraond 
 the same day as that from Gettysburg ; a story replete with 
 recrimination and full of bitterness and shame one that piled 
 reproaches upon the Confederate Government until popular 
 indignation became fatigued with building the monument of 
 infamy. This story was the surrender of Yicksburg. It 
 coupled one of the worst records of un worthiness and shame 
 on the part of the government. It was a disaster that nearly 
 broke the heart of the Confederacy, as it did cut in twain its 
 body. It was the clearest and most important complaint that 
 had yet been made against President Davis ; it inflicted upon 
 him an indelible disgrace ; and it is alone sufficient to deter 
 mine any doubt which may yet linger on our pages so far of 
 his unworthiness in the war. 
 
 Yicksburg was the strategic point in the Confederacy, second 
 only to the capital. It was a post already adorned by four 
 different successes of the Confederate arms, repulsing so many 
 attempts of the enemy to capture it. It afforded the only 
 firm line of communication between the cis-Mississippi and 
 the trans-Mississippi. It might have been supposed that at 
 a position so important, to which pointed so much of the hope 
 arid anxiety of the South, Mr. Davis would have appointed to 
 command one of the best Generals of the Confederacy, one, 
 indeed, whose reputation might have balanced that of Lee of 
 Virginia, and one who might have inspired a confidence on 
 the other side of the Alleghany that would have kept, to 
 " some extent, equal and uniform the fortunes of the war. Nor 
 was such a man wanting. Public opinion in the South had 
 long designated as the^par nobile fratrum in the war, Eobert 
 E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, and had suggested the conve 
 nient decision between these two men of the two dominant 
 
296 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 departments lying on either side of the Alleghany. It was 
 the natural and just division between the two greatest military 
 geniuses of the war. The military record of Johnston was 
 quiet ; but it had great substantial merit, and in the estima 
 tion of the most thoughtful persons in the South, he was the 
 superior of Lee as a safe General j ust the man to command 
 in the uncertain and chequered field of the West, where the 
 fortunes of the war had hitherto been so various, and where 
 prudent successes might have been the just balance of Lee s 
 easier and more brilliant victories in Virginia. No one but 
 Mr. Davis doubted that Johnston was a commander of first- 
 class ability and knowledge. Manassas, Williamsburg, and 
 Seven Pines, were all his battles; and it was notable of his 
 career so far, that he had never incurred a single defeat, and 
 never lost an army, not even a brigade, not a regiment. 
 
 Unfortunately Mr. Davis had an inveterate and stubborn 
 dislike of Johnston. Perhaps the reader has been already 
 brought to consider him as a ruler, whose private obstina 
 cies were superior to all considerations of the public interest ; 
 a nervous, ill-tempered person, making his government a fret 
 ful distribution of his personal likes and dislikes. It is sa:d 
 that he hated Johnston for no other reason than his cold and 
 sturdy manners. This commander was remarkable for his 
 plain and business-like communications with the government; 
 he scorned political influence ; he had no arts to conciliate 
 Mr. Davis ; in manners he was the severe soldier, cold and 
 reticent ; he never gratified the vanity of the President by 
 shows of deference, or even pleased popular passion by ful 
 some and rhetorical language about the war ; and yet this 
 stern, almost mute commander, illustrating the severity of 
 military manners, had outlived a short term of unpopularity 
 in the South, was generally esteemed the most sober and safe 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 297 
 
 of Confederate Generals, and to-day is accounted, even beyond 
 Lee, the most careful and judicious spirit in the war. But 
 although Mr. Davis was secretly and deeply offended with 
 Johnston, although he was the victim of prejudices, he was 
 now about to carry these to a point almost incredible, and 
 to actually confound and bewilder popular indignation with 
 his excess of favoritism. 
 
 In all periods of the war there was a parcel of Confederate 
 commanders known as " the President s Pets." The use of 
 such a phrase shows how familiar was public sentiment in the 
 South with the fact that the President was a man of preju 
 dices, and how persistent he was in asserting them. One of 
 these pets was John C. Pemberton. He was a native of 
 Pennsylvania, and in the old Federal service had been a Cap 
 tain without distinction. He had yet fought not a single 
 battle in the Confederacy ; he had not made one record of 
 meritorious service therein; he had never commanded troops 
 in action, not a regiment, not a company, not a man. By a 
 single stroke of the pen Mr. Davis had made this man a Lieu- 
 tenant-General, giving him one of the seven great commissions 
 authorized by the Confederate Congress, over the heads of 
 such men as Gustavus W. Smith, D. H. Hill, A. P. Hill, the 
 brilliant young Southern Generals who had really done the 
 fighting of the war. He was appointed to an independent 
 post, no less than that of Charleston. Thence a great outcry 
 of public opinion compelled the President to remove him ; 
 the story got out that General Pemberton had decided that 
 this important city was untenable ; he was accused of incom- 
 petency, treachery even was hinted, and Mr. Davis had to 
 recall his favorite from a command barren of any action with 
 the enemy, and fruitful only of disgraceful rumors. But the 
 President had that evil temper which, forced to make some 
 
298 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 show of compliance to opposition, yet insults and defies it by 
 making at the first opportunity an aggravation of the cause 
 of complaint actually defying public opinion, showing con 
 tempt for it, even taunting it by the very enlargement of the 
 offence of which it has dared to complain. This unhappy 
 temper, this mean and spiteful resentment of public opinion 
 will be found running through the whole of Mr. Davis s ad 
 ministration. Pemberton was removed from Charleston, only 
 to receive strident promotion. The country saw with aston 
 ishment and dismay this untried commander a man who 
 had absolutely nothing to support him but the personal affec 
 tion of Mr. Davis placed over the Department of Mississippi 
 and Louisiana, and in the command at Yicksburg, the criti 
 cal point of the Mississippi Valley, the Western correspon 
 dent to Richmond ! 
 
 No explanations but that of sheer obstinacy, can be possi 
 bly afforded for this choice by Mr. Davis of a commander for 
 a post the second in importance in the Confederacy. But it 
 is almost unaccountable, the degree of tenacity with which he 
 clung to his favorite in the midst of a storm of public indig 
 nation. Delegations visited him with protests from the peo 
 ple, and army alike; the Legislature of his own State, Missis 
 sippi, passed resolutions complaining of the appointment. 
 Outside the forms of public dissension, other agencies were 
 employed upon the President by those who understood how 
 narrow were his resolutions, and how accessible he was to 
 paltry and irregular influences in conducting the public busi 
 ness. It is shameful that in a matter of so great public con 
 cern as the appointment of a General to a vital point in the 
 Confederacy, the influence of women and of relatives had to 
 be sought to change the intentions of the President. Even 
 this degraded access to him was not neglected. His brother 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 299 
 
 Joseph Davis was induced to travel to Kichmond, and to 
 attempt to dissuade him from Pemberton. A woman in 
 Jackson, Mississippi, who was reported to have an extraordi 
 nary influence over the President was won to the side of the 
 protestants against Pemberton, and was prevailed upon to 
 write private letters to Mr. Davis. But all protests were un 
 availing, and the President had the invariable answer that 
 he had discovered in Pemberton a great military genius; that 
 his choice would be soon approved by brilliant victories; that 
 the country had only to wait for the tests of his judgment. 
 Mr. Davis might possibly have thought that he was acting 
 for the public good ; there is no bias which so easily eludes 
 self-inspection, and at the same time is so patent to the world, 
 as favoritism ; yet even if the President had discovered a 
 military jewel in this obscure man, even if Pemberton had 
 been a mute Napoleon awaiting occasion, the thought should 
 have occurred to Mr. Davis that the confidence of soldiers 
 is an essential element in the success of a General, and that 
 as long as his favorite lacked this he was not the rnan to 
 command the second army of the Confederacy. It is a maxim 
 in the science of military command that no matter what the 
 cause of distrust of troops, the distrust itself is sufficient to 
 disqualify the General for his position. And Pemberton s 
 soldiers distrusted him from the moment he took command, 
 to the time he marched them out to the field of surrender. 
 
 If Mr. Davis had strictly and literally adhered to the ap 
 pointment of Pemberton to command Vicksburg, there 
 would at least have been honesty in this conduct. But un 
 fortunately the President had a curious way of double-dealing 
 with public sentiment ; he had a habit, when strongly urged, 
 of making a show of compliance with it, yet cheating it, sub- 
 stantially. No stronger example can be given of this de- 
 
300 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 testable cheat of the sentiment of the people, this unworthy 
 subterfuge of the President, than after the translation of 
 Pemberton to Vicksburg, the appointment of GeneralJohnston 
 to the visible nominal command of the Western Department, 
 and yet without any practical power to conduct a campaign 
 therein, or to control the armies within the limits of his 
 military jurisdiction. The appointment was made to appease 
 popular clamor; and to cover the President s unworthy affec 
 tion for Pemberton. Johnston was too generous to expose 
 the game on public opinion to which he was made an instru 
 ment ; but at last under the pressure of recrimination after 
 the fall of Vicksburg, the details came out stark and dis 
 graceful, and they compose a story of dishonor for Mr. 
 Davis, the like of which is scarcely to be found in all the 
 crooked and sunken paths of his administration. 
 
 General Johnston was appointed to command in the West 
 with scarcely any other powers than those of an Inspector- 
 General. His appointment was a mission, not a military 
 command. When it had at first been spoken of, he had a 
 private conversation in the War Office in which he strongly 
 urged that the entire Mississippi Valley should be one 
 department, under one command ; that the river did not 
 affect its unity ; and that the measures for its defence ought 
 to comprehend the whole valley and both sides of the river. 
 These views were overruled by Mr. Davis, even after the 
 Secretary of war (Mr. Eandolph) had assented to them. There 
 was another tl pet " of the President on the other side of the 
 Mississippi, who was kept in command in Arkansas, despite 
 the prayers of the State and the irrepressible complaints of 
 the army. "If," said a journal of these times, "General 
 Holmes be not in his dotage, the English language possesses 
 no synonym to indicate his stupidity and inertia." Pember- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 301 
 
 ton, Mr. Davis s protege No. 2, was at Yicksburg, and com 
 manded the Department of Mississippi and Louisiana. 
 Bragg, another "pet," who, at the beginning of the year, had 
 telegraphed from the field of Murfreesboro , " God has given 
 us a happy new year," was uneasily resting at Tullahoma. 
 Thus General Johnston was misplaced among the "pets" of 
 the President. He was nominally the superior officer x of 
 Maury at Mobile, of Bragg at Tullahoma, and of Pemberton 
 at Yicksburg ; but his real control was naught. He could 
 not withdraw the armies from the points they defended ; he 
 could only reinforce one of them by detachments from 
 another. They were commanded by the respective Generals 
 placed over them by President Davis ; and it is remarkable 
 that each of them reported their actions, not through General 
 Johnston, but directly to Kichmorid. Being favorites to 
 whom the President was partial, they could, each, disobey 
 Johnston s orders with impunity. The latter could not be 
 ubiquitous. If he left General Bragg to himself, blunders 
 were immediately committed; if he left General Pemberton 
 with orders to collect provisions and ammunition, and sped 
 to Tullahoma, Yicksburg might be starved out; if he ven 
 tured towards Mobile to examine its defences, he uncovered 
 the larger part of his military district and left to nominal 
 subordinates the fairest and most important portion of the 
 Confederacy. 
 
 This disarrangement of military commands in the West, 
 this confusion of authorities, it is now known, was calculated 
 by President Davis to shield his appointment of Pemberton, 
 and to hide a surreptitious and underhanded correspondence 
 which he conducted with him in derogation of the views of 
 Johnston and in diminution of his command. When the latter 
 arrived at his post in the West, he saw at once the empti- 
 
302 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ness of his command. He wrote to a private friend in 
 Richmond : " I have no hope that Pemberton will regard a 
 suggestion of mine." The anticipation was abundantly ful 
 filled. At the conclusion of the campaign on the fall of 
 Yicksburg, General Johnston was constrained to write in his 
 official report : " General Pemberton made not a single 
 movement in obedience to my orders, and regarded none of 
 my instructions ; and finally did not embrace the only oppor 
 tunity to save his army that given by my order to abandon 
 Vicksburg." 
 
 The series of the acts of disobedience on the part of Pem 
 berton was persistent and high-handed. When Grant crossed 
 the river and invaded the State of Mississippi to make a 
 detour upon Yicksburg, the constant idea of Johnston, his 
 incessant order was that Pemberton should unite with him 
 and fight for Yicksburg in the open field ; that they should 
 manoeuvre to prevent a siege, that if such was once effected 
 by the enemy the loss of the city would become only a 
 question of time, with the Federal army in a position to re 
 ceive reinforcements from all parts of the North, and with no 
 Confederate force outside the town sufficient to break its 
 rear. This was his plain, dominant idea of the campaign. 
 It might have given a great victory to the Confederacy ; it 
 proposed the easy and obvious occasion of Grant brought to 
 a great battle in the interior of Mississippi, where the united 
 forces of Johnston and Pemberton could have matched his 
 numbers, and where, if defeated, he would have no opportu 
 nity of retreat. It was a splendid chance. But Pemberton 
 appears to have been afflicted with the morbid idea that 
 Yicksburg was his base from what inspiration we shall 
 presently see ; from first to last his chief anxiety seems to 
 have been to avoid a junction with Johnston, and to keep a 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 303 
 
 distance between them ; and every order of the latter he dis 
 obeyed with a sang froid and insolent self-complacency unex 
 ampled in the relations of a commanding General and his 
 subordinate, and inexplicable, unless on the supposition of 
 some hidden assurance to support him. 
 
 When Grant first crossed the Mississippi, General John 
 ston telegraphed to Pemberton : " Unite all your troops to 
 beat him ; success will give back what was abandoned to win 
 it." The response of Pemberton was the feeble adventure of 
 a single division of 5,500 troops thrown upon the enemy s 
 front at Port Gibson, and a disastrous battle there. The con 
 sequence of his vacillation and of his mere color of resistance 
 on the river was that the town of Jackson was lost, and the 
 way opened to Vicksburg. But again Johnston saw the 
 chance of concentration and the prospect of a great victory. 
 No sooner had the enemy left Jackson, four of his divisions 
 under Sherman deflected towards the west, than General 
 Johnston hurried a dispatch to Pemberton on the night of the 
 13th of May, urging the importance of establishing communi 
 cations, and ordering him to come upon Sherman s rear at 
 once, and adding, " to beat such a detachment would be of 
 immense value." " The troops here," wrote Johnston, speak 
 ing of his own command, "could co-operate. All the strength 
 you can quickly assemble should be brought. Time is all 
 important." The reply of Pemberton was again feeble ; he 
 could not cut loose from Vicksburg ; that had been committed 
 to him as the chief object of President Davis s solicitude; and 
 the dull and shallow commander could not understand the 
 advantage of fighting for a point at a distance from it, in pre 
 ference to the puerile conceit of fighting on the immediate 
 front of it. He preferred to be besieged, for a reason that at 
 the time was locked in his breast. A few hours after John- 
 
304 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ston s dispatch reached him, he was fighting the enemy on 
 the immediate approaches to Yicksburg ; and at the close of 
 the next day, he was retreating with a shattered and demora 
 lized army into the town, falling into the fatal trap of which 
 Johnston had forewarned him. " Had the battle of Baker s 
 Creek not been fought," wrote this commander, " Pemberton s 
 belief that Yicksburg was his base rendered his ruin inevita 
 ble. He would still have been besieged and therefore captured. 
 The larger force he would have carried into the lines would 
 have added to and hastened this catastrophe. His disasters 
 were due, not merely to his entangling himself with the 
 advancing columns of a superior and unobserved enemy, but 
 to his evident determination to be besieged in Vicksburg, 
 instead of manceuvering to prevent a siege." 
 
 But why should General Pemberton thus have persevered 
 against the orders of his superior ; why allow himself to be 
 shut up in Yicksburg with the determination to be besieged? 
 It was very strange conduct, even on an excessive hypothesis 
 of military incompetency. The fact was that he lore on his 
 person even from the shameful field of Baker s Creek, the secret 
 advices of President Davis in opposition to the orders of General 
 Johnston I From that field, where the shame of Bull Kun 
 was nearly reversed upon the South he carried an army 
 back into the streets of Yicksburg a profane, howling mob. 
 It was a scene of disorder, of cowardice, of despair. " I was 
 surprised," said an officer who rode near General Pemberton 
 when he re-entered Yicksburg, "to notice bis self-compla 
 cency, and to see how little he was disturbed by what to us 
 was a woful retreat." But Pemberton had secret sources of 
 consolation ; he had lost a battle, he had disobeyed Johnston, 
 he had defied his displeasure ; but he knew very well that in 
 betaking himself to a siege in Yicksburg, he was fulfilling 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 305 
 
 the views of Mr. Davis at Kichmond, as communicated to him 
 in private telegrams, and that he might calculate on the sup 
 port of the President in all he had done. 
 
 There has recently came to light, a secret dispatch that 
 curiously supplements the story of Vicksburg. On the 7th 
 of May, 1863, the very day on which General Johnston was 
 writing from Tullahoma, by a remarkable intuition, that he 
 had "no hope that General Pemberton would regard a sug 
 gestion" from him, President Davis telegraphed General 
 Pemberton in these words : " Want of transportation of 
 supplies must compel the enemy to seek a junction with their 
 fleet after a few days absence from it. To hold both Yicks- 
 burg and Port Hudson is necessary to a connection with 
 trans-Mississippi. You may expect whatever it is in ni}^ 
 power to do." This order had doubtless been given to 
 General Pemberton for the purpose of superseding that which 
 General Johnston had sent him six days before, from Tulla 
 homa, directing him " to concentrate and attack Grant im 
 mediately ;" of which General Johnston had advised the War 
 Department. 
 
 Here was a command superior to that of General Johnston, 
 which General Pemberton was obliged to obey. He did so, 
 in the spirit and in the letter. Whatever may have been 
 the blunders that his inexperience in the field might have led 
 him to commit, it cannot be said that he failed in fidelity to 
 his trust; or that his disobedience to tlie orders of his im 
 mediate superior was not excused by the order which had 
 come to him from the superior of both. 
 
 There was long an unpleasant suspicion in the Con 
 federacy that President Davis had a secret and underhanded 
 correspondence in the government of military campaigns, 
 conducting such with subordinate commanders, and thus 
 20 
 
306 
 
 displacing or diminishing the authority of the commander-in- 
 chief, whom he had nominally appointed. We shall see 
 other remarkable instances of this disreputable interference 
 with the conduct of armies in the field. But in the present 
 case the proof is in black and white, that Pemberton was the 
 creature of Mr. Davis ; that he was receiving secret instruc 
 tions from him when all orders to the latter should have 
 passed through General Johnston ; and the suggestion occurs 
 that even the violation of this usual and respectful form, 
 must have involved a sinister purpose, and a dishonorable 
 confidence, if not a positive conspiracy against the authority 
 of General Johnston. The latter was placed in the field to 
 bear the responsibility of a campaign which he never ordered, 
 and the secret history of which remained at Eichmond, to be 
 disclosed or to be retained, according as the result might 
 make to the credit or discredit of the military genius of Mr. 
 Davis. 
 
 When Pemberton had once retired to Yicksburg, Johnston 
 saw well that the fate of that town was determined, and he had 
 nothing more to beseech than that the army should be saved 
 by a speedy evacuation. Pemberton replied : " I have decided 
 to hold Vicksburg as long as possible. * * * I still conceive 
 it to be the most important point in the Confederacy." Once 
 besieged by an enemy whose communications were all open, 
 without prospect of relief from the insufficent army of Johnston, 
 without hope of reinforcement from other burdened parts of 
 the Confederacy, time was soon called upon Vicksburg ; 
 and on the 4th of July, 1863, the South suffered the most 
 aggravated disaster of the war. Pemberton had surrendered 
 to the enemy a force of more than twenty-three thousand 
 men, with three Major-Generals, and nine Brigadiers; up 
 wards of ninety pieces of artillery, and about forty thousand 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 807 
 
 small arms, large numbers of the latter having been taken 
 from the enemy during the siege.* These, however, were 
 only the immediate and visible losses of a day. There were 
 great results, such as had not yet been weighed on a single 
 field of the war. The fall of Yicksburg was the decisive 
 event of the Mississippi Valley ; the virtual surrender of the 
 great river ; and the severance of the Southern Confederacy. 
 The natural consequences were numerous and mouiaful: 
 the attack on and defence of Jackson, and withdrawal of 
 Johnston to Meridian ; the brilliant but fruitless battle of 
 Chickamauga ; the misfortune of Missionary Kidge; the 
 reinforcement and transfer of Sherman to Dalton; the Con 
 federate retreat into Georgia ; the fall of Atlanta ; the deso 
 lation of Georgia and the Carolinas ; the surrender at Chapel 
 Hill ; finally a lost Confederacy. 
 
 * General Grant in his official report claims thirty-seven thousand 
 prisoners, but appears to speak of the results of the campaign, rathei 
 than of the immediate fruits of the surrender. 
 
308 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. _ 
 
 . Pause in the Military History of the Confederacy, and a View thereupon of its Internal Ad 
 ministration Reference to the Confederate Congress Its Secret Sessions The " College De 
 bating Society" in the Capitol Some of the Notable Members of Congress Disgraceful Scenes 
 in Secret Session An Episode of the Bowie-Knife Judge Dargan a Curiosity A Hand-to- 
 Iland Fight in the Senate Other Scandals in Congress The Newspapers and " Contraband 
 Information" Mr. Davis and his "Back-Door" Conferences An Ill-natured Remark about 
 General Beauregard Bad Results of the Secret Sessions of Confederate Congress Multitude 
 of Rumors in the South Comments of the Richmond Examiner and the Charleston Mercury 
 Newsmongers in Richmond Two Notable Characters in the Capital " Long Tom" and the 
 Druggist Reflections on the Birth and Flight of Rumors concerning the War How Mr. 
 Davis s Pastor was Deceived An Anecdote of " Recognition " The Demoralizing Consequences 
 of False Rumors in the War The Heart of the South Worn Out, Swinging from Hope to Fear 
 How Mr. Davis s Uncaged Rumors How he Dulled and Destroyed Public Spirit. 
 
 THE disasters of Gettysburg and Yicksburg naturally give 
 a pause for some reflections on the war. .From these outward 
 events we propose to look in upon the internal administration 
 of Mr. Davis, and to describe something of official persons and 
 manners in the Confederate capital. 
 
 This view first presents us the Congress, the last appearance 
 of which on our pages was in its ignominious flight from 
 McClellan s army. It had reassembled a few months after 
 that army had been scattered. It entered thereafter upon a 
 prolonged term of existence ; the brief history of which is 
 that of dreary servitude to Mr. Davis, broken only by inter 
 vals of weak and spasmodic protest. 
 
 For a long time the existence of this legislative body was 
 almost unnoticed, except for some occasional foolish and em 
 pirical measure, with which it startled the public. It trans 
 acted all important business in secret session. It was a vio- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 309 
 
 lent affectation of the concealed habits of a despotism, and its 
 insolent withdrawal from public notice presented to the world 
 the first example of a public body which claimed to represent, 
 the people of a country, and to be acting by their authority 
 and in their behalf, sitting with closed doors, and withholding 
 all its impo tant transactions from their knowledge. Such an 
 exhibition illustrates that curious mixture in the Southern 
 Confederacy, which made it such a strange and anomalous 
 government, holding out to the world republican forms and 
 yet practising in many things the recluseness and isolation 
 and arrogance of the worst despotism. 
 
 Occasionally there would issue from these veiled mysteries 
 of legislation the most unexpected and astounding measures, 
 some of them expressing the most puerile conceits, and dis 
 arming criticism by the very excess of their absurdity. Nor 
 was this secret legislation always without corrupt advantage 
 to members. An instance was commonly related in Rich 
 mond, on an occasion where a law had been passed in secret 
 to have future effect to repudiate partially Confederate notes 
 above the denomination of five dollars, of a distinguished 
 Senator buying up the small currency in every broker s shop 
 in the capital, and making his millions by the operation. But 
 such corruption was only a day s gossip. The Confederate 
 Congress had long ceased to maintain anything of public re 
 spect. Its secret sessions were regarded only with slighting or 
 suspicious interest ; and when it did indulge in public some 
 slight discussion, those who happened to attend the exhibition 
 confessed themselves stricken with shame, and repeated the 
 common bit of sarcasm in Kichmond of " the college debating 
 society " on Capitol Hill. 
 
 The appearance of the Congress was singularly plain and 
 uflirnposing. It was mostly composed of men who were as 
 
310 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ordinary in appearance as they were dull in mind. Its sur 
 roundings were excessively democratic, dingy, and dirty, and 
 the poverty of the Confederacy scarcely afforded those con 
 veniences and accessories, if not luxuries, which one is accus 
 tomed to see in the halls of our legislation. The Congress sat 
 in the " State House," and such was the want of convenient 
 room, that the Senate was forced to occupy a room in the 
 third story, separated by a simple railing from the audience ; 
 the only apparent distinction between it and the rough crowd 
 (for there was no accommodation for ladies) being that the 
 Senators sat, while the listeners and loafers, having not 
 even benches, were satisfied to find standing-room on the same 
 floor, with the slight separation we have described. The 
 House had a better chamber ; but the bare walls, where there 
 were no paintings, the uncushioned chairs, the dingy desks 
 slashed with pocket-knives, and the attitudes of members, with 
 their heels in air, or their bodies sprawled over two or three 
 chairs, gave one but little idea of legislative dignity or de 
 corum. 
 
 There were not more than a dozen men in both Houses 
 who were before known to the country, or had enjoyed 
 a reputation a hundred miles from home. There were 
 Congressmen from districts overrun by the enemy, who had 
 been elected by a few dozens of soldiers votes cast in camp. 
 It was absurd to find Senators and [Representatives from Mis 
 souri, Arkansas, Louisiana, etc., holding their seats by virtue 
 of a handful of votes cast by soldiers from their respective 
 States in the camps of the Army of Northern Virginia. 
 Among these unworthy members of Congress were some 
 ridiculous figures, and not a few rustic curiosities who sug 
 gested the backwoods and the sedge-fields. The men who 
 relieved something of the rude and ludicrous aspect of the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 311 
 
 body had generally served before in the old Congress at 
 Washington ; but it was often remarked that even these ap 
 peared to have lost their former force and dignity, and to 
 have been belittled by the company in which they were mis 
 placed. There were of remarkable members in the House, 
 Mr. Foote, who spoke classical English, and dealt historical 
 illustrations to the unappreciating homespun members, a 
 voluble debater, but afflicted with extravagance and a colicky 
 delivery ; William Porcher Miles, of South Carolina, smooth, 
 gentlemanly, scrupulously dressed, a master of deportment, 
 and a type, indeed, of the truest cultivation, deprecating any 
 thing like violence in speech or manner ; Barksdale, of Mis 
 sissippi, the especial friend and champion of Mr. Davis, the 
 leader of the Administration party in the House, a small, 
 dark-featured man, who spoke so vehemently as sometimes to 
 overrun the rules of grammar, but really forcible, dealing 
 rude blows with facts and solid arguments ; James Lyons, of 
 Virginia, who was satisfied with the shallow reputation of 
 "the handsome member," and who possessed little brains, 
 showed very excellent large white teeth, and stood six feet 
 three in his stockings, the elevated " Turveydrop " of the 
 House. In the Senate were Yancey, of Alabama, the silver- 
 tongued orator of the South, speaking a subdued but luxu 
 riant language, quite unlike that of the American hustings , 
 Wigfall, of Texas, fierce, impatient, incandescent, illustrating 
 another school of eloquence ; Orr, of South Carolina, an ex 
 cellent man in the committee-room, but as heavy and blun 
 dering as a school-boy in his speeches ; and Hill, of Georgia, 
 the very picture of a smooth and plausible mediocrity, having 
 much of address and of gentlemanly equivocations, inclining 
 to the administration of the President, but at an angle nice 
 and variable in its degrees. 
 
312 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 In a body chiefly composed of uncultivated men to which 
 have been mentioned as exceptions, more or less partial, the 
 names above there might naturally be expected some 
 breaches of decorum and some scenes of personal violence. 
 Indeed, several most extraordinary scenes of this sort occurred 
 in the Confederate Congress, which were either suppressed 
 in the newspapers, or were but meagerly and tenderly men 
 tioned in their columns. An occurrence at a certain time, 
 by which the whole House of Representatives was thrown 
 into a panic and into the most disgraceful disorder, was so 
 carefully suppressed, that but few people in Eichmond ever 
 obtained any knowledge of it, or ever suspected that a scene 
 of bloodshed was about to be enacted behind the convenient 
 curtains of a secret legislative session. 
 
 The immediate parties to the disgraceful occurrence (which 
 happened in the summer of 1863) were Mr. Foote, of Tennes 
 see, and *Judge Dargan, of Alabama, the latter an old man 
 whose eccentric dress and whose soliloquies on the street were 
 well known in Richmond, and whose habit in Congress of 
 scratching his arms and saying " Mr. Cheer-man," had often 
 brought him under the notice of the galleries. Some words 
 of defiance had passed between the two members. While 
 Judge Dargan was speaking, Mr. Foote sat near him, and 
 muttered that he was a "d d rascal." The member from 
 Alabama immediately drew a bowie-knife, brandished it in 
 the gas-light (it was a night session), amid the shouts and 
 cries of the House, and made for the member from Tennessee. 
 For a moment all was consternation, and members rushed to 
 the scene of encounter. Several of them literally threw them 
 selves upon Judge Dargan, and wrested from his grasp the 
 murderous weapon ; when, just at this moment, Dargan hav- 
 <ng been pinned to the floor, the whole scene was converted 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 313 
 
 into one irresistibly ludicrous, shouts of laughter succeeding 
 those of passion, as Mr. Foote, striking an attitude and smit 
 ing his expanded breast, exclaimed with peculiar melodra 
 matic air, "I defy the steel of the assassin !" 
 
 Another memorable scene of personal violence was in the 
 Senate, and was more tragical in its results. In a secret ses 
 sion of that body there occurred a hand-to-hand fight between 
 Mr. Yancey and Mr. Hill, in which the latter, being greatly 
 superior in strength, threw his antagonist across a desk, and 
 bent him over it, continuing to strike him in the face. The 
 consequence was a wrenching and severe injury to Mr. Yan- 
 cey s spine. It was rumored that it caused his death a few 
 months later ; but there is at least no doubt that it hastened 
 the decline of a constitution already feeble by years and 
 disease. 
 
 There were other scenes of indecorum in the Congress, of 
 which we may spare details, in one of which a member was 
 flogged with a cowhide in his seat for some indignity or as 
 persion in social life. Half an hour after this dramatic dis 
 play took place, messages were flying to all the newspapers in 
 Richmond asking that their reporters should make no men 
 tion of it, putting the request on the ground that the publi 
 cation would degrade the character of the Confederacy, and 
 might be construed as "giving information to the enemy I" 
 There is no intention of satire or extravagance in statino- this 
 explanation of " contraband " matter ; it was actually given 
 by sapient Congressmen, and accepted by complaisant journal 
 ists. The newspapers were generally taught an obligation 
 to put all Confederate affairs in roseate color, and to dress 
 them up in the stiftest garments of dignity. To relate any 
 thing prejudicial to the Confederacy, to mention even a derog 
 atory social incident, was to incur in the minds of certain 
 
314 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 vain and paltry, but numerous persons in the South, the 
 charge of publishing "contraband " matter, or of at least lack 
 ing in proofs of Southern patriotism. It was thus, to an ex 
 tent, that the reader of this day can scarcely believe that 
 public opinion in the Southern Confederacy was disarmed, 
 and a wretched Congress passed almost unchallenged and un 
 noticed through a history of vile excesses and flagitious 
 scenes. 
 
 A notable and not the least disgraceful incident of the 
 secluded character of Congress was the shape of the inter 
 course between President Davis and it in the later periods of 
 the war. It became a singularly devious intercourse, in 
 which delegations composed of five or six Congressmen would 
 visit the President in a private way, arid make remonstrances 
 and protests to him on special subjects. The public was 
 generally kept in ignorance of these lack-door communica 
 tions ; it was a private sort of interlocution and catechism 
 dishonorable to both parties, and the incidents of which 
 would scarcely bear publication. 
 
 On one occasion Mr. Foote, with two or three other Con 
 gressmen, visited the President, to make some remonstrance 
 about..the military commands in the West, and abruptly re 
 tired from the room without finishing their mission, on the 
 allegation of Mr. Foote that Mr. Davis had spies posted in or 
 near the room to catch and retail the conversation! 
 
 On another occasion a Congressional delegation called on 
 Mr. Davis to entreat his restoration of General Beauregard to 
 the command of the army of Tennessee, representing that he 
 had quitted it on a short sick furlough, not supposing that the 
 advantage would be meanly taken of construing his furlough 
 into a resignation, and forcing him into retirement. The 
 President replied, in measured and- memorable words : " If 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 315 
 
 the whole world were to ask me to restore General Beaure- 
 gard to the command which I have already given to General 
 Bragg, I would refuse it." 
 
 The veiled government of the Southern Confederacy not 
 only interrupted popular sympathy with it, but it created 
 the most various evils. Making itself constantly the object 
 of mystery it was likely soon to render itself the object of 
 suspicion. It injured the patriotism and confidence of the 
 people of the South in many more ways than that of shelter 
 ing itself from proper official responsibility. 
 
 And here we are called to regard a most curious subject 
 in the history of the war the number and volume of false 
 rumors that circulated in it. To search the origin of these 
 rumors, to describe their flight, to inquire how the falsehoods 
 were fledged, and to trace their effects on the spirit and con 
 duct of the belligerents, would constitute, we believe, a chapter 
 of entertaining and even valuable speculation. Although 
 the two powers at war were coterminous, and although there 
 were varied and multiplied communications between the 
 lines of military operations, it is wonderful to notice the 
 multitude and prevalence of false rumors which obscured the 
 true history of the war, and tantalized, provoked, and indeed, 
 seriously embarrassed the combatants. The prevalence of 
 these rumors was peculiar in the South. The comparative 
 multitude of them was due not only to the characteristically 
 lively disposition of the people, but to a special and excep 
 tional cause. That cause was the affected mystery with 
 1 which Mr. Davis imitated some of the worst examples of 
 government, and in the mists of which he was anxious to 
 enlarge his own figure to most undue proportions. 
 
 We have noticed, as a remarkable anomaly of the Con 
 federate Government, the secrecy with which it invested its 
 
316 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 operations, not only including the conduct of the military 
 field but extended to the administration of every public 
 interest and concern. Here was a government professing 
 to be one of the people created under the inspiration of an 
 extreme republicanism, and yet preaching all the insolation, 
 exclusiveness and mystery of an oriental despotism. This 
 rule of secrecy was first commenced on the pretence, just 
 enough to a certain extent, to exclude the enemy from in 
 formation of Confederate affairs ; but this pretence was 
 capable of a. very indefinite extension, and the authorities of 
 Kichmond carried it to the most puerile and trivial lengths. 
 It was not only to condemn information generally esteemed 
 contraband in a state of war, but to silence the discussion of 
 almost every public topic by an absurd stretch of the plea 
 that it might injure or disparage the Confederacy abroad. 
 Criticism was not to be tolerated of Mr. Davis s administra 
 tion, not because it might indicate its faults to the people of 
 the South, but because it would exhibit its weakness to the 
 enemy and improve his confidence. This absurd and un 
 worthy argument was carried in the South to extravagances 
 which will scarcely now be believed. The government was 
 shrouded with a close and imposing mystery ; the sessions 
 of Congress even in debate of the commonest civil matter, 
 were habitually secret; and the press was silenced more 
 effectually than by the worst gag law of a despotism. 
 Nearly every article of criticism in the newspapers might by 
 an artful or violent construction be construed as giving in 
 formation to the enemy, and might be condemned as un 
 patriotic, if not contraband, under the rule that no evil was 
 to be spoken of the Confederacy, and all its affairs were to 
 be written of in color of the rose. 
 The effect of this rule upon the newspapers was to silence 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 317 
 
 the pliant and to embarrass the boldest of them. One of 
 them had spirit enough thus to comment and explain: 
 " Nations will suffer just punishment whenever they intrust 
 power to puny hands, puff up the conceit and encourage 
 the passions of their rulers by fulsome flattery or silent sub 
 mission. We have done so. The follies of the government 
 are manifest to all, but if any one who pays their cost pro 
 poses opposition, or even a remonstrance, the amiable majority 
 cry, Hush ! oh, hush, hush ! we can t get rid of him ; and 
 he will do thus and so, all the more if he is opposed. Don t 
 say anything. We must have concord unanimity and 
 there must be no opposition to government. Therefore the 
 only voice which is heard at all is the voice of flatterers 
 the voice of those who have neither head nor heart, neither 
 knowledge nor principle. Hence the Executive is encouraged 
 to pursue its fancies ; and although every military misfor 
 tune of the country is palpably and confessedly due to the 
 personal interference of Mr. Davis, the Congress continues 
 at each session to be his subservient tool and to furnish new 
 incentives to perversity, new means of mischief." 
 
 The consequences of this secrecy with which the Kich- 
 mond Government invested itself were various, and, with 
 respect to the responsibility of its rulers, were unjust, 
 despotic and ruinous. In a recent reminiscence of the Con 
 federacy, the Charleston Mercury thus writes in a style of 
 just historical review: "There never was any people so com 
 pletely kept in the dark, as the people of the Government of 
 the Confederate States were under Mr. Davis s administra 
 tion. His friends soon came to the conclusion, both in the 
 Provisional and the Regular Congresses of the Confederate 
 States, that the less the people knew of their President the 
 better. Therefore, the doors of Congress were closed to 
 
318 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 publicity; and almost everything that was said or done in 
 Congress was said and done in secret session. It was made 
 a standing rule of the Provisional Congress, and of the Eegular 
 Congress we believe also, that the Congress was opened by 
 prayer, and soon after went into secret session. From its 
 impenetrable silence, not a voice of remonstrance or of oppo 
 sition could be heard. To disclose anything which took 
 place in secret session, was punishable by expulsion. The 
 Government was thus practically, totally irresponsible to the 
 people. Whatever they knew of their government, was by 
 the special favor of those who originally concealed it. The 
 Confederate Congress thus was made to appear to be a caput 
 mortuum. Although speeches were delivered, and measures 
 proposed in it, which would have commanded the deepest 
 interest with the people, the only thing the people heard or 
 saw, was Jefferson Davis and of course Jefferson Davis, in 
 the most imposing and advantageous attitudes. This irre 
 sponsibility, stimulated a thousand improprieties and lent 
 countenance to grave and fatal follies both of omission and 
 commission, which the press forebore to publish." 
 
 But our particular design here is to treat this extraordinary 
 secrecy of the Confederate Government in a new light, and to 
 portray a train of curious consequences. It was to populate 
 the air of the South so thick with rumors that one could 
 scarcely breathe in it, except at exclamation points. Each 
 day, often each hour, had its rumors, and the country was de- 
 1 i vered to the worse than Egyptian plague of these flying pests. 
 The public heart was eat out by rumors. The Southern news 
 papers of these times, from their forced reticence, give no idea 
 of the extent of this plague. When the doors of official in 
 formation were closed to all enquirers, any one might presume 
 to be the herald of secret intelligence, and the most foolish 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 319 
 
 story, at any time of the day or night, might collect an au 
 dience. 
 
 In Richmond there was no end of " confidence men," pre 
 tenders, gossipers ; and any man who sought a brief hour of 
 self-importance had only to profess that he had been admitted 
 to a back-door confidence with some General, Secretary, or 
 even Department clem. The most paltry individuals affected 
 this confidence. A disreputable blockade-runner, accustomed 
 to wait in the ante-rooms of head clerks for passports, or per 
 mits for whiskey and woolen goods, would, to gaping and ill- 
 smelling audiences in bar rooms, tell stories of "behind the 
 scenes," and offer explanations why General Lee fought the 
 battle of Gettysburg, and what were President Davis s whis 
 pered words about Johnston. 
 
 It would be one of the most curious volumes of modern 
 times, a collection of all the rumors circulated in Richmond 
 alone during the war, leaving out none of their absurdities. 
 It would be metaphysically interesting as showing how busy 
 and various the human fancy is. There are but two persons 
 now who could make such a collection, even approximately ; 
 and they, through this generation, will be graphically re 
 membered in Richmond as the rival news-hunters of a his 
 torical period. In this character they were the most noto 
 rious men in the capital. 
 
 The first, a wealthy speculator and man of leisure, was 
 popularly known as " Long Tom," from his thin and elongated 
 figure. This man appeared to take a morbid delight in the 
 sole occupation of hunting news day and night ; it got to be a 
 kind of insanity with him ; he scarcely ate or slept, and, at 
 almost every hour of the day, and far into the night, he might 
 be seen haunting the telegraph office, wandering like a weary 
 ghost in the passage way of the War Department, or holding 
 
320 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 his hand to his ear on the skirts of every crowd on the street 
 corners. He had no particular purpose to serve in this eaves 
 dropping and ear- wigging ; it was his entertainment, his oc 
 cupation by choice, and he was never happier than when he 
 obtained a piece of news, good or bad, with permission to 
 retail it. 
 
 His rival in the rumor business was a little, ferrety, inco 
 herent man, a druggist by profession, but a " sensationist " 
 by real occupation. He dealt only in the largest sensations. 
 He had a habit of speaking with infinite gesture ; would 
 sometimes be lost in a perfect splutter of exclamation, when 
 he had important news to convey ; and was so dense and un 
 intelligible in his communications, that he generally had to 
 tell .his story twice to be understood. He would sometimes 
 break into the newspaper offices, pale and incoherent, with the 
 most dreadful stories, nigh to bursting with news, and in such 
 tremor from his emotions that the reporters would find it a 
 task to calm him, and were wont to compose his nerves by a 
 strengthening draught as a preface to his recital. Once the 
 author recollects to have been called across the street by this 
 little man making the most eager and dramatic gestures, and 
 actually quivering with excitement. "Great God, have you 
 heard the news, Mr. P.," he exclaimed thickly; "Jeff. Davis 
 has just committed suicide !" An hour later, this news of the 
 tragic end of the Confederate Chief had circulated all through 
 Kichmond, was wafted across the lines, and was given to the 
 wings of the telegraph from James Eiver to the Penobscot. 
 
 To recount even the most important of the false rumors 
 which possessed Eichmond during the war, would occupy 
 more space than we can command. Let those who then re 
 sided in the Confederate capital but attempt to recall to mem 
 ory how often Ministers from England and France had arrived 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 321 
 
 with news of recognition ; how often peace commissioners had 
 come by devious ways to Richmond, with protocols and 
 treaties ; how often Beauregard crossed the Potomac in 1861 ; 
 how often Washington had been captured ; how often Grant s 
 arrny had been defeated before Vicksburg the stench of its 
 dead being such that fires had to be kindled on the lines and 
 in the streets of the town, to purify the atmosphere (so said 
 the telegraph) ; in short, how often great victories were won 
 and great defeats suffered, which never happened, or existed 
 out of imagination ! 
 
 The rumors we have described were not the least of the 
 demoralizing consequences of Mr. Davis s unrepublican style 
 of government. They were saps of the public spirit of the 
 South. What is most remarkable of these rumors is that they 
 frequently came from reputable and even semi-official sources 
 They did not always come from obscure authors. There 
 were, of course, the common, paltry classes of news retailers : 
 the man who had just came through the lines, the " intelli 
 gent gentleman," the interesting lady refugee, and the person 
 who mysteriously had it from " good authority." These 
 might be listened to with contempt, or with a degree of skep 
 ticism. But in many instances in Richmond, rumors grossly 
 false were circulated from sources so well calculated to obtain 
 belief, that for days and weeks they would possess the public 
 mind, and compel even the credence of newspaper men, a 
 class which, though ambitious of news, is characteristically 
 skeptical, and trained to estimate its probability. The fact is. 
 the Confederate Government was so close in its confidences 
 so absolutely secret and secluse, that even those otherwise 
 in close relations with it were imposed upon by false beliefs, 
 and gave impressive endorsement to the wildest rumors. 
 
 Thus, on one occasion, the excellent Doctor Minnigerodc, 
 21 
 
322 LTFK OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 pastor of Mr, Davis, and supposed to have confidences which 
 the President would not give even to his Cabinet, related in 
 the streets of Richmond, that a French envoy had landed on 
 the North Carolina coast, and was making his way to the 
 capital. Coming from such a source, the story was re 
 ligiously, almost universally believed in Eichmond, for seve 
 ral days ; but it turned out that Doctor M. had been somehow 
 imposed upon, and had innocently raised the hopes of the 
 Confederacy to a height that increased the shock and cruelty 
 of the fall. 
 
 An explanation of the birth of rumors is very difficult. 
 We have often wondered and speculated where all the false 
 hoods came from which make history. Many false rumors 
 may be accounted for in interested inventions ; many may be 
 traced to motives ; many originate in mistake and misrepre 
 sentation ; many come from the excess of hope or fear, " the 
 wish the father of the thought," and dread the parent of the 
 apparition. But this does not account for all of them. How 
 shall we explain those many rumors to which no conceivable 
 motive attaches, causelessly originated, in cold blood, having 
 no imaginable object? We sometimes find worthy and re 
 spectable persons who by no means can be put in the de 
 graded class of liars giving currency to gross falsehoods, and 
 even professing to have been witnesses of what they relate. 
 These men are to some extent honest. Their conduct is not 
 entirely beyond explanation, or inadmissible of some charita 
 ble construction. It often happens that they themselves have 
 become absolutely convinced of some fact or occurrence ; they 
 meet hearers who are disposed to be skeptical, and who insist 
 upon doubting ; and, in a zeal to overcome what they con 
 sider the obstinacy of disbelief, they will make additions to 
 the story, or supply circumstances which never occurred, to 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 323 
 
 increase its credibility, believing, as long as the main state 
 ment is true, it will do no harm to add means to compel be 
 lief. This sophism in narrative is much more common than 
 supposed, disreputable as it is. It accounts for a peculiar and 
 large class of false rumors, and we remember some remarka 
 ble instances of it in the war. 
 
 One instance may be given as characteristic. Towards the 
 close of 1863, an "intelligent gentleman" arrived on the Mis 
 sissippi, related that he had travelled through a great part of 
 the State of Texas with an envoy from England, who had 
 come through Mexico on his way to Eichmond, and had 
 actually exhibited to him both his credentials and his letters 
 of authority to recognize the Confederacy. What was most 
 notable of the story was that its bearer was well known to 
 many of the Western newspapers, which, in relating the 
 agreable news, vouched for him as a gentleman whose honor, 
 veracity and intelligence were absolutely indisputable. So 
 there was an uproar of joyful excitement from one end to the 
 other of the Confederacy. Unfortunately, however, for the 
 sequel, the envoy never arrived at Eichmond, or put in an 
 appearance in the eis- Mississippi. The truth of the story is 
 probably that the " intelligent gentleman" had been imposed 
 upon by an adventurer, and was so sure of his news that he 
 thought himself safe in adding the circumstance of having 
 seen his papers, bearing the royal seal, thus persuading the 
 public to believe a fact of which he himself entertained no 
 misgivings or doubts. 
 
 The effect of this multitude of rumors on the public mind 
 of the South could not but be to strain and distress, and ulti 
 mately to demoralize it. It could not end otherwise than in 
 blunting the sensibilities of the people. Mr. Davis did not 
 have practical sense enough to appreciate this disastrous 
 
324: LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 effect ot the secrecy and exclusiveness in which he insisted 
 upon conducting the public affairs ; he could not understand 
 how the country suffered from his feverish fancies of im 
 perialism, and how, at last, overburdened with anxieties, and 
 dulled by excessive excitement, it was losing its emotions 
 and thus its inspiration in the war. It was significant how 
 the public mind of the Confederacy in the last periods of its 
 career descended to a condition of dull expectation. Its 
 heart was worn out by the pendulous swing in which it 
 oscillated from hope to fear. The very extent of rumors 
 diminished the sensibilities with which they were received, 
 and disheartened the Confederacy to a degree which many 
 perceived without the least suspicion of its cause. 
 
 In the North there could be no equal to the demoraliza 
 tion of the South from excessive rumors. There false state 
 ments of the war were plentiful; but, with the doors of 
 Congress open, and with public curiosity having its usual 
 access to the Government, barring only operations strictly 
 military, the field for rumors was, of course, partial and con 
 tracted. In the South this field was illimitable. 
 
 Mr. Davis bolted every door of the government, and 
 every time he turned the key on a public measure, he un 
 caged, on the other hand, a flock of rumors. They darkened 
 the air ; they preyed on the hearts of the people. Many of 
 these rumors were of the most cruel description, heartless 
 cheats of the little that remained to the people of hope. 
 Like the Indian bats which are said to fan with their pinions 
 the wound they make in the body of the sleeper, so as to 
 soothe and not disturb him, while they drink from his veins, 
 so these insidoius winged creatures of the imagination fed 
 on the life-blood of the Confederacy, dying while it indulged 
 in dreams. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 325 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Decay of the Patriotism of the South No Possible Explanation of it, but the Maladministration 
 of Mr. Davis Condition of the Confederate Armies Aversion to Military Service Mr. Davis 8 
 Appeal to Absentees False Praise of the South for Devotion in the War Eighteen Hundred 
 Habeas Corpuses in Richmond How the Conscription was Dodged Humors of the Habeas 
 Corpus The Public Spirit of the South, Mean and Decayed Senator \Vigfall Scathes tbo 
 Farmers Utter Loss of Moral Influence by President Davis Enlargement of the Conscrip 
 tion A Thorough Military Despotism at Richmond Conscription and Impressment Twin 
 Measures The Scarcity of Food in the South, the Result of Mismanagement A Notable Law 
 in the Depreciation of a Currency An Interesting Incident of the First Battle of Manassas 
 The Errors of the Impressment Law The War, a Choice of Despots, One at Washington, and 
 One at Richmond Fearful Attack of Senator Toornbs on Mr. Davis s Administration The 
 South " Already Conquered." * 
 
 IT would be difficult and perhaps unnecessary to enume 
 rate all the causes which conspired to decay the patriotism 
 of the South, and to produce such manifest disaffection in the 
 Confederacy as the war advanced to the limits of the period 
 where our narrative has paused. For certainly and obviously 
 the chief and sufficient cause of this must have been the mal 
 administration of Mr. Davis, in whatever particulars it oc 
 curred, and the loss of that influence which had formerly 
 commanded the unmeasured devotion of the South. There 
 had been no increase of the hardships of the war, commensu 
 rate with the decline of spirit in it ; there was no diminution 
 of the desire for independence ; the sense of the enemy s 
 wrongs had been exasperated ; there existed all the original 
 motives and inspirations which had formerly commanded 
 the efforts of the South ; and there is no other explanation for 
 the falling off and delinquency of these than a dissatisfaction, 
 
326 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 wide-spread and profound, concerning the conduct of the war 
 and the administration of affairs summed in Mr. Davis s 
 hands. 
 
 In the early periods of the war there had been an excessive 
 rage of volunteering. The care of the government had been 
 not to raise but to reduce it ; and the zeal of patriotic contri 
 butions of all sorts had been unlimited. Now the army had 
 become a name of terror ; everything was done to avoid the 
 conscription which instead of being accepted as formerly with 
 alacrity was shunned as the gates of death ; in the midsummer 
 of 1863, it was estimated that a half or three-fourths of the 
 Confederate forces were in the condition of desertion, strag 
 gling and absenteeism ; and as a further evidence of the aver 
 sion to military service, the curious statistic was furnished 
 in a secret session of Congress that 10,000 fraudulent substi 
 tute papers had been discovered in the archives of conscrip 
 tion. In vain Mr. Davis tried appeals to patriotism ; pub 
 lishing : " The victory is within your reach ; you need but 
 stretch forth your hand to grasp it ;***** the men now 
 absent from their posts would, if present in the field, suffice 
 to create numerical equality between our force and that of 
 the invaders." The absentees did not return ; and thousands 
 of men subject to military duty fled the conscription, or 
 exhausted all the means and arts of their lives to avoid its 
 demands. 
 
 Much has been written boastfully of the patriotic devotion 
 of the South in the late war. But we think judicious history 
 will declare that although there might have been such a 
 fervor in the commencement of the contest, all the later 
 efforts of the South were compelled only by the harshest 
 measures, and instead of being the free contributions of a 
 public spirit, were the forced results of a military despotism. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 327 
 
 Certainly the claim of patriotic devotion of the South cannot 
 be maintained in the face of the facts, that only the utmost 
 rigor of conscription forced a majority of its troops in the 
 field ; that half of these were disposed to desert on the first 
 opportunities ; and that the demands for military service 
 were cheated in a way and to an extent unexampled in the 
 case of any brave and honorable nation engaged in a war 
 for its own existence. We have the remarkable fact that 
 in one year the Confederate States Attorney in Richmond 
 tried eighteen hundred cases in that city on writs of habeas 
 corpus for relief from conscription! This honored writ in 
 fact became the vilest instrument of the most undeserving 
 men ; and there is attached to it a record Df shame for the 
 South that we would willingly spare. Mr. Humphrey 
 Marshall, a member of the Confederate Congress who recited 
 woman s poetry in that body, about all sorts of death being- 
 preferable to submission, added to his pay as a legislator 
 the fees of an attorney to get men out of the army ; he be 
 came the famous advocate in Richmond in cases of habeas 
 corpus ; and he is reported to have boasted that this practice 
 alone yielded him an average of two thousand dollars a 
 day! 
 
 It has occurred to us that a book might be written of the 
 experiences, in Eichrnond alone, of>efforts to escape the dreaded 
 conscription, and of the various dodges and artifices to which 
 resort was had for exemption from service in a war which 
 . the newspapers were constantly declaiming as the most 
 glorious of the age, and as illustrated with acts of universal 
 and unmeasured devotion on the part of the people. Such 
 devotion was only the imagination of editors, or the affecta 
 tion of Mr. Da vis s parti zans. How to escape the conscrip 
 tion was for months iu Richmond the unceasing concern of a 
 
328 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 population of one hundred and fifty thousand souls. The 
 various dodges of this dreadful measure would be curious as 
 examples of the general ingenuity of the human mind, 
 if they were not also entertaining and humorous as incidents 
 of character. The courts were sonorous with habeas corpus. 
 Family Bibles were brought in to determine uncertainties 
 of ages as within the boundaries of conscription. There 
 were romances of perjury. One of the attorneys in such a 
 case tells of an amusing instance where an old maid living in 
 the country, anxious to diminish her own record of years, had 
 tampered with the Bible of the family, and to make her re 
 duced age consistent, had ventured to dock a number of 
 years from the lives of two or three brothers recorded on the 
 same page. When the men came to claim their exemption 
 on the score of age, the Bible was produced, and to their dis 
 may they found they had been made several years younger on 
 the record, bringing them within the fateful terms of the con 
 script age. Explanations had to be made, not the most 
 delicate or pleasant ; but any thing was to be suffered 
 rather than to step into the ranks of those whom the journals 
 represented as the glorious and happy defenders of their 
 country. If conscription seized the shrinking victim there 
 was yet hope. There were marts for substitutes in every 
 alley-way of Richmond ; and even, at the last, there was 
 hope of a " detail," if there was money or influence to com 
 mand this last extremity of relief. The application for 
 details was the side-show of the habeas corpus. It burdened 
 all the routines of the War Department, and claimed a 
 " bureau " for its convenience. Merchants and bankers were 
 willing to be detailed as mechanics and laboring men, to 
 work on army supplies. Eich men applied for positions as 
 railroad men, telegraphers, and miners, at the pay of thirteen 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 329 
 
 dollars a month, equal to fifteen cents in gold. Offices were 
 invented by a convenient Secretary of War to shield fugitives 
 from the conscription ; a person was relieved by him from 
 military duty to write a "history of the war;" and two 
 notorious lawyers of Richmond, who had been busy at habeas 
 corpus and who affected literary pastimes, were sheltered by 
 the Macaenas of the War Department, one as a sinecure in 
 the Treasury and the other as custos rutulorum in the scholas 
 tic dominions of Mr. Seddon. 
 
 If such facts, concerning the evasion of military duty, 
 signify any thing, it is that the patriotism of the South had 
 become mean and decayed that there was an amount of un 
 willingness in the war, which had to be constantly chastised 
 and compelled by despotic laws. A few public men in the 
 Confederacy were bold enough to confess its loss of public 
 spirit, in opposition to all the cheap eulogiums and the self- 
 complacency which has come down to our day of the noble 
 devotion and generous sacrifices of the South in the war. 
 Mr. Wigfall of Texas told the story plainly in the Senate, of 
 the mean and grudging spirit that had taken possession of 
 the people of the South concerning every contribution to 
 the war. He said : " It was the fashion to talk about the 
 bone and sinew of the country, and to speak of the planters 
 and farmers as having all of the religion, cultivation, educa 
 tion and patriotism of the country. Talk of speculators, 
 extortioners, and Dutch Jews ! The farmers have been the 
 worst speculators, extortioners, and Dutch Jews of this war. 
 Has the population of the South changed ? No. Have the 
 Yankees driven out the people from their lands, and put in 
 their places the Dutch and Irish with whom they have 
 threatened to colonize the conquered States? No. These 
 are the people of the South who are fighting for their 
 liberties or getting other people to fight for them." 
 
330 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 It is remarkable that to those who make a boast of the 
 patriotic devotion of the South in the war, and are intent to 
 display it as an ornament of a lost cause, the thought has 
 never occurred how this claim can consist with the necessities 
 of conscription and impressment, the amount of force neces 
 sary to raise armies in the Confederacy, the amount of fraud 
 by which the public service was cheated of men and material, 
 the extent of desertions and of evasions of military duty, and 
 all the other peculiar incidents we have mentioned of unwill 
 ing service and forced contribution in the war. We may not 
 be able to establish fully the consistency of facts so opposite, 
 but we have an explanation that may go a great way to re 
 deem a contradiction that impeaches seriously the honor and 
 spirit of the South. The only possible hypothesis on which 
 that honor can be saved is that the people of the South acted 
 in the manner we have described, grudging the demands of 
 the war from the conviction of the un worthiness and misdirec 
 tion of their government, rather than from that of any demerit 
 or decline of their cause. It is certain that they had a great 
 and noble cause to fight for, and that in the first part of the 
 contest they had displayed unbounded devotion and courage, 
 the admiration of the world. The cause had lost none of its 
 merits, the war none of its just inspiration; these rather had 
 been increased ; and yet at a time when the people of the 
 South had in no degree diminished their desire for indepen 
 dence, and long before they thought the war for any natural 
 reason hopeless, and when all that was thought necessary for 
 its success was well-directed effort when the disasters that 
 had occurred were considered only of that measure which re- 
 inspires and strengthens the courageous spirit rather than re 
 duces it we find them yielding the war an uncertain and 
 niggardly support, displaying nothing of a former devotion, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 331 
 
 and disposed to deny or to cheat every contribution which the 
 government required of them. The only explanation can be 
 that that government had in some way wounded them, in 
 some way forfeited their confidence either this, or that the 
 people of the South had some inherent defect of cowardice or 
 irresolution: either Jefferson Davis unworthy, or the whole 
 population of the South in fault and disgrace. A severe al 
 ternative, of which the reader may take the supposition he 
 pleases. 
 
 When Mr. Davis, after the disasters of Gettysburg and 
 Yicksburg, found his appeals for volunteers unavailing, and 
 when he must have been sensible of his loss of the popular 
 confidence, we find him at once taking a new breadth of des 
 potism in his government a measure, indeed, calculated to 
 produce a certain re-animation of the war, and this for a cer 
 tain period, but having no depth of public spirit in it, and 
 although postponing the catastrophe, yet making it more cer 
 tain and disastrous at the last. We refer to the enlargement 
 of the conscription law. First, on the 15th of July, 1863, 
 came a proclamation of the President extending the limits of 
 the conscription, which in the former year had been of pefsons 
 between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, to include all up 
 to the age of forty -five ; then an act of Congress extending 
 the term of the conscript age to fifty- five years ; added to this 
 a law repealing all substitutions in the military service, and 
 actually compelling the seventy or eighty thousand persons 
 who had furnished substitutes to take up arms themselves, 
 and that without returning them the money they had paid 
 or releasing the substitutes they had employed an example 
 of the very effrontery of fraud and despotism ; and lastly, at 
 the close of the year, a law to clinch the whole matter, de 
 claring every man between eighteen and fifty-five years of 
 
< 
 
 332 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 age to belong to the army, subject at once to the articles of 
 war, military discipline and military penalties, and requiring 
 him to report within a certain time, or be liable to death as a 
 deserter. The whole people of the South were made soldiers 
 under martial law. The country was converted into a vast 
 camp, and the government of Jefferson Davis into one of the 
 most thorough military despotisms of the age. 
 
 But the levy en masse was not all. The twin measure of 
 conscription, that which completed the despotic character of 
 the government at Richmond, was impressment. They were 
 logical correspondents ; they made as a whole a government 
 in which the lives of the citizens and all the production and 
 labor of the country, were put under military control. It was 
 the maximum of the demands of a despotism. 
 
 After the disasters of 1863, complaints of the want of food 
 arose simultaneously with those of the deficiency of men ; 
 and it was evident to the intelligent that the same decay of 
 public spirit that denied the claims of military service, also 
 withheld the meaner contributions of food and supply for the 
 army. Both necessities grew out of the same unwilling spirit 
 in the Confederacy. There was really no scarcity of food to 
 the absurd extent represented by Mr. Davis when he declared 
 that it was " lut the one danger to be regarded with apprehen 
 sion "as if in an extensive and fruitful land like the South, 
 there could be danger of the starvation of a whole population ! 
 What necessities did really exist were mostly artificial, or of 
 the government s own creation. There was plenty of food in 
 the South ; but it was badly distributed by a Commissary who 
 was unwise and rapacious ; who had no idea of equalizing the 
 supplies of the country, or conciliating the generosity of the 
 people. Again, the apparent deficiency was greatly due to 
 the wretched currency of the Confederacy ; and that by a law 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 333 
 
 certain and irresistible in its effects. As a currency depreciates, 
 a rise in prices takes place; it affords for the time a temporary 
 accommodation to the producer. But it is remarkable that this 
 rise does not keep equal pace on the inverse scale of com 
 parisons with the decline of the currency ; that it cannot do so, 
 owing to the constant contest between buj^er and seller, which 
 delays and embarrasses the adjustment ; and that the conse 
 quence is, that when a currency depreciates there is a general 
 disposition to withhold from market and to hoard supplies 
 which would otherwise be converted into money. These re 
 sults were excessively realized in the Confederacy, where the 
 currency was rapidly verging to worthlessness, and where 
 hoarders and engrossers were found in every department of 
 industry and in every class of society. 
 
 In the early months of the war, when General Beauregard 
 was preparing to fight the battle of Manassas, he had written 
 a letter to a farmer in Orange county, representing that tho 
 army was in need of sixty wagon-loads of corn and provisions, 
 and engaging to pay for the same and the expense of haul 
 ing, as soon as the funds could be obtained from Richmond. 
 The letter was read the following Sunday to all the churches 
 in Orange county. The response was that the next day the 
 sixty wagons, loaded with corn, were sent to General Beaure 
 gard, free of charge, and with the message that he should also 
 keep the wagons and teams for the use of his armv. Such 
 was the patriotic generosity of a single county in Yirguiia ; 
 it was indicative of public spirit in the Confederacy. How 
 great a change must have befallen that spirit, when, two years 
 later, we find the same class of producers who then hastened 
 with donations for the army, avaricious and chaffering traders 
 in the life-blood of their own country, refusing to sell their 
 grain to the government, perhaps haggling about the price of 
 
33 i LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 pork per pound, when their sons and brothers in the army 
 were living on a quarter of a pound of meat a day, and some 
 times had none at all. 
 
 Truly the patriotism of the Confederacy had wofully de 
 clined had fallen by a whole heaven in view of a govern 
 ment compelled to recruit supplies for its army in a war for 
 its existence on the alternative of begging to buy them or 
 of taking them with a ruthless hand. jThe army was badly 
 fed ; it was worse clothed. It was said : " Day by day the 
 clothes made for the soldiers exhibit less wool and more 
 cotton." Thousands of these poor fellows were clothed in the 
 Federal uniforms which had been captured. Thousands were 
 destitute of shoes ; and it was reported that nearly half of 
 Longstreet s corps were barefoot, when the snows laid on the 
 ground at the close of the year 1863. Meanwhile the rail 
 way system of the Confederacy was giving out ; even if 
 supplies were found it was difficult to transport them ; and 
 thus distress from every point stared the people of the South, 
 while the enemy continued to invade their towns and States, 
 to offer liberty to their slaves, to enrol them in his armies, 
 and to defy their retaliation. 
 
 Great and bitter as were the wants of the government for 
 supplies, nothing could have been worse than the law into 
 which it wildly and madly plunged for a remedy. The law 
 of impressment was excessive ; it alarmed the sentiment of 
 the whole country; it destroyed the last vestiges of civil 
 rights in the Confederacy. To show to what extent the 
 government of Mr. Davis contemplated its powers, it may be 
 mentioned that his dull creature, Northrop, the Commissary- 
 General had proposed to him to seize plantations throughout 
 the South, and to work them on government account;* and 
 
 * " The plan is for the Government to take possession of the plan- 
 
SECBET HITSORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 335 
 
 that the President had, only after hesitation, declined this 
 high-handed scheme to adopt the more uniform, but scarcely 
 less cruel law of impressments. This law authorized the 
 government to seize or impress all the produce necessary 
 for the army. It provided that a board of commissioners 
 should be appointed in each State who should determine, 
 every sixty days, the prices which the government should 
 pay for each article of produce impressed within the State. 
 A central board of commissioners was also appointed for all 
 the States. The act authorized the agents of the govern 
 ment to seize all the produce of the former, except so much 
 as was necessary to sustain himself and family. 
 
 Denunciations of the law arose on all sides. It was in- 
 separable from abuses. The newspapers complained of the 
 rude and rapacious action of "the press-gangs." The meaner 
 citizens resorted to all possible methods to save their property 
 from impressment ; many of them were driven to sell clan 
 destinely or openly their stores to non-producers out of 
 the army, who were willing and anxious to pay fifty or a 
 hundred per cent, more than the government paid. On the 
 other hand the few who were really patriotic and disposed to 
 contribute to the war, who still maintained a romantic en 
 thusiasm in the contest, had their feelings hurt; they were 
 touched in their pride and sense of justice that the govern- 
 
 tations, or such portions of them as the owners do not intend to seed 
 with grain, etc., and to employ negroes belonging thereto in raising 
 such agricultural products as maybe deemed necessary. Officers 
 and soldiers who have been rendered by wounds or disease unfit for 
 further service in the field could be employed as superintendents and 
 overseers * * * Let the emergency be urged upon the President, 
 while there is yet time to save ourselves. "-Letter of Northrop to 
 Secretary of War, April 25, 1863. 
 
336 LIFE OF JEFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ment should treat them with rudeness and suspicion. Yet 
 another and more important class of citizens resented the 
 law in a more serious light as an act of unexampled despot 
 ism. There were men even in the Confederate Congress 
 who were bold enough to declare that impressment and 
 other acts of misrule and oppression in the administration of 
 Mr. Davis had extracted all virtue from the cause, and that 
 the war simply remained as a choice of despots, one at 
 Washington and one at Richmond. "I have heard it fre 
 quently stated," said Senator Toombs, of Georgia, " and it has 
 been maintained in some of the newspapers in Richmond, 
 that we should not sacrifice liberty to independence ; but I 
 tell you, my countrymen, the two are inseparable. If we 
 lose our liberty, we shall also lose our independence ; and 
 when our Congress determined to support our-arrnies by 
 impressment, gathering supplies wherever they found them 
 most convenient, and forcing them from those from whom 
 their agents might choose to take them, in violation of the 
 fundamental principles of our Constitution, which requires 
 all burdens to be uniform and just, and paying for them 
 such prices as they chose, they made a fatal blunder, which 
 cannot be persisted in without endangering our cause, and 
 probably working ruin to our government. The moment 
 they departed from the plain rule laid down in the Con 
 stitution that impressment of private property should only 
 be made in cases where absolute necessity required them 
 they laid the foundation for discontent among the people ; 
 they discouraged labor, and incorporated a principle which 
 is not only in violation of the Constitution, but fatal to the 
 rights of property. The Constitution cannot be dispensed 
 with in time of war any more than in time of peace. If it is 
 overthrown we are already conquered." 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. - 83V 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Scarcity of Food in the South in Connection with the Subsistence of Prisoners Secret His 
 tory of the Administration of the Confederate Prisons No Provision for Feeding Prisoners 
 A Brutal Incident at the Libby Anecdote of a Yankee Boatswain Commissary Northrop 
 Recommends that the Prisoners be Chucked into the James River Laws of the Confederacy 
 concerning Prisoners Exceeding Humanity of Quartermaster-General Lawton Northrop de 
 feats it His Coup d Etat on a Drove of Beeves Northrop Responsible for the Maltreatment 
 of Prisoners Sorrowful Story of Wirz "The Wrong Man" Hung Measure of Mr. Davis s 
 Responsibility for the Sufferings of the Prisoners His Extraordinary Affection for Northrop 
 Mr. Foote on the "Pepper Doctor" Senator Orr has a Flea put in his Ear The Subject 
 of Discipline in the Confederate Prisons An Argument tq Relieve Mr. Davis from the Charge 
 of Deliberate Cruelty The Authentic Version of the Libby "Gunpowder Plot "The Spy s 
 Story Richmond Sleeping on tine Crust of a Volcano Why the Prisoners were Distributed to 
 Salisbury and Audersonville. 
 
 IN connection with the scarcity of food and necessary sup 
 plies in the South occurs a subject of interest which we may 
 conveniently examine here. We refer to that large volume of 
 complaint against Mr. Davis for the maltreatment of Northern 
 prisoners, especially in the article of subsistence. We have 
 already, on the subject of the Confederate commissariat, made 
 some suggestions which throw light on this matter ; but we 
 find no more proper place in our work than the present to 
 sum a brief account of the administration of the Confederate 
 prisons. We propose thus to go over rapidly the history of 
 the subsistence of Federal prisoners in the South a subject 
 so serious and interesting as to have founded extensive ex 
 animations both at Washington and Richmond, but the secret 
 history of which is scarcely yet known. 
 
 It is remarkable that in the early periods of the war there 
 was no system whatever, no organized provision for subsist- 
 22 
 
338 LTFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ing the prisoners who soon commenced to accumulate on the 
 hands of the government. There was an officer, of the rank 
 of lieutenant, who had charge of the unfortunate creatures, 
 who subsisted them by irregular purchases in the Richmond 
 markets, and who was left to determine, as of his own discre 
 tion, the measure and article of food. He was removed for a 
 singular freak some weeks after the battle of Manassas. Having 
 had a drunken quarrel with the quartermaster as to who 
 should bury the dead of the prison, he had left two corpses in 
 front of the office of the latter, in a wagon halted in one of the 
 most public streets near the Capitol, and, unhitching the 
 horses in sight of a horrified crowd, had abandoned the "dead 
 Yankees " to take their chances of burial as the authorities, 
 other than himself, might determine. It was a day s scandal 
 in Richmond, and the brutal officer was removed. But for 
 forty-eight hours nearly two thousand prisoners were without 
 a mouthful of food, until a subordinate of the prison, moved 
 by their cries or alarmed by their mutiny, found some barrels 
 of corn-meal in the stores of the prison, and fed it to them in 
 buckets of mush. 
 
 It was through this humane diligence that Captain Warner, 
 a generous and efficient man, became afterwards charged with 
 the subsistence of the prisoners. The Captain often told in 
 Richmond, with great emotion, his experience with the pris 
 oners, mutinous and savage for want of food ; for surely there 
 is no fiercer devil in the human composition, none that dares 
 more than hunger. He was walking in the prisoners gal 
 leries of the Libby, explaining that a difficulty had occurred in 
 their supplies of food, but that they should have illimitable 
 stores on the morrow, when an immense Yankee boatswain 
 clutched him by the collar, and dragged him into a circle of 
 angry faces, desperate from hunger. "You are a good com- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 339 
 
 missary," said Jack, "and lam a good prisoner; I am the 
 
 best prisoner you ever saw in the world ; but, d n me, if I 
 
 had not rather face one hundred of Jeff. Davis s cannon than 
 be starved like a dog." " I felt rather unhappy for a few 
 moments," said Captain Warner, " but I promised the fellow, 
 who shook me, heavy as I was, as if I was no more than a 
 baby in his hands, that if he would let me go, he should have 
 some grub in half an hour. I found nothing in the store 
 house of the prison but three barrels of meal. I made it into 
 hot mush, filled some buckets with it, and had it passed in to 
 the prisoners. But you may bet I didn t go inside. I called 
 to Jack through the grate that I had got him the healthiest 
 supper I could, and not to let the men burn their mouths." 
 
 The next day Captain Warner represented to General 
 Winder, the principal officer in charge of the prisoners, that 
 there was no subsistence for them, and that they were in the 
 actual pangs of hunger. He was directed at once to make a 
 requisition on Colonel Northrop, the cross-grained and eccen 
 tric Commissary- General an officer whose idea of impor 
 tance was to have a fit of insolence whenever he was ap 
 proached, and who was either gruff or hysterical in his official 
 intercourse. 
 
 "I know nothing of Yankee prisoners," he said; " throw 
 them all into the James river !" 
 
 "At least, "said Captain Warner, "tell me howl am to 
 keep my accounts for the prisoners subsistence." 
 
 " Sir," said Northrop, slightly inclining his eyes to the 
 anxious inquirer, " I have not the will or the time to speak 
 with you. Chuck the scoundrels into the river !" 
 
 Here was a quandary. There was no law to charge the 
 Commissary-General with the subsistence of prisoners; he 
 insisted that it belonged to the quartermaster s department; 
 
340 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the latter denied it, and, in a dead-lock of quibbles the pris 
 oners might be left to starve. The ingenuity of a lawyer 
 was required to solve the dispute. Captain Warner had 
 been appointed Commissary of Prisons and yet Northrop re 
 fused to acknowledge his authority or to fill his requisitions, 
 and was completely obscure and impracticable on a question 
 of humanity. Happily a convenient law or military regula 
 tion was hunted up, to the effect that a bonded commissary 
 might be assigned to perform certain duties of quartermaster 
 at his post. Under this law Captain Warner might draw 
 his supplies from the Quartermaster-General and might be 
 independent of the odious Northrop. Another obscure 
 statute was discovered ; it was an act of the early Congress 
 at Montgomery ; it consisted only of three or four lines, but 
 it was very important. It provided with rare humanity that 
 the prisoners of war should have the same rations as Con 
 federate soldiers in the field. 
 
 Under the arrangement indicated by these laws the prison 
 ers were comfortably, and even generously, subsisted for 
 many months. The arrangement was perfected not long after 
 the battle of Manassas. Food was then abundant in Bich- 
 mond, and the best beef sold for only eight cents a pound. 
 When supplies became scarce; when the foolish law author 
 izing impressments and assigning "government prices," drove 
 nearly every producer from the market, it became a matter 
 of extreme difficulty to feed the prisoners and to divide what 
 could be obtained between their necessities and those of the 
 Confederate troops in the field. The Commissary of Prisons, 
 acting independently of Northrop, employed travelling agents 
 to purchase supplies at the best prices, and never allowed 
 his solicitude for the unhappy men in his charge to be im 
 paired by demands in other departments of the government. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 341 
 
 As evidence of this solicitude it may be mentioned that in 
 the winter of 1863, a memorable season of scarcity, it was 
 proposed to buy supplies for the prisoners in some of the 
 upper counties of Virginia, where Confederate money was re 
 fused, and that to effect the humane undertaking, General 
 Lawton, then Quartermaster-General, was willing to draw a 
 requisition for fifty thousand dollars in gold. 
 
 But these purchases were defeated by an unforeseen inter 
 ference. Commissary Northrop had opposed all purchases 
 of supplies outside of his department ; he complained that 
 Captain Warner paid larger prices than the government 
 maximum ; he insisted that as the first care was to provide 
 for the troops in the field, he should have the first option of 
 all marketable supplies; and at last he assumed to "impress" 
 the subsistence puchased for the prisoners and to divert it to 
 his own department. A fierce war was waged between him 
 and Warner ; rival committees of investigation were raised 
 in Congress ; and the supplies of the Libby became a bone 
 of contention. On one occasion Warner s agents had brought 
 down from Augusta county a drove of one hundred and 
 seventy-five beeves, and Northrop had performed a coup 
 d etat by impressing them on the skirts of Richmond. Not 
 to be entirely outdone, Captain Warner, in the winter of 
 1863, loaded sixty-three cars in North Carolina with sweet 
 potatoes, brought them to the Libby, pounded them and then 
 sifted them through the wire-nets he tore from the windows, 
 and composed a curious bread made of equal measures of 
 mash of potatoes, flour and corn-meal. "It was the best 
 bread I ever ate," says Captain Warner. But even this 
 invention was spoiled by Northrop. He had determined to 
 take control of all the subsistence of the Confederacy, and to 
 interdict all special purchases for the consumption of prison- 
 
842 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 ers. The first result was a regulation requiring the Com 
 missary of Prisons to purchase from the Commissary-General; 
 and ultimately, in the spring of 1864, a law was passed 
 virtually abolishing the former office and transferring the 
 subsistence of prisoners to the tender mercies of the man 
 who had wished the thousands of them in Kichmond at the 
 bottom of James river. 
 
 From this time whatever there was of distress for food 
 among the prisoners is to be properly and distinctly charged 
 to one man in the Confederacy Northrop. It is a pity that 
 this was not known when poor Wirz, the miserable scape 
 goat of Confederate maladministration, was sent to the 
 gallows ; and we may understand the remorseful remark of 
 the Judge- Advocate of the court that condemned him, when 
 better acquainted with the system under which the Southern 
 prisons were managed he is reported to have declared that 
 " he had hung the wrong man I" 
 
 A few words of this tragic episode, this fearful misadven 
 ture of Northern vengeance, may properly be introduced 
 here. Captain Wirz died an innocent man. His history 
 was one of the most harmless we have ever known. In 
 1861 he had come to Richmond, a private in a company 
 from Louisiana, called the Madison Infantry. He was de 
 tailed as a sentinel at the Libby ; there his fidelity and in 
 telligence were noticed, and he was promoted to a clerkship 
 in the prison. From this capacity he was sometimes called 
 to undertake slight executive duties about the prison, and 
 for this obtained a commission. He acquired such reputa 
 tion for his diligence and energy that when Secretary 
 Mallory wished in 1863 a trusty agent to convey some 
 ordnance to the coast of Louisiana, Wirz was indicated to him 
 as the man of all others for a service so difficult. When he 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 343 
 
 had got the cannon by almost superhuman efforts to the 
 Mississippi river, General Pemberton seized it, and Wirz 
 returned disgusted to Kichmond, and half resolved to quit 
 the service, from which he had once before obtained a 
 furlough to recruit his health in Europe. At this time 
 General Winder was establishing the prison at Anderson- 
 ville ; he had sent his son down, a youth, commissioned as 
 lieutenant to take charge of it; but it was suggested that an 
 officer of higher rank and more experience should go. 
 Captain Wirz was urgently solicited to undertake the mis 
 sion, and as warmly refused it. At last he consented to go, 
 but on the express promise of General Winder that he was 
 only to make a brief stay to relieve an embarrassment about 
 the youth and inexperience of his son, and that he would be 
 recalled in a few weeks. Winder never relieved him, and 
 the unhappy man was left there to fall a victim to a fate he 
 had never provoked or never suspected ! 
 
 For whatever there was of maltreatment of Northern 
 prisoners, the responsibility of Mr, Davis is to be measured 
 as that of any other part of his administration. The Presi 
 dent, himself, had an easy and humane temper, unless in fits 
 of enraged vanity. No one ever accused him of cruelty ; but 
 if he employed such cruel and incompetent agents as North 
 rop, continuing to employ him after repeated exposures of 
 his un worthiness, it is but fair that he should suffer some 
 thing of responsibility for the abuses we have described. 
 . The law of agency is as certain in politics as in any other 
 affair of life. The President of the Southern Confederacy, 
 although defended from the bulk of those atrocious Northern 
 inventions concerning cruelty to prisoners, is yet to be 
 blamed, not lightly, for continuing in his employment such 
 agents as Winder and Northrop, each a favorite creature, the 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS ; WITH A 
 
 last ^extravagantly so, and both of them repeatedly brought 
 to his attention as incompetent and scandalous officers. 
 
 His affection for Northrop was grotesque, inexplicable, 
 insane, "The pepper doctor from South Carolina " was as 
 great a curiosity at the head of the Confederate Commissariat 
 as Memminger, the eccentric, with tall beaver and black bag, 
 mumbling his soliloquies on the street, was at the head of 
 the Confederate Treasury. Mr. Davis could plead no igno 
 rance of the idiosyncrasies or insanities of Northrop. They 
 were laughed at or derided, by nearly every person in the 
 Confederacy ; or they were sternly accused in Congress. He 
 was thus spoken of in this body : "A certain Commissary. 
 General who is a curse to our country has been invested 
 with authority to control the matter of subsistence. This 
 man has placed our government in the attitude charged by 
 the enemy, and has attempted to starve the prisoners in our 
 hands." Mr. Foote, of Tennessee, added the following graphic 
 touch: "This Commissary-General, who I arn told was a sort 
 of pepper-doctor down in Charleston, and I must say looking 
 as like a vegetarian as his practice would indicate, has 
 actually made an elaborate report to the Secretary of War, 
 showing, that for the subsistence of a human Yankee carcass, 
 a vegetable diet is the most proper that can be adopted !" 
 
 One other instance of remonstrance by Congress against 
 Northrop deserves to be related. Senator Orr, of South 
 Carolina, backed by several Congressmen, attempted to pro 
 cure his removal, moved by the outcry from the army 
 and the country against an officer especially hateful and 
 ignorant, who was ridiculed for his grotesque incompetency, 
 who had been lampooned as a vegetarian, and who had been 
 accused as almost insane. " Gentlemen," replied Mr. Davis, 
 "you do not know Mr. Northrop as I do. I assure you he 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 345 
 
 is a great military genius, and if he had not preferred his 
 present position, I would have given him the command of 
 one of the armies in the field." And so both Federal prison 
 ers and Lee s army were left to starve on the theoretic genius 
 of the pepper-doctor ; and Congress, abashed and impotent, 
 was again forced to surrender to the supreme pleasure of Mr. 
 Davis, and to accept one of his worst creatures, one most 
 fatal and shameful to the Confederacy. 
 
 While we are treating the subject of the administration of 
 the Confederate prisons, we may not omit the subject of their 
 discipline ; although it is significantly to be noticed that but 
 few complaints of the enemy were lodged on this account, and 
 that they mostly related to the article of food and supplies, 
 in which principally it was alleged that the Federal prisoners 
 were sufferers. The distress for food was the main com 
 plaint. The remark is very significant ; for it appears that 
 the Federal prisoners were punished or pinched only in a 
 respect in which the whole army and people of the South 
 were, alike, sufferers ; and the thought obviously occurs that 
 if Jefferson Davis had really a disposition of cruelty towards 
 these unfortunates, he might have gratified it through means 
 much more direct and effective than that of dealing out to 
 them insufficient rations ; that a harsh and murderous disci 
 pline would have been much more to such purpose than 
 stinted allowances of food. The Federal prisoners suffered 
 only in that respect in which the whole South suffered. 
 The fact is powerfully significant in relieving Mr. Davis of 
 the charge of cruelty to prisoners ; although even in this 
 respect we are not disposed to acquit him of obstinate care 
 lessness in the supervision of his agents and subordinates, 
 and of that responsibility which ensues from an act of omis 
 sion or attaches to a case of neglect. 
 
346 
 
 If there had really been a disposition in the head of the Con 
 federate government to maltreat prisoners, we repeat the means 
 were muc,h more easy and obvious in a harsh discipline than 
 in insufficient doles of subsistence. But the fact is that the 
 discipline of the Confederate prisons, was mild and lax to a 
 fault. The incontestable proof of this easy and imperfect 
 discipline is the vast number of prisoners who escaped to the 
 North. There were insufficient guards of Southern prisons 
 their inmates had such great breadth of license that they 
 were almost constantly in a condition of mutiny and revolt ; 
 and if there were occasional acts of restraint and terrorism on 
 the part of the Confederate authorities, it was because the 
 prisoners had become insolent from the very excess of 
 freedom allowed them; were ill-contained by their guards 
 and were constantly encouraged to efforts at escape and to 
 attempts of revolt by the lax and insufficient discipline 
 which the means of the South afforded to govern and secure 
 them. 
 
 Much has been told, gloomily and melodramatically, of a 
 mine of gunpowder under the Libby prison, dug there on the 
 event of the Dahlgren raiders, and designed to blow the 
 prisoners to destruction, should any attempt for their rescue 
 be made. The story has been told with great dramatic effect ; 
 but the truth of it is very simple, and illustrates the disposi 
 tion to construct horrors about Southern prisons. It was told 
 to the prisoners that such a mine was under their feet to deter 
 them from a revolt, which was then plainly threatened ; but, 
 indeed, the Confederacy had no such quantity of gunpowder 
 to spare for a puerile scare-crow. The story quieted the 
 prisoners, and probably averted a scene of horror that was 
 being prepared for Richmond, and that was known to not 
 more than three men these officers connected with the Libby 
 prison 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 347 
 
 It has been confessed since the war that the keeper of this 
 prison, aware of his insufficient force to guard it and prevent 
 escapes, dreading almost each night, while Kichmond slept 
 secure, that a determined revolt of the prisoners might over 
 whelm the few hundred men who guarded it, hit upon the 
 plan of employing among them a spy, introduced in the 
 character of a Federal captive, who regularly gave informa 
 tion of the various plots of the prisoners to which he gained 
 confidence. At the time the raid of Dahlgren was afoot, the 
 spy reported that the prisoners had been made aware of this 
 movement outside to assist their escape, and had prepared at 
 a signal to batter out the walls which confined them, and to 
 unite in a foray through the streets of Eichmond, including 
 the murder of Jefferson Davis and the indiscriminate pillage 
 of the citizens. A fearful plot was exposed. Beams had been 
 detached from the rafters of the prison, to be used as batter 
 ing rams. There were then men enough in the prisons of 
 Kichmond to constitute an army. In the Libby prison alone 
 there were eleven hundred inmates ; in Crew and Pemberton s 
 Factory, across the street, there were twenty-five hundred ; 
 and including the men confined on Belle Isle, there were not 
 less than fifteen thousand prisoners in and around Eichmond, 
 guarded by a few hundred men, and who might any moment, 
 by a bold and concerted movement have obtained their liberty 
 (even without the assistance of such raids as Dahlgren s), 
 and have collected in the Confederate capital an enraged and 
 impetuous army, that would have made their way with blood 
 and fire through every street. The extent of the peril was 
 never popularly known in Eichmond. It slept each night on 
 the crust of a volcano. It is almost incredible now, that when 
 Lee s army was away, the safety of Eichmond should have 
 been watched by two local battalions, and so when fifteen 
 
348 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 thousand prisoners had only between them and their liberty 
 and revenge, a thin wall, or a few cannon planted on the 
 boundary of their range. The true romance of the Dahlgren 
 raid was not the night-fight on the turnpike and in the 
 forest, but the secret story of Libby Prison ; the meditation 
 of fifteen thousand men, to make their way as furies into the 
 streets of Eichmond. and to give a whole city to fire and sword. 
 The story was hushed up ; the "gunpowder plot" that had been 
 used to affright the conspirators, was treated only as a vague 
 rumor in the newspapers ; but it is remarkable that after this 
 date, Mr. Davis was busy to distribute the prisoners through 
 the South, sending them to distant places, as Salisbury and 
 Andersonville ; relieving Eichmond of an incubus of terror 
 of which it had happily been unconscious, and where only 
 the happy ignorance of all the Confederate Government did 
 and proposed had secured it from alarm. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 349 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Brilliant Military Effects of Conscription and Impressment The Richmond Government, the 
 Harshest Despotism of the Age New Hopes of the War The South not Deficient in Resources 
 Pictures of Plenty The Shadow of Jefferson Davis on the Prospect The Renewed Confi 
 dence of the South in the War Explained The Position of the Northern Democratic Party in 
 1864 A Great Advantage which the South had in the War What a Richmond Journal Said 
 of the Situation Why the South Failed in the War False Theory of Deficient Resources- 
 Moral Desertion of the Confederate Cause Proof of it in the Behavior of Southern Men since 
 the War The Southern Character Corrupted by the Misrule and Misuse of President Davis- 
 Peculiarities of the Campaign of 1864 Its Fierce Battles The True Situation Around Rich 
 mond A Ten Minutes Battle Lee Better Situated at Richmond than in the Wilderness A 
 Maxim of Napoleon No Alarm in Richmond Manners in the Filthy and Accursed City Mr 
 Davis s Household His Want of Moral Influence in Richmond Exclamation of a Joyous 
 Editor The Confidence of the Country Healthier than that of the Capitol A Southern Lady s 
 Pictures of Country-Life Prospect of Peace on the Horizon A Picture of the Arena of the 
 War. 
 
 THE measures of conscription and impressment, which 
 completed at Richmond one of the harshest despotisms of 
 the age, yet developed a brilliant and imposing array of 
 Confederate force for the great campaign of 1864, which both 
 sides had determined should be decisive of the war. All the 
 resources of the South were carried to the front and displayed 
 there. The war had now reached every man and every 
 family in the Confederacy ; it had extorted a tribute from 
 every household ; it had taxed every sinew of the country, 
 which now turned upon the enemy a concentrated and 
 formidable aspect, a strained and desperate expression 
 that might well have made him anxious for what was 
 plainly the last issue and the dominant campaign of the 
 contest. 
 
350 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The hopes of the South flared up again at the beginning 
 of the campaign of 1864:. There was a brilliant return of 
 confidence. The question of food had passed away with the 
 short crops of 1863, and Mr. Davis had said, with reason: 
 "The facts demonstrate that, with judicious legislation, we 
 shall be enabled to meet all the exigencies of the war from 
 our abundant resources." Indeed, as we have elsewhere 
 indicated, and making allowance for the partial failure of a 
 single year s crop of grain, the resources of the South, both 
 in men and subsistence to prosecute the war were ample ; and 
 as we may hereafter see, they were not insufficient, not ex 
 hausted, when the South chose to lay down its arms in sur 
 render, and more than six millions of people declared them 
 selves defeated, professing that they were so from the wear 
 of their resources, not from any great catastrophe of their 
 arms. The difficulty was and had been, ever since the 
 second year of the war the unwillingness of the people to 
 support the misgovernment of Mr. Davis, riot their physical 
 inability to prosecute the war, and to supply men and material 
 for a contest, which, if prolonged, could not have been other 
 wise than successful. 
 
 If there be any who doubt that the difficulty of men and 
 supplies was in the decline of the spirit of the South, and 
 who are disposed to insist that it was in the decay of re 
 sources, we have only to ask them to estimate the real, abund 
 ant, physical power of the Confederacy in the last year of the 
 war, the events of which we are proposing to relate. It was 
 then accounted that the conscription would bring more than 
 four hundred thousand men into the field. Subsistence, 
 instead of being scarce, was superabundant, no matter how 
 illy the government of Mr. Davis bestowed it. A writer who 
 followed the invading armies of the North, in the campaign 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 351 
 
 of 1864, thus describes some of the aspects of the route: 
 "Wherever the Federal soldier has penetrated, he has found 
 granaries filled with corn until they overflow ; gardens in 
 which grow all the luxuries of the season; pastures and hills 
 not deserted by flocks and herds ; yards frequented by fowls, 
 and dove-cotes not abandoned by the innocent inmates. The 
 cavalry horses, in the season, waded through clover knee- 
 deep, and the growing wheat brushed their sides as they 
 passed." 
 
 In addition to this plenty of the quick and fruitful land of 
 the South, manufactures of necessary articles of the war had 
 become prosperous. There was no longer any scarcity of 
 iron, implements, and machinery. Establishments for the 
 manufacture of cannon, small arms, powder, shot, shell, wag 
 ons, ambulances, and all the materials of war, were more than 
 supplied the demand. The limited commerce through the 
 blockade had, by a wise law, been made tributary to the 
 government, and for every pound of cotton exported, the 
 owner had to sign a bond, conditioned that at least one half 
 the value be invested in goods and merchandise on account 
 of the government, and brought into the Confederacy within 
 sixty days. It was thus that the material resources of the 
 South abounded in season for the campaign of 1864. Nothing 
 was wanting to quicken them but confidence in the adminis 
 tration of Mr. Davis. 
 
 There was confidence enough in the naked prospect of the 
 war, as stripped of the shadow which Jefferson Davis, alone, 
 threw upon it. It was not only that accumulation of material 
 resources we have noticed which was the ground of the renewed 
 hope of the South as it entered on the last year of the war. 
 There was another and greater reason for it. The North, in 
 conducting the war, had constantly the disadvantage of a 
 
352 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS WITH A 
 
 divided public sentiment ; and there was a near prospect in 
 the approaching Presidential election that this occasion of a 
 great popular dissent might be turned to the account of the 
 South, and increase the encouragement which it had already 
 greatly derived from the political controversies of the enemy. 
 In fact, it is to be admitted that the division of public opinion 
 in the North, had already thrown a great weight on the 
 balance of the war in favor of the South. It was an advan 
 tage of the latter that has not been justly estimated in the 
 comparisons which Southern men have been fond to make 
 between the resources of the contestants. It reduces them to 
 something like equality, when we consider that the political 
 division in the North must have detracted from its power to 
 make war in proportion to the numbers that it carried off 
 from the support of the government ; that the comparison is 
 to be justly made as between the resources which were avail 
 able on each side, not those merely apparent on a statistical 
 parallel of population and wealth, as described in the census. 
 There were, as yet, comparatively no political parties in the 
 South. In the North they divided it nearly by halves, and 
 that on the immediate question of the prosecution of hostili 
 ties; and the approach of a Presidential election threatened 
 yet further to disturb that public sentiment which was essen 
 tial to carry on and sustain the war. We may safely conclude 
 that it was at no great physical disadvantage that the South, 
 with all hter strength brought to the surface by conscription 
 and impressment, with all her resources employed in the war, 
 re-entered the contest in the year 1864, and commenced the 
 campaign on the torn, yet unpenetrated, borders of Virginia 
 and Georgia. 
 
 A Richmond journal, in January, 1864, thus described the 
 situation : " The South not only is not conquered ; but, if 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 353 
 
 she choses, she never can be. In a population of five millions, 
 there is one in five capable of making resistance ; capable of 
 exerting effective effort, in some form, in opposing an aggres 
 sive power. If true to herself, the South is capable of suc 
 cessfully resisting a million of men. Can a people thus 
 possessing an army of at least four hundred thousand brave 
 men be conquered by any foreign power unless they chose 
 to be? The North boasts twenty millions people. One in 
 twenty of this number is more than it has yet succeeded in 
 placing upon its muster rolls. The plain deduction from 
 this statement of the case, is, that if the South has suffered 
 reverses in the contest to the extent of bringing her cause 
 into any sort of peril, it has been either from want of valor in 
 the people, or of capacity in the government. It is for the 
 public to determine where the blame lies ; our own opinion is 
 well-known. The whole male population, between the ages 
 of eighteen and forty -five, with a few necessary exceptions, 
 have been placed at the disposal of the government ; and our 
 impressment laws have exposed to it the whole available 
 substance of the country, which they have seized with a 
 strong and used with a lavish hand. If our cause has been 
 brought into peril, it need not remain so for one moment, if 
 those who are charged with responsibility but perform theii 
 duty with wisdom, with honesty, and with ability." 
 
 There has been an explanation of the South s failure in the 
 war, very consoling to the pride of its people and much over- 
 asserted in its newspapers : that it was the victim of physi 
 cal necessities, and that it succumbed only to these ; that it 
 lost its cause from a deficiency of men and materials. This- 
 excuse, is, of course, pleasant to the vanity of the South; it 
 founds the tender and romantic theory of a great and spirited, 
 nation overcome by accidents, yet preserving its honor to the 
 23 
 
354: LTFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 last, and asserting a certain eclat in misfortune. But the 
 theory is false., illogical a^nd not without a mean stripe of 
 hypocrisy in it. The eyes of the world cannot deny that 
 since the surrender of the South there have been found popu 
 lation and subsistence enough in it to support a defensive war 
 for many years sufficient to furnish many such wars as 
 those which Paraguay and Crete have maintained in circum 
 stances vastly more unequal and adverse than those in which 
 the Confederates, contended for their independence. We 
 cannot afford at the expense of history to gratify the vanity 
 of the South, or even to console its mortification on defeat. 
 If the plain truth is to be told, the South lost the contest, 
 because of the moral desertion by her people of the cause 
 they had espoused ; not from their physical prostration or 
 actual destitution of means to continue the war. 
 
 Unhappily as proofs of the moral delinquency in which 
 the South surrendered, we have its behavior since the war. 
 A great nation, who had lost a contest for its independence 
 only through the accident of a power superior in material, 
 would necessarily retain and cherish some of the resentments 
 of the contest. But when we see almost the whole people of 
 the South professing that they have retained absolutely noth 
 ing of the animosity of the war ; when we find their news 
 papers actually representing as a merit that the Southern peo 
 ple feel precisely as if there had been no war, that they are 
 ready to treat Northern men as their friends and brothers, 
 that they have brought back their minds as blank pieces of 
 paper to be inscribed with new lessons of love and duty to 
 the Washington Government, we must be convinced that the 
 South surrendered in the war as a moral delinquent, a con- 
 sci6us culprit, and not as a brave nation giving way to a 
 physical power, and yet retaining its honor in history 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 355 
 
 How are such displays of indifference in the South concern 
 ing the past war consistent with the honorable regard 
 of its own heroes in it, or even the tender memory of its 
 dead ? But of these displays we design no remark here, ex 
 cept to apply them to the question whether the South surren 
 dered from a mere physical distress, or from a moral infirmity. 
 Where a people contending for their liberty have been over 
 matched by force and yet retain the spirit of their cause as a 
 moral sentiment which they have a right to do they may 
 submit and not cow, they may forgive without forgetting. 
 The other alternative is of a people not bravely worn out in 
 war, but surrendering from a broken spirit, a itcayed cour 
 age. Their conduct following the contest easily shows in 
 what condition they left it. How can we account but that 
 the South surrendered from an infirm spirit rather than from 
 physical misfortune, when we find her people now professing 
 to wash their hands of the war, to have forgotten all its pas 
 sions, to treat allusions to it with indifference, and receiving 
 as the highest teachings of their politicians, that they should 
 behave, speak and converse, as if no war had ever happened ! 
 But our criticism of the causes of the surrender of the 
 South must not outrun the course of our narrative. We 
 have only referred to it here, and naturally, in view of the 
 amount of physical resources it displayed at the beginning of 
 the last campaign of the war and of the just hopes which 
 might have been inspired by that campaign, had the South 
 retained to its close any thing of the former animation of the 
 war. And that it did not retain such we refer constantlv 
 and inevitably to the maladministration of Mr. Davis. Even 
 if the South surrendered at the last in a prostrate and de 
 praved spirit, and in view of the resources which we have 
 enumerated as collected in the last year of the war, we do not 
 
356 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 mention it as a disgrace of her people, but rather in unwilling 
 mournful reflection upon a government that by persistent 
 misconduct and trifling had brought the spirit of the country 
 to such a dishonorable pass. The best and bravest people 
 may be demoralized by a bad government. The people of 
 the South, whatever faults they had, were, as we have re 
 peated in these pages, a courageous and virtuous people sustain 
 ing a noble cause ; they had illustrated a martial virtue unex 
 celled in modern times ; they had proved that the age of 
 chivalry was not extinct ; and if at the last we shall find them 
 quitting the contest in evident disgust, and preferring the sin 
 gle pang of surrender to the useless and prolonged torture of 
 the government of Jefferson Davis, it was not so much that 
 their character had been changed by misfortune as that it 
 had been corrupted by misrule and misuse. In all that there 
 was of the decay of the resolution and devotion of the South, 
 the black hand and the weak spirit of Mr. Davis are visible. 
 Who can* intelligently doubt that with a better direction and 
 inspiration than this man afforded, that without his chilling 
 influence and mistakes, the strength which the South devel 
 oped in the campaign of 1864, would have carried it to 
 victory through the disturbance and hesitation of the North, 
 especially in view of the fact which we shall hereafter see, 
 that victory, despite all of Mr. Davis s former misgovernment 
 hung in the balance until a single supreme stroke of his folly 
 cut the cords and cast to the ground all that the South had 
 thrown in the last scale of the war ! 
 
 There was something remarkable of the campaign of 1864 
 in Virginia. It was the desperate, persistent, almost breath 
 less fury of its battles, as if both contestants were aware that 
 they were struggling in the death-lock, and that their feet 
 were on the brink of the fate of the war. Grant came to his 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 357 
 
 work with a nerve and directness which had been found in no 
 other Northern General. He did not tumble back, as Burn- 
 side had done from the hills of Fredericksburg, or lose his 
 head as Hooker had done at Chancellorsville. He was evident 
 ly resolved to do more than fight one battle and then with 
 draw, after the fashion of former years. Now, he had the 
 whole North at his back. He was furnished with an author 
 ity over the entire military force of his nation, never before 
 possessed by any commander, unless that commander was an 
 absolute sovereign in the field. On the other hand, Lee had 
 made up his mind to fight with quick, decisive strokes, as if 
 he knew the value of time in view of the enemy s accumula 
 tion of resources. There was none of the usual margin of 
 strategems and delays. Neither side declined the contest 
 until it had been fought to the doors of Richmond. When 
 Grant, in the early days of May, first crossed the Rapidan, 
 Lee did not hesitate a moment, but sprung upon his flank in 
 the Wilderness with the leap of a tiger. Thence the way to 
 Richmond was blazed by battles, and posted with monuments 
 of carnage a route of blood, a broad, red, macerating stripe 
 across the wide hills where the mountains of Virginia de 
 scend to the plains. 
 
 The summer campaign ended with Grant within sight of 
 Richmond. The true situation was, that he had reached a 
 point, after the loss of nearly a hundred thousand lives, 
 where, if he had moved by water, he might have arrived 
 without the loss of a man ; where, on delivering a battle for 
 Richmond (in attempting to cross the Chickahominy), he was 
 defeated in the space of ten minutes by the army he had hoped 
 to drive into the capital ; and where he sustained such a de 
 feat as to deter him thereafter from direct attack, and to 
 throw him back upon the resources of a slow and dastardly 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 strategy. So far the situation was yet favorable for Richmond. 
 A public meeting was called in New York to render the 
 "thanks of the nation" to Grant for his victories on paper, 
 the mere accomplishment of certain distances on the map ; 
 but the same day gold was quoted in Wall street at 285 
 about its maximum in the war and the city of Richmond 
 was quietly, without the ostentation of public assemblies, 
 paying a hearty gratitude to Lee, for the assurance he yet 
 gave it of safety, and was reposing on an undiminished con 
 fidence in his arms. 
 
 On a just military calculation it was plain that Lee was 
 better situated before Richmond than in the Wilderness or at 
 Spottsylvania Court-house. His movement towards the 
 capital was rendered necessary by the configuration of the 
 soil and the lines of the rivers he had to defend ; the latter 
 having their sources remote from the city, and emptying their 
 waters in the neighboring York. He had gained manifest ad 
 vantages by each change of his lines. When he was on the 
 Rapidan his stores and reinforcements had to be brought up 
 from Richmond ; now they were nearer and more available. 
 Grant had passed over a certain geographical space, without 
 gaining any ground in a military sense. Had he passed down 
 the lower Rappahannock, he might have come to the Piping 
 Tree, within eleven miles of Richmond, without an engage 
 ment with General Lee, or he might have come up the Penin 
 sula, perhaps to Fair Oaks, without firing a shot or losing a 
 man. If he adopted the more circuitous course to invite 
 battle, deliberately counting on " depletion," he could scarcely 
 have calculated that even with his army of one hundred and 
 fifty thousand men, the odds would have been overwhelming, 
 when the issue came to be that of an open field against a forti 
 fied place. Napoleon declared as an axiom of war, that 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 359 
 
 "fifty thousand National Guards, with three thousand gunners, 
 will defend a fortified capital against an army of three hundred 
 thousand men." Almost to the last days of the Confederacy, 
 the army of Lee was nearly equal in numbers to, and greater 
 in actual efficiency than those whom Napoleon assumed could 
 hold their position against twice the force which at any time 
 assailed Eichmond. There was no good reason, except that 
 fatal one, sufficient to explain every catastrophe demoraliza 
 tion why General Lee should not have held Eichmond and 
 Petersburg against any number which the enemy, within 
 the limits of his physical resources, could bring against them. 
 The government of Mr. Davis was not yet alarmed. It had 
 no reason to be alarmed except for the chances of its -own 
 mistakes. Nobody in Eichmond was alarmed not even so 
 much as when McClellan, in 1862, had displayed his stand 
 ards on the banks of the Chickahominy. There was the 
 same recklessness of vice in this city that it had displayed so 
 early in the war, and that had pointed it out as the centre of 
 all the crime and iniquity in the South. There were the same 
 "faro banks," on Main and other streets, with numbers painted 
 in large gilt figures over the door, and illuminated at night 
 the same flashily dressed young men with villainous faces, 
 who hung about the street corners during the day, and were 
 gamblers, garroters and plugs at night ; the same able-bodied, 
 red-faced and brawny individuals who mixed bad liquors in 
 the bar-rooms, and who held exemptions from military duty 
 as consumptive invalids, or for some reason had been recom 
 mended by the Surgeon- General to keep in cheerful compan}? 
 and take gentle exercise ; the same men who frequented 
 the innumerable bar-rooms, paying five dollars for a drink 
 of the bad liquors, and who, mistaken for men of fortune, 
 happened to be put-door patients of hospitals, with a 
 
360 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 allowance for stimulants, or government clerks on salaries, 
 the monthly amounts of which, would not pay for a single 
 night s carousal. The society of Eichmond was given over 
 to unabashed vice and revelry, to continue thus until the 
 partial doom of Sodom should overtake it. The filthy and 
 accursed city was indeed a commentary on the administration 
 of Mr. Davis ; for that he should have made of his capital 
 such a place indicates his own unworthiness, and, no matter 
 what local or particular excuses are made, men will think 
 how weak and bad must have been the government, immedi 
 ately around which the moral atmosphere was so impure. It 
 has often been boasted of Eichmond, that it never lost its 
 confidence during the war ; but we must confess that much 
 of this confidence was a vile recklessness that lived in the 
 twenty-four hours, not all the serious and manly faith which 
 calculates the morrow, and reposes on its superiority to 
 fortune. To the last vice kept open doors in Eichmond. 
 For the present it had taken out a new lease of its abodes, as 
 it supposed itself secured by the immediate presence of Lee s 
 army, and confidently expected for Grant, the sequel of 
 McClellan. 
 
 Mr. Davis, himself, was not an immoral man. However, 
 in midsummer of 1864, there were curious stories about the 
 President s household, and the money that was squandered 
 by the luxurious tastes of his wife, and her excessive love 
 of display. In secret session of Congress, there were com 
 plaints that the President did not live as democratically 
 as he might, or should ; and one member was bold enough to 
 mention the incident that a large sum had been diverted 
 from the Treasury to cover the expense of transporting, in 
 box cars, all the way from Mississippi, the splendid horses 
 which Mrs. Davis displayed on Main street, while the whole 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 361 
 
 South was groaning in poverty. A joint resolution was 
 whirled through Congress with extraordinary alacrity, giving 
 additional compensation and emolument to Mr. Davis, under 
 the name of " lights and fuel for the Presidential mansion/ 
 and forage in the Presidential stables for four horses during 
 the war. But notwithstanding the supplies of money, of 
 which his wife gave evidence in various ostentation, there 
 was but little social bounty in the President s household. 
 He gave but few entertainments, and even his occasional 
 " receptions " were neglected by the best people in Kichmond. 
 There were no instances of elegant hospitality, no examples 
 of those refinements which a President is supposed to give to 
 the manners and society of his capital. Thus, although Mr. 
 Davis was much above most of the vices in Kichmond, it is 
 yet remarkable what little correction he administered to 
 them, and what a listless observer he was of the social cor 
 ruption that besieged the very doors of his mansion. The 
 worst that can be said of him in this connection is, that he 
 gave none of those examples of decorous social life which 
 the President of a republic is supposed to impart, at least, 
 within the limits of his capital, where he is as much the 
 censor of manners as he is the ruler of public affairs. 
 
 When Grant s army approached Kichmond, Mr. Davis was 
 in better health and in better spirits than he had yet been 
 during the war. He had recovered from his neuralgia ; he 
 was healthy and frivolous. We have described the inner 
 life of Kichmond about this time as indicative of the little 
 impression Grant s approach made upon it although, as we 
 have slightly and incidentally -seen, it is interesting in other 
 respects. The sounds of hostile cannon fell unheeded on the 
 ears of revellers. Not for a day did Mr. Davis change the 
 unpopular routine of his household, abate the luxury of his 
 
362 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 table, or his allowance of Havana cigars, or neglect, weather 
 permitting, his easy evening ride on his shabby grey horse, 
 while his more pretentious wife gathered on the wheels of 
 her equipage the dust through which Lee s barefoot soldiers 
 might have trudged an hour before. In this*indifference in 
 Richmond, there is much that is unpleasant, much that is the 
 subject of detraction ; but we have exhibited it in its most 
 excessive phases to show how little affected Mr. Davis and 
 the population around him were by Grant s array in front of 
 them, and to suggest that while part of this indifference was 
 only bad and reckless, yet another part must have proceeded 
 from a common popular confidence in the war, \rhen a whole 
 community is found involved in so great a neglect of danger. 
 
 " If," exclaimed a joyous Richmond editor, " those highly 
 excited official circles of Washington, and delighted news 
 paper readers of New York and Boston, could but see the 
 tranquil serenity of these embowered streets at this day ; 
 how peacefully our people go about their daily business; 
 how quietly they buy and sell, or even marry and are given 
 in marriage ; ? but the same writer fatally added, finishing 
 his period of exclamation, unconscious of the significance : 
 " as in the day when Noah entered tKe ark /" 
 
 Among the people of the country as compared with those 
 in the capital the confidence in the war was much healthier. 
 Through the South, beyond Richmond, the dirty patch of 
 the Confederacy, there was an increased alacrity to contribute 
 to the war, more willingness to bear its burdens in the prospect 
 of a speedy peace, and some hope of improvement in the ad 
 ministration of Mr. Davis. The people had recovered much of 
 their former animation ; they again showed examples of readi- 
 ,ness, of fortitude, and of noble sacrifices ; it appeared that they 
 had taken new resolution, and had determined to strain every 
 
SECRET HISTOKY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 363 
 
 nerve in what they supposed to be the last stadium of the 
 war. In every period of the contest there was a remarkable 
 contrast between the licentiousness of the capital of the Con 
 federacy and the hardy and virtuous simplicy of the country 
 people. It was never illustrated more strongly than in the 
 times of which we write. The South generally was aroused 
 to a new and sustained effort for independence, and the 
 evidences of this resolution were to be found in the sim 
 plicity and industry of almost every household at a distance 
 from Eichmond. 
 
 A Southern lady has thus graphically described the in 
 terior of these rustic and virtuous homes : " We were 
 carried back to the times of our grandmothers. Our women 
 were actively interested in discovering the coloring proper 
 ties of roots, barks, and berries, and experimenting with 
 alum, copperas, soda, and other alkalies and mineral mor 
 dants in dyeing cotton and wool for domestic manufacture. 
 On approaching a country house rather late, the ear would 
 be greeted, not with the sound of the piano or the Spanish 
 guitar, but with the hum of the spinning-wheel brought out 
 from the hiding-place to which it had been driven before the 
 triumph of mechanical skill, and the "bang-bang" of the old- 
 fashioned and long-disused loom. The whereabouts of the 
 mistress of the mansion might be inferred from the place 
 whence the sound proceeded ; for she was probably herself 
 engaged in, or superintending the work of a servant in the 
 weaving or spinning-room. It was beautiful to watch the 
 snowy cotton and wool drawn out from the fleecy roll into 
 long threads, and wound up so dexterously on the spindle. 
 It was delightful to watch the magic shuttle shoot to and fro 
 under the threads of the warp, and to hear the strange music 
 of the almost obsolete loom, and to see the stout fabric grow 
 
364 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 under ingenious hands. With commendable pride we beheld 
 the Southern gentleman clad in the comfortable homespun 
 suit, and our ladies wearing domestic dresses that challenged 
 comparison with the plaids and merinos of commercial manu 
 facture." 
 
 From the pictures we have given of the South, both of its 
 capital and country in the summer months of 1864, the 
 reader will conclude how much more cheerful and assured had 
 become the prospect of the war, and how improved was the 
 spirit of the Confederacy in view of it. In every direction 
 the armies of the North had been brought to a dead halt ; 
 hope had sprung again in the heart of the Confederacy ; the 
 sources of political weakness in the North were being multi 
 plied ; a prospect of peace was on the horizon, its rumors in 
 the air. The strained nerve of the South, its beating heart, 
 its sinews thrown to the surface, told of the last lock of the 
 contest, that final match of strength and courage in which it 
 already held the adversary in its arms and appeared about to 
 trip his uncertain foothold. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 305 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII., 
 
 The Situation at Atlanta, Georgia, more Favorable than that at Richmond Johnston s Retreat, 
 the Masterpiece of His Military Life Its Incidents, and its Triumph over Sherman The 
 Military Condition of the South one of Brilliant Promise The Confederacy had now to Accom 
 plish, only " Negative" Results Mr. Davis s Private Correspondents in the Chicago Conven 
 tionSecrets of " the Presidential Bureau of Correspondence" A Remarkable Article in the 
 New York Tribune Compositions and Designs of the Peace Party in the North Bold Declara 
 tion of the New York World The Northern Democratic Party Looking to Richmond rather 
 than to Washington How Much Depended on the Prudence of Mr. Davis How His Course 
 Bhould have been Shaped in such a Crisis General Johnston Busy at Atlanta An Opportunity 
 to Operate in Sherman s Rear A Conversation of General Johnston and Senator Wigfall 
 An Urgent Application to President Davis, to Transfer Forrest s Cavalry to Sherman s Rear- 
 Important and Critical Nature of this Enterprise Senator Hill Undertakes a Mission to the 
 President He "Goes Back" upon Johnston A Special Messenger Sent to Richmond Anec 
 dote of Mrs. Davis and a Washerwoman Order Removing Johnston from Command, the 
 Death- Warrant of the Confederacy Secret History of this Order The Fruit of an Intrigue in 
 Richmond The Part Played by General Bragg Underhanded Correspondence of Mr. Davia 
 with General Hood The Latter Described by General Sherman and a Richmond Wit Demora 
 lizing and Terrible Consequences of the Removal of Johnston "The Beginning of tho End" 
 Reflection on the Narrow Chances which make History Bitter Remarks of a Richmond 
 Journalist. 
 
 WE have described the situation at Richmond. Its cor 
 respondent on the other side of the Alleghanies the situa 
 tion at Atlanta, Georgia was even more favorable. General 
 Johnston held Atlanta more securely than Lee did Richmond. 
 We have already said something of the military character of 
 the former. His opportunities of distinguishing himself had 
 not been so great and prolonged as those of Lee ; but, however 
 various might be the popular criticism of him, or however 
 cold and envious might be the regards of Mr. Davis, it could 
 not be said of him that he ever lost an army, or any con 
 siderable body of troops, or incurred any disaster, or even 
 
366 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 disadvantage that obscured the prospects of the Confeder 
 acy for a moment. 
 
 General Johnston was now executing the masterpiece of 
 his military life. He had fought down to Atlanta with far 
 more success and brilliancy than Lee had fought down to 
 Richmond, with more incidents of advantage, and to greatly 
 better effect. His retrograde from Dalton to Atlanta has 
 been described as a future study in military schools, and as 
 exact as a figure in geometry his plan of campaign, being 
 the avoidance of pitched battles and the substitution of flank 
 movements, interspersed with actions between detachments 
 and sometimes rising to a general engagement. He had per 
 formed the wonder of conducting an army in retreat through 
 nearly one hundred and fifty miles of intricate country, abso 
 lutely without any loss in material or prisoners; he had 
 brought along every thing, every gun, every wagon, every 
 camp-kettle ; he had inflicted a loss upon the enemy of forty- 
 five thousand men, more than four times his own ; and in 
 pursuance of his plan of reducing the numerical superiority 
 of Sherman s army so as " to cope with it on equal ground 
 by the time the Chattahoochee was passed," he had now that 
 army south of the stream where its defeat would be inevitably 
 its destruction, and where, on the other hand, the Confede 
 rates would have a place of refuge in Atlanta which their 
 commander, writing officially to Richmond had described as 
 "too strong to be assaulted and too extensive to be invested." 
 Never was any situation of the war so advantageous for the 
 Confederates, and so critical and tremulous for the enemy, 
 unable, as he was, to go further, brought to a place which he 
 dared not to assault, and which he was unable to invest and 
 suspended one hundred and forty miles in a hostile country 
 by a single line of communication. The fears of the giddy 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 367 
 
 enemy were excessive, almost to demoralization; the assui- 
 ances of Johnston were as perfect as human foresight could 
 make them. We repeat that his position in Atlanta was 
 more secure than that of Lee in Eichmond. Judging pros 
 pective by past events, it was impossible to doubt that he 
 would have held Sherman as well as Lee held Grant. He 
 could at least have done this ; and it was probable he would 
 have done more, for if he had succeeded in destroying Sher 
 man s line of land communication, which was obviously easier 
 to reach than that of Grant over water, he might have forced 
 his enemy to a retreat, in which surrender or annihilation 
 woi^ld be the choice. 
 
 No wonder that the heart of the Confederacy was elated, 
 and that the tiptoe of expectation was the attitude of the most 
 intelligent. The campaign of 1864 found the two best men 
 in real command and in the two principal positions Lee in 
 Virginia, Johnston in Georgia. The military condition of the 
 country was, as we have seen, in various respects never so 
 prosperous as it was at midsummer ; for these two great com 
 manders had so done their work that it was then morally cer 
 tain that the last supreme effort of the enemy was going to 
 fail; and failing it was impossible to doubt that the year 
 would be the last of the war, and would terminate in the pro 
 claimed independence of the Confederacy. 
 
 The question of peace already trembled on the balance in 
 the North, and the number of rumors concerning it show how 
 busily employed was the public mind with the prospect of an 
 early termination of the war, and how eager it was to antici 
 pate it. So equally had parties come to be divided in the 
 North, when the Chicago Convention nominated McClelian 
 for President, that the entire Democratic party was bold 
 enough to declare, in the most deliberate manner ; that the 
 
368 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 war was a "failure." Scarcely any Northern man of any 
 political persuasion, outside of fanaticism, doubted that if 
 Johnston defeated Sherman, or that if he even held his own 
 in short, that if the South accomplished mere negative results, 
 in holding Eichmond and Atlanta the peace partv which 
 was at this time the whole Democratic party, would come 
 into power, turn the war into a Convention of States, and de 
 cide there the claims of the South, which, it was a foregone 
 conclusion, and a logical necessity, could not be less than 
 independence. Mr. Davis could not fail to perceive the sig 
 nificance of the Chicago Convention, and was certainly in 
 telligent enough to understand the condition of parties in the 
 North. He had private correspondents in that Convention. 
 Indeed it is well known that during the entire war, Mr. Davis 
 maintained secret communications with many distinguished 
 Northern politicians, generally those of the Democratic party. 
 The letters and documents he received from them were so 
 numerous that they were kept in a special, private archive, 
 entitled the Presidential Bureau of Correspondence. These 
 confidences were kept from Congress, and even from his 
 Cabinet ; few persons in Kichmond ever knew of the exis 
 tence of such a bureau ; no curiosity was ever admitted to its 
 papers ; and so anxious was Mr. Davis to conceal them that it 
 is a curious fact that, some days before the surrender of Rich 
 mond, he had them conveyed to a secret place, where they 
 are yet supposed to be safely deposited. In this "under 
 ground " correspondence Mr. Davis had been well informed 
 of the Chicago Convention; that "it meant peace for the 
 North and independence for the South," as a distinguished 
 gentleman of New England wrote him, and that all there was 
 of doubt of the success of the Chicago nominees depended on 
 the success of his own administration at Richmond, and that 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 369 
 
 the Democratic party of the North was held in the hollow of 
 his hand. 
 
 But as to the real desire for peace in the North, which had 
 now divided it nearly by halves, Mr. Davis did not need to 
 look to evidences in his Presidential Bureau ; he might have 
 learned it in the newspapers and common publications of the 
 day. It was deeply significant that the question of peace 
 was no longer discussed in the North in wary whispers, and 
 under the shadow of the danger of an accusation ; it was no 
 longer the discovery of eavesdroppers and the pursuit of spies 
 not even the subject of axjlamor for " disloyalty." It had become 
 a topic of bold, open argument ; it was on the unfaltering and 
 multiplied tongues of the press ; it was spoken of without 
 disguise, and without abatement. Nor was it any longer the 
 stinted thought of any particular political party. Some of 
 the best men of the Kepublican party raised their voices for 
 peace; they joined the Democrats, as if in a sentiment of a 
 general nature, but where they must have known, as well as 
 they, the logical consequence of this sentiment in the inde 
 pendence of the South, as the one condition of peace, and 
 where to fall back from such conclusion, or to attempt to 
 flank it by circumlocution, could only have been an affectation 
 to cheat the public, or to console their own consciences. It 
 was not without some surprise that the people of the South 
 read in such a paper as the New York Tribune: " We feel 
 certain that two-thirds of the American people on either side 
 of the dividing line anxiously, absorbingly, desire peace ; and 
 are ready to make all needful sacrifices to secure it. Then 
 why shall it be long withheld. Let us know, as soon as may 
 be, the most that the rebel chiefs will do to secure peace ; let 
 us know what is the ultimatum on our side." Almost i 
 the same breath of the New York Press, the World gave a 
 24 
 
370 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 practical expression to a purpose which Mr. Greeley had 
 been content to leave in the vagueness of a sentimental 
 appeal. It furnished the true exposition of the Chicago Con 
 vention. It said : " The new President, to be nominated at 
 Chicago, and elected in November, must be a man ready and 
 willing to meet any and every overture for peace, a man who 
 shall represent truly the dignity and power of the nation, and 
 who will not be unwilling even to tender an armistice, and 
 suggest a National Convention of all the States." 
 
 Such signs of public sentiment in the North could not 
 have been lost on Mr. Davis. He must have known how 
 near the Confederacy was to peace and independence, the con. 
 summation of its hopes. He must have understood what his 
 New England correspondent advised: that the Democratic 
 party of the North had for the time turned its attention from 
 what was taking place at Washington, to fix it upon the ad- 
 ministration at Kichmond, and that upon its wisdom now 
 singly depended the condition of parties in the North, and 
 the ultimate question of peace. The Democratic party asked 
 Jefferson Davis rather than its own leaders to sustain it. 
 Richmond and Atlanta were its arguments, and it looked to 
 Mr. Davis to preserve their force. It only asked that the 
 Confederacy should for a few months hold its own, and that 
 Mr. Davis should not interrupt or imperil the existing state 
 of affairs by any act of imprudence. Scarcely ever did a 
 single man control issues so vast and critical. It was a con 
 dition which required the utmost delicacy, the utmost pru 
 dence; a condition in which rather the status quo was to 
 be maintained than new experiments to be hazarded much 
 less changes to be made originating in caprice. Mr. Davis 
 Stood near the boundary of peace ; he had only to fold his 
 arms, only to wait on Lee and Johnston. But unhappily he 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 371 
 
 was one of those men whom the consciousness of power 
 makes pragmatical, who are never satisfied to accept events 
 without the appearance of controlling them, and who, from 
 vanity rather than impatience, had much rather risk taking 
 fortune by assault, than to wait for it in anconspicuous cir 
 cumstances, and in wise obscurity. 
 
 Meanwhile, General Johnston, never looking aside to any 
 political complications in the war ; was giving a characteristi 
 cally single and severe attention to his purely military work. 
 He was steadily devoting himself to the defences of Atlanta ; 
 heavy rifled cannon were brought up from Mobile and 
 planted on its ramparts ; a large number of negroes were 
 employed on its earthworks ; and the militia of Georgia were 
 being assembled to garrison Atlanta, which Sherman now 
 dared not to approach, and could not approach, without risk 
 ing an attack of Johnston s whole army on his most exposed 
 flank. 
 
 One other movement now only remained to complete the 
 discomfiture of the enemy. It was plain and inviting ; and 
 it seemed indeed as if all events had been marshalled in 
 favor of Johnston. The defeat by Forrest s cavalry in north 
 ern Mississippi of an expedition of the enemy under Sturgis 
 designed to protect and operate in Sherman s rear, left that 
 rear uncovered, and presented the spectacle of an enemy a 
 hundred and forty miles in the interior of Georgia, holding 
 a single line of communication which might be easily de 
 stroyed by cavalry. General Johnston at once dispatched to 
 Kichmond a request that Forrest s cavalry might be trans 
 ferred from Mississippi, where it was then roving as an inde 
 pendent command, representing that if it got on Sherman s 
 line, it could destroy it beyond the possibility of further use. 
 He did not doubt that the government would at once see an 
 
372 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 opportunity so plain and splendid ; he was in the highest 
 spirits from all his prospects of advantage in the campaign ; 
 he supposed that what he had done was appreciated at Rich- 
 mond, and that what he proposed would now be ordered 
 with alacrity. To his infinite surprise and alarm, he re 
 ceived an order from Richmond denying his request and 
 prohibiting him from any command of Forrest s cavalry to 
 move it to the rear of Sherman. 
 
 At this time Senator Wigfall happened to be in Georgia. 
 General Johnston, surprised at the singular treatment he had 
 received from President Davis, knowing nothing of what 
 was taking place in Richmond to discredit him, invited Mr. 
 Wigfall to visit his camp, and in an earnest conversation en 
 treated that Senator to hasten back to the capital, and to use 
 all possible influence to prevail upon Mr. Davis to transfer 
 Forrest to Georgia. He explained the great importance of 
 such a movement. He disclaimed any desire to repair Mr. 
 Davis s confidence in himself or to conciliate him personally ; 
 he was careless of injustice to himself; he was only deeply 
 hurt that any opportunity for the good of the country should 
 be neglected through a personal dislike of him by the Presi 
 dent, a dislike which he considered himself unfortunate to 
 have incurred, and to which he would not be made a party 
 in any recrimination or protest further than the interests of 
 the public service to which he was attached demanded. He 
 spoke with his usual magnanimity, and in noble and touch 
 ing terms. Mr. Wigfall grimly replied that the President 
 had as little love for himself as for Johnston. He explained 
 that his intermediation would only injure the cause for 
 which he was invoked to act, and he therefore declined the 
 mission. 
 
 Mr. Wigfall was on bad terms with B. H. Hill, Senator 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 373 
 
 from Georgia ; but he knew him to be an obsequious politi 
 cian and, to some extent, a favorite of Mr. Davis, well-quali 
 fied to influence the President by his adroit servility, and to 
 exercise an influence over him denied to wiser and purer 
 counsellors. In the inspiration of his conversation with 
 Johnston, the Senator from Texas was willing to lay aside 
 his private feelings, and to use a medium to which he was 
 personally averse to accomplish a public benefit. He sug 
 gested B. H. Hill for the mission to Richmond. The sugges 
 tion was adopted ; Mr. Hill was called into council with 
 Johnston and some of his corps commanders ; the clear 
 headed General submitted to him all his plans, assured him of 
 the safety of Atlanta, pointed out the opportunity of opera 
 ting on Sherman s rear ; and at the close of the conference, the 
 Senator expressed himself as fully satisfied with all that 
 Johnston proposed and requested. He left with the promise 
 warmly expressed that he would go at once to Richmond 
 and use all the influence he had or could assemble to per 
 suade the President to sustain General Johnston, and especi 
 ally to give him command of Forrest s cavalry for the criti 
 cal operation he designed. 
 
 The promise was never kept. The confidence with Gen 
 eral Johnston was not only violated but betrayed. Senator 
 Hill went to Richmond ; but the gossip was that he "went 
 back" upon Johnston, and joined his enemies and detrac 
 tors who he found had secured the ear of Mr. Davis. The 
 fact may be that Senator Hill was at first sincere in what he 
 had undertaken in behalf of an injured General, but that 
 coming to Richmond, he found the President so impatient of 
 any thing said in favor of Johnston, and so well-disposed 
 towards those who brought him any tale to the discredit of 
 this commander, that, weak and servile as he was, a man 
 
374 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 always more anxious to court favor for himself than for 
 others, he was easily led away from his first intentions and 
 by another step of descent in sincerity was involved in the in 
 trigue which he found busy in Eichmond to depose Johnston, 
 and to make a pretext on which Mr. Davis might gratify the 
 malice he had nursed against this great and good commander. 
 Whatever the explanation, it is certain that Senator Hill, a 
 short time after reaching Richmond, was active in the in 
 trigue referred to ; that he circulated stories to alarm the 
 more foolish of the public for the safety of Atlanta ; that he 
 was in frequent conversation with General Bragg, whom the 
 President had, previous to this occasion, sent as a well-dis 
 guised spy into Johnston s camp ; and that he was in corres 
 pondence with one of the corps commanders of the Army 
 of Tennessee whom Mr. Davis had already designated as one 
 of his favorites. 
 
 General Johnston was ignorant of this intrigue. He 
 anxiously awaited at Atlanta, the result of Hill s mission, the 
 signal for action ; and while day after day he suffered dis 
 appointment, he yet busied himself adding to the defences 
 of Atlanta, assured that even at the worst he might expect 
 from Mr. Davis s temper, he could yet defy and wear out the 
 enemy, although enviously denied and robbed of the opportu 
 nity of finishing his work with a conspicuous victory. Hear- 
 in 2 nothing from Hill, he was yet resolved to leave no means 
 unemployed to operate on the mind of the President. He 
 sent a special messenger to Richmond, furnished with full 
 and detailed dispatches, which were to be submitted to the 
 President at the earliest possible moment. For two weeks 
 this messenger unsuccessfully sought an audience of Mr. 
 Davis. Trifles, especially in weak governments, sometimes 
 govern great events. An anecdote obtained circulation in 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 375 
 
 Kichmond that the President could not see Johnston s messen 
 ger, because he was over-busy with an affair of Mrs. Davis, 
 she having quarelled with a laundress in one of the hospitals 
 who had formerly been discharged from her service as a 
 waiting- woman ; that there was a deficiency of eleven dollars 
 in the monthly hospital account of the laundress, and that 
 Mrs. Davis was moving President, Cabinet, and all sources 
 of authority to have the woman punished, giving the first 
 but little time to attend to the cares of State, until he had ap 
 peased the clamor in his household. It was a story, perhaps, 
 told for amusement, and designed as a caricature of those 
 anecdotes which serve as popular illustrations of famous 
 persons, which would be excessively absurd if they were not 
 obviously characteristic, and which, if not true, yet deserve 
 in a measure to be true. 
 
 On the 17th day of July, General Johnston was standing 
 on the fortification of Atlanta, conversing with his chief 
 engineer. A dispatch was handed to him; there were no 
 marks of importance upon it ; he read it without a change of 
 countenance. It was an order removing him, from the command 
 of the army ; brief, decisive; he should u immediately turn 
 over the command of the army and department of Tennessee 
 to General Hood." 
 
 It was a day never to be forgotten, for it contained the 
 doom of the South. On the slight piece of paper that John 
 ston read silently, looking over the great army that he had 
 hoped to lead to victory, that had been his pride, and joy> 
 glory, and that, standing upon the ramparts, he now saw, for 
 the last time, stretched before him, there was written not 
 only his removal, not only this of cruel and sneering brevity 
 to himself, but the sentence that murdered tens of thousands of 
 brave soldiers, the message of greatest joy and encouragement 
 to the enemy, the death-warrant of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
376 
 
 LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Why did Mr. Davis remove General Johnston? The 
 pretence put before the public was, that this commander had 
 not expressed sufficient confidence of his ability to hold 
 Atlanta ; while the fact was that Johnston, properly resenting 
 the pragmatism of the President, and annoyed by the fire of 
 cross questions from the War Department, at Richmond, had 
 simply been cold and reluctant in his replies, instead of being 
 fulsome, as a weak General might have been, in such circum 
 stances ; and when at last removed, he made the neat and 
 cutting reply to the Secretary of War: "Confident language 
 by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence 
 of incompetency." He did right not to commit himself to an 
 inquisition by which there is reason to believe Mr. Davis 
 designed to entrap him. The latter could have really had no 
 doubt as to Johnston s determination and spirit to hold 
 Atlanta, for the evidence of these was his daily employment 
 in strengthening its defences; and the fact was that his family 
 was remaining in the town at the time he was removed. Not 
 a single charge of disaster incurred, or opportunity omitted, 
 could be brought against this wise and ready commander. It 
 is especially remarkable that while the retrograde of Lee from 
 the Rapidan to Richmond had had the effect of adding to his 
 reputation, and had been adorned with the thanks of Mr. 
 Davis and his Congress, the correspondent movement of 
 Johnston, in Georgia, attended, as we have seen, with more 
 success, and ending in better advantages, should have excited 
 the ire of the President, and should have been used to raise 
 a clamor as against a shameful and disastrous defeat.* 
 
 * The following is from a private letter of General Johnston, not 
 intended for publication, but due to history :" After his experience 
 in the Wilderness, General Lee adopted as thorough a defensive as 
 mine, and added by it to his great fame. The only other difference 
 
SECRET HISTOEY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 377 
 
 The true history of Johnston s removal is yet to be written. 
 It is already discovered, as far as evidence can make it plain, 
 that an intrigue to remove him was commenced in Eichmond, 
 at the time he first moved from Dalton, at the very com 
 mencement of the campaign, and that Mr. Davis only awaited 
 a convenient opportunity and an available pretext to put his 
 sinister design in execution. The fact was that the appoint 
 ment of Johnston to the Army of Tennessee had been wrung 
 from Mr. Davis by a public sentiment which had compellen 
 him to make a show of obedience to it ; and he was resolved I 
 to find the earliest pretence to get rid of an appointment 
 which he had made so unwillingly, which had offended his 
 vanity, and which, as the triumph of a rival in the affections 
 of the people one innocently so rankled in his heart. He 
 had been compelled to remove his favorite General Bragg 
 the commander who had, on the 1st of January, 1863, dis 
 patched from the field of Murfreesboro, " God has given us a 
 happy New Year," and who, at the close of this year, had 
 been driven through the length of Tennessee, had been forced 
 from the mountain-barrier of Georgia, and yet clung to the 
 command of an army which not only distrusted, but despised 
 him. Bragg was displaced for Johnston. But the former was 
 consoled by the sinecure but sonorous appointment of " mili 
 tary adviser," at Eichmond, a sort of ornamental generalis 
 simo which made the Examiner exclaim : " We are driving 
 the red battle car and not a gilded coach, with room enough 
 
 between our operations, was due to General Grant s bull-headedness 
 and Sherman s extreme caution, which carried the armies in Vir 
 ginia to Petersburg in less than half the time in which Sherman 
 reached Atlanta. From our relative losses, I might have expected 
 to be very soon stronger than Sherman. His army beaten on the 
 east of the Chattahoochee, might have been destroyed." 
 
378 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 on the foot-board for uniformed chasseurs with marshals 7 
 batons. Cat behind. We are driving artillery into the 
 fight." 
 
 But Bragg was used not altogether for ornament. He was 
 a great and useful part of the intrigue against Johnston. He 
 was employed by the President to visit Johnston in the lines 
 around Atlanta ; he was cordially received by this comman 
 der; and he gave no intimation that his visit was of an official 
 nature. He observed that some of the public workshops had 
 been removed, and that there were no large supplies deposited 
 in the town circumstances no more significant than sending 
 the wagons of an army to the rear on a day of battle ; and he 
 hurried back to Mr. Davis to furnish him a pretence on which 
 he might act as he desired, in the report that Atlanta was 
 about to be evacuated ! Another party to the intrigue, and 
 who was in communication with Bragg and the President, 
 was General Hood himself, who, there is reason to believe, had 
 been designated as the successor of Johnston while his army 
 was yet in motion from Dalton. We have heretofore referred 
 to a bad practice of Mr. Davis in holding underhanded secret 
 correspondence with subordinate commanders in the field, so 
 as to diminish the authority of the General in command, and 
 to hold the latter under a disreputable surveillance. He had 
 done so with Pemberton. And we must suppose that he had 
 done so with Hood. For how else is it possible to explain 
 the evidence that the latter had written a private letter, since 
 divulged in some circles, while on the retreat from Dalton, 
 that he expected soon to be raised to the chief command of 
 the army ; that he, generally so ready for a fight, had so 
 stoutly resisted General Johnston s first proposition to give 
 battle on the Etowah river, and was apparently so well 
 pleased with the continuation of his retreat to Atlanta ; and 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 379 
 
 that when at last the removal of Johnston and his own ap 
 pointment reached there, and when the whole army was struck 
 with wonder or convulsed with indignation, he alone, of fifty 
 thousand men, received it without surprise ; and that in his 
 readiness to take command, he neglected even the compliments, 
 if we may not say civilities, which custom required to the re 
 tiring General. 
 
 The news of General Johnston s removal fell upon the ears 
 of his army like a clap of thunder from clear skies. When 
 Sherman heard of it, he was radiant and jocose ; and one of 
 his staff-officers tells of his making a motion with the thumb 
 of one hand around the forefinger of the other, as if already 
 wrapping around it the weak and maimed commander who 
 had displaced his old and tried antagonist. The man whom 
 the folly of Mr. Davis had raised to the command of a great 
 army, not less numerous than that with which General Lee 
 had fought the campaign of the Kapidan, was described by 
 one of the wits of Eichmond as having " a lion s heart and a 
 wooden head." Courage was cheap in the army of Tennessee ; 
 and in the constitution and temper of Confederate troops, the 
 wise General was much to be preferred to the pugnacious 
 one. General Johnston had obtained the admiration and 
 affection of his troops ; but what is more, as the foundation of 
 all discipline and efficiency in armies, their steady confidence. 
 His removal chilled and blasted the spirit of the army, which 
 for months he had cultivated and trained; it sowed in a single 
 day the South broadcast with the seeds of distrust ; it pro 
 duced fruits such as inconsequence, folly, and subserviency, 
 never produced before. If Mr. Davis could have heard the 
 rumors which filled the camps of the Army of Tennessee when 
 it was known that their trusted and beloved commander was 
 to be taken from them ; if he could have been sensible of the 
 
380 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 expressions of anger and discontent which traversed the 
 country as fast as the telegraph carried the news of this last 
 ill-tempered and ill-timed freak of the Executive; if he could 
 have observed the rejoicings in Washington, and the dismay of 
 every Northern friend of the Confederacy, at this unexpected 
 and inconsequent folly, he might possibly have realized the 
 terrible extent of the disaster he had done by a single stroke 
 of his pen. In one day, in one capricious moment, he had 
 struck down the prospect which, in the midsummer of 1864, 
 had held the South in expectation of an early peace. He had 
 signed an order, unconsciously we may believe, but recklessly 
 we must declare, for the general and final ruin of his country. 
 It was "the beginning of the end," the first of the train of 
 events that led distinctly to the final catastrophe, the explo 
 sion of the Confederacy. 
 
 In history we are often grieved and tantalized at the narrow 
 chances on which are determined the most important events. 
 We say to ourselves, if such and such things had not been so, 
 if there had been another adjustment of mere circumstances, 
 a great disaster might have been averted, or a good cause 
 might have been saved. It is a common emotion in those 
 who study the order of events. But, in the case referred to, 
 of the one act of Mr. Davis that visibly and immediately 
 turned the balance ot the war, there is added to such dis 
 pleasure of the reader as comes from an unexpected alteration 
 of history, a feeling of irritation ; since such alteration was not 
 the effect of an accident, but of a voluntary, deliberate act, 
 which should have foreseen its consequences, and which, too, 
 originated in the worst motives of the human heart, conceived 
 in malice, matured by fraud, and executed by stealth. 
 
 "We must," said a Kichmond journalist, "think of these 
 things, for these are the causes which produce the effects. It 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 381 
 
 is manifestly absurd to put up and pull down a commander 
 in the field according to the crude views or peevish fancies of 
 a functionary in Eichmond. Such conduct of a government 
 would paralyze the greatest military genius, ruin the oldest 
 army, and render success in war absolutely impossible. Now 
 is it not hard, is it not cruelly hard, that the struggle of eight 
 millions, who sacrifice their lives, sacrifice their money, who 
 groan in the excess of exertion, who wrench every muscle till 
 the blood starts with the sweat should come to naught 
 should end in the ruin of us all in order that the predilec 
 tions and antipathies, the pitiful personal feelings of a single 
 man may be indulged ?" 
 
382 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTEK XXIV. 
 
 Mr. Davis s Idea of a " Fighting General "Hood s Battles and Mistakes Fall of Atlanta A 
 Powerful Appeal to Mr. Davis to Restore Johnston to Command Anecdote of Mr. Davis and 
 His Physician Demoralization of all the Confederate Armies One Hundred Thousand 
 Deserters Effect of the Disasters on Mr. Davis He Attempts to Re-animate the People by 
 Braggart Speeches A Remarkable Speech at Augusta The Error and Weakness of the Policy 
 of Inflation of Public Confidence The Temper of the South Misunderstood by Mr. Davis 
 Partial Sincerity of his Expressions of Confidence in the War His Over-Sanguine Tempera 
 ment Some Instances of It Mr. Davis Constantly Blind to th True Condition of Affairs 
 Extraordinary Self-DelusionExtravagance of Hope, as an Infirmity of Character A Shrewd 
 Suspicion of one Motive the President had to Remove Johnston His Weak Ambition to Con 
 duct a Military Campaign How his Vanity Betrayed him at Macon His Visits to the Ar 
 mies Ominous The Country Surprised by Hood s Eccentric Movement towards Tennessee 
 Mr. Davis s Prophecy of Sherman s Retreat Fatal Error of the Davis-Hood Campaign It ia 
 Arranged at one End, without ever Looking to the other End General Johnston Foresees 
 Sherman s March to the Sea Interesting Extract from a Private Letter of the Former A 
 Baptist Clergyman s Evangely in Richmond Mr. Davis on " Vital Points" of the Confederacy 
 An Error in his Calculation Decline of the War Spirit in the South General Hardee at 
 Savannah His Grim Telegram to Bragg Fall of Savannah March of Sherman towards 
 Richmond Apparition of the Army of Tennessee in the Pine Woods of North Carolina. 
 
 GENERAL HOOD had been appointed by President Davis 
 as a "fighting General," and he at once proceeded to make 
 good the recommendation. In one week he fought three 
 vain, ineffectual battles, attempting to break the enemy s lines. 
 They were the most brilliant, reckless, massive and headlong 
 charges of the war. It appeared as if he emulated Grant in 
 reducing the art of war to competitive slaughter, although it 
 should have been plain to him that the resources of the South 
 afforded no margin for fanciful battles. It was a fatal imita 
 tion. General Johnston had left the Army of Tennessee with 
 a heavy heart for his country, for he knew what was expected 
 of his successor, and he knew that the expectation involved 
 destruction, both to that army and to the Confederacy. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 383 
 
 Hood retired his reduced army into Atlanta, only to make 
 another mistake. General Johnston had earnestly soaght the 
 transfer of Forrest s cavalry to operate in Sherman s rear, 
 knowing how necessary it was to keep the little cavalry that 
 properly belonged to his arrny, to watch the movements of 
 the enemy and to entangle his flanks. Hood sent off his 
 entire cavalry towards Chattanooga ; Sherman, with his flanks 
 now easily protected, moved to the South, repulsed an at 
 tempt to dislodge him, broke the Macon road, severed 
 Atlanta entirely from its supplies and "the Gate City" fell, 
 Hood retreating from it under the cover of an ill-starred 
 night. 
 
 It was a disaster of fearful import to the South, but only 
 such as had been expected by intelligent persons who fore 
 saw the consequences of Johnston s removal. It was the 
 occasion however of a new appeal to Mr. Davis ; and for some 
 time a brave endeavor was made to repair as far as possible 
 the disaster, and to avert the demoralization which was now 
 swiftly pervading the Confederacy. All in Georgia was not 
 yet lost ; there yet remained between Atlanta and Macon the 
 army of Hood which had secured its retreat, shattered and 
 demoralized it is true, but which might yet respond to the 
 inspiration of the return of its old commander, and thus be 
 enabled to check the further advance of the flushed and inso 
 lent enemy. It was not too late to restore Johnston to com 
 mand ; it was the natural and obvious remedy ; and it was 
 supposed that, after a lesson so plain and severe as Mr. Davis 
 had derived from his removal, he would be more accessible 
 to the popular appeal and argument, and might relent in his 
 personal enmity toward the unjustly treated commander. He 
 had removed Johnston for the ostensible reason that he had 
 not been perfectly confident of holding Atlanta. Why should 
 
384 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 he not remove Hood for the solid and greater reason that he 
 had lost it ? 
 
 An urgent and imposing appeal for the restoration of John 
 ston was prepared. Nearly all the newspapers joined in it.. 
 Members of Congress visited the President as petitioners; 
 every influence around him was, as far as possible, employed 
 to change his purposes concerning Johnston, and to shake 
 his obstinacy ; and even the intercessions of many of those 
 who were recognized favorites of Mr. Davis were secured to 
 reinforce the appeal. He was inexorable. On one occasion 
 his family physician ventured to tell him that the public ex 
 pectation was that he would relent, and that Johnston would 
 be restored to command. "Doctor," replied Mr. Davis, "do 
 
 you believe in homoeopathy similia simililus curantur like 
 
 cures like ? Anyhow, I am not disposed to practise it in my 
 government. I will not attempt to cure disasters of the 
 country by imposing upon it the very man in whom these 
 disasters originated, and whom I hold to be the author of the 
 greatest misfortunes of the Confederacy. The people may be 
 sure that I shall not give them another dose of Johnston." 
 
 Nothing being done by any change in the administration 
 at Eichmond, or any new disposition of the commander in 
 the field to break the fall of Atlanta, the worst consequences 
 of this event were rapidly realized. The most deplorable 
 effect was the demoralization, which was not confined to the 
 army yet commanded by Hood, but which quickly spread 
 through all the camps of the Confederacy, and involved the 
 whole people. Two or three months after the great disaster, 
 it was estimated that the desertions from the Confederate 
 armies for the yet unfinished year had reached one hundred 
 thousand men ! The narrowed limits of the war, the threat 
 ened loss of the vast agricultural interest in Georgia, the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 385 
 
 depletion of the armies, were subjects of painful contempla 
 tion, where but a short time before had reigned the prospect 
 of an early peace. The discouragement of the people was 
 expressed in sneers, lamentations, and misgivings of the 
 future. 
 
 Mr. Davis was not moved by the popular discontent and 
 alarm to give up any of his personal prejudices. But he 
 could not be wholly insensible to these appeals ; he saw that 
 he had committed a great mistake and produced a great dis 
 aster, and he proposed in his characteristic way to cover up 
 the latter by boastful speeches and messages by putting a 
 fine complexion on the affairs of the country, when they were 
 verging to the worst. He had tried this weak remedy more 
 than once in the history of the war, experimenting upon the 
 popular sentiment by braggadocio. He now proposed to 
 visit the camps of Hood, in Georgia, to harangue the people 
 by the way, and to try what his ingenuity of words might 
 accomplish to cure the popular despondency. Some of these 
 speeches are curiosities in the way of swollen and braggart 
 rhetoric. 
 
 At Augusta, Georgia, he said: "Those who see no hope 
 "now, who have lost confidence, are to me like those of 
 " whose distorted vision it is said, they behold spots upon the 
 " sun. Such are the croakers who seem to forget the 
 " battles that have been won, and the men who have fought ; 
 " who forget that in the magnitude of those battles and the 
 " heroism of those men, this struggle exceeds all that his- 
 " tory records. We commenced the fight without an army, 
 i( without a navy, without arsenals, without mechanics, with- 
 " out money, and without credit. Four years we have 
 " stemmed the tide of invasion, and to-day are stronger than 
 11 when the war began; better able now than ever to repulse 
 25 
 
386 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 " the Yandal who is seeking our overthrow. Once we im- 
 H ported the commonest articles of daily use, and brought in 
 " from beyond our borders even bread and meat. Now the 
 " State of Georgia alone produces food enough not only for 
 " her own people, and the army within it, but feeds, too, the 
 11 army of Virginia.* Once we had no arms, and could receive 
 no soldier but those who came to us armed. Now we have 
 " arms for all, and are begging men to bear them. This city 
 " of Augusta alone produces more powder than the army can 
 " burn. All things are fair, and this Confederacy is not yet 
 " played out, as those declare who spread their own des- 
 " pondency over the whole body politic." 
 
 Of the absurd exaltation of such speeches a part must 
 have necessarily been insincere. There is something to be 
 accounted to braggadocio to the bad calculation of raising 
 the spirits of a fatigued and despondent people, by false pic 
 tures of hope and delusive promises of success. 
 
 As the author has had other occasion to observe of Mr. 
 Davis, "his flippant prophecies of speedy success were 
 doubtless intended to animate the South. But in this respect 
 it was the thought of a small mind, a shallow trick ; and it 
 had the fault, too, of being calculated without reference to a 
 peculiar temper of the Southern people in the war. That 
 temper was one of impatience, almost of mutiny, under pe 
 culiar hardships ; and thoughtful men remarked it more than 
 once in the exhibitions of the war. It grew out of the very 
 elements of Southern society. Here was a people of singu 
 larly high spirit, who had enjoyed a previous prosperity 
 perhaps greater than that of any other community of equal 
 numbers on earth, who had lived, although perhaps some- 
 
 * A curious commentary on the necessity of the Impressment Law. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 387 
 
 times without cultivation, yet always in ease, and who had 
 their due share of republican indisposition to submit to 
 severe exercises of authority. A people so sensitive should 
 have been lightly taxed with disappointments, and the policy 
 of amusing them with promises was essentially a delicate and 
 dangerous one. It would have been the task of a true states 
 man to have moderated their expectations, and to have edu 
 cated then to just conceptions of the trials of the war. 
 Instead of such prudent cultivations of strength, Mr. Davis 
 always went to the opposite extreme of inflaming the army 
 and people with promises, and while foolishly congratulating 
 himself on the momentary excitements that flared out under 
 such appeals, he did not perceive that the heart of the country 
 was being steadily consumed by this policy, and that with 
 each false appeal to public confidence he lessened his hold 
 upon it." 
 
 But the singular remark is to be added of such speeches 
 as we have reported the President making at Augusta, that 
 it was not entirely insincere, and that while some of it may 
 be ascribed to braggadocio, some of it must be put down 
 to his self-delusion. He undoubtedly believed much of 
 what he said. There is nothing more remarkable of this 
 extraordinary man than an over-sanguine temperament, par 
 taking largely of conceit, which kept him to the last blind 
 to the true condition of affairs, and even presented him in 
 creased in confidence, self-complacent as his power continued 
 to decline, lively and hopeful when all around him had been 
 committed to despair. The man who could be so insolently 
 confident as towards the close of the year 1864, when the 
 disasters we have referred to had been largely increased, to 
 reply to a suggestion of European recognition, that the Con 
 federacy was past the necessity for it, and to decline the 
 
388 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS WITH A 
 
 attempt to secure such countenance and aid from the French 
 Emperor, as not needed to secure the success of the South; 
 and who ; when Sherman had marched through Georgia, and 
 South Carolina and North Carolina, almost to the borders of 
 Virginia, prophesied that he would be speedily destroyed, 
 and that peace and independence were only a few months 
 distant, might well be accounted as suffering from self-delu 
 sion, and not altogether insincere, in speaking so hopefully 
 of the condition of the South to an audience in Georgia, 
 when that State had not yet been lost to the Confederacy, 
 and when the enemy that had entered it had not yet passed 
 .beyond Atlanta. 
 
 We are forced to the reflection on this extravagance of 
 hope in the character of Mr. Davis, the singular fatuity that 
 kept him constantly insensible of the real condition about 
 him, that whatever happiness it may have bestowed upon the 
 individual, it is an infirmity of weak minds, and never more 
 out of place and more deplorable than in the serious govern 
 ment of men. The common observation of life teaches us 
 that such a disposition is characteristic of weak and disap 
 pointed men. It is the source of constant failure, for it 
 excludes the judgment. It is only he who can measure events 
 that can control them ; the just conception must precede the 
 effective execution ; and it may be announced almost in the 
 form of an axiom at least, in the style of a correct antithesis 
 that he who cannot, in some measure, govern events, has, 
 in no measure, the right to govern men. 
 
 But to return to the progress of Mr. Davis s journey in 
 Georgia. He lost no time, beyond that required in making 
 speeches, in hastening to Hood s lines. It had been already 
 suspected, by a few persons in Kichmond, that a part of the 
 motive which the President had in removing Johnston, was 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 389 
 
 to exhibit some of his own military ideas, and impress his 
 own views on the campaign in Georgia ; knowing well that 
 Hood would permit such interference, and would consent, as 
 long as he had the nominal rank which he coveted, to be 
 used as his instrument, whereas Johnston would certainly have 
 resented it. It was an opportunity for Mr. Davis, which the 
 deference of Hood gave, to display himself in the field, and 
 to gratify the ambition which he had long indulged of tue 
 personal conduct or direction of a campaign. Before ne 
 reached Hood s line, he announced so plainly, in a speech, in 
 Macon, his purpose to produce some great military phenome 
 non, that he not only moved the expectations of those who 
 heard him, but excited the suspicion of the enemy ; so greatly 
 betraying himself by the imprudence of his vanity, that 
 General Grant has since written of this speech, that it " dis 
 closed the plans of the Confederates, thus enabling General 
 Sherman to fully meet them} 1 
 
 The visit of the President to any of the armies of the Con 
 federacy had always been ominous. Thereafter, the country 
 had generally heard of obvious campaigns discomfitted or 
 overruled, and the substitution of some far-fetched and 
 empirical plan of operations, such as might well proceed from 
 the vanity of a man who had mistaken his vocation. Mr. 
 Davis, as we have elsewhere noticed, imagined, after the 
 fashion of vain men, that his forte laid in what he was really 
 weakest. He was excessively fanciful in military matters, and 
 to the last, he continued to believe that he was a master of the 
 art of war. He thought to illustrate genius, while he was 
 only proving the affectation of it, in fondness for novelties, in 
 moving out of the beaten track of campaigns, and in surpris 
 ing the public by sudden and violent eccentricities. 
 
 Surprise he accomplished enough ; for the country soon 
 
390 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 beheld, with feelings akin to amazement, Hood s army turned 
 northward and marching in the direction of Tennessee ! The 
 first night Mr. Davis reached Hood s lines, he said, as if he 
 had not already advertised sufficiently to the enemy as well 
 as to the South his plan of operations speaking to Cheat- 
 ham s command : " Be of good cheer, for in a short while 
 your faces will be turned homeward, and your feet pressing 
 Tennessee soil." The novelty of the movement, and the 
 indiscreet admissions of the President, in his various ad 
 dresses, were such that for a long time the wondering people 
 in Kichmond would believe neither. The newspapers there 
 had daily contests as to the whereabouts of Hood ; and it was 
 suggested that the speeches of the President were forgeries 
 or extravagances of the telegraph, or that they had been 
 made in an unnatural excitement. At Macon, he had alluded 
 with something of vexation to the depletion in General 
 Hood s ranks, caused by " absenteeism," and promised if the 
 deserters would return to duty, that General Sherman should 
 incur "the fate that befell the army of the French Empire in 
 its retreat from Moscow. Our cavalry," he said, " and our 
 people will harass and destroy his army as the Cossacks did 
 that of Napoleon; and the Yankee General, like he, will 
 escape only with a body-guard." 
 
 The foundation of these boasts, the military conceit that 
 gave rise to them, and which was the indisputable product 
 if Mr. Davis s brain, and, indeed, ostentatiously advertised 
 by him, was *-he movement of Hood s army to the rear of 
 Atlanta, on che calculation that, destroying the railroad be 
 tween the Chattahoochee and Chattanooga, and crossing the 
 Tennessee river, burning the bridge behind it, it might 
 isolate Atlanta from Chattanooga, and the latter from Nash 
 ville, and thus cut off Sherman from his primary and second 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 391 
 
 ary bases. Yet this was but one end of the campaign. Mr. 
 Davis appeared to have absolutely never looked at the other 
 end ; to have never questioned what Sherman would do ; to 
 have taken for granted that he would have followed Hood 
 with unequal pace and in the dismay of retreat he had des 
 cribed ; and to have never had his mind crossed by the 
 thought that Sherman might march through the rich and 
 inviting country, which the withdrawal of Hood s army had 
 left undefended, to the sea. It was a campaign characteristic 
 of the partial and unilateral mind of Mr. Davis. What in 
 sanity must have inspired a movement that thus uncovered a 
 vital and most resourceful part of the Confederacy, and yet 
 assumed that the enemy would not take advantage of it! 
 Mr. Davis must have known that there was nothing between 
 Sherman and Augusta, or Savannah, but about two thousand 
 of Wheeler s ill-mounted and ill- disciplined cavalry; that 
 there was nothing to be expected of the Georgia militia, since 
 Governor Brown, whose action in the war had already be 
 come sinister, had withdrawn them from Hood, and retired 
 them to their homes, as soon as Atlanta had fallen ; that 
 General Beauregard had no troops to spare from Charleston ; 
 that Savannah was almost without a garrison ; and that that 
 part of Georgia, which was the granary of the South, laid at 
 Sherman s mercy, the fair, warm fields inviting him, while 
 Hood s army, at the beginning of winter, marched northward 
 to the cold mountain ridges, and with an uncertain destination. 
 He prepared a trap, blabbed of its ingenuity, exposed it to 
 the enemy, and then supposed that he would walk directly 
 into it, without once considering the chances of his going in 
 another direction ! 
 
 General Johnston was remaining as a private citizen in 
 Macon. His ready and even mind knew what was coming, 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 In a private letter to a friend in Richmond, he wrote: "I 
 could not tell the public what I would have done if left in 
 command. I do not hesitate to tell you, though, that if I 
 had been left in command of that army, it is very unlikely 
 that Atlanta would have been abandoned. At all events, ten 
 or twelve thousand soldiers, whose lives have been thrown 
 away, would have been saved. Nor would I have left Sher 
 man, with a force about equal to my own, in the heart of 
 Georgia, to make such an excursion as our army is now en 
 gaged in. If Sherman understands his game, he can now cut 
 off General Lee s supplies, which pass through this place, and 
 break up all our establishments for the repair of arms and 
 preparation of ammunition ; and this without risk, without 
 the chance of being compelled to fight a necessity which he 
 can avoid by marching to Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, or 
 Mobile. At this season the country can furnish his army an 
 abundance of food and forage. Sherman, in his extreme 
 caution, may not venture upon such a course. Should he do 
 so, he will win." 
 
 Sherman did understand his game. He marched through 
 an undefended country to the sea, impeded only by the 
 plunder of his soldiers; he closed the year with the capture 
 of Savannah, a " Christmas gift" to his government; he be 
 came the terror of the South, the messenger of doom ; his 
 fierce, lurid warfare spreading fear and dismay through the 
 country, failing to disturb the equanimity, the confidence, the 
 
 self-complacent routine of but one man in the Confederacy 
 
 he, Jefferson Davis! 
 
 " God had put a hook in Sherman s nose, and was leading 
 him to destruction," said Doctor Burroughs, a puddy ; little 
 Baptist clergyman of Richmond, who affected intimacy with 
 the President, and who would have said or done anything to 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 393 
 
 jump with his humor. The President was satisfied with the 
 revelation. He had said in November, 1864, when Congress 
 met in Richmond : " The Confederacy has no vital points. If 
 Richmond, and Wilmington, and Charleston, and Savannah; 
 and Mobile were all captured, the Confederacy would remaili 
 as defiant as ever." This might be true in a certain sense ; 
 but the declaration implied, as its first condition, that the 
 spirit of the people, despite of temporary disasters, was to re 
 main erect and unbroken. Could it be said that that spirit 
 was thus firm, when it had become the chief care of those 
 who remained out of the army, to dodge the conscription, 
 when "details" were purchased at tens of thousands of 
 dollars, and when it was commonly said in Richmond, that it 
 was " easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter Camp Lee " the rendezvous for 
 conscripts ; when delegations were being plotted in all parts 
 of the South for peace missions to Washington ; when the 
 desertions from Lee s army, that of best morale in the Con 
 federacy, were reported to average fifty a day ; when North 
 Carolina swarmed with deserters, so numerous, and desperate 
 in their resistance, that whole regiments had to be sent to re. 
 claim them ; when gold was quoted at 1 for 60 in Richmond ; 
 when Mr. Davis had already (in his message to Congress in 
 November) suggested the arming of the slaves, as if Negro 
 soldiers might do what white citizens, with their vastly supe 
 rior interests in the contest, were no longer forward in accom 
 plishing ; when all thoughtful persons walked with bent heads ; 
 when there was nothing of social cheer in the Confederacy, 
 only the bad and reckless revelry which expresses the levity 
 of despair ; when the newspapers were filled with complaints 
 of Mr. Davis; when the Examiner printed its famous u Eheu 
 Jam Satis" article, and when those journals which had 
 
394 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH JL 
 
 hitherto defended the President had now nothing to offer, but 
 falsehood s last refuge silence ? 
 
 But Mr. Davis remained blind and insolent ; his eyes fil- 
 letted, his ears sealed, his imagination drunken. If the 
 public had really known something of the history then 
 secretly transpiring of Sherman s march through Georgia 
 they would have been aghast at the folly of the President, or 
 they might possibly have been amused at the grotesqueness 
 of some of his affectations of confidence. General Hardee 
 had been appointed to take command in Georgia. He repre 
 sented to the government the exact condition of affairs, and 
 the necessity of sending him troops, both for the defence of his 
 department, and as an eventual protection to General Lee. The 
 estimate was that Sherman had forty -five thousand muskets, and 
 Hardee was willing to take the field against him with twenty 
 thousand. Not a soldier or a gun was sent him, and he was left 
 to his unassisted resources.* He set about securing the service 
 of the militia and reserves of Georgia and South Carolina, and 
 took measures for placing all important points in his depart 
 ment in such condition of defence as his means would allow. 
 He went to Macon, Georgia, where there were valuable 
 public shops, soon after Sherman began his march southward. 
 
 * Every soldier and gun not absolutely indispensable to hold the 
 coast line, had been sent to Lee or Johnston long ago. The troops 
 left in Hardee s department, mostly heavy artillerists, were distribu 
 ted in forts and defences along one hundred and fifty miles of coast, 
 and were at every point confronted by the land or naval forces of the 
 enemy. The weakening of any one point would have been followed 
 by an attack upon it, probably a successful one, by an enemy con 
 stantly on the alert, and whose naval resources gave him great ad 
 vantages for concentration. The loss of one point in a system of 
 coast defences more or less dependent, involved the eventual loss of 
 the whole system. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 395 
 
 There he could do no more than collect a force of Georgia re 
 serves, under command of Howell Cobb, and the reserve 
 artillery of the Army of Tennessee, which had been sent 
 back to that point by Hood, prepared to defend the place. 
 Sherman passed by without attacking Macon, and Hardee 
 then proceeded to Savannah, which was now evidently Sher 
 man s destination. 
 
 At Savannah, General Hardee received from the "military 
 adviser " of the President, the redoubtable Bragg, a telegram 
 advising him to take the field against Sherman ! He replied 
 with bitter humor that his whole available force at Savannah 
 then consisted of one hundred and eighty Georgia militia, and 
 he suggested most respectfully that Mr. Davis could scarcely 
 desire him to assume the offensive against Sherman s army 
 with that force ! 
 
 Events moved rapidly beyond the limits of our narrative 
 assigned to this chapter. It is not our design to attend the 
 march of Sherman from Savannah to Charleston, to Branch- 
 ville, through North Carolina, towards Eichmond. It is 
 only to notice the improvidence and folly of Mr. Davis, 
 which, as we have seen laid bare all the length and breadth 
 of the Confederacy outside of a small circle around Eichmond 
 and a slip of territory in Virginia, and which at the last 
 gathered from all quarters of the South, outside the Eichmond 
 lines, not more than fourteen thousand men on the front of 
 Sherman, advanced near Ealeigh. What had become of that 
 splendid army from which Johnston had parted at Atlanta, 
 and which was to achieve the wonders conceived by Mr. 
 Davis, to illustrate his military genius, and to revive the 
 memories of Napoleon ? When in the forests of North Carolina 
 it made its reappearance, only four thousand men answered to 
 the roll-call of the Army of Tennessee ; men worn and hag- 
 
396 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 gard from the hard service of winter, their faded gray jackets 
 stained with the mud of six States in which they had fought 
 or marched within the past three months, and not more than 
 a corporal s guard gathered around some of the regimental 
 colors that had waved defiantly at Atlanta, but since then 
 had never been carried to a single victory I 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 397 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Inflamed Aspect of the War on the Side of the North The Causes which Produced it How the 
 Cruel and Inhuman Spirit of the North had Increased The "Warfare of Sherman His Con 
 tract with his Soldiers for Plunder His Army Re-created by the Davis-Hood Campaign The 
 Track of his March through the Carolinas General Hampton s Reflections on the Burning 
 of Columbia Sheridan Competes with Sherman in Atrocities Devastation of the Valley of 
 Virginia Approved by Public Sentiment in the North The Last Period of the War that of 
 Revengeful Punishment of the South General Grant Involved in the Savage Warfare A New 
 Theory of the Enemy s Raids Their Extraordinary Moral Effect on the South Change of 
 Warfare on the Confederate Bide, Correspondent to the Increased Atrocities of the Enemy Mr. 
 Davis Refuses any Plan of Open and Manly Retaliation How he Treated his Friends, and 
 how his Enemies A Curious Sort of Obstinacy Reminiscences of General Lee in Pennsyl 
 vaniaGeneral Early s Feat of Incendiarism Secret Expeditions to Fire Northern Cities, etc. 
 A Mean and Paltry Substitute for Legitimate Retaliation Curious Method of Taking Revenge 
 upon the North Mr. Davis s Responsibility for Firing Northern Cities and Robbing Northern 
 Banks Revelations of the St. Albans Raiders and the Chesapeake "Pirates" One of Morgan s 
 Men to Fire Chicago To what Extent these Bad Enterprises were Countenanced by Mr. Davis 
 Secrets of the Confederate Passport Office Revelations of a Member of Congress Mr. Davis 
 and "Confidence Men " A Peep at his Ante-Room Romantic Story of an Italian Adventurer 
 in Richmond The Carbonari and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Mr. Davis Innocent 
 of any Conspiracy against the Life of Lincoln A Playful Allusion to the Abduction of the 
 Northern President What Mr. Davis Thought of his Rival at Washington. 
 
 ABOUT the time of Sherman s march through the South, the 
 war on the enemy s side assumed an aspect so new, and so 
 exaggerated, and so decided, that we cannot pass it without 
 notice. The fall of Atlanta, the encouragement it bestowed on 
 all the armies of the North, the consequent defeat and diminu 
 tion of the Democratic party, the re-election of Lincoln, made 
 the enemy so confident of success, that there was no longer 
 any occasion to bridle the real passions of the war, or to 
 practice any show of moderation. It was remarked through 
 out the war that the North became insolent and ferocious as 
 
398 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 it gained successes. Now, since it had passed, as it supposed, 
 the crisis of the war, and was assured of speedy and complete 
 victory, the mask of humanity, already thin enough, was 
 thrown off, and the formerly pent up hate of the North had 
 full sway. It appeared as if a calculation had been made of 
 using the little time left of the war in making excessive re 
 prisals of vengeance for what the North had suffered in nearly 
 four years of bloody contest, and while the memories of its 
 own losses were yet fresh and exasperated. It was as if, ex 
 pecting an early termination of hostilities, the enemy had re 
 solved to expend all he could of rage on the antagonist who 
 had so long baffled, punished, and scorned him, while such 
 acts of ferocity might obtain some appearance of justification 
 in a state of war, and before the South might come under the 
 shelter of a declaration of peace. 
 
 In earlier periods of the war the North had practised out 
 rages, and had shown a savage disposition, which the South 
 then imagined could not be exceeded, and which it supposed 
 was the limit of its sufferings. But now the atrocities of 
 Sherman, of Hunter, of Sheridan, went far past all former ex 
 periences of the war, and a dense, disfiguring chapter of 
 horrors was to precede the illuminated " Finis," the decked 
 scroll of peace. When Butler governed in New Orleans, he 
 had banished people from that city, but only such as were 
 " registered enemies," those being called so who refused to for 
 swear their allegiance to the Confederacy ; about the period 
 of Pope s irruption into Virginia, the Northern Congress had 
 passed a law, popularly known in the South as " the plunder 
 act," but which authorized the taking only of such private 
 property of "rebels," as might be available for military use; 
 at various times of the war, citizens had been imprisoned and 
 executed, and in some instances as felons, but even these 
 
SECRET HISTORY OP THE CONFEDERACY. 399 
 
 capital outrages had been done under some affected forms of 
 law, and with some show of trial. Now, Sherman did not 
 hesitate to exile from their homes whole and indiscriminate 
 populations, men, women, and children, as when, in his 
 characteristic slang, he " wiped out" Atlanta ; now, all private 
 property, of every species and in every place, dwelling-houses, 
 furniture in the chambers of the. sick, jewelry on the persons 
 of ladies, were given over to the marauder or the incendiary, 
 and every soldier in Sherman s army was a licensed plun 
 derer ; now, peaceful citizens were dragged to unwholesome 
 prisons, were driven as cattle in the rear of the invading 
 army, or were shot down at the doors of their houses, for no 
 other offence than that of attempting to defend their property. 
 The immediate occasion of license which Sherman gave to 
 his army is interesting} as it has been suggested by General 
 Johnston. The latter commander has explained that one of 
 his calculations in resting at Atlanta, and there taxing the 
 time of the enemy, was that he expected a considerable part 
 of Sherman s army to be discharged, as the time lor which 
 the troops enlisted expired. This army had been formed in 
 1861 for three years ; the terms of most of the regiments had 
 been served out, and a very large number refused to re-enlist. 
 But the capture of Atlanta came in time to relieve the Federal 
 General from the unwillingness of his soldiers to continue the 
 campaign ; and what inducements were offered to secure their 
 re-enlistment may be inferred from the license which they 
 indulged in the long marches of the months that followed. 
 It was a matter of contract. The Federal soldiers were in 
 duced to believe that they had done enough for glory, that 
 they had now only to fight for booty ; and when the modern 
 Vandal marched from Atlanta his sword pointed to the pri 
 vate wealth of three States as the argument for re-enlistment. 
 
400 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The wretched Davis-Hood device which had uncovered these 
 States, had re-created Sherman s army, and, besides giving it 
 opportunity, had supplied it with animation to make the most 
 of it. 
 
 The narrative of Sherman s march through the Carolina^ 
 will be read over the world as a graphic and fearfully pic 
 turesque illustration of the barbarities of war, when the apo 
 crypha or more doubtful stories of Goth and Yandal are for 
 gotten. Wide-spreading columns of smoke rose wherever 
 went that army of destruction. These fearful evidences of 
 its march stood constantly in the sky, signals by which the 
 marauders who had wandered miles away to plunder -were 
 guided back to the main army. Pillagers, incendiaries, 
 "bummers." black and white thieves, recruited on the march 
 and conveniently called "emigrants," were put under the 
 charge of men who had escaped from the Confederate prisons, 
 on the calculation that such officers would be most cruel and 
 ferocious, and that they might have an opportunity to avenge 
 the memories of Andersonville and Salisbury. These preda 
 tory and murderous bands spared nothing. On the black, 
 slow length of an army choked with emigrant trains, laden 
 with plunder, picturesque with a barbaric caravansary, there 
 were carried devastation, ruin and horror. The smoke of a 
 hundred conflagrations arose to the sunlit sky, and at night a 
 gleam brighter and more lurid than that on the horizon of 
 evening, shot from every verge. The land was desolated and 
 scorched, dwelling-houses were robbed and then wantonly 
 fired, the shrines of religion WQTQ violated, women were in 
 sulted, and in many a household there was an agony more 
 bitter than death. Looking over the smoking ruins of the 
 once beautiful city of Columbia, his own cherished home in 
 volved in the destruction, General Wade Hampton wrote to 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 401 
 
 the conqueror, who had just threatened him because some 
 Federal pillagers had been killed by men defending their 
 property: You are particular in defining and claiming 
 1 war rights. May I ask if you enumerate among them the 
 right to fire upon a defenceless city without notice ; to burn 
 that city to the ground after it had been surrendered by the 
 authorities, who claimed, though in vain, that protection 
 which is always accorded in civilized warfare to non-combat 
 ants; to fire the dwelling-houses of citizens, after robbing 
 them, and to perpetrate even darker crimes than these 
 crimes too black to be mentioned ?" 
 
 The outrages of Sherman were not only sustained but en 
 couraged by a public sentiment in the North ; and the con 
 tagion of his example was soon illustrated in all the Federal 
 armies. In the Valley of Virginia where Jackson had 
 planted crimson, glorious memories, and where Early had 
 just made a counterpart of Hood s wretched campaign, and 
 had left behind him a monument of shame Sheridan vied 
 with Sherman in the work of destruction, and appeared to 
 envy him for the popularity of the ruffian and the incendiary. 
 " I have destroyed," he wrote gleefully, " over two thousand 
 barns filled with wheat, hay and farming implements, and 
 over seventy mills filled with wheat and flour." The bright, 
 tempered sword was laid aside for the indiscriminating, re 
 lentless, merciless torch. A spectator in Sheridan s army 
 touched by scenes he was compelled to witness has thus 
 written of them : " The wailing of women and children 
 mingling with the crackling of flames, has sounded from 
 scores of dwellings. I have seen mothers weeping over the 
 loss of that which was necessary to their children s lives, 
 setting aside their own, their last cow, their last bit of flour 
 pilfered by stragglers, the last morsel that they had in the 
 26 
 
402 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 world to eat or drink. Young girls with flushed cheeks, 
 and pale with tearful or tearless eye, have pleaded with or 
 cursed the men whom the necessities of war (!) have forced to 
 burn the buildings reared by their fathers, and turn them 
 into paupers in a day, The completeness of the desolation is 
 awful."* 
 
 Yet what one Northern man looked upon with a sickened 
 heart was a pleasing picture to millions in the North, who re 
 garded it as a sign of their power or a token of their 
 triumph, who had their vanity pleased or their hate gratified 
 by it. The extent of this disposition to punish the South, 
 conceived at a time when victory should have made the 
 enemy generous the breadth and depth of that vindictive 
 sentiment, which acquired such sudden growth after the fall 
 of Atlanta, and when all danger of the war to the North was 
 supposed to have passed, appears almost incredible ; and, yet 
 examined, it is perfectly undeniable. A passion appears to 
 have seized the whole people of the North to crowd the last 
 
 * A committee, consisting of thirty-six citizens and the same num 
 ber of magistrates, appointed by the county court of Rockingham for 
 the purpose of making an estimate of the losses of that county by the 
 execution of General Sheridan s orders, made an investigation and 
 reported as follows : 
 
 Dwelling-houses burned, 30 ; barns burned, 450 ; mills burned, 31 ; 
 fencing destroyed (miles) 100 ; bushels of wheat destroyed, 100,000 ; 
 bushels of corn destroyed, 50,000 ; tons of hay destroyed, 6,233 ; 
 cattle carried off, 1750 ; horses carried off, 1750 ; sheep carried off, 
 4,200 ; hogs carried off, 3,350 ; factories burned, 3 ; furnace destroyed, 
 1. In addition to which there was an immense amount of farming 
 utensils of every description destroyed, many of them of great value, 
 such as McCormick s reapers, and threshing machines ; also house 
 hold and kitchen furniture, money, bonds, plates, etc., etc., the 
 whole loss being estimated at the enormous sum of $25,000,000. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 403 
 
 period of the war with vindictive measures, and to disfigure 
 it with scenes of savage warfare. The South was to be made 
 " sick of war " as Sheridan suggested, and nearly the whole 
 North applauded the sentiment. As significant evidence of 
 the growth of this passion for vengeful hostilities, the in 
 crease of savage disposition in the war, we find General 
 Grant a commander who had never before fought women 
 and children, and who had hitherto been considered by the 
 South as conducting a legitimate contest of arms involved 
 by it, actually giving those orders, which Sheridan executed 
 as his lieutenant, but for which the latter has hitherto been 
 willing to reap all the infamy, and esteem it glory. Such 
 outrages could not have been ordered by the highest General 
 in the Federal armies ; could not have been countenanced by 
 the newspaper press ; could not have failed to awaken a re 
 sponse of pity or indignation, save some desultory expres 
 sions of sentimentalisrn or some appeals of party in Demo 
 cratic journals, unless there had been a large popular senti 
 ment to sustain such conversion of the war to the methods 
 and codes of the barbarian. 
 
 While the aspect of vengeful war was thus put on by the 
 main armies of the North, another means was employed 
 which not only served to harass the South, but is remarka 
 ble for the effect it had upon the imagination of its people, 
 and the advantage thus contributed to the enemy. We refer 
 to those numerous raids by which the South was cut up 
 those expeditions of cavalry which traversed every part of 
 the country, and appeared in places where a Federal soldier 
 had never before been seen. The Southern newspapers were 
 in the habit of consoling themselves that these raids accom 
 plished but little- of material injury, such only as could be 
 soon repaired, and they were often foolishly inclined to ridi- 
 
404 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 cule and caricature them as profitless adventures. But it was a 
 great mistake. These frequent and far penetrating raids of the 
 enemv, even when they inflicted but the most trifling injuries 
 on the physical resources and material of the South, did as 
 much to determine the war in favor of the North as many 
 considerable battles. It was the alarm they created, the 
 effect they had on the imagination of the people of the South, 
 the sense of insecurity which they spread through the length 
 and breadth of the country, the bringing home to every 
 household the fear of an armed enemy, the apparition of i( the 
 Yankee," which more than the defeats of main armies in the 
 field made the South " sick of war," and disposed to abandon 
 it. These raids of the enemy, multiplied in the last period 
 of the war we are now considering, operated largely to the 
 demoralization of the South, and were doubtless organized 
 for that purpose, rather than for the amount of material in 
 jury they might inflict. A feeling of insecurity entered- 
 every household in the Confederacy. There was not a square 
 mile outside the lines of Richmond where the enemy s cavalry 
 might not put in an unexpected appearance ; and thus those 
 who had hitherto lived remote from the war had now 
 its terrors brought to their doors. For one act of outrage 
 committed by these raiders, a hundred persons suffered in 
 alarm. It was impossible to say what point they might not 
 next visit, or who might not be their next victims. The 
 imagination of almost the whole people of the Confederacy 
 was strained and their spirits worn by a constant anxiety ; 
 and thus, while the main Federal armies spread death and 
 devastation as far as they could reach, the enterprise of raiders 
 carried to remote parts of the country the fear if not the 
 actual experience of war almost an equal agent of demorali 
 zation. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 405 
 
 To the various outrages of the enemy what of response had 
 President Davis to make ? To the new and inflamed aspect 
 of the war assumed by the North we shall see as a feeble 
 correspondent some change in the warfare of the South. But 
 it was a change of the most paltry pattern, and of the most 
 curious character. 
 
 Mr. Davis had constantly refused any open retaliation upon 
 the enemy, from motives which, in a preceding chapter we 
 have discussed. He was not willing to risk being tried as a 
 felon in a Federal court of justice, in the event of the "rebel 
 lion " being subdued. He wrote in his messages with a most 
 violent mania of Yankees ; he multiplied threats of retaliation ; 
 but his record on this subject, as we have seen, was that of 
 swaggering menace, followed by prompt abasement. He 
 was fierce and alarming enough in his words, but when it 
 came to acts it appeared that his passion had given way, and 
 that he had recovered the sweet and Christian temper of for 
 giveness. His stern self-will, his hauteur, his obstinacy were 
 for his own people ; he could be very firm and very bitter, 
 when he differed from a Southern officer, or when his own 
 rightful counsellors approached him with respectful advice t>r 
 remonstrance ; he could defy the indignation of his own peo 
 ple in maintaining a minion or a measure ; while all that he 
 had of graceful gentleness appeared to be reserved for the 
 foe, and it is remarkable that he was never so politic and 
 yielding as when the public enemy commanded him to come 
 down from his high ground, to belie his pronunciamentos 
 and to take back his threats. 
 
 When Northern pictorials exhibited in Richmond were 
 almost weekly filled with carefully executed wood cuts of 
 gibbets and "rebels" dangling from them, not a single 
 victim of retaliation had ever been claimed by the gallows. 
 
406 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 When the enemy destroyed the products of labor, devastated 
 vast tracts of country, and drove out the inhabitants whom 
 they did not destroy, Lee s army in Pennsylvania made levies 
 on the inhabitants less severe than those which the Confede 
 rate government made daily on its own citizens. The policy 
 of the Confederate invading armies had been the rigid protec 
 tion of the enemy s private property. The orders of General 
 Lee in Pennsylvania had been, that "all persons complying 
 with requisitions for supplies shall be paid the market price 
 for the articles furnished ;" and where Confederate money was 
 refused, they were to be satisfied with " a receipt specifying 
 the kind and quantity of the property received or taken and 
 the market price," which as a certificate of indebtedness, 
 might, after the close of the war be recovered in gold or 
 silver! Even but a little while before Sherman began his 
 grand raid, General Early had an opportunity to devastate 
 the country immediately about Washington, and yet had 
 come back, looking mean for having burned a single house, 
 and pleading as an absurd extenuation, a snobbish excuse, 
 that this single act had been reluctantly done in retaliation 
 for General Hunter s destruction of Governor John Letcher s 
 house as if no one else in Virginia or in the South had lost 
 home or property by the enemy s act, and might not as well 
 as the retired Governor whom Early avenged, have invoked 
 the law of retaliation. 
 
 But tame as was the government of Mr. Davis, on the 
 subject of retaliation, and subdued as were the people of the 
 South in their sentiment of retributive justice, the vast increase 
 of the enemy s outrages, at the time of Sherman s march, and 
 towards the close of the last year of the war, could not fail to 
 effect some response. But it was a most singular response. 
 Mr. Davis yet persisted in abstaining from open and regular 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 407 
 
 retaliation. But while he was thus silent, there were whispers 
 in Eichmoncl of strange and secret expeditions which were 
 to burn Northern cities, to fire transports, to abduct hostages, 
 and to give to the North, in a mysterious way, some taste of 
 the horrors of war, to accomplish some degree of revenge for 
 what the South was suffering. Nor were these whispers 
 always low and covert. There were suggestions in the news 
 papers that the North might not have all of plunder and 
 incendiarism, that houses in New York and Chicago might 
 pay for those burned in Georgia, that the South was not as 
 helpless in the way of revenge as her enemies supposed, that 
 the trodden worm might turn and sting. The author recol 
 lects a remarkable article in that journal of Richmond, known 
 peculiarly as the organ of Mr. Davis, and to which rumor 
 assigned Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of State, as a regular con 
 tributor the Sentinel warning the North that but a few 
 secret hands might suffice to commit her finest cities to the 
 flames, and to inflict an injury as great^as that which Sher 
 man s army had done to Atlanta. It was a new mode of 
 warfare thus suggested ; it was, of course, not large enough 
 to affect, to any considerable degree, the fate of the contest ; 
 it was not useful, and scarcely considered as such ; it was 
 revengeful. 
 
 We are sensible that a great effort has been made to relieve 
 Mr. Davis of responsibility for the various predatory and 
 incendiary enterprises toward the North, partial and unworthy 
 correspondents as these were, for the atrocities of Sherman 
 and Sheridan. These atrocities were bad enough ; but there 
 were obvious open modes of retaliation, such as were allowed 
 by the honorable laws of war; and it was, indeed, shameful, 
 if Mr. Davis, not having the nerve to take these methods of 
 manly and courageous retribution, .not daring to doom to 
 
408 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 death a single prisoner captured from Sherman s pillagers, 
 and taken in the act of murder and felony, should yet have 
 attempted to take revenge in a secret, cowardly and indis 
 criminate way, by promoting or countenancing conspiracies 
 to burn houses and rob banks in the North, to fire upon 
 transports, taking the risk of involving innocent persons, 
 and to destroy, under cover of night, the shelters of women 
 and children. Yet on this painful subject we must write the 
 truth of history. To those who contend that these bad 
 enterprises was the work of lawless and abandoned adven 
 turers, and that the Confederate Government had no 
 part in them, we are forced to remark the significance of the 
 fact that such a phase of the war, on the side of the South, 
 had never before taken place, as it might have done, had it 
 proceeded only from a bad element in the population ; and 
 that the number of these enterprises, their cotemporary 
 relation, and the distinct period they occupied being a 
 series of acts rather than desultory performances are evi 
 dences of a purpose and organization which, under the 
 circumstances, only some official direction and authority in 
 the South could have accomplished. 
 
 Under the severe passport system of the Confederacy, 
 scarcely a man could leave its limits without it being known 
 to the authorities and certainly not when he went through 
 ports of the Confederacy, or through the lines of its armies. 
 Passports were given in the utmost stinginess. Especially 
 could not any officer or soldier of the Confederate armies 
 leave the country unless he obtained a passport from the 
 War Department at Eichmond, and then the business which 
 took him from the regular military service had to be stated 
 most explicitly. Yet the St. Albans raiders were found to 
 be, mostly, commissioned officers in the Confederate army. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 409 
 
 Yet tho party that, in the autumn or winter of 186-i, made 
 the "piratical" seizures in Chesapeake Bay, was of Confeder 
 ate soldiers, who had been furnished with passports from the 
 War Department, and who had gone on their expedition 
 directly through General Lee s lines. And yet again the 
 emissary to burn Chicago an officer of Morgan s command 
 had gone through the port of Wilmington, and had exhibited 
 there a passport signed by Secretary Seddon, besides possess 
 ing a general letter of introduction from the President 
 himself. 
 
 The whole truth of these vengeful episodes of the war, in 
 relation to the responsibility of Mr. Davis, is that while lie 
 carefully abstained from furnishing any direct authority for 
 them, he gave a secret countenance to them, under the system of 
 passports in the War Department, and afforded their emissaries 
 and agents facilities of departure from the Confederacy. The 
 modus operandi has been privately described by a distinguished 
 Congressman. The expeditions of oakum and turpentine 
 were not very close secrets in Eichmond. Not a few members 
 of Congress were in favor of almost any measure of revenge 
 upon the North, even to the burning of hotels and steamboats. 
 In some cases they applied to Mr. Davis to authorize such an 
 illegitimate warfare, informing him of the expeditions that 
 were plotted ; they were waived away or treated with non 
 committal speeches. But "my experience was," said the 
 member referred to, "that, although the commissions or 
 details were not given, I never had any trouble in getting 
 passports from the War Department, and in getting the boys 
 through the lines." 
 
 It was a paltry and detestable warfare ; on the part of Mr. 
 Davis, a subterfuge, and, with respect to the whole Southern 
 people the evidence of a descent from the true spirit of the 
 
410 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 war to a mean spitefulness, a disposition to wanton acts of 
 revenge when they had come to despair of success. It was a 
 profound pity that Mr. Davis could not conceive at least 
 not execute the just idea of a bold and open retaliation. 
 The proper subjects of such retaliation were before him in 
 the miscreants of Sherman s and Sheridan s armies ; many of 
 these were in his power as prisoners ; and to go behind them, 
 and substitute in a secret way, as victims of his revenge, 
 peaceful people in the North, was an unmanly device and a 
 cruel absurdity. 
 
 To the men who came to him with schemes of vengeance 
 upon the enemy, Mr. Davis was frequently accessible without 
 the intermediation of Congressmen or powerful friends. He 
 had such a weak credulity that every adventurer, with an 
 extraordinary and insane invention, found it not* difficult to 
 obtain his ear. Men who professed to have found out some 
 new form of liquid fire, patentees of extraordinary torpedoes 
 that would destroy whole fleets, the Mississippi inventor of a 
 flying machine to freight ordnance and to fire down upon 
 the enemy at the height of half a mile, were mingled in the 
 President s ante-room with men who proposed immense 
 financial schemes, after the fashion of extracting sunbeams 
 from cucumbers, and geniuses of diplomacy who were anxious 
 to spend their time in the grand Hotel du Louvre and to 
 test its famous vintages, whereof each glass would cost about 
 three pounds of cotton. There never was a lack of "confi 
 dence-men " about Mr. Davis, and among them those who 
 proposed to dispatch the war by such means as we have de 
 scribed, and who even suggested viler works of destruction. 
 
 With respect to the credulity that entertained such wild 
 and reckless propositions, an incident happened in Kichmond 
 that would be incredible but for the evidences which the 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 411 
 
 author has from one of the parties to it. This incident or 
 romance we may call it has never before been published, 
 and there are persons who, having thought it effectually sup 
 pressed and concealed, will be surprised to find at this day a 
 minute account of it. 
 
 About the close of the year 1864 a stranger appeared in 
 Eichmond, of elegant dress and manners, speaking both 
 English and Italian, and whose dark and peculiar features 
 supported the statement that he was a native of Italy. He 
 made himself exceedingly agreeable to the company at the 
 Exchange Hotel, although practicing something of the re 
 serve of the nobleman ; and he was observed with not a 
 little curiosity, until gossip settled on the discovery that 
 he had been seen to visit the State Department, and that, 
 therefore, considering, too, his distingue appearence, he must 
 be charged with a "mission " of importance. Dining one day 
 at the hotel, he took advantage of a casual remark to 
 draw into conversation Mr. Boteler, a member of Congress 
 from Virginia, a gentleman who was supposed to have a 
 great taste for learning. The latter had noticed the sound 
 escaping from a gas jet over the table. The conversation 
 turned upon the possibility of producing musical notes from 
 such a source ; chemistry, acoustics and other branches of 
 science were discussed, greatly to Mr. Boteler s relish ; and 
 at last the Italian gracefully insisted that the Congressman 
 should accompany him to his room to witness some scientific 
 experiments in which he was then engaged. The experi- 
 ments were shown; Mr. Boteler saw at once that their adjust 
 ments were those of a scientific man, and for hours he 
 roamed with his strange acquaintance over the fields of 
 science, literature, and art, wondering at his varied accom 
 plishments and fascinated by the charm of his manners. As 
 
412 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Mr. Bolder rose to depart, the stranger said with the air of 
 communicating an important confidence: "I have some 
 thing to say to you. The pleasure I have experienced in 
 your company, and the position I know you occupy in your 
 government, encourage me to make a communication that 
 will interest you. I have a mission to Eichmond, and I have 
 already partially discharged it, and am now only waiting on 
 your government for a sum of money that is necessary. I 
 belong to the society of Carbonari! It sympathizes with the 
 Southern Confederacy; and it is the only power in Europe 
 that can compel its recognition, for Napoleon III. is secretly 
 a member of the society, and dares not disobey its mandates. 
 More than this" and his brow darkened " I hold in my 
 hand the life of Abraham Lincoln ; the victim whom the 
 Carbonari designate cannot elude them." 
 
 What impression this important and terrible disclosure 
 made upon Mr. Boteler is not known ; but he has never de 
 nied that he believed what the man told him. He even 
 went to the extent of appointing a day to accompany the 
 strange diplomat to the State Department, and actually en 
 gaged to add his influence to the impressions which the latter 
 already reported he had made upon Secretary Benjamin, but 
 to what extent of aiding the mission he did not mention. 
 The day came; Mr. Boteler attended at the hotel. The 
 Italian was not to be found; he had left the hotel hurriedly 
 that morning. Suspicions were aroused at the State Depart 
 ment. Pursuit was ordered on nil the roads leading out 
 fr^m Eichrnond, and fortunately the man, disguised as a ped 
 dler, was overtaken and arrested a few miles from the city. 
 He resisted the officers stoutly and with great insolence ; for 
 some time the search to which he was subjected revealed 
 nothing contraband or suspicious; he was about to be dis- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 413 
 
 missed with apologies, when one of the officers examining 
 his boots discovered that the heels might be screwed off, and 
 found snugly ensconced therein several sheets of tissue paper 
 inscribed with plans of all the fortifications of Eichmond, 
 and with a correspondence giving all the details of its 
 defences ! The man was carried back to Kichmond as a spy. 
 But he was never tried, never punished, and we do riot know 
 what became of him the government being unwilling to 
 give publicity to the incident, and anxious to hush up an 
 affair, in which its credulity had been so ridiculously prac 
 ticed upon by an adventurer, who, at best, was nothing more 
 than a charlatan. 
 
 The singular story suggests here a remark which we 
 should make in justice to Mr. Davis and that is with refer 
 ence to the allusion it contains to the assassination of Mr. 
 Lincoln. There have been those who have believed few 
 believe it now that the strange warfare which the South 
 proposed to conduct by secret agents and emissaries in the 
 North, and in which we have seen Mr. Davis might have 
 borne an indirect share, might possibly have extended to a 
 conspiracy against the life of the Northern President. It is 
 an absurd and foul imagination, without a particle of evi 
 dence to support it, and with every probability pointing to 
 the contrary. Irregular and nefarious as we must consider 
 the warfare that we have just described, as designed for an 
 indiscriminate revenge upon the people of the North, rather 
 than for the legitimate ends of the war, or in the true and 
 manly spirit of retaliation, Mr. Davis never could have 
 carried it to the point of cold-blooded assassination, and that 
 as against a President whose death could not possibly benefit 
 the South, and who, at the time, was more tolerable to it than 
 the man who would succeed him. Briefly, Mr. Davis was 
 
414: LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. WITH A 
 
 equally incapable of the crime and of the folly of such an 
 act. As to the safety of Mr. Lincoln, the author, living in 
 Eichmond during the war, and having access to most of its 
 political conversation, never heard a threatening breath, but 
 on one occasion, and that a playful allusion in the War 
 Department, to capturing him and using him as a hostage to 
 compel an exchange of prisoners. Possibly that allusion 
 might have grown to a serious plan of abduction ; but even 
 to this there is not the slightest evidence that Mr. Davis was 
 a party. He bore Mr. Lincoln no ill-will, and it is remarkable 
 that he never designated him personally in his bitter criti 
 cisms on the conduct of his government, or reflected the popular 
 disposition in the South to caricature and abuse him. On 
 the contrary, he had a certain personal esteem for his rival at 
 Washington. He regarded him as an honest, weak man, 
 who had been used beyond his real disposition by the adroit 
 ness and malignity of party ;* he certainly had neither motive 
 nor desire to injure him in his person, much less to kill him, 
 and to inflame the North by a crime which civilization has 
 
 * Since the war, Mr. Davis is thus reported in a conversation in 
 his prison at Fortress Monroe, referring to the assassination of the 
 Northern President : " Of Mr. Lincoln he spoke, not in affected 
 terms of regard or admiration, but paying a simple and sincere 
 tribute to his goodness of character, honesty of purpose, and Chris 
 tian desire to be faithful to his duties according to such light as was 
 given him. Also to his official purity and freedom from avarice. 
 The Southern press labored, in the early part of the war, to render 
 Mr. Lincoln abhorred and contemptible ; but such efforts were 
 against his judgment, and met such opposition as his multiplied 
 cares and labors would permit. From no ruler the United States 
 could have, might terms so generous have been expected by the South. 
 Mr. Lincoln was kind of heart, naturally longing for the glory and 
 repose of a second term to be spent in peace. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 415 
 
 stamped as the extreme of infamy. Surely the President of 
 the Southern Confederacy has enough of deserved censure to 
 bear, without throwing upon him the suspicion of a foul 
 crime, in which there is not a particle of evidence <>r a grain 
 of consistency. 
 
416 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 A New Breadth and Volume of Opposition to President Davis Approach to an Internal Revolu 
 tion in the Confederacy A Coup d Etat Threatened in Richmond Animation of the Confede 
 rate Congress Appeals to It by the Richmond Examiner and Charleston Mercury Senator 
 Wigfall on President Davis A Revolutionary Opportunity Lost by Congress Movement to 
 Make General Loe Military Dictator He Resists it In what Sense he Accepted the Office of 
 Commander-in-Chief His Private Understanding with Mr. Davis The Secret and Curious 
 History of a Military Dictatorship in the Confederacy A Remarkable Correspondence of 
 General Lee with the President Some Peculiarities of the Character of Lee His Quiet and 
 Negative Disposition General Lee Excessively and Servilely Admired in the South Defects 
 in his Character A Great Man nevertheless Why he Refused to be Used by the Opposition 
 against Mr. Davis How he Secured the Favor of the President Their Personal Relations 
 Mr. Davis Affects not to bo Sensible of the Revolutionary Design against his Administration 
 A Remarkable and Dishonorable Evasion by the President His Correspondence with the 
 Legislature of Virginia His Secret Resentment of the Revolutionary Demands Made 
 upon Him Anecdote of Mrs. Davis A Defiant Speech in the Executive Mansion Scandalous 
 Quarrel between the President and Congress A Lame Conclusion of a Revolution. 
 
 THE disasters which ensued in the close of the year 1864, 
 created a popular sentiment towards Mr. Davis, that needed, 
 to rise to the force and dignity of a great revolution, but one, 
 yet an indispensable condition spirited leadership. They 
 were the occasion of a breadth and volume of opposition to 
 his administration that would have overwhelmed it, could it 
 only have improved its organization, and secure the leader 
 whom popular preference had designated. How near the Con 
 federacy came to an internal revolution, while it yet waged 
 war, though feebly, against the public enemy ; how narrowly 
 Mr. Davis missed the chance of dethronement ; and how 
 critically short of success fell an effort to re-animate the 
 flagging war in the South by the repudiation of Mr. Davis, 
 have been but little known to the world. It is the period of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 417 
 
 the war of profoundest interest, although so unconspicuous or 
 unknown in the common history of the contest. Behind the 
 panorama of battles, a great struggle of moral forces was going 
 on, imperfectly seen by the world, only scantily related in the 
 newspapers, mistaken in the North as nothing more than a 
 passing political effervescence in the South, one of its scan 
 dalous party quarrels, an episodial excitement, but which was 
 really a movement of historical moment, and constitutes, per 
 haps, the most interesting passage in the stormy and unequal 
 annals of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 Heretofore, in treating of the dulness and servility of the 
 Confederate Congress, we have referred to a brief and excep 
 tional animation in it, towards the end of the war. It came 
 from an opposition to President Davis, in which Congress 
 was led by a few men of power, incited by the press, and 
 aroused and alarmed by the evidently declining fortunes of 
 the Confederacy. If it had had the intellectual capacity and 
 the nerve, or if certain conditions had been supplied, its dis 
 position would have carried it to the extent of a coup d etat 
 against Mr. Davis. It was astonishing how, in the last periods 
 of the war, it threw off its servile habit to the President. It 
 became as men often do who have long lived in mean and 
 interested compliance, and then break away from it, sudden 
 and violent in its resentment. In this disposition it was 
 spurred by the newspapers. The Richmond Examiner wrote : 
 " It will be for Congress to repair as it best can the mischief 
 done the public service by a weak and impracticable Execu 
 tive ; to look at the reduction of our forces in the field ; the 
 decay of military discipline; the demoralization of our armies^ 
 and the jeopardy to which our cause has been put by a long \ 
 course of trifling conduct, childish pride of opinion, unworthy | 
 obstinacy, official obtuseness, conceit, defiance of public 1 
 27 ^ 
 
413 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 opinion, imperoiusness, and despotic affectation on the part 
 of those intrusted with the execution of the war." 
 
 In less passionate phrase, but with not less determined pur 
 pose, the Charleston Mercury said : " Congress must assume 
 its duties under the Constitution as an independent element 
 of power. It must abandon the idea that it is only a secret 
 power for registering the will of the President. It must be the 
 people standing forth in the light of day, clothed with the 
 whole legislative power of the Government, and with their 
 agent, the President, instrumental for their deliverance. . . . 
 But if President Davis is to be treated as our Moses, we 
 really do not see the use of Congress. If the people, through 
 their representatives in Congress, are to exercise no power 
 but at the bidding of the Executive, Congress is a nonentity. 
 It is worse, it is the tool of the Executive by which the Con 
 stitution is practically overthrown, and a military dictator 
 ship established in its stead ; characterized by a base assump 
 tion of power on the part of the Executive, and a baser be 
 trayal of trust on the part of Congress." 
 
 But the opposition that thus sprang up in the later years 
 of the war between the Confederate Congress and the Presi 
 dent, although stimulated by public opinion, and carried to 
 the point of personal exasperation, was singularly without 
 results. Some of this opposition in Congress was merely 
 petulant. Mr. Foote represented it in the Lower House with 
 voluble speeches, but without weight of character to impress 
 even his shallow audience. In the Senate, General Wigfall, 
 who had returned from the army to the political arena, was 
 more formidable. Perhaps the greatest orator of the South, 
 lie spoke with powerful effect, in language that could mount 
 from the most even and classical flow of words to the most 
 rugged and eccentric force, and sometimes penetrating his 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 419 
 
 audience with the electrical passion that would blaze in his 
 seamed and fierce face. The Kichmond papers feared to re 
 port his bitter and vindictive speeches. Only the Examiner 
 dared to tell of the fires in which he roasted that " amalgam 
 of malice and mediocrity," as he described the august person 
 of Mr. Davis. But after all, these were fruitless censures and 
 declamations, and, as we shall see, no positive measure of im 
 portance ever grew out of them, beyond a formal relinquish- 
 ment of the control of military affairs to General Lee, which 
 4 he practically never accepted. 
 
 The fact is and it is a fact that has never had its just pro- 
 , portion of mention in the current histories of the war there 
 was in the last year of hostilities a serious and determined 
 thought in the minds of the Southern people to get up a 
 counter-revolution in the Confederacy, or, at least, to over 
 throw the military authority of Mr. Davis ; and that the Con 
 gress, while weakly assuming to respond to this design, 
 really belittled and abandoned it and reduced it to nothing 
 more than a wordy and indecent controversy with the Presi 
 dent. It never represented the depth of the public sentiment 
 in the Confederacy on this subject. It fell utterly below the 
 occasion, and, at last degraded an opportunity that might 
 have produced the most important historical results and pos 
 sibly have saved the Confederacy, to a low competition in re 
 criminating and fruitless words. 
 
 Every revolution, to be effective, must have distinctness of 
 purpose, a plain and well-defined object in view, and, secondly, 
 a leader capable of representing its design and of conveying 
 its inspiration. It was on the second condition that the 
 revolution, aimed at the maladministration of Mr. Davis, 
 failed. The condition of the country in which was presented 
 the necessity for such a movement, was obvious, and there 
 
420 LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 was no variety of opinion, among those who were aggrieved, 
 as to the remedy. It was thus clearly indicated in a Rich 
 mond journal : " A remedy for all discontent has suggested 
 itself to the mind of every man who thinks, and has been ad 
 vised by a thousand mouths in the same breath. It is the 
 creation of a new officer a Commander-in-chief who shall 
 exercise supreme control over the armies and military affairs 
 of the Confederacy ; and the appointment of General Lee to 
 be that officer. Such an act, if made in good faith, and 
 solidly guarded against counteracting influences, would re 
 store public confidence, and give the country heart for a new 
 effort equal to that which it has hitherto made. It would do 
 more to bring down the price of gold and restore faith in the 
 currency, than any law that the Secretary can devise, however 
 wise in principle, and however ingenious in detail. The 
 people would be satisfied that their means are not thrown 
 away ; that the best use of their blood and property would 
 be made that could be made. The adoption of such a measure 
 would be the new birth of the Southern Confederacy. But it 
 must be a real, substantial measure, guarantied by the repre 
 sentatives of the nation ; not a sham not a duplex general 
 order, creating another Beauregard or Johnston " Department 
 under the control of the President." And it must be adopted 
 in time that is to say, now." 
 
 As the train of disasters had progressed, all eyes had been 
 turned upon General Lee as the remaining hope of the Con 
 federacy. There was an anxiety to put on his broad shoulders 
 the burden of the public cares, and to trust him for a safe 
 deliverance. General Lee could not have been insensible to 
 this trust and confidence of the people. His modesty could 
 not have barred the knowledge of it ; it was in the thoughts 
 and speeches of all men; it was before his eye in every news- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 421 
 
 paper he read ; it was the daily conversation of the people; 
 it reached his ear in every tone of expression. His judgment, 
 approved by so many events, his constancy under heavy 
 trials, his lordly equanimity in the face of misfortune, his 
 economy and readiness of resources were the only signals of 
 hope and deliverance in what was now the darkest and most 
 painful time of the war. 
 
 Briefly, there was but one influence in the Confederacy 
 that could have fully carried out the revolutionary purpose 
 of the people ; that, Lee ; and he, unfortunately, and to a 
 most curious extent, was found impracticable. He could not 
 be brought to accept the position of Commander-in-chief of all 
 the forces of the Confederacy. It is true he apparently ac 
 cepted this appointment. It was thus announced by him to 
 the public : 
 
 " In obedience to General Order, No. 3, from the Adjutant and 
 Inspector-General s office, February 6, 1865, I assume command of 
 the military forces of the Confederate States. Deeply impressed with 
 the difficulties and responsibility of the position, and humbly in 
 voking the guidance of Almighty God, I rely for success upon the 
 courage and fortitude of the army, sustained by the patriotism and 
 firmness of the people, confident that their united efforts, under the 
 blessing of Heaven, will secure peace and independence. " 
 
 But General Lee did not accept the position in the sense 
 and to the extent that Congress had intended. He insisted 
 upon believing that the President was still " constitutionally" 
 Commander-in-chief; and while accepting the position to which 
 Congress and the country had called him, in terms so as to 
 satisfy public sentiment, and end a controversy in which he 
 was unpleasantly involved, he did it with a private reserva 
 tion to respect the views of the President, quite equivalent to 
 the former written conditions that had been attached to the 
 position. This explanation is necessary to understand a part 
 
422 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of Confederate history which has been generally confused; 
 and proofs of it we shall soon see in the sequel, where the un 
 fortunate judgment of the President was still visible, and took 
 its accustomed precedence in the conduct of military affairs. 
 
 The history of the movement to place General Lee in com 
 mand of all the Confederate armies, is as yet unwritten, and 
 contains some facts as characteristic of the man as they are 
 generally interesting. The movement, as conceived by the 
 people, had, as we have seen, really the breadth and incisive- 
 ness of a revolutionary design ; it was not less than to divide 
 Mr. Davis s administration and to appropriate to another 
 his powers as commander-in-chief. Such an idea had vaguely 
 floated in the public mind almost from the beginning 
 of the war ; it was precipitated by the dissatisfaction which 
 Mr. Davis particularly gave in his administration of the 
 military affairs of the Confederacy; but even, apart from 
 this, it may be said that a serious reflection occurred to 
 thoughtful minds during the past civil struggle, and on 
 both sides of it, whether the office of President, as combining 
 that of commander-in-chief, was not really too large and 
 incongruous, and whether, in case of actual war, the latter 
 authority should not be separated, or the powers of the 
 President, as the leader and director of armies be held only 
 as a convenient fiction of constitutional law, not designed to 
 be practically, much less pretentiously and pragmatically, 
 executed. But we have no space here for an excursion on 
 the speculation, interesting as it is, and suggestive, somewhat, 
 of an anomaly ; inasmuch as we believe the time has not yet 
 come for the American people to elect their Presidents for 
 the qualifications of military leaders. 
 
 Whether or not this qualification had been considered in 
 the case of Mr. Davis, when he had been selected by a Sena- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 423 
 
 torial caucus, in "Washington, as head of the Southern Con 
 federacy and on this question we have seen the curious 
 evidence that the first programme of the conspirators had 
 Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, for President, and Mr. Davis as 
 commander-in-chief, the latter being thus assigned in view 
 of his military experience in Mexico it is certain that he 
 regarded his military office as no fiction, that he insisted 
 upon practically executing it, and that he displayed it even 
 in the smallest details, and to a point of insufferable prag 
 matism. 
 
 It has been popularly reported that General Lee discour 
 aged the movement to invest him with the military authority 
 of the Confederacy, because of scruples that it violated the 
 letter of the Constitution. But such scruples, if they were 
 entertained, were paltry and illogical; for, we repeat, the 
 movement was essentially one of revolutionary design, it was 
 to be estimated as such, and the only question was whether 
 General Lee would consent to assume the part assigned him 
 on the supreme plea of the safety of the republic. He could 
 not but be fully sensible of this plea, for no one knew better 
 than he the military deficiencies of Mr. Davis, and his in. 
 firmities as Commander-in-chief. To be sure, with his natural 
 restraint of speech, he had never breathed a word of distrust 
 of Mr. Davis ; but on this subject we need not the evidence 
 of confessions. General Lee could not help knowing the 
 incompetency of the President in military matters ; it had 
 been brought home to him; and he had had recent and 
 singular experiences of it, since the summer campaign of 
 1864 had forced him back to Kichmond. Since that time 
 the President had been in opposition to him to an extent 
 little known to the public. The people of Kichmond would 
 have trembled had they known that after General Lee drew 
 
424 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 in his defences around the capital, and when Grant shifted his 
 operations south of the Jarnes river, he wrote a private letter 
 of warning to Mr. Davis, telling him that he even then had 
 but little hopes of holding the city, and that the loss of his 
 communications, with the numerous cavalry of the enemy 
 operating upon them appeared to be only a question of time; 
 but what would have been the feelings of this people, thus 
 startled and distressed, to have known the additional fact that 
 Mr. Davis, so far from being properly impressed by this 
 letter, despised its warning, and even resented it, in way of 
 re P ] y, by urging Lee to send troops from the small and 
 critical force that scarcely covered the approaches to the 
 capital to aid in defence of Charleston I Yet such are the 
 facts, strange and astounding as they may be. More than 
 this, the President had embarrassed the plans of General Lee 
 from the moment the latter had come directly under his eye 
 in Richmond ; he had starved the army, by sustaining Com 
 missary Northrop, in the face of universal opposition to this 
 singular creature ; he had almost destroyed its discipline by 
 repeated pardons of deserters ; and when General Longstreet, 
 Lee s most important lieutenant, had ventured to write as a 
 commentary on one of these writs of pardon that four hundred 
 men out of a brigade of twelve or fifteen hundred were at 
 that time confined in the guard-house for desertion, thus 
 indicating the condition of the discipline of the army, Mr. 
 Davis had returned the paper with the imperial endorsement 
 that " the act of the Executive was not the subject of comment 
 by an officer in the field !" 
 
 Understanding then the condition in which the position of 
 Comrnander-in-chief was urged upon General Lee, the ques 
 tion forcibly occurs why he should have so strenuously 
 declined this solicitation of public confidence. The scruple 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 425 
 
 thnt to accept it would contravene the letter of the Constitu 
 tion is, as we have seen, scarcely tenable; and his opinion 
 could not have been undecided of the necessity of a radical 
 change in the military affairs of the Confederacy. General 
 Lee declining the position of Commander-in-chief, and actively 
 discouraging the only hopeful turn which popular confidence 
 had taken in the extremit}^ of affairs, yet refused to give, to 
 the public, at least, any explanation of his course. It must 
 be found and estimated in the character of the man. We 
 think we discover it in certain peculiarities of his character: 
 an anxiety to avoid the accumulation of responsibilities, yet 
 coupled with a strict sense of the duty that has been accep 
 ted ; an indisposition, not ungenerous, but severely resolved 
 to do nothing more than is nominated in the bond of public 
 service. It was as if he had said to those who proffered him 
 the high trust of military dictator : " Gentlemen, I accepted 
 the position of the Army of Northern Virginia ; I shall do 
 my best by that army, I shall fight it to the best advantage ; 
 it employs all my solicitude, its safety and success are my 
 studies, night and day ; but I am not willing to go outside of 
 that army to assume new responsibilities ; its limits confine, 
 alike, my duty and my ambition." 
 
 The future philosophic historian will probably make an 
 elaborate, difficult judgment of this choice of General Lee. 
 We shall not attempt here to anticipate that judgment ; but 
 we indicate the subject as one for profound criticism. It 
 was the moral effect that was mostly sought in the appoint 
 ment urged upon him. The Confederacy had to be saved in 
 extreme and desperate circumstances ; and General Lee was 
 the only man within its limits who could have commanded 
 public confidence to the extent of reanimating the declining 
 cause, and effecting another lease of the war. He did not do 
 
426 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 it. It is remarkable of him and we scarcely know whether 
 in a good sense, for, however excellent may be a degree of 
 reticence, a cold and barren silence is not admirable that 
 never, at any time of the war, and not even in the company 
 of the most intimate friends on whom he might have bestowed 
 his confidence without imprudence, did he ever express the 
 least opinion as to the chances of the war.* Curiosity was 
 
 * It is quite certain from all the evidences in the case, and espe 
 cially from his private letters bewailing the secession of his Slate, 
 that General Lee s heart was not in the war. He accepted it as a 
 necessity, doing what it required exactly, and even punctiliously, yet 
 coldly. Since the war he testified faithfully to the lieconstruction 
 Committee that he had never anything to do with the affairs and for 
 tunes of the Confederate cause outside the limits of his army. He 
 proposed nothing of a general nature in the war, with the single ex 
 ception of arming the slaves ; and this departure from his usual nega- 
 tiveness, the writer has had ingeniously explained to him, to the 
 effect that General Lee had a strong though secret affection for Eman 
 cipation, and imagined an opportunity of accomplishing that by a 
 convenient circuit, together with whatever might be the particular 
 benefits of the measure in recruiting his army. 
 
 His lack of animosity in the war as we find him protesting it to 
 the Reconstruction Committee, since the surrender of the Confederacy 
 is illustrated by a number of anecdotes. In another historical work 
 by this author, are the following : " In all his official intercourse 
 and private conversation, he never breathed a vindictive sentiment 
 towards the enemy who so severely taxed his resources and ingenuity, 
 and put against him so many advantages in superior means and 
 numbers. He had none of that Yankee-phobia common in the 
 Southern army ; he spoke of the Northern people without malevo 
 lence, and in a style that deprecated their political delusions rather 
 than denounced their crimes ; and he generally referred to the enemy 
 in quiet and indifferent words, quite in contrast to the epithets and 
 anathemas which were popularly showered on the Yankees. On 
 one occasion, a spectator describes him riding up to the Rockbndge 
 Artillery, which was fiercely engaging the enemy, and greeting his 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 427 
 
 kept on the stretch, but with little avail, to learn his views of 
 the probable fate of the struggle. A Virginia newspaper 
 
 son Kobert, who, as a private soldier, was bravely working one of 
 the guns. 4 How d ye do, father? was all that Kobert had to say 
 as he continued his duty at his gun ; and General Lee replied quietly : 
 1 That s right, my son ; drive those people back. At another time, 
 in sight of the enemy on the Rapidan, General Lee was standing near 
 his lines, conversing with two of his officers, one of whom was known 
 to be not only a hard fighter and a hard swearer, but a cordial hater 
 of the Yankees. After a silence of some moments, the latter officer, 
 looking at the Yankees with a dark scowl on his face, exclaimed, 
 most emphatically, 1 wish they were all dead. General Lee, with 
 the grace and manner peculiar to himself, replied, How can you 
 say so, General ! Now I wish they were all at home, attending to 
 their own business, and leaving us to do the same. He then moved 
 off, when the first speaker, waiting until he was out of earshot, 
 turned to his companion, and in the most earnest tone said, C I 
 would not say so before General Lee, but I wish they were all dead 
 and in hell / When this amendment to the wish was afterwards 
 repeated to General Lee, in spite of his goodness and customary re 
 proof of profanity, he could not refrain from laughing heartily at the 
 speech, which was so characterictic of one of his favorite officers." 
 
 To the last day of the Confederacy, General Lee appears to have 
 preserved his singular indisposition to incur responsibility. In a 
 recent reminiscence of Appomattox Court-house, General Grant is 
 reported to have said : " Lee remarked that he hoped I would offer 
 as magnanimous terms to the other Confederate armies as his had 
 received. I told him he should, if he wished to serve his friends, go 
 to the other armies in person, and prevail upon them to surrender. 
 He said he would wish to see Mr. Davis firtt /" 
 
 To his retirement since the war, General Lee has carried that 
 vacancy of opinion, so remarkable in him. He is said to be in the 
 habit of refusing to converse of the war a refusal which, we must 
 say, has much more the appearance of an absurd prudery, an old- 
 maidish estimate of proprieties, than that of a wise and delicate re 
 serve. The late war was a great historical event ; it not only supports 
 conversation, but is a natural topic of the intelligence of our times. 
 
4:28 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 said, shortly after the battle of the Wilderness, when the 
 public mind was in a momentary conflict of hopes and fears, 
 that there were men in the South, who would bestow half 
 their fortunes for three words from General Lee, giving his 
 opinion of the military situation. " What does he think 
 about ?" said the journalist referred to. "None of us can read 
 the thoughts of that impenetrable bosom. It is appropriate 
 that the hero of this story should not be garrulous; the sad 
 ness of the time renders it fitting that the helmsman should 
 guide the ship with few words spoken. * * * * When he 
 first came to Kichmond, they said he had no manners; he at 
 tended to his business, and spoke little. They sent him to 
 Western Virginia a small theatre, when Beauregard was at 
 Manassas, and Johnston was at Winchester ; he went, and 
 made no comment. The campaign failed they called him 
 Turveydrop he did not attempt to excuse himself. Soon we 
 find him in a blaze of glory, the hero of the battles around 
 Richmond. He is still silent. He marches to Manassas, and 
 achieves another great victory. Not a word escapes him. He 
 
 "Why should General Lee shun intelligent references to the war ? 
 Indeed, as a great actor in it, he owes, as a duty, both to history and 
 to present public opinion, to give whatever information he can of it ; 
 and, at least, he might be glad to illuminate some of its passages in 
 cheerful conversation among his friends. But it is said that he will 
 tolerate no conversation on the subject. When visitors call on him, 
 he makes it a precedent condition that they shall make no allusion to 
 the war ; and whenever the subject is approached, he turns the con 
 versation to the weather, the crops, or some other commonplace. A 
 gentleman, hunting some historical materials, recently applied to him 
 for aid, or, at least, for the benefit of some directions ; and he replied 
 that he had not a scrap of writing about the war, not even a memo 
 randum book to preserve the dates of his battles, and that he could 
 absolutely furnish nothing from his recollections ! 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 4*29 
 
 takes Winchester, is foiled at Sharpsburg for the want of men 
 defeats Burnside at Fredericksburg Hooker at Chan 
 cellors ville but he breaks not his silence. He has the terri 
 ble trial of Gettysburg he only remarked, It was my fault* 
 and then, in the present year (1864), he has conducted this 
 greatest of all his campaigns. Silent still. When will he 
 speak ? Has he nothing to say ? What does he think of 
 our affairs ? Should .he speak, how the country would hang 
 upon every word that fell from him 1" 
 
 We have recited, in another part of this work, many of the 
 virtues of General Lee, and much that was admirable ; and 
 yet there are faults in this military idol of the South, which 
 neither the partiality of friends, nor the glare of cotemporary 
 eulogium, can entirely conceal or compensate. His most 
 notable defect was that he never had or conveyed any inspira 
 tion in the war. He had gone into it with but little personal 
 animation, as a matter of severe and unwelcome duty, and he 
 never attempted any animation of his troops greater than his 
 own. He was mechanical in the war ; he never inflamed his 
 troops ; he had not that passion, that faculty of inspiration 
 which is at once the most brilliant and valuable quality of 
 the military commander. Nothing could be more character 
 istic of his quiet conception of the war, than when asked by a 
 committee of the Federal Congress if the soldiers of the Con 
 federacy were not less acrimonious after the surrender, than 
 were the people generally of the South, he replied : " My 
 troops looked upon the war as a necessary evil, and went 
 through it." It was a low sentiment for an army ; and 
 General Lee in his testimony evidently made the mistake of 
 transferring his own passionless character to his soldiers. A 
 great army must have an inspiration beyond the mere con 
 viction of performing a painful duty ; it must have resent- 
 
430 
 
 ment, passion, ambition, those emotions which stir men to die 
 at the call of their leader ; and, however admirable General 
 Lee may have been, in his own person, from his quasi asceti 
 cism in the war, it is certain that in this respect he was 
 detective as a commander. 
 
 The discriminating reader will perceive that we are not 
 writing an encomium of General Lee ; we are attempting a just 
 account of the man, and we must maintain both the debtor 
 and creditor sides in Fame s great ledger. We suppose there 
 are some silly and coarse people in the world, who resent any 
 shadow in the portraiture of the heroes they accept as depre 
 ciation ; who can bear nothing but the raw and garish colors 
 of the dauber of praise; but we are persuaded that the true 
 harmony of all human character, and its truthfulness require 
 that mixture of light and shade which Nature displays even 
 in the most perfect creations. The writer is an admirer of 
 General Lee, but not a servile one. He perceives at least one 
 serious shadow in his character, that marked and somewhat 
 marred his career. It was a negativeness that bordered on 
 a weak neutrality, which perhaps originated rather in a moral 
 casuistry than in constitutional timidity. It was the lack of 
 self-assertion^rather through a morbid conscience, than a weak 
 ness of will or intellect ; an indisposition of the man to go 
 beyond a technical or professional line of duty, or to do any 
 works of supererogation. Anyhow, we can but consider it a 
 fault of character. It is true that General Lee may, to some 
 extent, have been admirable in illustrating a type of great 
 ness without that vigorous, aggressive selfishness, that has 
 usually imprinted history with remarkable successes, and 
 which, according to a certain theory of human greatness, is a 
 necessary element of it ; but it is not admirable when this 
 lack of selfishness becomes a weak amiability, the lack of in- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 431 
 
 dividualism, of force, degenerating to a degree of negativeness 
 and indifference. We have no idea of disputing the great 
 ness of General Lee, and we mention an infirmity only to de 
 plore it by the side of so many virtues. If his sense of duty 
 was morbid and paltry in some regards, yet the quality of 
 mind from which these excesses sprung was a noble one; and, 
 taken with the even development of his faculties and the 
 purity of his character, constituted that pleasing, Washington- 
 like type of greatness, which partakes both of the moral and 
 intellectual, and fairly distributes the practical virtues of life. 
 No candid person will doubt the fair and honorable place 
 which General Lee holds in the history of the war ; although 
 he may be permitted to doubt whether, with something of 
 the egotism of genius, he might not have made it more bril 
 liant with respect to his own fame, and more useful in serving 
 the true interests of his country. 
 
 The man whom the South most loved, and would have 
 most honored, refused the duties which they would have im 
 posed upon him, as supreme military ruler of the Confederacy. 
 In the sense in which the office of Commander-in-chief was 
 urged upon him, he would have absorbed nearly all the 
 powers of Mr. Davis, the government of the Confederacy 
 being almost purely military, and all its concerns capable of 
 being rated as military affairs. But in the sense in which he 
 accepted the nominal title, he took nothing from Mr. Davis s 
 powers, still deferring to his authority, and using the discre 
 tion which the popular choice conferred upon him only in 
 the tone of suggestion to the President, whom he still con 
 sidered his superior. 
 
 The kindly relations between himself and Mr. Davis were 
 not for a moment disturbed, although the partizans of the two 
 were in the most violent collision. General Lee had from his 
 
432 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 natural habit of self-negation and deferential etiquette, the 
 happy faculty of managing the President to a degree which 
 others dared not attempt; and although he might not have 
 been always guilty of calculating the vanity of the latter, the 
 deference and respect he showed, bred out of his natural dis 
 position, were very soothing and grateful to Mr. Davis, 
 and secured the greatest amount of Executive favor for the 
 modest and uncomplaining commander. Bat whatever the 
 motives that governed President Davis in his attachment to 
 Lee, it was a fortunate instance of well-bestowed confidence. 
 The Confederacy had reason to congratulate itself that, for 
 once, the obstinacy of the President was set out in the direc 
 tion of what was right that Kobert E. Lee was a single ex 
 ception to that caprice, which had removed Johnston, which 
 had persecuted Beauregard, and which had once driven 
 Stonewall Jackson to the point of sending in his resignation 
 to the War Department ;* which had made such appointments 
 
 * It has been stated in an unscrupulous panegyric of Mr. Davis, as 
 additional evidence of his just perceptions of military worth, that he 
 steadily sustained Jackson as well as Lee. The statement has 
 generally been accepted as true, in ignorance of the curious fact of a 
 quarrel which Mr. Davis or at least the War Department had with 
 this famous commander, and in consequence of which he sent in his 
 resignation from the army as early as January, 1862. It was an in 
 stance of one of the characteristic dissensions of the President ; he 
 wishing to put General Loring over Jackson in the campaign of the 
 Valley of Virginia (as he did "granny " Holmes over Price in the 
 Trans-Mississippi), or, at least, refusing to subject the former to the 
 authority that Jackson claimed to direct his forces. The letter of 
 resignation was actually sent to Richmond. Jackson proposed to 
 submit to "the will of God," as he humbly interpreted what others 
 considered the human injustice of Mr. Davis. Governor Letcher, 
 hearing of such a letter, took the bold liberty of withdrawing and 
 suppressing it ; wrote to Jackson to consider the claims which the Slate 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 433 
 
 as Lovell, Bragg, Pemberton, Hood, Holmes ; and which only 
 needed, to cap the climax of grotesque selections to command 
 Confederate armies, that Northrop, Mr. Davis s last discovery 
 of military genius in the guise of the civilian, should be sent 
 to the field along with Henry A. Wise, the supreme absui-dity 
 of the war, a shallow-brained and large-mouthed charlatan 
 in peace, the elder edition of George Francis Train, Colorado 
 Jewett, and other notoriety hunters in war, a scare- crow 
 made up of buckskin leggings, flint-lock pistols, and pro 
 fanity. 
 
 But although there was no personal controversy between 
 Mr. Davis and General Lee, the latter continuing undisturbed 
 in the confidence and favor of the Executive, as commanding 
 the army of Virginia, and the former being yet supreme mili 
 tary ruler of the whole Confederacy, it is interesting to observe 
 what was the conduct of the President towards the last effort 
 of popular opposition to his administration, which was practi 
 cally to depose him. There was no quarrel with Lee, but 
 there was a deadly one with the party that attempted to use 
 him, and to put him in the attitude of the superior of the 
 President in military affairs. Yet the conduct of Mr. Davis 
 was very singular, and is not easily understood, unless we 
 regard him as attempting the most violent affectation. In his 
 public commentary on what could not have been less than an 
 attempt to degrade him, he exhibited no temper whatever ; 
 he even made a show of alacrity to have Lee appointed coin- 
 
 of Virginia had upon him, and which were involved in his relations 
 with the Confederacy and Mr. Davis, however unpleasant they might 
 be ; and, at last, prevailed upon him to withdraw his resignation, and 
 to retain "the sword which might have been dropped in an obscure 
 quarrel, and was yet to carve out the most brilliant name of the 
 war." 
 
 28 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 mander-in-chief ; but all the time affecting not to understand 
 the object which the popular mind had in this appointment 
 the real design of Congress. He might have been unwilling 
 to expose to the world the breadth and depth of the disaffec 
 tion of the Confederacy towards himself, the prospect of an 
 intestine conflict in the midst of war ; or he might have been 
 unwilling to show to Congress how deeply he was wounded 
 by its vote of want of confidence, and to give to his enemies 
 the pleasure of seeing him suffer from shame or resentment. 
 Whatever the motive, the President took the movement 
 against his authority with affected ease, and sought to evade 
 its significance by professing not to understand it, and putting 
 upon it a construction of which it was logically and essentially 
 incapable. It was an attempt at evasion, the most remark 
 able of all his sinister diversions on popular sentiment. 
 
 The Legislature of Virginia passed a resolution declaring 
 that " the appointment of General Kobert E. Lee to the com 
 mand of all the armies of the Confederate States would pro 
 mote their efficiency, and operate powerfully to reanimate 
 the spirits of the armies, as well as of the people of the 
 several States, and to inspire increased confidence in the final 
 success of our cause." President Davis replied that he had 
 desired to surrender all military affairs to General Lee, but 
 that the latter persisted in his refusal to accept a trust of such 
 magnitude. He said : " The opinion expressed by the General 
 Assembly in regard to General E. E. Lee, has my full con 
 currence. Virginia cannot have a higher regard for him, or 
 greater confidence in his character and ability, than is enter 
 tained by me. When General Lee took command of the 
 Army of Northern Virginia, he was in command of all the 
 armies of the Confederate States by my order of assignment. 
 He continued in this general command, as well as in the im- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 435 
 
 mediate command of the Army of Northern Virginia, as long 
 as I would resist his opinion that it was necessary for him to 
 be relieved from one of these two duties. Ready as he has 
 ever shown himself to be to perform any service that I desired 
 him to render to his country, he left it for me to choose be 
 tween his withdrawal from the command of the army in the 
 field, and relieving him of the general command of all the 
 armies of the Confederate States. It was only when satisfied 
 of this necessity that I came to the conclusion to relieve him 
 from the general command, believing that the safety of the 
 capital and the success of our cause depended, in a great 
 measure, on then retaining him in the command in the field 
 of the Army of Northern Yirginia. On several subsequent 
 occasions, the desire on my part to enlarge the sphere of 
 General Lee s usefulness, has led to renewed consideration 
 of the subject, and he has always expressed his inability to 
 assume command of other armies than those now confided to 
 him, unless relieved of the immediate command in the field 
 of that now opposed to General Grant." 
 
 We are almost forced to a sense of pity that so disingenuous 
 a statement, and one of such duplicity as that contained in 
 the correspondence indicated above, should have originated 
 from the President of the Southern Confederacy. The posi 
 tion which General Lee held in 1862, described above as 
 " command of all the armies of the Confederate States," had 
 attached to it the condition " with the advice and direction of 
 the President " and General Lee, having that circumscribed 
 authority, was nothing more than part of "Mr. Da vis s military 
 family," his advisor or confessor ; while the present demand 
 was that he should have independent, supreme control of the 
 armies, and supercede the military authority of the President. 
 Mr. Davis must have known the extent of this demand, must 
 
436 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 have known that there was nothing conditioned of his " advice 
 and direction" in the appointment now sought for Lee ; must 
 have known that the public sentiment was not to be satisfied 
 with the repetition of the folly of this duplex command, as in 
 1862 the wretched and worn farce of the alter ego in his mili 
 tary administration. He must have known the extent of the 
 revolutionary design upon his authority ; any one who under 
 stood the force of words could see it ; any one who looked at 
 the popular excitement could not help perceiving that the 
 question was of the substance of the government, and any one 
 whose vanity was so easily alarmed as that of Mr. Davis, 
 could not have remained insensible of a conspiracy so great 
 against his authority. It was an affectation of ignorance and 
 of indifference, that, of itself, would have been pitiful enough, 
 without the addition to it of studied misrepresentation of 
 what we are painfully compelled to designate a positive act 
 of falsehood. 
 
 But while Mr. Davis practised an appearance of careless 
 ness, in public, with regard to the popular discontent that 
 threatened him so seriously, and while he found General Lee 
 accommodating him with personal assurances of undiminished 
 deference to his authority, he nursed, in private, a fierce and 
 unrelenting resentment. He felt, although unwilling from 
 shame or from policy to acknowledge it in public, that the 
 Virginia Legislature and the Confederate Congress had done 
 him an unpardonable indignity in asking him to give up the 
 greater portion of the authority which the early choice of the 
 people had conferred upon him, and which he undoubtedly 
 held under the letter of the guaranties of the Constitution. It 
 was a deep and rankling wound. In his private conversation, 
 and in his household, there were said to be unrestrained ex 
 pressions of rage and defiance. On one occasion, Mr. Henry, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 4:37 
 
 a Senator from Tennessee, who had formerly been the ablest 
 and most eloquent advocate of the President in the higher 
 branch of Congress, was paying a social visit to the Executive 
 mansion, when Mrs. Davis said abruptly, " So you, too, Mr. 
 Henry, have turned against my husband !" " Madam," replied 
 the Senator, "I voted that General Lee should be appointed 
 commander-in-chief; not because I had ceased my confidence 
 in or respect for your husband, but the people required it ; 
 their confidence, it appears, has not been so constant as mine ; 
 and you should know that in matters of government, for a 
 ruler not to have the people s confidence is almost as bad as 
 to deserve the deprivation. At least, Mr. Davis may console 
 himself with the consciousness that he has not deserved the 
 condemnation which the people wills." " I think," replied 
 the lady, warmly, " I am the person to advise Mr. Davis ; and 
 if I were he, I would die or be hung before I would submit 
 to the humiliation that Congress intended him." 
 
 With Mr. Davis so much inflamed, in fact, by the action of 
 Congress, and with that body, on the other hand, smarting 
 under the sense of defeat which it has sustained from the im 
 practicableness of General Lee, there was but little prospect 
 of any serious and effective legislation for the remaining days 
 of the Confederacy. An open war was declared between 
 them soon after the fiasco of Lee. The work of making laws 
 and the public cares were subordinated to an angry, personal 
 controversy; messages and resolutions of censure were 
 bandied between the President and Congress, while legislation 
 stood at a dead-lock. It appeared they could agree upon 
 nothing, and that every incident of intercourse was a new 
 exasperation. It was a scandalous quarrel. Congress sat in 
 secret session, but its doors were imperfectly closed, and the 
 walls could not contain the screaming rhetorics from which 
 
43-8 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Mr. Davis suffered. The contest continued until public 
 indignation became fatigued with both parties, and until 
 the popular excitement, which had so recently aimed at 
 the dignity of a revolution, was turned to disgust or indif 
 ference. 
 
SECKET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 439 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Resignation of Mr. Seddon from President Davis s Cabinet Ugly Developments in the War 
 Department How Mr. Seddon s Resignation was Forced by a Delegation of Congress Mr. 
 Davis s Angry Defiance Daring Response of Congress Condition of the Confederate Treasury 
 Empirical Remedies in Congress A Frightful Tax Law The Infirm Temper of Congress 
 Heroic Appeals of the Press The South yet far from Material Exhaustion Remarkable State 
 ment of General Lee respecting the Resources of the Confederacy Application of it to Theory 
 of the Failure of the War A Proposition to Arm the Slaves, a Desperate Remedy Reluctant 
 Recommendation of it by Mr. Davis Summary of Arguments for and against it Public 
 Opinion Decided by a Letter from General Lee A Gross Fallacy Contained in this Measure 
 Remarkable Concession of the Confederate Government to the Anti-Slavery Party of the 
 North Jefferson Davis, as an Abolitionist Reflections on the Little Regret Shown by the 
 South for the Loss of Slavery The Law of Negro Enlistments as Finally Passed A Farcical 
 Conclusion A Negro Parade in Capitol Square Congress Expiring in a Recrimination witl 
 President Davis. 
 
 THE wordy warfare of the last days of the Confederate 
 Congress produced, as we have already indicated, nothing 
 but public demoralization. In the midst of the greatest dis 
 tresses and abuses, it was able to effect no considerable meas 
 ure of re-organization, to execute no practical scheme of re 
 lief. Nothing was done, beyond some partial and imperfect 
 laws that accomplished but little good, to strengthen the 
 army, to improve the condition of the treasury, or to revive 
 the confidence of the people. We have remarked in the pre- 
 . ceding chapter^ that, in the midst of necessities so great, Con 
 gress did not produce a single measure of importance, and we 
 have shown how it was defeated in its controversy with the 
 President. A slight exception to this observation may be 
 named in the forced resignation of Mr. James Seddou, Secre 
 tary of War ; but as the design to reform Mr. Davis s Cabinet 
 
440 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 was arrested there, and as Mr. Seddon resigned from a largo 
 share of personal motive, and without consulting the President, 
 the event had neither great effect nor significance. 
 
 But it was the occasion of a manifestation of temper on the 
 part of Mr. Davis that was not without interest. Mr. Seddon 
 was one of the President s "pets;" he had succeeded Mr. 
 Benjamin in the office of Secretary of War ; an utterly heart 
 less politician, a conspirator by nature, of little ability but 
 vrith great disposition for intrigue, a man always in the con 
 dition of servility to some other, and one not above the sus 
 picion of administering his office for private gain, he had be 
 come in his office as odious to the public as he had proved 
 useful to Mr. Davis. Mr. Foote had brought out by a com 
 mittee of investigation in Congress a curious incident in his 
 administration a small circumstance, but one so neatly 
 proved and so sharply defined that it gave a fatal wound to 
 his reputation. It appeared in unquestioned evidence that 
 while Mr. Seddon had been impressing the grain of the Vir 
 ginia farmers at nominal prices, he had sold his own crop of 
 wheat to the government at forty dollars a bushel, then the 
 equivalent of two dollars in gold ; and that the price thus es 
 tablished thereafter for this staple, and which he had raised 
 for his own selfish profit, had had the effect of suddenly de 
 preciating the whole currency of the Confederacy. In a fail 
 ing and sensitive currency subject to alarms it is surprising 
 what vast and sudden effects may ke produced by apparently 
 the slightest causes. In the summer of 1864, the paper 
 money of the Confederacy had shown some symptoms of re 
 vival, and was then received and paid at the rate of twenty 
 for one. But when it was known that a member of Mr. 
 Davis s Cabinet who was supposed to know the true state of 
 affairs had doubled the price of wheat, the twenty dollar scale 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 441 
 
 was discarded every where, and in a single day, as it were, 
 without any military disaster, without any other event than 
 that in the wheat market, the currency of the Confederacy fell 
 from twenty for one to forty for one ; in effect cheating Mr. 
 Seddon out of his profits, but inspiring a popular distrust of 
 the money, from which it never recovered. 
 
 In January, 1865, the Virginia delegation in Congress ad 
 dressed to the President an earnest petition for a change in 
 his Cabinet, expressing their want of confidence in the capa 
 city and services of its members. They represented that the 
 public spirit was depressed, that the apprehensions for the 
 public safety were increased by the berief that the public mis 
 fortunes were at least partially the result of mismanagement, 
 and that one of the most important measures to be adopted 
 was a reconstruction of the Cabinet. ,Mr. Seddon, being a 
 Virginian, and recognizing the censure as coming from Vir 
 ginians, and therefore as peculiarly applicable to himself, and 
 conscious of the excessive unpopularity he had incurred in 
 the administration of his office, determined to resign, and thus 
 appease the public indignation against himself. 
 
 Mr. Davis was unaware of this determination of his Secre 
 tary until his letter of resignation was sent in to be accepted. 
 He declined to accept it, and earnestly besought Mr. Seddon 
 to continue in office, as his resignation would be interpreted 
 as a triumph of Congress and would found other insolent de 
 mands on the Executive. Mr. Seddon insisted on resigning ; 
 he had no hope of repairing his reputation, and it is not im 
 probable that he wished to withdraw from the catastrophe he 
 saw approaching, and to retreat to the seclusion of his country 
 home. But Mr. Davis was determined that the event should not 
 bear any significance of concession on his part, either to the 
 demands of Congress or the clamor of the people. He went out 
 
442 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 of his way ; he made a violent occasion in a correspondence 
 published in the newspapers to declare that Mr. Seddon s 
 resignation would in no manner change the policy or course 
 of his administration. In words not to be mistaken he thus 
 threw down his defiance to Congress and the country, and 
 practically proclaimed that he held his government above 
 public sentiment and inaccessible to its appeals. 
 
 To this defiance Congress replied with a spirit which, if 
 translated into action, would have been admirable enough. It 
 declared, through an address of the Virginia delegation, reply 
 ing to the President s ill-tempered publication: "That the 
 friendly advice of a delegation, or the more authentic counsel 
 of Congress, should be repelled in such a manner, with such 
 claims, and at such a time, is a circumstance which we deplore 
 for the sake of the country, and, let us add, for the sake of 
 the President. It will not provoke us to a resentful contro 
 versy ; it cannot abate our devotion to the public cause ; it 
 does not alter our principles of action. But since, by the 
 publication of this correspondence, members of the Cabinet 
 have (probably with their consent) been placed before the 
 tribunal of public opinion, at issue with the Virginia delega 
 tion upon the question whether they should have remained or 
 been retained in office, notwithstanding the condition of our 
 country and all the indications of public sentiment, this dele 
 gation do not recoil from that issue." 
 
 In the midst of other distresses, the condition of the Con 
 federate Treasury had fallen to a point from which it was next 
 to impossibility to recover it. The extent of the public grief 
 and alarm on this subject may be judged from the measures 
 which were proposed to meet the crisis. There were still 
 vast stores of cotton and tobacco in the South, and it was pro 
 posed in Congress, to lay a special and heavy export duty on 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 443 
 
 them as long as there was a chance of working them to market 
 through the blockade. There were members who favored 
 yet more exacting measures, who thought that in the altered 
 condition and circumstances of the government, it should 
 take the cotton and tobacco, as it already did the wheat, corn, 
 meat and other products of the country. The latter had been 
 taken at rates far below their market value why should the 
 cotton and tobacco be spared ; and if the government did not 
 take them the enemy would, and the accumulation of these 
 staples at different points were already standing invitations 
 to the rapacity of the Federal armies. Another measure of 
 financial relief was debated. It was proposed to call upon 
 the States to give up to the Confederate government the 
 benefit of their separate State credits ; but this application 
 had been made more than a year before to the extent of 
 having the States endorse the Confederate debt, had been 
 rejected by most of them and favorably answered by a 
 few, and it was scarcely to be supposed that they were better 
 prepared now to signify thus their confidence in the issue of 
 the war, and to pin their credit on Mr. Memminger s notes. 
 The result was that neither scheme of finance referred to was 
 perfected by Congress ; that on this subject, as on others, it 
 squandered public expectation in wandering and fruitless 
 debate. There were other schemes to be counted by the dozen, 
 and not necessary to be repeated here. They were merely 
 evidences of the uncertainty of Congress. Nothing was actu 
 ally done to relieve the Treasury. Indeed it was not until 
 March, 1865, that Congress agreed upon a measure of taxa 
 tion ; and the monstrous provisions of this such as a tax of 
 twenty-five per cent, on all profits of business which exceeded 
 twenty-five per cent, of the capital invested in it, and a tax 
 of twenty-five per cent., payable in kind, on all the gold and 
 
444 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 silver in the Confederacy could never have been carried 
 into execution if the enemy had not intervened to end, alike, 
 all the troubles and all the aspirations of the Southern Con 
 federacy in the early days of April, 1865. On the subject 
 of Confederate finance, there was to the end of the war a vast 
 expenditure of ingenuity ; but it is remarkable that in the 
 last session of Congress, not a single measure was produced 
 on this subject beyond a tax bill. The empiricisms displayed 
 in this Congress ; the violence of reforms suggested, but never 
 carried out ; the increased volume of debate, yet the scanti 
 ness of results ; a condition in which legislation was no longer 
 matured through leaders, but lost in the differences of the 
 views of individuals, and in which all party organization was 
 gone but that which was held together by the sympathy of 
 opposition to Mr. Davis, suggested that weak and wandering 
 condition of mind which precedes settled despair, that vague 
 uneasiness in which men, expecting great misfortunes, lose 
 their readiness and self-possession, and cannot bear to have 
 either their hopes or their fears defined. 
 
 While the affairs of the Confederacy thus visibly declined, 
 and while the neglects and distresses of its government were 
 thus unrepaired or unrelieved, it is to be remarked that the 
 press of the South never ceased its appeals to the public. It 
 was the one element in the contest that, to the last, never lost 
 its integrity or fervor. The ability, the genius, the dexterity 
 which the newspaper press illustrated in educating and in 
 spiring the* South in its great contest of arms, especially when 
 viewed in contrast with the intellectual barrenness it has shown 
 in later years, constitutes really a historical feature of the war. 
 The Richmond press had a power and brilliancy that were 
 remarked over the world ; and it might scarcely be recognized 
 in the servile and insipid papers now issued from the dimin- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 445 
 
 ished capital of Virginia. During the war it boasted, among its 
 contributors, such names as John M. Daniel, John Mitchell, 
 Robert W. Hughes, Patrick Henry Aylett and Judah P. Ben 
 jamin. The pens of such men were busy to the last, in the 
 attempt to animate the South and to improve its confidence in 
 the war. 
 
 Within three months of the fall of Richmond, one of its 
 journals printed the picture which has been so repeatedly 
 upheld in these pages sufficiency of all the material re 
 sources of the South to continue the war, provided only the 
 spirit of the people could be revived, so as to use them. It 
 said: "Several persons have employed themselves lately in 
 preparing statistical tables of the wealth, food, and fighting 
 men, remaining in the Confederacy, subject to the command 
 of the government. They prove conclusively that the 
 amount of all these things is still very great enormous suf 
 ficient to support far greater efforts than the Confederacy has 
 yet made. To question the accuracy of their facts is far from 
 our purpose ; indeed their truth has been so long and so well 
 known to all who have examined the subject, that the proof 
 and tabular exposition seem to them quite superfluous, and 
 even uninteresting. Material exhaustion is not yet felt by 
 the mass of the nation ; not felt in the slightest or most dis 
 tant degree. It will never be felt. But the nation may soon 
 suffer from moral exhaustion . The country will never be 
 unable, if willing, to supply the wants of its government, but 
 it may easily become unwilling ; and then no pressure of 
 legislation will be of much value. Pressure will obtain only 
 those few drops which trickle from the squeezed orange, and 
 soon get nothing at all. These Southern States are lands 
 of Goshen. A hot summer and a fertile soil will always pro 
 duce a superabundance of bread and meat. They contain 
 
446 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 five millions of the best fighting people in the world, and 
 can always supply three hundred thousand arms-bearing men 
 in the prime of life. The extent of their territory is so great, 
 that its real occupation by the armed forces of two or three 
 such nations as that we are fighting is inconceivable. The 
 enemy is perfectly aware of the fact, and does not base his 
 hope of subjugation on the practical application of main 
 strength, but upon the submission of the will, and consequent 
 inability, to contend to the last extremity, which he expects 
 to see at some time spread over the land. That is, in fact, 
 the only contingency on which the subjugation of the South 
 is possible. The Southern States are in no danger so long 
 as the spirit of the people is what it has hitherto been. But 
 let us not be blind to the truth, that there is such a thing possi 
 ble as a decay of national confidence and a death of national 
 spirit. There is such a thing as heart-break for nations as for 
 individuals. There are such things as hopelessness and de 
 spair, lethargy and apathy. A conviction that all that it will 
 do must come to naught, all sacrifices it can make be rendered 
 vain by an irremediable cause, a conviction resting on 
 rational grounds, both of reflection and experiment, will pro 
 duce this state of feeling in any nation, however heroic and 
 however obstinate." 
 
 Neither was the picture, nor the reflections subscribed to it 
 overdrawn. On the llth of February 1865, General Lee 
 wrote deliberately and conscientiously in one of his general 
 orders: "Our resources, fitly and vigorously employed, are 
 ample" With what consistency, in the face of this supreme 
 and unquestionable testimony the testimony of a man who 
 never made an extravagant statement, and whose word no 
 one in the South had ever disputed could it be said that the 
 Confederacy surrendered, not more than sixty days later, from 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 447 
 
 actual pl^sical inability to carry on the war ! The fact is 
 that those who hunt excuses for the loss of the Southern Con 
 federacy in merely external circumstances, and neglect the 
 maladministration of Mr. Davis and its consequences in their 
 estimate, are generally persons who seek to cover up by a 
 gross and impudent fallacy their own implication in the fol 
 lies of the President of whom they were partizans, and to con 
 ceal their own share of responsibility in the work of destruc 
 tion. 
 
 In the list of reforms and rumors debated in the last session 
 of Congress, and bandied between that body and the President, 
 one more remains to be noticed a measure after the fashion 
 of the legislation we have already, vast in conception, but an 
 utter failure in execution. It was a measure of profound 
 interest; and although a dwarfed birth was the consequence 
 of the excessive labor of debate, the whole subject is so vitally 
 connected with moral questions in the war, that we cannot 
 pass it with the slight notice it has heretofore obtained from 
 those who are inclined to measure the spaces of history by 
 the external event produced, rather than by the principle 
 involved. 
 
 We refer to the proposition to arm the Negro slaves in the 
 South, and to enlist them in the Confederate service. Such 
 an idea had, as early as the autumn of 1864, found some ex 
 pression in the newspapers, the uniform theory being that the 
 Negro soldier should be emancipated at the end of the war, 
 and that this prospect would hold out an appropriate reward 
 for his services, and stimulate them to the highest degree of 
 efficiency. But the discussion was general, speculative, and 
 several months elapsed after the first allusions we have 
 described, and before the arming of the slaves was considered 
 as a probable measure, and had become a subject of practical 
 
448 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 argument. The public mind had to*be brought up by degrees 
 to the calm contemplation of a reform so radical ; had to be 
 delicately managed to support so great a surprise, and to put 
 itself on familiar terms with so thorough a change of its 
 traditions and old associations. 
 
 Mr. Davis slowly and reluctantly progressed to the open 
 advocacy of the employment of the slaves as soldiers. In his 
 official message of the 7th of November, 1864, he thought that 
 no necessity had yet arisen for resort to such a measure; but 
 he added : " Should the alternative ever be presented of 
 subjugation, or of the employment of the slave as a soldier, 
 there seems no reason to doubt what should then be our 
 decision." As events progressed, and under influences here- 
 ifter to be indicated, Mr. Davis was forced from this equivo 
 cal position and was found recommending to Congress the 
 enlistment of the Negro in all the breadth of this measure ; 
 and, at last, when in March, 1865, an imperfect bill was passed 
 to obtain Negro recruits, he wrote, with but little consistency 
 in view of his earlier message, although justly enough with 
 reference to the delay: "Much benefit is anticipated from this 
 measure, though far less than would have resulted from its 
 adoption at an earlier date, so as to afford time for their 
 organization and instruction during the winter months." 
 
 Meanwhile the question of employing Negro soldiers had 
 been debated from a variety of stand-points, with great ex 
 citement, and upon a singularly nice balance of arguments, 
 affirmative and negative. In favor of the measure it was 
 urged that the Negro could be effectively used as a soldier, 
 that the experiment had already been determined in the 
 Northern armies, where two hundred thousand Negroes had 
 already been put under arms and had proved serviceable sol 
 diers ; that the military experience of all nations had shown 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 449 
 
 that a severe discipline was capable of making soldiers from 
 almost any human material ; and that the South could use the 
 Negro to better advantage as a soldier than the North could ; 
 that it could offer superior inducements to his good service 
 by making him a freeman in his own home, instead of turn 
 ing him adrift at the end of the war in a strange and inhos 
 pitable country, and that it could furnish him officers who 
 could better understand his nature, and better develope his 
 good qualities than could his military taskmaster in the 
 North. These views were not a little plausible, and they 
 founded some pleasant calculations. It was estimated by 
 Secretary Benjamin that there were six hundred and eighty 
 thousand black men in the South of the same ages as the 
 whites then doing military service. Again, if there was any 
 doubt of their efficiency at the front, and until they were 
 educated to bear the fire of the enemy there, they might be 
 employed in other parts of the military field they might be 
 put in the trenches ; and General Ewell, who commanded the 
 immediate defences of Richmond had declared that with a 
 Negro force thus employed on the interior lines of the capi 
 tal, fifteen thousand white soldiers might be liberated from a 
 disagreeable duty and be used by Lee on the enemy s front. 
 As to emancipation as a reward of the Negro s services, it 
 was said that Slavery was already in an expiring condition 
 in the South on account of the shock given to it by the inva 
 sions and raids of the enemy, and the uncertainty of this 
 property represented in the low prices it brought, the price 
 of an average slave such as would have commanded before 
 the war twelve or fifteen hundred dollars being now scarcely 
 more than fifty dollars estimated in gold ; and it was. argued 
 with great ingenuity and not without force> that, by a meas 
 ure of emancipation the South might make a virtue of neces- 
 29 
 
450 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 sity, remove a cause of estrangement, however unjust, between 
 it and the Christian world, and possibly neutralize that large 
 party in the North, whose sympathy and interest in the war 
 were mainly employed with the Negro, and would cease on 
 his liberation. 
 
 These arguments were not without weight. Yet the reply 
 to them was scarcely less in volume and power. It was said 
 that the measure would be virtually to stake success in the 
 war on the capacity and fidelity of Negro troops of which the 
 South had no assurance ; that they would desert at every 
 opportunity ; that the white soldiers of the South would never 
 bear association with them, and that their introduction into 
 the army would be the signal of disaffection and mutiny; that 
 the proposed liberation of slaves becoming soldiers was to 
 give up the most important of the objects of the war, and to 
 abandon ever} ground assumed at its commencement : that 
 it would be a fatal confession of weakness to the enemy, and 
 that it would be a resort to a low and dishonorable alliance 
 far more shameful that that of which the North had been 
 guilty in recruiting its armies. The cry of " Abolitionism" * 
 was used with most effect. It was declared that the South 
 was abottt to inflict upon itself the very evil to avoid which 
 it had professed to the world that it had separated from the 
 North, and that thus while lowering the dignity of its cause it 
 would also divest it of its justification, and expose it to history 
 as a useless and wanton controversy. 
 
 The tremulous balance of the Southern mind on the subject 
 of Negro enlistments the almost equal match of arguments, 
 for and against was determined by a single event, by the 
 influence which one man in the Confederacy threw into the 
 scale. It illustrates, indeed, the wonderful power which 
 General Lee had to command the opinions and confidence of 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 451 
 
 the people of the South, and suggests what must have been 
 his vast superiority to Mr. Davis in this respect, that when, 
 on the subject referred to, departing from his usual reticence 
 or his indifference to the general affairs of the Confedracy 
 probably for a peculiar reason, as we have elsewhere inti 
 mated he recommended, in a plain, open letter, the arming 
 of the slaves, from that moment the measure should have 
 obtained a decided, almost overwhelming popular majority in 
 its favor, and been urged on Congress by the almost unani 
 mous voice of the country. Before the declaration of Lee, 
 the measure had been in such suspense that it was difficult to 
 say on which side lay the majority of public opinion. Now 
 Congress could have no doubt of the popularity of the 
 measure ; the recommendation of General Lee had reinforced 
 its advocates, and had reconciled nearly the whole country to 
 to it ; and the only thing to fear was that the large slave- 
 holding interest in Congress would prove too strong for both 
 Lee and the people. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Barksdale, a member of the House of 
 Representatives, from Mississippi, and a confidential friend of 
 Mr. Davis, General Lee declared that no time was to be lost 
 in securing the military service of the slaves. He said : 
 " The % enemy will certainly use them against us if he can get 
 possession of them ; and as his present numerical superiority 
 will enable him to penetrate many parts of the country, I 
 cannot see the wisdom of the policy of holding them to await 
 his arrival, when we may, by timely action and judicious 
 management, use them to arrest his progress." He advanced 
 the opinion from his military experience, that the Negroes, 
 under proper conditions, would make efficient soldiers, re 
 marking that they furnished a more promising material than 
 many armies of which we read in history, that owed their 
 
452 LIFE OF JEFFERSON- DAVIS WITH A 
 
 efficiency to discipline alone. On the subject of emancipation, 
 and the stimulants to be supplied to obtain recruits, he 
 wro te: "I think those who are employed should be freed. 
 It would be neither just nor wise, in my opinion, to require 
 them to serve as slaves. The best course to pursue, it seems 
 to me, would be to call for such as are willing to come with 
 the consent of their owners. An impressment or draft would 
 not be likely to bring out the best class, and the use of 
 coercion would make the measure distasteful to them and to 
 their owners. I have no doubt that if Congress would 
 authorize their reception into service, and empower the 
 President to call upon individuals or States for such as they 
 are willing to contribute, with the condition of emancipation 
 to all enrolled, a sufficient number would be forthcoming to 
 enable us to try the experiment. If it proved successful, most 
 of the objections to the measure would disappear, and if indi 
 viduals still remained unwilling to send their negroes to the 
 army, the force of public opinion in the States would soon 
 bring about such legislation as would remove all obstacles." 
 
 It is a matter of greatest surprise that there should have 
 occurred, neither to General Lee nor to President Davis, 
 while occupied with the various arguments we have related 
 on either side of the question of Negro enlistments, the great 
 and important fallacy so obviously contained in such a 
 measure. This fallacy was overlooked, and yet is not too 
 much to say that it constitutes a page for the most important 
 reflections on any part of the war. It is true enough that the 
 object of the war was not the tenure of property in slaves, as 
 claimed only by a narrow, insolent and selfish aristocracy of 
 slave-holders, and to the extent of a remark of the Charleston 
 Mercury, that lt if the slaves were armed, South Carolina could 
 no longer have any interest in prosecuting the war." But 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 453 
 
 although Negro enlistments and consequent emancipation 
 could not be construed as we have seen the attempt made 
 to be an abandonment of the object of the war, which surely 
 had higher objects than to protect a certain species of 
 personal property, yet it is profoundly remarkable that this 
 measure, in the shape prepared by President Davis and Gen 
 eral Lee, contained a full justification of the Anti-Slavery 
 party in the North, and to that extent, at least, surrendered 
 the contest. 
 
 It cut under the traditions and theories of three generations 
 in the South. The one essential, exclusive argument, outside 
 of all technical reasonings, which supported Negro slavery in 
 the South, was that that condition accommodated the fact 
 of the natural inferiority of the Negro, that he obtained his 
 best development, his maximum of civilization and happiness 
 in the condition of a slave. Beyond this argument, all that 
 has been written or spoken of " the Slavery Question," may 
 be taken for technical defences as, for instance, the guar- 
 ranty of the Constitution ; for if the slave-holder was morally 
 a criminal, he was no better than any other criminal, who 
 might boast or congratulate himself that the law did not 
 reach his case, that the statute was defective or as excesses 
 or palliatives ; for if the slave was well treated, contented, etc., 
 this could not compensate for his loss of liberty any more 
 than in the case of any other prisoner, if the fact was that he 
 was captured from the condition to which nature had assigned 
 him. Briefly, the justification of slavery in the South was the 
 inferiority of the Negro ; it being inferred from this that 
 nature designed him to live in subordination to the white 
 man, and that he was better placed as a slave for his own 
 happiness than if thrust into a violent equality with a 
 superior race. Yet we find Mr. Davis and his counsellors, in 
 
454 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 
 
 their scheme to use the Negro as a soldier side by side with 
 the white man, thrusting him into an unnatural equality, and, 
 in the promises of emancipation, virtually proclaiming that 
 his former condition as a slave was an unhappy and injurious 
 one, and holding out to him his freedom as a better state, 
 something most desirable, a reward, a blessing, calculated to 
 make him risk his life for it. It was a fatal inconsistency. 
 By a few strokes of the pen the Confederate government had 
 subscribed to the main tenet of the Abolition party in the 
 North and all its consequences, standing exposed and stultified 
 before the world. We repeat that the only ground on which 
 the South could justify Slavery, was that it kept the Negro in 
 his proper situation, in the condition that was best for him, 
 where he reached his highest moral, intellectual and physical 
 development, and could enjoy the full sum of his natural 
 happiness ; in short, that while living with the white man, in 
 the relation of slave, he was in a state superior and better for 
 him than that of freedom. Yet this important theory was 
 destroyed by the Confederate government when it proposed 
 that the Negro s freedom should be given to him as a reward 
 for services to his country ; and the very assumption of his 
 capacity and fidelity in this service was the best argument 
 that could be presented to show, the injustice and oppression, 
 and crime of slavery. If the Negro was fit to be a soldier, he 
 was not fit to be a slave. If his freedom was to be offered as 
 a reward, then it was a desideratum, a boon it was a better 
 
 state a natural good of which the laws of the South had 
 
 deprived him. Now this was the whole theory of the Aboli 
 tionists; and the world found it subscribed to, in circum 
 stances which might be thought to compel sincerity in what 
 might be easily construed as an honest confession in a season 
 of affliction and misfortune by no less a person than 
 Jefferson Davis. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 455 
 
 The concession which wag thus made to the Abolition 
 party of the North by the Confederate Government on the 
 subject of Slavery probably had an effect of which the mind 
 of the South was unconscious, to reconcile it to the final loss 
 of its peculiar institution that was soon to ensue in the con 
 clusion of the war. It explains to some degree the easy 
 assent which the South gave to the extinction of Slavery at 
 the last, and indicates the progress which had been made in 
 lessening its attachment to an institution which it had once 
 esteemed essential to every interest it had on the face of the 
 earth, and which had been placed as the corner-stone in the 
 structure of the Southern Confederacy. There is no more 
 just and profound surprise to the thoughtful historian than 
 the little regret which the people of the South have mani 
 fested for the loss of Slavery, as compared with other conse 
 quences of the failure of the Confederate cause and that too 
 after the long and impassioned defence of this institution against 
 the Abolitionists of the North ; and the suggestion forcibly 
 Ofi -Mrs how much of this defence must have been conven 
 tional and constrained, due simply to the resentment of 
 Northern interference in this system of labor, rather than 
 giving proofs of real attachment to it. Any how the little 
 sorrow that the South has bestowed upon the death of Slavery, 
 compared with other losses of the war, proves conclusively 
 enough that it was an inferior object of the contest surelv 
 not the chief cause and end of the war, as Northern writers 
 have been forward to misrepresent. 
 
 But we return from these speculations to notice the practi 
 cal result from them in the action of Congress. The result 
 was, ns we have intimated, to the last degree paltry and im 
 perfect. For three months Congress labored in debate and 
 had convulsive intercourse with the President ; and the birth 
 
456 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 was a bill passed not until the 7th of March 1865 not much 
 more than three weeks before the fall of Richmond that 
 brought the whole matter to an impotent and ridiculous con 
 clusion. The law, as finally enacted was merely to authorize 
 the President to receive into the military service such able- 
 bodied slaves as might be patriotically tendered by their mas 
 ters, to be employed in whatever capacity he might direct ; 
 no change to be made in the relation of owners of slaves, at 
 least so far as it appeared in the bill. The fruits of this 
 emasculated measure were two companies of blacks organized 
 from some Negro vagabonds in Richmond, which were al 
 lowed to give balls at the Libby Prison and were exhibited 
 in fine, fresh uniforms on Capitol Square, as decoys to obtain 
 sable recruits. But the mass of their colored brethren looked 
 on the parade with unenvious eyes, and little boys exhibited 
 the early prejudices of race by pelting the fine uniforms with 
 mud. The paltriness of the law referred to, was a stock of 
 ridicule and the occasion of a new contempt for Congress. It 
 was seriously interesting only as showing that vague despera 
 tion in the Confederacy which caught at straws ; an indication 
 of the want of nerve in it to make a practical and distinct 
 effort for safety ; and a specimen of those absurdly small laws 
 of Congress, measured with reference to the necessities for 
 which its legislation was invoked. 
 
 All hopes of reviving the war by any action of Congress 
 had faded out and disappeared. The day of its final dissolu 
 tion was near at hand ; and yet there was nothing but trifles 
 and quarrels to the end. It is, indeed, remarkable of the 
 Confederate Congress, which had lived so dishonorably, giv 
 ing so much of imbecile and disgraceful record to the South 
 ern story of the war, that it should have fitly expired in a 
 weak and disreputable recrimination with President Davis. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 457 
 
 Its last official act was to raise a committee in the Senate to 
 report upon a message in which Mr. Davis had reproved it 
 for designing to abandon the affairs of the Confederacy, and 
 to leave important interests unprovided for, as the enemy ap 
 proached and pressed upon the capital. He wrote: "The 
 capital of the Confederate States is now threatened, and it is 
 in greater danger than it has heretofore been during the war." 
 Congress replied that it had finished its legislation, that it 
 proposed to adjourn, and that whatever culpability there 
 might be for any improvidence of the Government, it did not 
 lie at the doors of the legislative department. It adjourned 
 on the 18th of March, 1865, unwilling to witness the end 
 which it saw approaching, and repeating the cowardice of its 
 flight in 1862, refused to take any official lot in the final 
 catastrophe. Thus meanly expired a legislative body, re 
 markable in the annals of the world for its weakness and 
 ignorance, whose record was a constant degradation of the 
 Confederate name, and whose composition and nature will 
 afford to the future historian an especial study among the 
 contradictions and curiosities of the late war. 
 
458 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 JLn Unexpected Test of the Spirit of the South The Fortress Monroo Peace Commission Mr. 
 Blair s Visit to Richmond Review of Peace Movements in the Confederacy Critical Analysis 
 of the Peace Party in the South Three Elements or Classes hi it Mr. Davis Ultimately 
 Joins the Third Class of Peace Men Governor Vance s Exposition of this Class Correspond 
 ence between him and President Davis The Idea in this Correspondence Renewed, a Year 
 thereafter The Fortress Monroe Commission, the Result Sec ret Design of Mr. Davis to Kill 
 off the Peace Movement How this Design was Served by the Official Report of the Com 
 missioners A Day of Speech-Making in Richmond Speeches of Mr. Hunter and Mr. Benja 
 min Unexpected Appearance of Mr. Davis in Metropolitan Hall The Most Eloquent Speech 
 of his Life It was never Reported Summary of it A Brief Excitement in the South Followed 
 by a Failure of Resolution The Character of the Southern People Impaired Fatal Defect of 
 Mr. Davis as a Ruler in his Ignorance of the People His Power to Inspire the People Gone 
 A Curious Reason for the Failure to Re-animate the South after the Fortress Monroe Com 
 mission Doubts Thrown on the Truth of the Report of the Commissioners Singular and 
 Remarkable Delusion of the South as to the Consequences of Submission Extent of the False 
 Trust in the Enemy s Generosity "Subjugation" Treated as a Scare-Crow Hopes of Saving 
 Something from the Abolition of Slavery A Singular Conversation of President Lincoln 
 An Amiable Episode of the Fortress Monroe Commission Impressive Warnings in Richmond 
 Against a "Deceptive Reconstruction" To what Degree the South was Conquered by Antici 
 pations of the Generosity of the North A Justification of the War on Retrospect Examples 
 of the Credulity of the South How it has Lingered Since the War. 
 
 IN" the month of February, 1865, an event came from an 
 unexpected quarter, and apparently of the enemy s own 
 motion, which, for a time, afforded some prospect of re 
 animating the South in the war, and arming it with a new 
 resolution to continue it, even despite the disaffection and 
 distrust which had been produced by its own government. 
 This event was the memorable Fortress Monroe Commission ; 
 the declaration there of the harsh and arrogant ultimatum 
 of the North ; the rebuff of the Southern Commissioners ; and 
 what was apparently the authentic statement of the conse- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 459 
 
 quences of the surrender of the South, which were thought 
 by some persons, calculated to raise the efforts of the Con 
 federacy, regarding it, as they did, in that condition and 
 spirit where the insolent demands of an enemy are more 
 likely to give increase of resentment and resolution than to 
 compel assent and produce the indifference of despair. But 
 this test of the true condition of the Southern mind the 
 question whether the point to which its hopes had sunk, 
 was that where an increased menace would sink it still 
 further, or that where it would cause it to rebound was yet 
 to be determined ; and the decision was eagerly looked for 
 by parties standing on each side of the question, and each 
 looking at it from his own stand-point of speculation. 
 
 In the preceding month of January, Mr. Francis P. Blair 
 had visited Richmond, coming from Washington ; and 
 although he disclaimed any official character, his earnest 
 application to Mr. Davis for a letter that would signify his 
 willingness to send or receive commissioners authorized to 
 treat of peace, disclosed a distinct purpose in which he must 
 have been serving the views of the Federal Government. 
 The letter was given. But it was in Mr. Davis s usual 
 equivocal and circumlocutory way when approaching the 
 powers at Washington ; it being addressed to Mr. Blair him 
 self, and containing such a specimen of diplomatic certainty 
 and perspicuity, as that he was willing to " renew the effort 
 to enter into forms by which the public interests are to be 
 subserved." The result of the irregular and tentative mis 
 sion of Mr. Blair, was that President Lincoln and his Secre 
 tary of State, Mr. Seward, were met near Fortress Monroe 
 by three commissioners appointed by Mr. Davis (Vice-Presi 
 dent Stephens, Senator Hunter, and Judge Campbell) ; that 
 a conference of some hours took place; and what is most 
 
460 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 remarkable that although this conference resulted in not a 
 single article of agreement, it ended with mutual satisfaction 
 the South promising itself that a sine qua non so harsh as 
 that which was submitted would give fresh inspiration to its 
 war, and the North (or the dominant party there) congratu 
 lating itself that the Washington Government might be 
 trusted to abate none of the objects of the war, to show no 
 weak mercy to " rebels," who might be regarded as already 
 driven to the attitude of supplication, but to exact all de 
 mands it had ever made upon an enemy now sure to be 
 conquered. 
 
 But before proceeding to the minutes of this conference, we 
 must go back over a considerable space in the chronological 
 order of the war. The true internal history of the Fortress 
 Monroe Commission commences more than a year later than 
 the time it actually met on board a steamer moored near the 
 shores of Virginia. From the time the military fortunes of 
 the Confederacy commenced to decline, and in exact inverse 
 proportion to this decline, there had grown up a peace party 
 in the South proposing in reality terms of submission, but 
 scarcely venturing in public to do more than insist that the 
 Richmond Government should open negotiations with the 
 enemy on the pretence, which it knew to be false but which 
 served its purpose of deceiving the people, that terms much 
 short of subjugation could be obtained. We are thus de 
 scribing the majority of the peace party in the South. But 
 that party was really composed of three elements ; and it is 
 from failure to observe the distinctions of opinion in it, the 
 want of a correct analysis, that it has suffered from a con 
 fused and sometimes unjust commentary from most of the 
 writers who have assumed to criticise it. First, there was 
 the old Union party proper, the " submissionists," who 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 461 
 
 formed the early bulk of what came to be generally desig 
 nated as the peace party of the South. Secondly, there was a 
 large number of persons acting with them to the point of 
 asking that an effort should be made at negotiations, under 
 the delusion, which their more designing associates busily 
 practiced upon them, that terms might be obtained from the 
 enemy short of the sacrifice of the independence of the South. 
 What was the hypocritical pretence of the " subrnissionists " 
 was the sincere belief of those we may call the " optimists." 
 This second element in the "peace movement" thus named 
 for convenience, became, as we shall hereafter see, considera 
 bly enlarged and powerful towards the end of the war under 
 the operation of peculiar influences. But there was a third 
 party or class in this movement, yet more remarkable and 
 of the most curious construction which so far from coin 
 ciding with the "submissionists" was really the party of 
 extreme Southern views, representing the most determined 
 spirit of resistance to the North, yet joining persistently in 
 the demand for peace negotiations, on the calculation that 
 the result of them in what they imagined would be the rejec 
 tion of all propositions other than the abject submission and 
 ruin of the South, would inflame the war, and strengthen the 
 resolution of the Confederacy to continue it. 
 
 To this third party belonged Governor Yance of North 
 Carolina; and to it was finally won over President Davis, 
 but not without difficulty, and not until near the close of the 
 war. A correspondence between these men, more than a 
 year before the date of the Fortress Monroe Commission, fur 
 nishes the proper logical commencement of the peace move 
 ment, so far as Mr. Davis was involved in it, and should be 
 studied as a preface to the negotiations that preceded but a 
 few weeks the close of the war. The letter of Governor 
 Vance was brief and pithy, as follows : 
 
462 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT. 
 
 KALEIGH, December 30, 1863. 
 
 His Excellency President Davis : MY DEAR SIR : After a careful 
 consideration of all the sources of discontent in North Carolina, I 
 have concluded that it will be impossible to remove it except by 
 making some effort at negotiation with the enemy. The recent action 
 of the Federal House of Representatives, though meaning very little, 
 has greatly excited the public hope that the Northern mind is looking 
 toward peace. I am promised by all men who advocate this course, 
 that, if fair terms are rejected, it will tend greatly to strengthen and 
 intensify the war feeling, and will rally all classes to a more cordial 
 support of the Government. And, although our position is well- 
 known, as demanding only to be let alone, yet it seems to me that for 
 the sake of humanity, without having any weak or improper motives 
 attributed to us, we might, with propriety, constantly tender negotia 
 tions. In doing so, we would keep conspicuously before the world a 
 disclaimer of the responsibility for the great slaughter of our race, 
 and convince the humblest of our citizens who sometimes forget the 
 actual situation that the Government is tender of their lives and 
 happiness, and would not prolong their suiferings unnecessarily one 
 moment. Though statesmen might regard this as useless, the people 
 will not, and I think our cause will be strengthened thereby. I have 
 not suggested the method of these negotiations, or their terms. The 
 effort to obtain peace is the principal matter. Allow me to beg your 
 earnest consideration of this suggestion. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 Z. B. VANCE. 
 
 On the 8th of January, 1864, President Davis wrote a long 
 letter in reply, only some passages of which it is necessary to 
 consider here. He wrote : " We have made three distinct 
 efforts to communicate with the authorities at Washington, 
 and have been invariably unsuccessful. Commissioners were 
 sent before hostilities were begun, and the Washington 
 Government refused to receive them or hear what they had to 
 say. A second time I sent a military officer with a com- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 463 
 
 munication addressed by myself to PresideDt Lincoln. The 
 letter was received by General Scott, who did not permit the 
 officer to see Mr. Lincoln, but promised that an answer would 
 be sent. No answer has ever been received. The third time, 
 a few months ago, a gentleman was sent, whose position, 
 character, and reputation were such as to insure his reception, 
 if the enemy were not determined to receive no proposals 
 whatever from the government. Vice-President Stephens 
 made a patriotic tender of his services, in the hope of being 
 able to promote the cause of humanity; and although little 
 belief was entertained of his success, I cheerfully yielded to 
 his suggestion, that the experiment should be tried. The 
 enemy refused to let him pass through their lines, or to hold 
 any conference with them. He was stopped before he 
 reached Fortress Monroe, on his way to Washington. To 
 attempt again (in the face of these repeated rejections of all 
 conference with us) to send commissioners or agents to pro 
 pose peace, is to invite insult and contumely, and to subject 
 ourselves to indignity, without the slightest chance of being 
 listened to. ... 
 
 " I cannot recall, at this time, one instance in which I have 
 failed to announce that our only desire was peace, and the 
 only terms which formed a sine qua non were precisely those 
 that you suggested, namely, a demand only to be let alone. 
 But suppose it were practicable to obtain a conference 
 through commissioners with the Government of President 
 Lincoln, is it at this moment that we are to consider it desir 
 able, or even at all admissible? Have we not just been 
 apprized by that despot that we can only expect his gracious 
 pardon by emancipating all our slaves, swearing allegiance 
 and obedience to him and his proclamation, and becoming, in 
 point of fact, the slaves of our own Negroes." 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 It appears from this correspondence, that Mr. Davis was 
 then unwilling to essay negotiations with Washington; and 
 from a close inspection of his letter, we cannot see that he 
 fully apprehended Governor Vance s proposition. lie rather 
 manifested the idea to take the peace movement in its direct, 
 literal and, perhaps, honest sense, as coming from that second 
 class we have named in the composition of the peace party of 
 the South men who sincerely believed that the war might be 
 mitigated or some of the consequences of surrender saved, if 
 an opportunity could be secured to communicate and nego 
 tiate with the enemy. Mr. Davis appears to have been 
 sufficiently disabused of such confidence in the generosity of 
 the enemy, and greatly anxious to expel it from the popular 
 mind of the South. He never contracted that confidence 
 again ; for although we have the story of Messrs. Clay and 
 Thompson attempting to communicate with President Lincoln 
 from Niagara Falls in the mid-summer of 1864, it is now well 
 known that that so called " peace commission" was rather an 
 experiment on the Democratic party of the North, then about 
 to engage in a Presidential campaign, than the expression of 
 a real desire to get to Washington and obtain the ear of 
 Abraham Lincoln. After the correspondence with Governor 
 Vance, Mr. Davis does not really appear in the operations of 
 the peace party until more than a year, fraught with great 
 fortunes, had elapsed the date of the Fortress Monroe com 
 mission ; and then only as representing that third element of 
 the party we have described. 
 
 As the felling fortunes of the war pressed upon him, and as 
 the clamors of the people assailed him, he appeared to the 
 public to have retracted his opposition to the peace move 
 ment, and to have altered the views which he had expressed 
 in the letter from which we have quoted. But the real fact 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 465 
 
 was, that, without giving up anything of his opinions of the 
 unyielding disposition of the enemy, he had taken the sudden 
 resolution of trying Governor Vance s plan of consenting to 
 an effort at negotiation with the enemy, which would appease 
 the malcontents, and, if successful, as he had reason to expect, 
 would intensify and strengthen the war feeling in the South. 
 Thus, while in the minds of some leading persons in the Con 
 federacy, the interview of the Southern commissioners with 
 President Lincoln and Mr. Seward was a sincere experiment 
 on the sentiment and temper of the Northern Government, 
 Mr. Davis had, in fact, consented to it with the especial view 
 of obtaining an ultimatum from the enemy so harsh as to 
 exasperate the people of the South, and to put before them a 
 plain alternative, which he calculated would be a continua 
 tion of the war, or an unconditional submission too absolute 
 to be entertained. The secret thought in Eichmond of the 
 Fortress Monroe commission was thus, strangely enough, to 
 kill off the "peace conferences" rather than to improve 
 the growing tendency to negotiation. In some respects 
 Mr. Davis calculated aright; but the scheme of re-anima 
 tion utterly failed for peculiar reasons, which remain to be 
 examined. 
 
 Of what took place at Fortress Monroe the following 
 account was given under the official imprint of the Confed 
 erate Government, and published to the people of the South 
 as a sufficient history of the negotiation : 
 
 " To the Senate o.nd House of Representatives 
 
 of the Confederate States of America : 
 
 " Having recently received a written notification, which satisfied 
 ine that the President of the United States was disposed to, confer, 
 informally with unofficial agents that might be sent by me, with a 
 view to the restoration of peace, I requested Hon. Alexander H 
 30 
 
4()6 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Stephens, Hon. K. M. T. Hunter, and Hon. John A. Campbell, to 
 proceed through our lines, to hold a conference with Mr. Lincoln, 
 or such persons as he might depute to represent him. 
 
 U I herewith submit, for the information of Congress, the report 
 of the eminent citizens above named, showing that the enemy refuse 
 to enter into negotiations with the Confederate States, or any one of 
 them separately, or to give our people any other terms or guarantees 
 than those which a conqueror may grant, or permit us to have peace 
 on any other basis than our unconditional submission to their rule, 
 coupled with the acceptance of their recent legislation, including an 
 amendment to the Constitution for the emancipation of Negro slaves, 
 and with the right, on the part of the Federal Congress, to legislate 
 on the subject of the relations between the white and black popula 
 tion of each State. 
 
 "Such is, as I understand, the effect of the amendment to the 
 Constitution, which has been adopted by the Congress of the United 
 
 States. 
 
 "JEFFERSON DAVIS. 
 " EXECUTIVE OFFICE, Feb. 5, 1865." 
 
 RICHMOND, February 6th. 
 To the President of the Confederate States : 
 
 SIR Under your letter of appointment of commissioners, of the 
 8th, we proceeded to seek an informal conference with Abraham Lin 
 coln, President of the United States, upon the subject mentioned in 
 the letter. A conference was granted, and took place on the 30th, 
 on board the steamer anchored in Hampton Roads, where we met 
 President Lincoln and Hon. Mr. Seward, Secretary of State of the 
 United States. It continued for several hours, and was both full and 
 explicit. We learned from them that the message of President Lin 
 coln to the Congress of the United States, in December last, explains 
 clearly his sentiments as to the terms, conditions, and mode of pro 
 ceeding by which peace can be secured to the people ; and we were 
 not informed that they would be modified or altered to obtain that 
 end. AVe understood from him that no terms or proposals of any 
 treaty or agreements looking to an ultimate settlement would be 
 entertained or made by him with the authorities of the Confederate 
 States, because that would be recognition of their existence as a 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 467 
 
 separate power, which, under no circumstances, would be done ; and 
 for like reasons, that no such terms would be entertained by him 
 from the States separately ; that no extended truce or armistice, as 
 at present advised, would be granted or allowed, without the satisfac 
 tion or assurance in advance, of the complete restoration of the 
 authority of the constitution and laws of the United States over all 
 places within the States of the Confederacy ; that whatever conse 
 quence may follow from the re-establishments of that authority, it 
 must be accepted ; but all individuals subject to the pains and penal 
 ties under the laws of the United States, might rely upon a very 
 liberal use of the power confided to him to remit those pains and 
 penalties if peace be restored. During the conference, the proposed 
 amendments to the Constitution of the United States, adopted by 
 Congress on the 31st, were brought to our notice. 
 
 These amendments provide that neither slavery nor involuntary 
 servitude, except for crime, should exist within the United States or 
 any place within its jurisdiction, and Congress should have power 
 to enforce the amendments by appropriate legislation. 
 
 Of all the correspondence that preceded the conference herein 
 mentioned, and leading to the same, you have heretofore been in 
 formed. 
 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servants, 
 
 A. H. STEPHENS, 
 R. M. T. HUNTER, 
 J. A. CAMPBELL. 
 
 According to this report, the commission had accomplished 
 what Mr. Davis had desired in his scheme to revive or to in 
 crease in the South the animosity of the war. In substance 
 it was the distinct, enlarged and insolent demand of Mr. Lin 
 coln and his government, that the South should submit 
 unconditionally to the rule of the Union and conform to the 
 advanced position of that government on the subject of 
 Slavery, which included an amendment to the Constitution 
 abolishing this domestic institution of the South, a bill estab 
 lishing a Freedmen s Bureau, and much other incidental 
 
468 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 legislation, stipulated as " laws of the United States," looking 
 to a new construction of relations between the Negroes and the 
 white men of the South, and to consequences even beyond a 
 full concession to the original party of Abolition in the North. 
 This was the version which the commissioners evidently 
 desired should be made of their report by the popular mind 
 of the South ; to which, indeed, it was more addressed than 
 to Mr. Davis. The report was carefully prepared, and every 
 word of it appears to have been skilfully adjusted. It was 
 designed to exclude all hopes of further negotiation for peace, 
 and to summon the South to new and desperate resolution. 
 It was a very scant document, and made the impression that 
 those who represented the Federal government were singu 
 larly harsh and formal. There was nothing to break the 
 force with which Mr. Davis had designed that it should strike 
 the imagination of the South, and excite alike its resentment 
 and its resolution. 
 
 As if in evidence of the design we have imputed to the 
 government of Mr. Davis, the return of the commissioners 
 was at once made the signal of numerous addresses to the 
 people, in which the President himself, and such of the 
 members of his Cabinet as had any faculty for oratory, took 
 the stand of the speaker, and in their speeches, joined in the 
 attempt to rally the spirit of the people with precisely the 
 same argument that almost any increase of trial and suffer 
 ing in the war was preferable to submission to the insolent 
 demands of the enemy. It was an attempt to infuse into the 
 war a new element of desperate passion, as the reply of 
 spirited men to the arrogance of a hated foe. The people of 
 the South were to be taught to believe that the result of the 
 conference at Fortress Monroe proved that every avenue to an 
 honorable peace was closed, but what might be hewn out by 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 469 
 
 the sword, and that they were fighting not only for the 
 original prize of the war independence but for safety from 
 the worst consequences in case the enemy should obtain their 
 submission. Such a conclusion, it was argued, should nerve 
 the arms of those who had hitherto been steadfast in the fight, 
 and, on the other hand, rescue those who had been enfeebled 
 by the imagination of reconciliation and generosity on the part 
 of the enemy, and secure their adhesion to the prosecution of 
 the war. 
 
 A day was taken for public speaking in Richmond, and 
 calls were published in the newspapers for the people to hold 
 mass-meetings, and renew their testimony of devotion to the 
 Confederacy. In the African church, in the theatre, and in a 
 large hall in the capitol, speakers stands were erected and 
 occupied the same day; business was suspended; and a 
 long procession, in which walked some of the cabinet officers 
 of Mr. Davis, designated as orators of the day, passed 
 through the streets. The African church which the white 
 politicians of Eichmond had for years been in the habit of 
 appropriating for public meetings, as if there was no invasion 
 of sanctity of so lowly a house of God as that where Negroes 
 worshipped was packed with an excited audience ; its foul 
 air rent with shouts and huzzas, and its crazed floor shaken 
 under applause. The speaking continued until near sunset, 
 and was resumed at night. The newspapers devoted almost 
 their whole space to reports of the day, and described it as a 
 triumph, a resurrection, a regeneration of the war no longer 
 to be doubted. It was curious to observe how the different 
 orators served the purpose which had brought them together. 
 Mr. Hunter, one of the commissioners, addressed the multi 
 tude, and gave them to understand that Mr Lincoln had 
 turned from the propositions of peace with cold insolence 
 
470 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 an insolence which he described as monstrous, since the 
 Federal President "might have offered something to a people 
 with two hundred thousand soldiers, and such soldiers under 
 arms." The frightful apparition of subjugation was next 
 introduced. " I will not attempt," said Mr. Hunter, " to 
 draw a picture of subjugation. It would require a pencil 
 dipped in blood to paint its gloom." Mr. Benjamin, Secretary 
 of State, followed with yet more artful appeals to the multi 
 tude. He affected to witness the animation which he designed 
 to produce, and spoke of it with exciting praises. " How 
 great the difference in one short week ! It seems an age, so 
 magical has been the change ! Hope beams in every coun 
 tenance. We now know in our hearts that this people must 
 conquer its freedom or die!" It is remarkable that the 
 Confederate Congress, a few days later, adopted the same 
 adroit style of taking for granted a change of popular senti 
 ment. In an address to the people, it declared : " Thanks be 
 to God, who controls and overrules the counsels of men, the 
 haughty insolence of our enemies which they hoped would 
 intimidate and break the spirit of our people is producing 
 the very contrary effect." 
 
 To the volume of rhetorical appeal, President Davis him 
 self added the most remarkable speech of his life. Two or 
 three days before the meeting at the African church, and not 
 more than six hours after the return of the commissioners, he 
 had ascended the speaker s stand in the most unexpected way. 
 It was the last public speech of the President of the Southern 
 Confederacy, but, in all its circumstances, the most splendid 
 and dramatic oration he had ever made. He appeared before 
 the public without any announcement whatever. A meeting 
 had been called at Metropolitan Hall, On Franklin street, by 
 Governor Smith, to adopt resolutions on the part of the State 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 471 
 
 of Virginia, responsive to what had taken place at Fortress 
 Monroe; and there was a general surprise of the audience 
 when the thin figure of Mr. Davis, in a worn suit of gray, 
 stalked into the hall, and ascended the speakers stand. 
 
 We have heretofore spoken of the power of Mr. Davis as 
 an orator. On this occasion the author sat near him, and he 
 does not recollect ever to have been so much moved by the 
 power of words spoken for the same space of time. It ap 
 peared that the animation of a great occasion had for once 
 raised all there was best in Mr. Davis ; and to look upon the 
 shifting lights on the feeble, stricken face, and to hear the 
 beautiful and choice words that dropped so easily from his 
 lips, inspired a strange pity, a strange doubt, that this "old 
 man eloquent " was the weak and unfit President whom a 
 large majority of his people had been recently occupied in 
 despising and abusing. For more than an hour he held the 
 audience by an appeal of surpassing eloquence. The speech 
 was extempore, for he was frequently interrupted, and 
 always spoke appropriately and at length to the subject sug 
 gested by the exclamations of the audience. There were no 
 reporters present to preserve a speech which should have 
 been historical ; and, indeed, there was but one man con 
 nected with the Eichmond press who fully understood the art 
 of the short-hand writer. Mr. Davis frequently paused in 
 his delivery; his broken health admonished him that he was 
 attempting too much ; but frequent cries of " go on " impelled 
 him to speak at a length which he had not at first proposed. 
 When he first appeared, erect at the speaker s stand, holding 
 with his glittering eye the assembled crowd, there were 
 tremendous cheers, and a smile of strange sweetness came to 
 his lips as if the welcome assured him that decried as he was 
 by the newspapers, and pursued by the clamor of politicians, 
 
472 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 he had still a place in the hearts of his countrymen. He 
 spoke with an even, tuneful flow of words ; the choicest lan 
 guage appeared to come from his lips without an effort ; spare 
 of gestures, his dilated form and a voice the lowest notes 
 of which were distinctly audible, and which anon rose as 
 a sound of a trumpet, were yet sufficient to convey the 
 strongest emotions, and to lift the hearts of his hearers to the 
 level of his grand discourse. The sentiment of his speech 
 was that of imperious unconquerable defiance to the enemy ; 
 their insolent officials at Fortress Monroe little knew that 
 they "talked to their masters" and that it would be their turn 
 to ask for peace "before the summer solstice was reckoned;" 
 and then changing the subject, he surveyed the whole field 
 of the war, enumerated new hopes, and, at last, speaking of the 
 private soldiers of the Confederacy, he commemorated their 
 heroism and devotion, drew a picture of their sufferings, and 
 in withering tones cursed the speculators who had traded and 
 profited in their distress, and said the day might soon come 
 when their ill-gotten gold would be divided in the camps of 
 the country s defenders ! He closed with a remarkable illus 
 tration drawn from history. He referred to the judgment 
 which the world had passed upon Kossuth who had been so 
 weak as to abandon the cause of Hungary with an army of 
 thirty thousand men in the field. He spoke of the disgrace 
 of surrender, if the Confederates should abandon their cause 
 with an army on their side and actually in the field more 
 numerous than those which had made the most brilliant 
 pages in European history; an army more numerous than 
 that with which Napoleon achieved his reputation ; an army 
 standing among its homesteads ; an army in which each 
 individual man was superior in every martial quality to 
 each individual man in the ranks of the invader, and reared 
 with ideas of independence, and in the habits of command ! 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 473 
 
 The effect of these rhetorical stimulants could scarcely 
 have been less than some temporary excitement. Hearing 
 the huzzas in Richmond and reading the congratulations in 
 the newspapers, the President and many around him were 
 cheated into the belief that the people of the South had taken 
 heart again, and that the war was about to be dated from a 
 new era of popular enthusiasm. But the delusion was soon 
 to be dispelled. There was no depth in the popular feeling 
 thus excited ; it was a spasmodic revival, or short fever of 
 the public mind, ending in the most sickly and shameful 
 response to what was undoubtedly, in all its circumstances, 
 one of the most powerful appeals ever calculated to stir the 
 heart and nerve the resolution of a people fighting for liberty. 
 The sources of popular enthusiasm were dried up in the 
 South, and it was past that period when any thing could be 
 expected from it, beyond a temporary excitement for the 
 most unparalleled insult, or a brief resentment of the most 
 arrogant menace. The test to which we have referred in the 
 opening of this chapter, as of the point to which the nope and 
 spirit of the South had descended had been determined, and 
 had proved to be such as where the bravado of an enemy, 
 instead of raising men to new and passionate exertion, sinks 
 them to the abject and timid counsels of submission. The 
 condition of the South, following the brief excitement of 
 appeals such as we have described, was, among the best of 
 its people, a dull, helpless expectation, a blank despondency, 
 and, among the worst of them, an increased alacrity to pursue 
 the phantom of negotiation, and finally, as of course, to 
 submit to the enemy. 
 
 Mr. Davis had calculated too much on the integrity of the 
 Southern character. He had not yet realized and to the 
 last moment of the existence of the Southern Confederacy 
 
474 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 he never did realize that that character had been impaired 
 by what had been the terrible experiences of the war ; and 
 he persisted in believing that the troops which yet defended 
 Eichmond were soldiers of the same spirit as those who had 
 won the battle of Manassas. He trusted too much in what 
 he believed to be the unchangeable courage, the irreversible 
 resolution, the untameable manhood of the Southern soldier 
 A month after the African church revival, and when back 
 sliders were numerous, he wrote in reproof of Congress, then 
 meditating an adjourment, that he yet " reposed entire trust 
 in the courage and constancy of the people." It was on the 
 violent hypothesis of that constancy that he was insensible, 
 to the last, of the condition of the country, and made most of 
 those ludicrous miscalculations and grotesque prophecies 
 which amused the North, and which divided the South on the 
 question whether it should resent them as trifling with its 
 intelligence, or pity and despise them as displaying, uncon 
 sciously, the real weakness of his judgment. A single, but a 
 great misassumption explains much of that curious over-con- 
 fidence of the President, which we have seen in other parts of 
 this narrative, and have discussed on various grounds of 
 speculation, and as proceeding from a mixture of causes. He 
 was blind to the true condition of the South, partly because 
 of the false media through which he viewed it. He looked 
 at it through armies, which he yet supposed to be of men 
 similar to those who had successfully fought the enemy five 
 to one, and who, having won such victories once, might do it 
 again. The mere list of Confederate victories was too often 
 used as an argument, and an enumeration of names without 
 any logical order in them an instance of mere exclamations, 
 ad captandum vulgus, drowning the voice of reason was 
 often thought sufficient to silence those who were inclined to 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 475 
 
 debate seriously the prospects of the war, or who ventured to 
 express misgivings of the future. 
 
 The people of the South were never understood by their 
 President ; and this first condition of a wise and powerful 
 government insight into the character of the people was 
 never performed. The principle of a wise democracy but 
 repeats the apothegm of Machiavelli, that a nation is wiser 
 and more constant than its leading men. A truth announced 
 from sources so various, and inscribed alike by the wisdom 
 and the experience of all ages, was conspicuously illustrated 
 in the Southern Confederacy. President Davis never under-*! 
 stood the people he was appointed to govern ; and whatever I 
 there was of weakness and inconstancy in them and there / 
 were certainly such exhibitions were exceeded by his own 
 weakness and inconstancy ; and it is remarkable that he could 
 never see them, either as exaggerated reflections of himself, or 
 as effects of his own ignorance in government. If the people 
 of the South are somewhat to be blamed for the want of 
 proper spirit in the war, which they at last exhibited, Mr. 
 Davis is much more to be blamed for having been in a great 
 part the cause of such popular delinquency, and for not 
 having performed the first duty of a wise governor that of 
 acquainting himself with the character of the people, and 
 thus cultivating their virtues that they might over-balance 
 their vices. 
 
 The Southern people had their virtues and their vices 
 their good and their bad traits of character, as any other 
 people. All that there was among the first, of lively and 
 peculiar courage as in contempt of danger, quickness of 
 imagination, extravagant sensitiveness to indignity, a passion 
 for romance, had been misdirected and abused in the war; 
 and all that there was among the last, of variableness of 
 
476 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 temper, as in a tendency to despond easily, impatience of 
 expectation, a disposition to brave peril rather than to wait 
 on fortune, an insobriety of hopes and fears were brought 
 out and cultivated by the ignorant and uncertain administra 
 tion of Mr. Davis. The best qualities of his people he failed 
 to develop, and their faults he unconsciously enlarged to his 
 and their ruin. No wonder that they commenced to disso 
 ciate themselves from a government, which from ignorance of 
 their character alone, could never have been in sympathy with 
 them ; to support its existence, without upholding its autho 
 rity, to acquiesce, instead of applauding. Mr. Davis still 
 held in his hands the reins of authority ; but his power to 
 inspire the people was gone, diminishing from the moment 
 he became instead of the orator, who had so easily inspired 
 them by his speeches at the commencement of the war the 
 ruler who, by a long course of mistakes and abuses, was to 
 impair their character and to forfeit their confidence. Now 
 his words had to be taken along with his acts. The oration 
 he made at Metropolitan Hall, designed to excite anew the 
 spirit of the war, which his actions for nearly four years had 
 depressed, was beautiful, admirable words as caught by the 
 ears of his auditors; but when submitted to the reflections 
 of their minds they were but dead types, the unavailing 
 pretences of a man upon whom the public had already passed 
 an irreversible judgment. Little did he know when ani 
 mated in that oration, he accepted the mere temporary glow 
 of an audience for a tribute and confirmation from the 
 people, how powerless he had become to make a permanent 
 impression on either the mind or heart of the South. Little 
 did he feel when thus speaking, he prophesied the indepen 
 dence of the Confederacy " before the summer solstice," and 
 pointed with disdain to the enemy he doomed, how near his 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CQNFEDERACY. 477 
 
 own feet were to the brink of destruction Alas ! the mili 
 tary events for the next few weeks were to nullify all that 
 eloquence could accomplish, were to terminate the existence 
 of the Southern Confederacy, and were to consign to a dim 
 and voiceless prison him who, once, by his words had com 
 manded the affairs and ruled the affections of six millions rf 
 people ! 
 
 But there remains yet another reason to account for the 
 failure to re-animate the South after the Fortress Monroe 
 Commission a reason that makes a historical discovery of 
 such importance, and so connected with the times in which 
 we live with, indeed, the whole future of the South that we 
 must earnestly invoke for it the attention of the reader. In 
 another part of this chapter, analyzing the peace party in the 
 Confederacy, we have already referred to the rapid and 
 wonderful growth of an opinion in the South, that, at the 
 last, generous terms might be expected from the enemy ; and 
 although we have seen that this opinion was apparently so 
 discouraged by the Fortress Monroe Commission its dis 
 couragement being the very design of that commission, on 
 the part of the President yet we are bound to notice that, 
 after the first effects of the representations of Mr. Davis and 
 his commissioners, the people of the South came generally to 
 believe that the report of the Commissioners was a false or 
 garbled statement, that the enemy was not really so harsh 
 and inaccessible as he was represented to be ; and that the 
 real disposition of the North was for a generous reconciliation, 
 1 and a " reconstruction " of the Union, in which the South 
 would lose nothing but Slavery, and probably not that with 
 out some measure of compensation. The extent of this 
 delusion, and the singular fact of its rapid growth under the 
 very means taken to suppress it, is a subject of great historical 
 
478 LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 importance. It explains "how a mistaken faith in Northern 
 generosity, added to the distrust of Mr.Davis s administration 
 in continuation of the war, gave the last blow to the Con 
 federate cause, and broke down the war in the South; it 
 accounts, in a great degree, for the sudden and abrupt termi 
 nation of the contest, when the South was so far from the 
 physical necessity of surrender ; and it furnishes reflections, 
 the most obvious and interesting, upon the present situation 
 of parties at Washington. 
 
 In a political review written since the war, by the author, 
 (and from which he had drawn some of the facts stated here 
 concerning the Fortress Monroe Commission) the false hope 
 of the South in the moderation of the enemy, which precipi 
 tated the cause of the Confederacy and expedited its surrender, 
 has been explained fully. With some slight changes in the 
 context and expression it may supply some passages here, 
 consistent with what we have written, and aiding the idea 
 we desire to convey : 
 
 In the last stage of the war, and contributing to its termination, 
 there was a marked decline of hostility to the Yankee in the sense of 
 dread of the consequences of submission. The wonder is that ex 
 pectations of the enemy s generosity should have been indulged to 
 such an extent, when the outrages of Sherman were fresh, and when 
 the enemy was really in his fiercest and most destructive moods, and 
 the atrocity of his arms at its height. The explanation is very 
 peculiar, and one must have closely studied public sentiment in the 
 South to understand its curious condition on this particular subject 
 toward the end of the war. It was an effect produced entirely by 
 politicians who had had frequent opportunities in various conferences, 
 regular or irregular, with Northern men to inform and mitigate 
 public opinion as to the real designs of the enemy. The idea was 
 spread, sometimes insidiously, that although the North was violent 
 in the war, its excesses in this might be forgiven, as proceeding not 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 479 
 
 so much from cruelty as from a false notion of military necessity, 
 and that its political design was really of the most moderate and 
 indifferent description, meaning only the re-establishment of the 
 Union, and the restoration of the status quo in every other particular. 
 The reports brought back from the conferences referred to, were 
 generally those of the most polite and pleasant personal intercourse, 
 of heart} fellowship and kind entertainment on the enemy s part. 
 Many of the politicians who had enjoyed such interviews, or who 
 had Northern correspondence, had heard, in a confused way, of the 
 most liberal propositions, and were ready to assure theii weary 
 countrymen of almost any terms of peace, on the single condition of 
 laying down their arms, and trusting themselves to the generosity of 
 the North. 
 
 Under these representations, generally made privately and insidi 
 ously, and never venturing in the columns of the press, where the 
 death s head of " Subjugation " was constantly displayed, the idea 
 grew in the Southern mind that the Yankee was not such a terrible 
 monster after all, that the newspapers had been practicing scare 
 crows on the people, and that the government had only for its own 
 selfish purposes exaggerated the demands of the enemy, and painted 
 the terrors of submission. The extent of this delusion in the last 
 days of the Confederacy, can scarcely be conceived by one not 
 admitted to those under-currents of opinion which make the secret 
 history of governments in great wars. It was a whispered thought, 
 an adroit suggestion, rather than a declared idea making its appear 
 ance in the press, or circulated in open debate. While the news 
 papers displayed the horrors of submission, and John Mitchell wrote, 
 in serial articles, the parallel between Ireland and the conquered 
 South, and President Davis continued the stereotype of " death 
 preferable to defeat," the idea went secretly and steadily abroad, in 
 the South that the Yankee was not as black as he was painted, and 
 that surrender was not the chief of evils. 
 
 Of this delusion toward the end of the war (so inconsistent with 
 the public tone of the South and especially with the defiance of Mr. 
 Davis) the author ventures to make this curious remark : that many 
 men in the South were even led to doubt of the loss of Slavery in the 
 final adjustment with the enemy, and on this particular account, 
 were induced to relinquish the contest. This supposition may appear 
 
LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 very extravagant at this day; but it should be remembered that at 
 the time referred to, the South had very imperfect communications 
 with the North, that she was a prey to rumors, and that politicians 
 were busy with the story of the generous temper of the enemy. 
 People were told in whispered conversations that it was not impos 
 sible that, at some time after the surrender of their arms, Slavery 
 might be recovered from the yielding disposition of the North ; a 
 second supposition was yet more probable, to the effect that they 
 might expect pecuniary compensation, if they promptly and gracefully 
 accepted emancipation, and rumors were already flying in the air 
 that President Lincoln had intimated such a proposition to Alexander 
 H. Stephens, in the conference at Fortress Monroe. 
 
 Mr. Stephens has since confessed (if we are to believe a Georgia 
 newspaper), that in that conference, Mr. Lincoln said to him : 
 
 : Your people might, after all, get four hundred thousand dollars 
 for the slaves, and you would be surprised if I should call the names 
 of some of those who favor such a proposition. But this important 
 disclosure has been so severely suppressed since the death of Mr. 
 Lincoln, as an injury to his memory in Northern estimation, that 
 the public, even to this day, is scarcely aware of it, or is unprepared 
 to credit it. Certainly, it would have been more direct for Mr. 
 Stephens to have made this disclosure in his public report of the 
 conference, instead of submitting the bald statement he did, and 
 locking in his breast so important a secret. 
 
 Unfortunately for the object of Mr. Davis, there leaked out some 
 other private versions of the conference which showed the official 
 report to be partial and sinister, and suggested a friendly and 
 generous disposition of President Lincoln quite at variance with the 
 spirit in which he was officially represented to have replied to the 
 Commissioners. 
 
 In private accounts of the conference, Mr. Seward was especially 
 represented as kindly, and very much disposed to enter into a 
 general amicable conversation with the Confederate Commissioners. 
 He asked Mr. Hunter, with amiable solicitude, of many of those 
 they had mutually known in former days, in Washington, and 
 inquired particularly of the health of Mr. Davis. There were no 
 marks of harshness in the conference, and no attendance of cere 
 monies and forms. At parting, Mr. Seward shook Mr. Hunter by 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 481 
 
 the hand very warmly, and said, with effusion: "God bless you, 
 Hunter!" 
 
 The author recollects to have made some reference to this and 
 other incidents of personal amiability in this famous conference, and 
 to have designed publishing it in the Richmond Examiner; but Mr. 
 Daniel ruled it out sharply, and for a special reason. He always 
 forbade the publication of any of the amenities of the war ; he 
 thought they were likely to mislead as to the true character and 
 conduct of the enemy, and to soften the resolution of the South." 
 
 But, without reference to the conference at Fortress Mon 
 roe, or to the disputes concerning what took place there, 
 there can be no doubt of the general fact that the South sur 
 rendered before it was actually compelled to do so by the 
 arms of the North, and from a false and ill-considered trust 
 in the moderation of the latter. The explanation of the 
 almost abrupt conclusion of the war, stated in its broadest 
 terms was the expectation of a mild, and even magnanimous 
 treatment of the enemy the mollification of dread of the 
 Yankee coupled with an entire want of confidence in the 
 Davis Administration ; the consequence of which was that the 
 people of the South were demoralized, and their virtue and 
 resolution corrupted. There are thus stated three causes of 
 the failure of the Confederacy and all of them outside the 
 hypothesis of physical inability to carry on the war. Of the 
 existence of that we are now treating there can be no doubt. 
 The popular mind of the South, all official protestations to 
 the contrary, expected a generous treatment after the war, 
 and had lost its faith in the conventional terrors of subjuga 
 tion, so long maintained in the newspapers and in the public 
 demonstrations of the Richmond Government. The people 
 who had been variously called "rebels" and "brethren" in 
 the North, believed that one term was for war, the other for 
 peace, and that on the declaration of the latter, they would 
 31 
 
482 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 take their equal and accustomed places in the Union. ^ In 
 vain, Mr. Davis sought to combat this idea, and, in the light 
 of his interpretations of the Fortress Monroe Commission, to 
 argue the people into the belief that subjugation or war was 
 the only alternative before them. There were many who 
 answered that these were only interpretations, effected, too, 
 by some fraud or ingenuity in the language of the conference, 
 and made by a man who was likely to take a partial view of 
 the matter, and interested, perhaps, to present a dishonest one. 
 In vain, advisers more competent and persuasive than Mr. 
 Davis, warned the Southern people of the treachery of the 
 North, and reminded them of former lessons of its deception 
 and cruelty. In vain, the press exhorted them, "better go 
 down fighting, better be subjugated and conquered than live 
 to recollect that we brought our ruin upon our heads by 
 ^deceptive reconstruction r They were prophetic words. The 
 South never awoke from its delusion, until it had become the 
 victim of " deceptive reconstruction;" until there were fastened 
 upon it the chains of political tyranny it now wears; and 
 until those terrors of subjugation, to which it had sealed 
 ears in the last periods of the war, as silly or distorted imagi 
 nations, were realized almost literally in the acts of the Con- 
 gress at Washington. 
 
 When the war was first declared for the independence of 
 the South, there were those who doubted whether there had 
 up to that time been sufficient of actual experience of the 
 hardship and oppression of the North to support a popular 
 justification of rebellion, and to furnish moral animation 
 enough to sustain it. The doubt was a reasonable one. 
 However right a revolution may be on abstract principles, or 
 for protection in the future, the experience of the world shows 
 that in such contests the spirit and resources of a people are 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 483 
 
 never fully developed, and that to arouse them, there must 
 be some actual, present experience of the rod of the oppressor. 
 A whole people will justify a rebellion when they fight for 
 relief from some oppression, present and visible ; but only the 
 more thoughtful of them will appreciate a war for the 
 integrity of an abstract principle or for some good, distant in 
 the future. It has been singularly reserved for the South to 
 obtain after the war the actual experience of oppression and 
 of that sort of despotism which, if it had existed ai the com 
 mencement of hostilities would have amply sustained them 
 in popular estimation, and supplied much greater animation 
 to their arms. Now such justification of the war is obtained 
 in regarding the present condition of the South, in which all 
 that was ever feared of the oppression of the North is fully 
 realized. It is a justification retrospective, but none the less 
 true or effective on that account. 
 
 Yet we are forced to reflect on the credulity that had to 
 wait the present actual realization of the outrages of North 
 ern despotism, to understand the usefulness and justice of the 
 past war, and that refused to see the consequences of surren 
 der until they were brought home to their doors. The delu 
 sive faith in the generosity of the North that hastened the 
 surrender of the South before her arms had been conquered, 
 and betrayed her to a treacherous enemy the weak belief 
 that the latter meditated no practical tyranny over those whc 
 were invited to return to the blessings of free government 
 prove how persistent has been the South in her credulity, 
 respecting all designs of the North, and how yielding to all 
 the professions of the latter. This disposition is no new 
 thing; it is part of the history of the South, cotemporary with 
 three generations, and not yet expired. She showed it, when 
 she refused, long before the war, to accept the lesson that the 
 
484 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 transfer of political power to the North would be used to 
 oppress her ; she showed it when she hesitated to believe, on 
 the incoming of the government of Abraham Lincoln, that it 
 had any actual designs upon Slavery, and was, for some time, 
 inclined to doubt whether the war was not undertaken on a 
 false alarm or an over-remote speculation ; she showed it, 
 when she regarded the terrors of subjugation as imaginary, 
 and insisted upon believing, against the counsels of her great 
 est and wisest men, that the victorious North would be liberal 
 and just, and that she would be taken back into the Union, 
 without hindrance or delay ; and wonderful to say to this 
 very day, she shows it in still trusting to the moderation of 
 a party hostile to her, in yet looking for a time when a senti 
 ment of returning justice in the North will undo the tangled 
 skein of "reconstruction," and restore to her something of the 
 faith in which she surrendered. That surrender, we repeat, 
 was made not so much under the compulsion of military 
 necessities, as from the persuasions of a false political 
 hypothesis. It was the fruit of the credulity of the South; 
 and it is credulity for her yet to believe that she will not 
 be required to eat the fruit of her own choosing to its inmost 
 core of bitterness. 
 
SECKET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 485 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 A Cruel Rumor in Richmond Description of General Lee s Lines- The Fatal Battle of the 2d of 
 April Sabbath Scenes in Richmond A Telegram Delivered in St. Paul s Church No Au 
 thentic Announcement concerning the Evacuation of Richmond A Scene on a Hotel Balcony 
 Sudden and Wild Excitement in the City Scenes of a Panic Where is the President ? Mr. 
 Davis Concealed His Mean and Obscure Exit from the City General Breckiuridge at the 
 War Department A Curious Scene in the Third Story of the Capitol Disgraceful Conduct of 
 the Citizens of Richmond A Mission of Mayor Mayo How Richmond was Fired Responsi 
 bility of President Davis for the Conflagration Congregation of Horrors Picturesque Entree 
 of the Federal Army The Burnt District A Thronged Theatre Unnaturally Illuminated 
 Terrible Quiet of the Night after the Fire The War Virtually Ended President Davis Insen 
 sible of the Importance of the Loss of Richmond His Confidence Grotesque An Issue Between 
 Him and a Richmond Editor The Picture of a Southern Confederacy Reduced to Jefferson 
 Davis in Flight. 
 
 WE have heretofore referred to the peculiar distress pro 
 duced in the South by the multitude of rumors, mostly pro 
 ceeding from the secret habits and recluse disposition of the 
 government of Mr. Davis. About the last of the important 
 and certainly the most cruel of the false rumors of Eichmond, 
 was one circulated there but two days before the final battles 
 in front of Petersburg. These were dark days ; the public 
 gloomy and despondent; worn and dejected faces in the 
 streets of Eichrnond. No one outside the circle of Mr. Davis s 
 confidences knew what strength Lee had, or what was the 
 "situation." Into this mist of ignorance and despondency 
 darted a ray of light. An early morning train from Peters 
 burg sped to the capital with the news that General Lee had 
 made a night attack on the enemy, and in the summary 
 phrase of the report (not official, but averred to be the fore 
 runner of such) had "crushed his whole line." The news 
 
486 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. WITH A 
 
 was generally believed in Eichmond ; and although the gov 
 ernment must have obtained its contradiction in a few 
 moments by the telegraph, of which it had exclusive possession, 
 it, with as little feeling as of judgment, allowed the pleasant 
 delusion to linger in the excited minds of the people. Such 
 was the credit the report obtained that it was told at the 
 bedside of John M. Daniel, chief editor of the Examiner, as a 
 comfort to the dying man, then almost in his last agonies, 
 and too feeble to do more than nod his satisfaction. Next 
 day, John Mitchell regretted, in the Examiner, that its editor, 
 who had labored so much for the Southern Confederacy had 
 died almost at the moment that its arms had gained a great 
 victory, and when it had probably crossed the fitful boundary 
 of its fortunes, and passed into the grand illumination of final 
 success. Alas for human hopes, and false comforts for the 
 dead and dying !-^a few days later, and Kichmond was 
 crowned with an illumination but it was of the flames of 
 fire that signaled the approach of the enemy, and waved over 
 the grave of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 No one in or about Richmond not even General Lee 
 himself, surveying his slight army, and comparing it with 
 the hosts of Grant before him could have imagined how 
 near was the end ; nor did Grant himself conceive it until 
 the hour he ordered the fatal attack. As long as the enemy 
 could be kept from the west of Eichmond, the seige of the 
 city might be indefinitely prolonged ; his line already ex 
 tended thirty miles, but on the west it ended on the bank of 
 Hatcher s Run, and had failed, after repeated attempts, to 
 reach the South-Side railroad, which connected with the 
 Danville railroad and maintained all that was left of the 
 communications of Eichmond. An unexpected reinforce 
 ment of cavalry (Sheridan s corps) enabled Grant to make a 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 487 
 
 strong movement to develope his left ; but before that opera 
 tion was finished, it became a mere episode, for as it weak 
 ened Lee s lines in front of Petersburg, the enemy conceived 
 suddenly the grand design of giving the lesser movement 
 to the winds, and breaking through directly upon his prize, 
 which was no longer the railroad, but Richmond itself. In 
 the morning of the 2d of April, General Lee saw his line 
 broken at three points, at each of which a whole Federal 
 corps had attacked, and all day long the enemy was closing 
 on the works immediately enveloping Petersburg. But the 
 work, decisive of the war, was done in two hours. At eleven 
 o clock in the morning, General Lee wrote a dispatch to 
 President Davis at Eichmond, advising him that the army 
 could not hold its position, and that preparations should be 
 made to evacuate the capital that night ! He might have 
 added in the dispatch what he remarked to one of his staff- 
 officers, as with embittered, but lofty face, he saw his army 
 breaking up in the broad sunshine : " It has happened as I 
 told them in Eichmond : the line has been stretched until it 
 has broke." 
 
 No sound of the battle not an echo, not a breath had 
 yet reached the doomed city. It was a lovely Sabbath day, 
 and Eichmond basked in its beauty and enjoyed more than 
 usual remission from the cares of the week. There were no 
 sounds as of the vexed thoroughfare ; the long streets laid 
 open, not a vehicle upon them ; the murmur of the river 
 gave tones only to soothe the ear, and the silent pulses of 
 the sunshine beat slowly in the misty warm air that laid on 
 the landscape. It was a day of careless thoughts. The 
 usual Sunday crowd lounged near the post-office, exchanging 
 rumors of the war, or the latest depraved gossip of Eichmond 
 society. Hundreds wended their way to the churches, while 
 
488 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 not a few of " their country s hope " trod the paths beaten 
 as sheep-walks to the back-entrances of the whiskey-shops 
 on Main street, and sought consolation in the shades of " the 
 Chickahominy," " the Rebel," and " the Wilderness." Ladies 
 dressed in old finery, in which the fashions of many years 
 were mingled, were satisfied to make a display at St. Paul s 
 about equal to the holiday wardrobes in better days of the 
 Negroes at the African Church. At the former church 
 worshipped Mr. Davis. He now sat stiff and alone in " the 
 President s pew " where no one outside his family had ever 
 dared to intrude since Mrs. Davis had ordered the sexton to 
 remove two ladies who had ventured there, and who, on 
 turning their faces to the admonition to leave delivered 
 before the whole congregation, had proved, to the dismay 
 and well-deserved mortification of the President s wife, to be 
 the daughters of General Lee. Mr. Davis was an earnest 
 worshipper. But a Sunday before this memorable one, he, 
 General Lee and Secretary Trenholm had gone together to 
 the communion-table, and many eyes in the congregation 
 had been moistened to see these three men, on whom depen 
 ded so many of human hopes, kneeling side by side to par 
 take of the most precious and comforting sacrament of the 
 church. Now a very different scene was to be witnessed. 
 
 In the midst of the services, a man walked noisily into the 
 church, and handed the President a slip of paper. Mr. Davis 
 read the paper, rose, and walked out of the church without 
 agitation, but his face and manner evidently constrained ; an 
 uneasy whisper ran through the crowd of worshippers, and 
 many hastened into the street. The congregation was -soon 
 dismissed. The rumor had already gained the street that 
 Richmond was to be evacuated ; it was confirmed to a few 
 who penetrated the closed doors of the War Department, or 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 489 
 
 made persistent inquiries at the telegraph office ; but, although 
 the government had no motive now to suppress the sad truth, 
 but, on the contrary, was in duty bound to inform the people 
 and to prepare them for the exigency, it is remarkable tnat 
 there was no authentic announcement of the intended evacua 
 tion, no published order on the subject, no official notification 
 of any sort ; and that news in which every man s household 
 was involved, was left to wander all day as a vague rumor in 
 the streets, only to be confirmed by the actual, visible fact of 
 the authorities leaving the city. In these singular circum 
 stances, many persons for many hours of this memorable day 
 doubted the truth of what they heard only in the streets: 
 many clung to undefined hopes ; many remained in blank 
 dismay, unable to conceive suddenly the magnitude of their 
 misfortune, and having no details by which to determine or 
 guide their action. Thus for a considerable part of the after 
 noon, Eichmond remained without visible excitement; for 
 hours there were on the streets no active preparations to 
 evacuate ; a whole population was kept unnecessarily in sus 
 pense, blank, hesitating, knowing not what to believe or how 
 to act ; but it was the calm before the storm. 
 
 A little past noon some regiments of Longstreet s command, 
 on the north of James river, were seen marching through the 
 city, on their way to reinforce General Lee in the battle he 
 was then supposed to be making to save or recover his lines 
 before Petersburg. The soldiers moved with a slouching 
 step ; and, once, on their disordered march, it is said groans 
 were called for Jefferson Davis. Formerly, when Confederate 
 soldiers had passed through Kichmond, there had been music, 
 cheers, crowds of shouting spectators, throngs of ladies stand 
 ing on the balconies of the principal hotels on Main street, to 
 wave their adieux, perchance, to scatter flowers on them, at 
 
490 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 least to bestow upon them sweet and inspiring countenances. 
 Now, as they passed through the thoroughfare, only a few 
 spectators looked on sadly or cynically: no note of music 
 cheered the sullen procession of men, marching sadly and 
 wearily to Death ; a few blank faces appeared at the windows ; 
 and on the balcony of the American Hotel, only two or three 
 ladies stood. It was melancholy to see one of them limply 
 wave a single handkerchief in a hesitating way, and then stop, 
 pale and wounded, as not a single soldier cheered or recog 
 nized the compliment. 
 
 As the day wore on, it was noticed that wagons were 
 driven to the doors of the Departments, and to the public 
 storehouses many of them branded as government wagons, 
 many nondescripts and all moving off towards the Danville 
 depot. The accumulation of stores there, and of ticketed 
 boxes, left no doubt that the city was to be evacuated. Signs 
 of hurry increased; wagons, no longer driven in order, tore 
 through the streets ; men seemed suddenly possessed with a 
 mania to run to their houses, to snatch from them some hasty 
 baggage, and to rush to the nearest exit from the city. In 
 less than an hour from the first appearance of the wagon 
 trains on the streets, the whole population of Eichmond was 
 involved in a panic. 
 
 What scenes ensued it is impossible to describe. What a 
 change fell upon this city, palled its wanton and hitherto 
 unabashed revelry, and spread terror through its wicked 
 streets, like a thunderbolt from the unclouded expanse of 
 heaven, can only be imagined, as the comparison indicates, 
 in the light of some sudden wrath visited from the skies. 
 "For four years Kichmond had lived in the easy riot of the 
 war. Now it appeared as if the day of judgment had been 
 called upon it. Now there was hurrying to and fro. Now 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 491 
 
 the panic-stricken city broke up as if riven by lightning, into 
 black, torn crowds of maddened men, conscience-stricken 
 fugitives, sobered revelers, blanched woman and children, 
 fleeing wildly through the streets, over the bridges jf the 
 river, through every avenue of escape from the terrible day 
 of judgment the chariots of fire and wrath that were next 
 day to enter -the doomed city. It was a scene never to be 
 forgotten in the memories of Eichmond. The night was 
 hoarse with the roar of the great flight. 
 
 But where, in this dramatic and tumultuous scene, was 
 President Davis ? When he had received news of Lee s 
 defeat he had slunk from his pew in St. Paul s church, and 
 while the fountains of his government were being broken up, 
 and the great final catastrophe had mounted the stage, the 
 principal actor was wanting ; he, the President, the leader, 
 the historical hero, had never shown his face, had never 
 spoken a word, was satisfied to prepare secretly a sumptous 
 private baggage, and to fly from Eichmond a low, unnoticed 
 fugitive under cover of the night. In such scenes a greai, 
 leader is naturally sought for by the love and solicitude of 
 his people ; there are words of noble farewell to his country 
 men ; there are touching souvenirs of parting with his officers. 
 But there were none of these in Mr. Davis s case, and, indeed, 
 no stronger proof could have been given of the popular con 
 tempt and neglect into which he had fallen than his mean 
 and obscure exit from Eichmond. He did not show himself to 
 the public, as a great leader might be expected to do in such 
 a supreme calamity; he attempted no inspiration, comfort or 
 advice ; hid in his house, busy only with his private pre 
 parations, inquired of by no one, without any mark of public 
 solicitude for him, without the least notice from popular 
 sympathy or anxiety, the unhappy, degraded President of 
 
492 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the Southern Confederacy, never showed his face in the last 
 catastrophe of his capital, until he stole on the cars that was 
 to bear him to a place of safety, and fled from the doomed 
 city, unmarked among the meanest of its fugitives. He left 
 no word of tender or noble farewell for Kichmond, and the 
 last souvenir of his power was an order to burn the city that 
 for four years had given him shelter, countenance and 
 hospitality. 
 
 He left behind him every circumstance to dismay the people. 
 The Congress had meanly adjourned some days before ; the 
 President was not visible ; not a single member of the Cabinet 
 could be found but General Breckinridge (the successor of 
 Mr. Seddon in the War Department), who remained steadily 
 in his office until nightfall, giving the last orders that were 
 necessary for the destruction or distribution of the archives, 
 and answering the inquiries of the few citizens who were 
 allowed access to him. The reporter of the associated press 
 who was aware that eight o clock had been designated by 
 General Lee as the hour for evacuation, unless meantime he 
 succeeded in re-establishing his lines, in which event he 
 would telegraph again, attended the room of General Breck 
 inridge at that hour, and was admitted. He came out with a 
 blank face. "There is no hope," said General Breckinridge, 
 and he walked quietly from the room and from the building 
 to the house where the President was then concealed, making 
 private preparations for his flight. There was no last coun 
 cil or conference. All that there was of deliberative assem 
 bly all that remained of the once proud and loquacious 
 government of Jefferson Do/vis was to appoint the rendez 
 vous and time for flight, the Cabinet members being in 
 structed to meet the President at the Danville depot, a little 
 before midnight. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 493 
 
 The Capitol appeared deserted, but as night fell, it was 
 noticed that the main door was ajar. Hid away in an ob 
 scure room in the third story, the City Council was anxiously 
 debating what ceremonies were necessary for the surrender 
 of the city, since the President was supposed to have already 
 fled, or to be concealed for the present in Manchester, and 
 the duty of surrendering the capital was thus devolved upon 
 its municipal authorities. It was a cowardly debate re 
 moved from the observation of the citizens. One of the 
 councilmen was ostentatiously dressed in a Confederate 
 uniform. So extreme was the concern for the safety of the 
 city, such the anxiety for its readiest humiliation, that it 
 was arranged that a notification of surrender should be 
 given before the next day broke, and three hours past mid 
 night, the Mayor, despite his eighty years of age, was started 
 in a dilapidated vehicle on the mission of surrendering 
 Eichmond before the enemy could get in sight of it. It was 
 the first of a train of disgraceful humiliations. The city 
 that showed such hot and indecent haste to surrender ; that 
 next day presented the spectacle of some of its leading 
 citizens rushing bareheaded to Federal officers in the street, 
 asking for the delicious consolation of taking the oath of 
 allegiance (one of them a former financial agent of the Con 
 federacy obtaining the reply, " When we are ready to ad 
 minister the oath of allegiance we ll send for you, you d d 
 scoundrel ;") that in two days after the enemy s occupation 
 was publishing a " Union " newspaper from the office of the 
 Whig, with the boast that " the old flag" had been concealed 
 in its garret during the whole war ; and that within a week 
 after the surrender showed the statistic of seventeen thous 
 and three hundred and sixty-seven food tickets calling for 
 eighty-six thousand five hundred and fifty-five rations, as 
 
494 LIFE OF JEFFEESON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the measure of its population willing to live on the bounty 
 of " the hated Yankee " is yet that self-styled " heroic city " 
 of Kichmond, which professes to have lived within a peculiar 
 enclosure of glory during the war, which has insolently 
 claimed comparison in history with such places as Saragossa 
 and Londonderry, and which yet cherishes its blunt and 
 withered laurels as capital of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 Before the Mayor could mount on his mission to the 
 enemy, a new and surpassing terror fell upon the city. It 
 had been fired in various quarters, and there were already 
 gleams of conflagration on the dark horizon. While the 
 heaving and tumultuous city was even at this hour of the 
 night filled with pillagers and marauders convicts from the 
 penitentary, who had escaped, their guards having fled, and 
 lawless soldiers who were no longer under any control, 
 the main command of General Ewell having already tramped 
 across the bridges over the river the wakeful and anxious 
 eyes of thousands of terrified citizens looking from their 
 windows beheld this new apparition of horror rising from 
 the black wastes of the night. "Word came that the Shockoe 
 Warehouse was fired ; then, again, that three other large 
 warehouses containing tobacco had been given to the flames. 
 It was too late ; the hand of the government was recognized 
 in it. 
 
 The conflagration had proceeded from a strange negligence 
 of President Davis. It was a standing order in the Con 
 federacy, that cotton and tobacco should be burned on the 
 approach of the enemy ; and some weeks before, in a general 
 discussion, in the newspapers, as to what might possibly take 
 place in Kichmond, it was suggested that the little there was 
 of these staples, in the city, should be removed, and im 
 pounded in the Far Grounds outside the city, where thev 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 495 
 
 might be conveniently and cleanly destroyed in case of 
 necessity. The suggestion was never heeded by Mr. Davis. 
 The cotton and tobacco remained stored in large and scattered 
 warehouses in the most thickly built parts of the city. In 
 the trepidation of his flight, and in the excessive concern for 
 his own safety, Mr. Davis appears to have left the order for 
 burning the cotton and tobacco unchanged ; at least the 
 supposition of neglect is most charitable, for it is hardly to 
 be supposed that he would have deliberately imperilled the 
 homes of sixty thousand people, to destroy and to deprive 
 the enemy of some insignificant stores of the total value of 
 which it has been computed that it wo aid not furnish one 
 day s rations for the whole of Grant s army ! 
 
 Eichmond in flames was a fitting souvenir of its departed 
 President a characteristic concluding example of the mis 
 management and thoughtlessness of the government whose 
 record for four years had been that of brilliant wrecks. Tt 
 was well for the sensibilities of Mr. Davis that he did not 
 witness the last supreme ruin and distress his folly caused, 
 and which history has placed at his doors as an inextinguish 
 able signal of shame and crime. The flames that devoured 
 his capital were seen by him only in faint reflections on the 
 sky ; the sheets of fire and smoke that flapped in the mid air 
 were not over his own head; the keen cries of distress, though 
 given to the racing winds, could not overtake his rapid flight. 
 For the present he was safe and amused ; and while Eichmond 
 burned, he was setting up a childish caricature of a new 
 government in the obscure town of Danville. 
 
 The morning of the 3d of April was ushered in with a 
 congregation of horrors. The first grey streaks of the dawn 
 were broken by the explosions of the iron-dads in the James 
 river, blown up by orders of Admiral Semmes. The air was 
 
496 LIFE 
 
 rent as by the report of a hundred cannon. Men rushed 
 through the streets crying out that Richmond was bombarded; 
 but even the voices of alarm could scarcely be lifted above 
 the roaring, the hissing and the crackling of the flames as 
 they leaped from house to house, and licked the faces of the 
 swaying crowds. By ten o clock when several thousands of 
 the enemy had already marched into the city the scene had 
 become fearfully sublime. It was a scene in which the 
 horrors of a great conflagration struggled for tho fore-part of 
 the picture, while the Grand Army, brilliant with steel and 
 banners, breaking into the circle of fire with passionate cheers, 
 and the crash of triumphant martial music, dazzled the 
 spectator and confounded his imagination. The flames had 
 already spread over the chief business portion of the city ; 
 brands were flying toward the Capitol ; and it seemed at one 
 time, as if the whole of Richmond would be destroyed that 
 the whole wicked city would rush skyward in a pyramid of 
 fire. A change in the wind, however, drove back the fire 
 from the high plateau above Franklin street, where, if the 
 flames had once lodged, they would soon have traversed the 
 length and breadth of the city. But the business portion of 
 the city, south of this street, and bounded east and west by 
 Fifteenth and Eighth streets, was doomed from the time the 
 torch was applied to the Shockoe Warehouse, where the 
 flames rising to the height of six stories, and radiating front 
 and rear, were soon beyond control. The Government could 
 not have selected a better point from which to scatter the 
 destroying element, and to secure a complete conflagration of 
 the most valuable part of Richmond.. 
 
 All that was terrible in sounds was added to all that was 
 terrible in sights While glittering regiments carried their 
 straight lines of steel through the smoke ; while smoke- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 497 
 
 masked robbers fought for their plunder ; while the lower 
 streets appeared as a great pit of fire, the crater of destruction ; 
 while alarmed citizens, who had left their property a ruin or a 
 spoil, found a brief refuge on the sward of the Capitol Square, 
 whose emerald green was already strewn with brands 
 the seeds of fire that the merciless winds had sown to the 
 very doors of the Capitol ; while the lengthening arms of the 
 conflagration appeared to almost reach around those who had 
 fled to the picturesque hill for a breath of fresh air, sounds as 
 terrible, and more various than those of battle, assailed the 
 ear, and smote the already over- taxed imagination. There 
 were shells at the Confederate Arsenal exposed to the fire, 
 from the rapid progress of which they could no longer be 
 rescued, and for hours the explosions of them tore the air and 
 shook the houses in their vicinity. Crowds of Negroes roamed 
 through the streets, their wild, coarse voices raised in hymns 
 of jubilation, thanking God for their freedom ; and a few steps 
 farther might be heard the blasphemous shouts of those who 
 fought with the red-handed fire for their prey. 
 
 Above all these scenes of terror hung a great vail of 
 smoke. It rose solemnly to the sky, and through it the 
 trimmed disc of the sun, " no bigger than the moon," shone 
 dull and ghastly. It was a combination to which description 
 fails to do justice, and in which it is impossible to distress 
 the mind with all of its details. There were crowds, mad 
 with cowardice, swaying under excitement, trampling on each 
 other ; there were lurid figures of pillagers in the smoke and 
 flame; there we.re keen cries of distress that cleft the volume 
 of military music; and thus, on this thronged theatre, un 
 naturally illuminated, and in an auditorium of almost 
 unearthly sounds, expired much of the pride, the luxury, the 
 licentiousjiess and the cruelty of Richmond. 
 32 
 
498 LIFE OF JEFFERSON" DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 When night descended, a death-like quiet fell upon what 
 remained of the city. It represented a feeling of reaction; 
 and far beyond the sleepless forms of those who mechanically 
 laid down in the shadows of the ruins of Eichmond to think 
 of the events of a day never to be forgotten, there were 
 millions in all parts of the country to whom the same night 
 brought a sense of remission from a great excitement. The 
 tens of thousands who had sung the doxology in New York, 
 and whose voices of praise to (rod had risen in the open air, 
 while the smoke of Richmond s torment ascended the sky. 
 laid down at the close of the day with hearts as overstrained 
 as those which kept vigil in the punished and despairing 
 capital of the Confederacy. For each the decisive event of 
 the war had happened, although in the opposite senses of 
 hope and fear ; but the excesses of despair and joy are alike, 
 in reducing the mind to a momentary blankness, to the ces 
 sation of an active interest. A war which had been waged 
 for four years had practically, virtually ended in a day, and 
 the country was sunk into meditation awaking after the 
 night of the 3d of April, to show but little interest in the 
 chronological order that alone remained to gather up the de 
 tails, to distribute the characters, and to conclude the story. 
 
 Only one notable man in the South seemed thoroughly 
 insensible of the meaning of that day. Intoxicated with rage 
 and disappointment, foolishly disposed to resent as an inci 
 dent of misfortune what was really the finishing blow of fate, 
 furious at what he th ought the incredulity of those who 
 listened in pitiful silence to his new schemes of triumph, 
 Jefferson Davis was proceeding t$ continue the war with 
 behavior so extravagant and grotesque as to excite the 
 ridicule of his enemies, to move the pity of his friends, and 
 to rob himself even of that last consolation of a failing cause 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 499 
 
 the dignity of a calm and intelligent submission. It is the 
 great man who can make the distinction between the chal 
 lenge of misfortune and the sentence of fate, and who knows 
 how to conform his conduct to the one or the other. Mr. 
 Davis could not see it. He had not the nature to accept 
 gracefully the irreparable. He could not understand the 
 effects of the fall of Richmond. But a short while before the 
 catastrophe, and as if in calculation of it, he had stated that 
 if Richmond fell, the war would still go on ; and he had added 
 to some of his friends in intimate conversation on the subject, 
 that he even ventured to hope that after such an event, the 
 war would proceed with increased spirit on the part of the 
 South. It is memorable that the press published the follow 
 ing reply to the inflation of the President : " The evacuation 
 of Richmond would be the loss of all respect and authority 
 towards the Confederate Government, the disintegration of 
 the army, and the abandonment of the scheme of an indepen 
 dent Southern Confederation. Each contestant in the war has 
 made Richmond the central object of all its plans and all its 
 exertions. It has become the symbol of the Confederacy. 
 Its loss would be material ruin to the cause, and, in a moral 
 point of view, absolutely destructive, crushing the heart and 
 extinguishing the last hope of the country. Our armies 
 would lose the incentive inspired by a great and worthy 
 object of defence. Our military policy would be totally at 
 sea ; we should be without a hope or an object ; without 
 civil or military organization ; without a treasury or a com 
 missariat ; without the means of keeping alive a wholesome 
 and active public sentiment ; without any of the appliances 
 for supporting a cause depending upon popular faith and 
 enthusiasm; without the emblems or the semblance of nation 
 ality." A few days were to determine whether Mr. Davis or 
 
500 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 his critic was right; which view was to supervene on the 
 loss of the Confederate capital. It proved a sequel in which 
 we shall presently follow Mr. Davis a view even more 
 sorrowful and humiliating than that which the Eichmond 
 journalist had predicted ; for what remained of the picture of 
 the Southern Confederacy, after the catastrophe of Eichmond 
 is, as we shall see, mainly the single figure of the President 
 in flight, and, at last, his surrender with not one defender 
 from all the vast armies of the South, standing between him 
 and the enemy. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 501 
 
 * 
 
 CHAPTEK XXX. 
 
 Some Further Reflections on the Character of President Davis A Historical Comparison Secret 
 History of his Flight from Richmond A Vessel Awaiting Him ou the Coast of Florida Con 
 cealment of Important Records of the Confederacy Trepidation of Mr. Davis s Departure from 
 Richmond What Became of the Gold in the Treasury The President s Proclamation at Dan 
 ville A Singular Conversation Fatuity and Blindness of Mr. Davis Continuation of his 
 Flight to Greensboro , North Carolina Infamous and Insulting Conduct of the People there 
 The President Housed, for nearly a Week, in a Box Car A Lady to the Rescue Memorable 
 Interview of President Davis and Generals Johnston and Beauregard A Bitter Speech from 
 Johnston The President Dictates an Important Letter Meditations of his Journey through 
 North Carolina He Conceives a New Prospect " Hoping Against Hope " A Dramatic and 
 Painful Scene at Abbeville, South Carolina The Last Council of the Southern Confederacy 
 "All is Lost" Disbandment of the Confederate Troops at Abbeville Mr. Dayis s Misconduct 
 on Receiving the News of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln The Presidential Party at 
 Washington, Georgia Mr. Davis Disguised as an Emigrant His Capture Wicked and Absurd 
 Story of his being Disguised in a Woman s Dress A Bloody Defiance Mrs. Davis in the Scene 
 The President s Parley with His Captors A Sorrowful Cavalcade to Macon, Georgia. 
 
 IN another part of our work we have suggested a com 
 parison between President Davis and a character whom the 
 historian Gibbon has vividly portrayed, and whom Bulwer, 
 from the standpoint of elegant fiction, has adorned, making a 
 brilliant, romantic figure quite unlike the severe description 
 in history Hienzi, the last of the Koman Tribunes. The 
 comparison, as it will suggest itself to the reader, is remarka 
 bly fine and forcible. The two men are examples of that 
 mixed character, always fated to various and opposite criti 
 cism, alike liable to the extremes of censure and of praise, 
 where the virtues and the vices flourish on an uncertain 
 boundary, and are often intertwined ; where great weaknesses 
 are coupled with admirable accomplishments, and where the 
 defects of practical judgment are found in union with the 
 
502 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 finest scholarly culture, rendering the attainments of the 
 latter rather curious than useful. The two tribunes were 
 alike in their ambition, alike in their historical mission, alike 
 in abusing the most extraordinary gifts of fortune. They had 
 the same quality^ 1 ambition, at once intensified and degraded 
 by much of personal vanity ; they made the same mistake of 
 strong, selfish aspirations for public spirit; they had the 
 same affection for the gauds of authority, proceeding not so 
 much from the love of elegant luxury as from that of the 
 symbol and adornment of power ; they had the same connu 
 bial entanglements, alike governed by their wives, and 
 divided between the endearments of the private chamber and 
 the cares of State. And yet they were great orators and 
 scholars ; they represented the best culture of their times ; 
 and they were pure men, though, in the sense of being such, 
 not so much from the hardihood of virtue as from the refine 
 ments of taste. They failed, alike, from the same ignorance 
 of government, the same ill distribution of obstinacies and 
 weaknesses, haughty refusals in one instance, and mean com 
 pliances in another, the same repulse of counsellors, the same 
 paltry intrigues of the closet and the boudoir, the same con 
 tempt of fortune, presuming upon its favors as natural rights 
 or irrevocable gifts. They experienced the same extremes 
 of public opinion popular adultation at the commencement 
 of their career and damning neglect at its close ; and they, 
 alike, lost the affections of their people, by using with arro 
 gance the powers they had bestowed, playing the tyrant 
 rather from the vanity of power, rather through conceited 
 and thankless use of it than from any natural cruelty, or 
 through exercises of anger or revenge. 
 
 The comparison is most striking, towards the end of the 
 careers of the two tribunes. The feebleness of the surrender 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 503 
 
 of Rome brings to mind the forty cavalrymen, that, first, in 
 the morning of the 3d of April, rode into Richmond without 
 hindrance, and planted their guidons on the Capitol ; and 
 the apathy of the citizens who looked with contempt on their 
 former idol, Rienzi, the friend of Petrarch, the great orator, 
 the elegant favorite of the forum, suggests at least the indif 
 ference with which Jefferson Davis was dismissed from the 
 stage of his country s extreme distress and calamity. 
 
 " The Roman hero," says Gibbon, " was fast declining from 
 the meridian of fame and power ; and the people who had 
 gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to 
 mark the irregularity of its course, and the vicissitudes of 
 light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more 
 enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not 
 balanced by cool and commanding reason : he magnified in a 
 ten-fold proportion the objects of hope and fear ; and prudence 
 which could not have erected, did not presume to fortify his 
 throne. In the blaze of prosperity, his virtues were insensi 
 bly tinctured with the adjacent vices; justice with cruelty, 
 liberality with profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile 
 and ostentatious vanity * * * In the pride of victory, he 
 forfeited what yet remained of his civil virtues, without ac 
 quiring the fame of military prowess. A free and vigorous 
 opposition was formed in the city; and when the tribune 
 proposed in the public council to impose a new tax and to 
 regulate the government of Perugia, thirty-nine members 
 voted against his measures; repelled the infamous charge of 
 treachery and corruption; and urged him to prove, by their 
 forcible exclusion, that if the populace adhered to his cause, 
 it was already disclaimed by the most respectable citizens 
 At the head of one hundred and fifty soldiers, the 
 count of Minorbino introduced himself into Rome ; barricaded 
 
504 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the quarter of the Colonna ; and found the enterprise as easy 
 as it had seemed impossible. From the first alarm, the bell 
 of the Capitol incessantly tolled ; but, instead of repairing to 
 the well-known sound, the people were silent and inactive ; 
 and the pusillanimous Eienzi, deploring their ingratitude 
 with sighs and tears, abdicated the government and palace 
 of the republic." 
 
 Kienzi, at another time, attempted to escape from his capi 
 tal in the disguise of a baker. Jefferson Davis s effort at 
 escape was perhaps not less mean in its last resources. But 
 Eienzi did what the chief of the Southern Confederacy did 
 not do ; and at the last he was unwilling to leave his capital, 
 without at least the dignity of an adieu, without some words 
 addressed to the people, without something of invocation not 
 to be omitted in any extremity of despair, or to be forgotten 
 in any haste of personal alarm. 
 
 We have seen that Jefferson Davis fled from Kichmond, 
 without a word of public explanation, with none of that 
 benediction or encouragement which a great leader is expec 
 ted to impart to his people in such a catastrophe. He escaped 
 with the ignominy of an obscure, mean fugitive, if not posi 
 tively in the character of a deserter. Some explanation has 
 been offered of his singular neglect on this occasion of those 
 whom, in his day of power, he was accustomed, after the 
 affectation of a fond and paternal ruler, to call "his people/ 
 in the statement that the government at Kichmond had no 
 expectation of Lee s disaster, and was thus painfully hurried 
 in its evacuation of the capital. 
 
 The statement is untrue, and the excuse is unavailing. 
 The writer well knows, what has not heretofore been impar 
 ted to public curiosity, that Jefferson Davis had, many weeks 
 before Lee s catastrophe, made the most careful and exacting 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 505 
 
 preparations for his escape. The matter had been fully con 
 sulted with his Cabinet, in profound secresy ; and it had been 
 agreed that, to secure the escape of the President and his 
 principal officers, the Shenandoah should be ordered to cruise 
 off the coast of Florida, to take the distinguished fugitives on 
 board, who had selected the coast for their exit from the Con 
 federacy, and their extrication from its falling fortunes. 
 These orders had been sent to the Confederate cruiser many 
 days before Lee s lines were broken. It was calculated that, 
 in the last resource of the surrender of Lee s army, and of the 
 neutralization of other organized forces of the Confederacy, 
 the President s party might make an easy and deliberate 
 escape in the way agreed upon, as the communications with the 
 Florida coast were then scarcely doubtful, and once on the 
 Shenandoahj a fast sailer, the most valuable remnant of the 
 Confederate navy, they might soon obtain an asylum on a 
 foreign shore. Other preparations were made for the flight; 
 all the papers of the government were revised, and marked 
 for destruction, abandonment, or preservation, according to 
 their contents ;* and even Mr. Davis s private baggage was 
 
 * By the way, it is remarkable that so little has been obtained, by 
 the capture or discovery of documents, of the secret history of the 
 Confederacy. True, there have been collected at Washington some 
 documentary relics, under the title of "Rebel Archives;" and the 
 pretentious construction of a Bureau to take care of them, and cer 
 tain foolish provisions against the access to them of public curiosity, 
 have given the idea of some value and mystery attached to them. 
 But they are historically worthless, scarcely anything more than the 
 official platitudes, dry and barren amplifications of stories which 
 have been told a hundred times in the newspapers. There was 
 captured in Richmond only the refuse of the Confederate archives. 
 It is a curious and romantic fact, not generally known, that the bulk 
 of the valuable papers of the Confederate Government, including the 
 
506 LIFE OF JKFFERSOX DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 put in order for transportation. Of course, the public knew 
 nothing of these preparations, and it did not even suspect 
 
 correspondence of Jefferson Davis, exists to-day in concealment ; 
 that many days before the fall of Eichmond there was a careful 
 selection of important papers, especially those in the office of the 
 President, and letters which involved confidences in the North and 
 in Europe, and that these were secretly conveyed out of Richmond, 
 and deposited in a place where they remain concealed to this time, 
 and will probably not be unearthed in this generation. Where is 
 this repository of the secrets of the Confederate Government the 
 author is not prepared to say. Indeed, he has never been able to 
 obtain other than very general information of the present place of 
 these papers, and even as to the limits of the locality he was bound 
 by obligations of private confidence, which it is impossible to violate. 
 The author can only assure the reader of three facts : that they 
 still exist ; that there are living persons who know of their conceal 
 ment ; and that they contain important evidences of the secret 
 history of Mr. Davis s Government. lie has repeatedly sought 
 access to them out of historical curiosity, but he has been invariably 
 met with the explanation that, while this indulgence might be 
 allowed him, for such legitimate purpose, it would be unsafe, for 
 private reasons, and the information if published might be diverted 
 to serious consequences to persons of importance yet living, and 
 within the jurisdiction of the government. It has been impossible 
 to surmount this objection, and there is no doubt that many of these 
 papers do really involve discoveries of some curious negotiations in 
 the war, the parties to which might astound the public. During the 
 war it was well known, in some circles of confidence in Richmond 
 as we have observed in the text of another part of this work that 
 Mr. Davis entertained a large secret correspondence in the North ; 
 that he had sources of comfort, information, and advice there ; and 
 indeed it would have been strange, considering the volume of dis 
 affection in the North a remarkable peculiarity of the late war 
 if it had not found some expression in secret negotiations, or some 
 sort of surreptitious communication with the Confederate authorities. 
 Of the extent of such correspondence the popular imagination has 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 507 
 
 them. We have already referred to a bitter suspicion in 
 Kichmond, that whatever the misfortune of the Southern 
 Confederacy, Mr. Davis would be certain to provide for his 
 personal safety, above that of all others ; and indeed, we have 
 been forced to suggest that, for this mean reason, the Presi 
 dent had invariably blanched at any retaliation upon the 
 enemy involving the penalty of death. But many people re 
 sented this thought or suspicion ; they persisted in believing 
 that President Davis would stand with the army when the 
 
 probably fallen short. As an instance of the volume of " disloyalty " 
 and venality in the North, the writer may mention the case of a 
 single secret document which he was once permitted to see in Rich 
 mond, wherein certain parties offered to assist the Confederacy, by 
 supplying its "Western armies for a whole year from the granaries 
 and magazines of the North. Such important letters and other 
 secret papers were kept in what was called "the Presidential 
 Archives." These archives a part of the documentary history of 
 the government of Mr. Davis, of which we have had occasion to 
 speak in connection with its political intrigues in the summer of 
 1864 we repeat, still exist, were preserved from the wreck and fire 
 of Richmond, and at this moment are under the seal of a personal 
 confidence with Mr. Davis ; while the Federal authorities congratu 
 lating themselves that they seized the archives of the Southern Con 
 federacy, had only captured its waste paper. 
 
 However imperfect the revelations that have yet been made of the 
 inner or secret government of Mr. Davis, yet the world may know, 
 and it is at least some historical satisfaction, that the most valuable 
 papers of the Southern Confederacy, including the correspondence of 
 the President, reported to have been held with important parties in 
 the North and in Europe, and which might yet involve the personal 
 safety of some of them, and possibly found prosecutions, did not 
 perish in the catastrophe of Richmond ; that they are yet preserved 
 in a manner and place to defy discovery, and secure against loss or 
 mutilation dedicated, perhaps, to the curiosity of a distant genera 
 tion. 
 
508 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 Confederate flag was lowered, and accept a common lot with 
 them and the people ; and they called to mind his heroic 
 words, spoken to the troops in Virginia in 1861, at the be 
 ginning of the war : " When the last line of bayonets is 
 levelled I will be with you." 
 
 In the last chapter, we left Mr. Davis hurrying from St. 
 Paul s church. He walked unattended to his house. After 
 having safely bestowed his important papers, and by this 
 measure consulted to some degree his personal safety, it might 
 be supposed that Mr. Davis would be prepared to leave Kich- 
 mond with some appearance of self-possession and dignity. 
 But after all the provisions for his flight, the signal for it was 
 so sudden and dramatic announced to him in the shape of 
 Lee s dread telegram as to have some effect of surprise at 
 least, breaking down his equanimity, and reducing him to 
 that condition of fluster and tremulousness with which the 
 weak man receives the news of misfortune, no matter how 
 long he has vaguely expected it, and practised against the 
 moment of its announcement. 
 
 He nervously prepared at his house his private baggage, 
 and he never ventured in the streets until, under cover of the 
 night, he got, unobserved, on the train that was to convey him 
 from Richmond. He did not forget the gold in the Treasury ; 
 that, amounting to less than forty thousand dollars, it had 
 been proposed some days before, in Congress, to distribute as 
 largesses to the discontented soldiers ; but Mr. Davis had in- 
 slated upon reserving it for exigencies, and it was now secured 
 in his baggage. He did forget his sword. That, a costly 
 present from some of his admirers in England, had been sent 
 to the Richmond Armory for some repairs ; it was abandoned 
 to the fire there. The last seen of this relic of the Southern 
 Confederacy was a twisted and gnarled stem of steel, on pri- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 509 
 
 vate exhibition in a lager-beer saloon in Richmond, garnished 
 with a certificate that it was what remained of Jeff. Davis s 
 sword, and that the curiosity might be purchased for two 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 Mr. Davis was accompanied at the first stage of his flight 
 by some of his personal staff, and three members of his 
 Cabinet : General Breckinridge, Secretary of War, Mr. Ben 
 jamin, Secretary of State, and Mr. Eeagan, Postmaster- 
 General. His wife was in North Carolina. The party 
 journeyed without accident or adventure to Danville, sitting 
 mostly in moody silence, as the train shrieked through the 
 night that a few miles further was being torn by explosions, 
 through whose fitful chasms of light Lee s army marched as 
 into impenetrable darkness. Arrived at Danville, Mr. Davis 
 issued a proclamation ; out of place there, inaccessible to the 
 army, and which would have been much more fitly made 
 before he had abandoned the post of danger in Eichrnond. 
 
 This proclamation merits the curiosity, and, in some sense, 
 the sympathy of the reader : 
 
 DANVILLE, VA., April 5, 1865. 
 
 The General-in-Chief found it necessary to make such movements 
 of his troops as to uncover the capital. It would be unwise to conceal 
 the moral and material injury to our cause resulting from the occu 
 pation of our capital by the enemy. It is equally unwise and un 
 worthy of us to allow our own energies to falter, and our efforts to be 
 come relaxed under reverses, however calamitous they may be. For 
 many months the largest and finest army of the Confederacy, under 
 a leader whose presence inspires equal confidence in the troops and 
 the people, has been greatly trammelled by the necessity of keeping 
 constant watch over the approaches to the capital, and has thus beer 
 forced to forego more than one opportunity for promising enterprise. 
 It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses, 
 how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed 
 
510 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVTS ; WITH A 
 
 us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude than to encounter 
 dangers with courage. 
 
 AVe have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle. Eelieved 
 from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be 
 free to move from point to point, to strike the enemy in detail far 
 from his base. Let us but will it, and we are free. 
 
 Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude which 
 never yet failed me, I announce to you, fellow-countrymen, that it is 
 my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul ; 
 that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil 
 of any of the States of the Confederacy. That Virginia noble State 
 whose ancient renown has been eclipsed by her still more glorious 
 recent history ; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock 
 of this war ; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so 
 sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come that Virginia, 
 with the help of the people, and by the blessing of Providence, shall 
 be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous 
 invaders of her territory. 
 
 If, by the stress of numbers, we should ever be compelled to a tem 
 porary withdrawal from her limits, or those of any other border 
 State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall 
 abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves 
 of a people resolved to be free. 
 
 Let us, then, not despond, my countrymen, but, relying on God, 
 meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and uncon 
 querable hearts. 
 
 JEFFERSON DAVIS. 
 
 The proclamation was a characteristic effusion of the san 
 guine disposition of the President. While walking the streets 
 of Danville, he was met by two gentlemen who had occupied 
 offices in one of the Departments of Eichmond, and who now, 
 with visible anxiety, but with great respect, asked him if he 
 had yet received any news from Lee s arrny. " No," replied 
 Mr. Davis ; " but, gentlemen, no news is good news under the 
 circumstances, and General Lee probably knows what to do 
 with the enemy, without consulting me." And, with a smile, 
 he added, " Make the most of your holiday, gentlemen, for 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 511 
 
 we ll soon have you at work again." What miracle could he 
 thus have expected from Lee ? What transformations of 
 public opinion, that the authority and civil routine of the 
 government were thus easily to be resumed ? It was the evi 
 dence of a fatuity, the example of a blindness, proof against 
 that enlightenment which is supposed to be afforded when 
 misfortune wreaks its worst and last the illumination of the 
 past which the kindness of nature grants before the moment 
 of death the period of eclaircissement at the close of the life 
 drama, when the entanglements of the plot are loosened, and 
 nothing remains but the expiring hero and the final catas 
 trophe. 
 
 Even when the news of the surrender of Lee s army got to 
 Danville (which it did on the 10th of April), Mr. Davis was 
 not yet ready to abandon hope. But it was noticeable that 
 the exaltation of spirits he had obtained after having passed, 
 as he conceived, the boundary of danger, and got on the side 
 of supposed personal safety, did not long survive. With 
 courage again impaired by the nervous haste and trepidation 
 of flight, and with hopes diminished, but not extinguished, 
 the President and his party, on the news of Lee s surrender, 
 turned their faces to the South. They travelled by railroad 
 to Greensboro , North Carolina, and here the President 
 paused to obtain an interview with Generals Johnston and 
 Beauregard. Something of assurance might be obtained from 
 them ; they might appeal to their soldiers not to lay down 
 their arms, as Lee s troops had done ; and if once could be 
 effected only the semblance of continuing the war, the ex 
 ample of such a resolution, or, perhaps, a victory, no matter 
 how small or obscure the field, would rally the confidence of 
 the people in its vicinity, and spread gradually through the 
 country. Such were the weak speculations of the President. 
 Sorrowfully, General Breckinridge, undertook a journey on 
 
512 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 horseback to General Johnston s camp, to acquaint him with 
 the President s desire for an interview ; moved by the earnest 
 entreaties of Mr. Davis, pitying the fallen chief, to whom he 
 had been so near in office, but well knowing that his mission 
 was vain, and sharing none of the fluttering hopes of Mr. 
 Davis, or of the vivid delusions which tormented the last 
 days of his official life. 
 
 At Greensboro occurred an episode on which every candid 
 reader of the history of the war, no matter what his stand 
 point, must put a condemnation, and which no Southern man 
 can remember, without affixing it with a stigma of shame. 
 There is nothing which tests character more truly than the 
 fall into misfortune of a friend or of an enemy. Surely a 
 mean nature is never more despicable than in its maltreat 
 ment of misfortune, and its cowardly refuge, on such occa 
 sions, in old resentments, or in selfish calculations. There 
 were many in the South who dissented from the government 
 of Mr. Davis, who were hostile to his administration, who 
 gave him no confidence and bore him no affection, as a ruler; 
 yet even among these, the truly noble and the sincere could 
 have respected the misfortunes of the President, when they 
 found him a distressed fugitive. They would have obeyed 
 the promptings of but an ordinary human generosity, to have 
 visited him at the stages of his distressed and weary flight, 
 to tender some hospitality, or to offer an honorable condolence. 
 But even such manifestations of humanity did a North 
 Carolina town, containing several thousand souls, refuse to 
 show to the man who, but a few weeks before, had been their 
 supreme magistrate and chief, who was yet such under the un- 
 expired forms of the Confederacy, and who now came among 
 them a broken, aged fugitive, making a feeble flight from 
 the enemy, and encumbered with a helpless family. For 
 nearly a week, while remaining at Greensboro , the President 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 513 
 
 and his family lived in a box-car on the railroad, having no other 
 shelter ! When lie arrived, not a house in Greensboro was 
 open to him. Not the slightest hospitality was offered ; and 
 if any thing could be added to the shame of this cruel neglect 
 and insult of the unhappy President, it was the cowardly 
 excuse made by the citizens, that they were unwilling to 
 alleviate his distress, or, indeed, to offer him shelter, because 
 they feared that the enemy, on some future visit to this 
 humane and honorable town, might resent it. But for the 
 honor of humanity, there occurred one exception to the 
 shameful exhibition of a North Carolina community; and it 
 as the reader may anticipate came from a woman, a lady 
 well qualified by her social position and worth to rebuke 
 conduct of such infamy and cowardice. It was not until 
 some days after his arrival that Mrs. C. S. L Hommedieu, a 
 lady residing in Greensboro , and well-known in society as 
 the daughter of Dr. Tooley, of Natchez, Mississippi, learned 
 that the President was in town, ignominiously housed in a 
 box-car, and shunned by the citizens, except those who visited 
 him from brutal curiosity ; and this true and brave lady at 
 once addressed him a note, begging him to make her house 
 his home, and to honor her by commanding any thing in it 
 The President had to decline the invitation, as he was then 
 making preparations to depart ; but he was deeply affected : 
 in no circumstances to his credit be it said was he ever 
 unmindful of what was due from the fine and generous breed 
 ing of the gentleman, and, although hurried in his departure 
 from Greensboro , he did not omit to address to the lady a 
 beautiful letter of thanks, anxious to commemorate, and 
 unable otherwise to reward her goodness and generosity. 
 
 The resumption of Mr. Davis s flight toward the South 
 was in consequence of what had taken place in his interview 
 33 
 
514 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 with Generals Johnston and Bcauregard. It was an inter 
 view of inevitable embarrassment and pain. The two Gen 
 erals were those who had experienced most of the prejudice 
 and injustice of the President ; he had always felt aversion 
 for them ; and it would have been an almost impossible 
 excess of Christian magnamity if they had not returned 
 something of resentment and coldness to the man who, they 
 believed, had arrogantly domineered over them, and more 
 than once sought their ruin. We have seen how unceremo 
 niously and cruelly Johnston had been hustled off the stage 
 at Atlanta. True, he had now been restored to command ; 
 but under circumstances which made it no concession to the 
 public, and no favor to him, for he was restored only to the 
 conduct of a campaign that was already lost, and put in com 
 mand of a broken and disorganized force that Sherman had 
 already driven through two States. When some time before 
 public sentiment was demanding his return to service, he 
 wrote bitterly that he was quite sure that if the authorities at 
 Kichmond restored him to command, they were resolved not 
 to act toward him in good faith and with proper support, but 
 to put him in circumstances where defeat was inevitable, and 
 thus confirm to the populace the military judgment of the 
 President. He had no reason to thank Mr. Davis for his present 
 command in the forests of North Carolina, where the President 
 had now come to him to ask little less than a miracle at his 
 hands. As for General Beauregard, his painful relations with 
 Mr. Davis had been public gossip ever since the battle of 
 Manassas. There had been, too, a recent unpleasantness, fresh 
 in the minds of both, on account of General Beauregard 
 having evacuated Charleston against the orders of the Presi 
 dent ; although what idea the latter could have had, within 
 the limits of sanity, in attempting to hold this city after 
 Sherma,n army had flanked it is difficult to imagine. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 515 
 
 These three men were now to meet, to consult of the con 
 dition of the country ; and the occasion invoked that they 
 should rise above personal feelings in the circumstances of a 
 great public sorrow and anxiety. There was obtained for 
 the interview a mean room on the second floor of a house 
 owned by a Confederate officer. Mr. Davis sat cold, digni 
 fied, evidently braced for an unpleasant task. He spoke in a 
 musing, absent way ; and it was remarked that, while speaking, 
 he never looked toward either commander, his eyes being 
 amused by a strip of paper which he was twisting in his 
 hands. His heart must have beat with a great anxiety, for 
 he must have known how much depended on these Generals 
 countenancing his plans of continuing the war ; and yet he 
 spoke as one who had merely resolved to state his case, and 
 who cared not to influence the decision one way or the other. 
 It was as if he had said openly to his Generals, " if you decide 
 to continue the war, to keep your armies in the field, well 
 and good ; but understand, it is no obligation conferred upon 
 me, I shall regard it as no concession to me." And yet his 
 heart secretly hung on their replies, and beneath his cold 
 exterior the practised eye might have seen the deep under 
 play of the nerve, the flutter of suppressed emotion. 
 
 The President spoke at great length. General Johnston 
 sat at as great a distance from him as the room allowed. He 
 was evidently impatient ; he knew what was coming ; he had 
 anticipated all that the President said before he had come 
 into the room, and he listened as one oppressed with the ful 
 ness and readiness of reply. Yet, when the President stopped 
 speaking, he remained profoundly silent. " General John 
 ston," Mr. Davis said, "we should like now to hear your 
 views." It was a reply that came with a bluntness and defi 
 ance that brought a sudden color to the cheeks of the Presi 
 dent. " Sir," blurted out General Johnston, " my views are 
 
516 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 that our people are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped 
 and will not fight !" In these few words he had said all that 
 was necessary ; and he spoke them suddenly, without preface. 
 But he continued to speak in short, decisive jerky sentences, 
 as if in haste to deliver his mind. He suggested that the 
 enemy s military power and resources were now greater than 
 they had ever been. What could the President hope to 
 oppose to them in the present demoralized condition of the 
 South? "My men," he said, "are daily deserting in large 
 numbers, and are taking my artillery teams to aid their 
 escape to their homes. Since Lee s defeat they regard the 
 war as at an end. If I march out of North Carolina, her 
 people will all leave my ranks. It will be the same as I pro 
 ceed south through South Carolina and Georgia, and I shall 
 expect to retain no man beyond the by-road or cow-path that 
 leads to his house. My small force is melting away like 
 snow before the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it. We 
 may, perhaps, obtain terms which we ought to accept." 
 
 A silence ensued. It was broken by the President, saying, 
 in a low, even tone : " What do you say, General Beaure- 
 gard ?" " I concur in all General Johnston has said," he 
 replied. 
 
 There was another pause in the conversation, when 
 presently General Johnston, as if regretting the cruel plain 
 ness of his remarks and thinking he had wounded enough 
 the unhappy President, who was still twisting abstractedly 
 the piece of paper in his hands, proceeded to suggest, at some 
 length, the hope of getting favorable terms from the enemy. 
 He thought it would be legitimate, and according with mili 
 tary usage for him to open a correspondence with General 
 Sherman, to see how far the Generals in the field might go in 
 arranging terms of peace. Mr. Davis could not but be sensi 
 ble of the wisdom of this suggestion, although he listened 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 517 
 
 coldly to it, and it was very little of consolation for the de 
 struction of such towering and grotesque hopes as he had 
 brought into the interview. General Breckinridge, who had 
 been present at the whole of the interview, now ventured to 
 advise that General Johnston should at once, and on the spot, 
 address a letter to Sherman to prepare an interview. " No/ 
 replied General Johnston probably anxious to show a mark 
 of deference to the President, out of pity for the mortification 
 already inflicted upon him " let the President dictate the 
 letter." The letter, proposing a suspension of hostilities, was 
 dictated by the President. And thus Mr. Davis himself, 
 virtually subscribed the token of submission of the Con 
 federate army, second in importance and numbers to that of 
 Lee ; yet unwilling to go further in the sequel, and to write 
 gracefully his entire submission to the inevitable. 
 
 On the 16th of April, the President, his staff and cabinet 
 left Greensboro . It was a slow travel in ambulances and on 
 horseback, and the dejection of the party was visible enough. 
 Mr. Davis was the first to rally from it. When he and his 
 companions had left Eichmond, it was in the belief of the 
 majority that Lee could avoid surrender but a few days 
 longer, and with the intention, as we have already said, of 
 making their way to the Florida coast and embarking there 
 for a foreign land. The President had clung, at Danville, to 
 the hope that Lee might effect a retreat to south-western Vir 
 ginia, and he had remained there long enough to see that 
 hope disappointed. Again, when he had sought General 
 Johnston s demoralized and inconsiderable army, it had been 
 from a feeble diversion of hope that it might not yield to the 
 example of Lee s surrender, and that, under the inspiration 
 of the presence and the direct command of the President, it 
 might be induced to keep the field. That expectation had 
 been brought to a painful end ; and it appeared as if the 
 
518 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 President would be recommitted now to the original design 
 of fleeing the Confederacy, and would now make an earnest 
 effort at escape. But his mind was disordered and undecided; 
 and it was distressing to see how he hesitated b tween assured 
 safety in flight from the country and the possxble hope that 
 the cause of the Confederacy might not be beyond redemp 
 tion. Anyhow, there were no signs yet that he was pursued 
 by the enemy ; and he had appeared to consider himself sure 
 of ultimately making good his escape, after he had once got 
 out of sight of Kichmond. He had shown great trepidation 
 in getting out of the capital, but in the leisure of a journey, 
 unmolested by pursuit and entertained by the fresh air and 
 pleasing sights of spring, he had time to recover, to some 
 extent, his self-possession, and to cast about for something to 
 be saved from the wreck of his hopes. 
 
 In the meditations of his journey through North Carolina 
 the fugitive President, although anxious for his personal 
 safety, appears to have conceived the alternative of venturing 
 to the south-west, within reach of the forces of Taylor and 
 Forrest, in the hope of reviving the fortunes of the Confede 
 racy within a limited territory. He suggested the alternative 
 to General Breckinridge, as they travelled together, after the 
 news of Johnston s surrender, but received only an evasive 
 reply ; the latter not sharing his hopes, but unwilling to 
 mortify them by a candid declaration of opinion. Mr. Davis 
 was remarkable for a sanguine temperament, but it was that 
 which we observe in weak characters, " hoping against hope," 
 fickle, flaring, extravagant, rather than that practical energy 
 which renews itself on disaster and conquers fortune. The 
 vision he had conjured up of a limited Confederacy around 
 the mouths of the Mississippi might have looked plausible 
 upon paper, but it was fatally defective in omitting the moral 
 condition of the South. The unhappy President had not yet 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 519 
 
 perceived that he had lost the faculty of encouraging others, 
 that the Southern people were in despair, and that, wherever 
 he might go, he" would find their countenances averted, their 
 hopes abanc} vned, and their thoughts already committed to 
 submission, [j But he was to realize very shortly how morally 
 deserted and practically helpless he was. His first discovery 
 of it was at Abbeville, South Carolina, where occurred one of 
 the most pathetic scenes in history, over which the tenderness 
 and charity of some of the actors have been disposed to draw 
 the curtain, committing its sorrows to secresy. 
 
 Mr. Davis reached Abbeville on the 1st of May. So far he 
 had been accompanied by the fragments of five brigades, 
 amounting in number to less than one thousand men, and 
 reorganized into two battalions, at the front and in rear of 
 the long train which signalled his flight and foolishly ob 
 structed his effort at escape. There were already painful 
 evidences of the demoralization of the escort, and the story 
 told almost at every mile, by stragglers from Johnston s 
 command, was not calculated to inspire them. At Abbeville 
 Mr. Davis resolved upon a council of war. It was composed 
 of the five brigade commanders, and General Braxton Bragg 
 (for the year past the " military adviser " of the President) 
 was admitted to this last scene of the deliberations of the lost 
 cause. 
 
 In the council Mr. Davis spoke with more than his accus 
 tomed facility and earnestness, inspired by hope, but without 
 volubility or extravagance. He made a statement of sur- 
 passing plausibility. The South, he declared, was suffering 
 from a panic ; it yet had resources to continue the war ; it 
 was for those who remained with arms in their hands to give 
 an example to reanimate others ; such an act of devotion, 
 besides being the most sublime thing in history, might yet 
 save the country, and erect again its declining resolution. 
 
620 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 " It is but necessary," he said, " that the brave men yet with 
 me should renew their determination to continue the war ; 
 they will be a nucleus for rapid reinforcements, and will 
 raise the signal of reanimation for the whole country." No 
 one of the council answered him at length; the replies of the 
 commanders were almost sunk to whispers ; the scene was 
 becoming painful : and it was at last agreed that each in his 
 turn should announce his decision. Each answered slowly, 
 reluctantly, in the negative ; the only words added were that 
 though they considered the war hopeless, they would not dis 
 band their men until they had guarded the President to a 
 place of safety. 
 
 " No," exclaimed Mr. Davis, passionately. " I will listen 
 now to no proposition for my safety. I appeal to you for the 
 cause of the country." Again he urged the commanders to 
 accept his views. 
 
 " We were silent," says General Basil Duke, one of the 
 council, " for we could not agree with him, and we respected 
 him too much to reply." 
 
 Mr. Davis yet stood erect, raised his hands to his head, as 
 if in pain, and suddenly exclaimed, "all hope is gone!" added 
 haughtily, " I see that the friends of the South are prepared 
 to consent to her degradation ;" and then sweeping the 
 company with a proud and despairing glance, he attempted 
 to pass from the room. 
 
 But the blow was too much for his feeble organization. 
 His face was white with anger and disappointment, and the 
 mist of unshed tears was in his eyes tears which pride 
 struggled to keep back. The sentiment that all was lost 
 went through his heart like the slow and measured thrust of 
 a sword ; as the wound sunk into it, it left him speechless ; 
 loose and tottering, he would have fallen to the floor, had 
 not General Breckinridge ended the scene by leading him 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 521 
 
 faltering from the room. In a dead and oppressive silence 
 the deserted leader, the fallen chief, secured a decent retreat 
 for agonies which tears only could relieve. 
 
 It was the last council of the Confederacy. The hateful 
 selfishness which originates in the attempt of each individual 
 to extricate himself from a common misfortune soon broke 
 out, no longer restrained by the presence of the President. 
 The soldiers were discharged ; but they clamored that they 
 had no money to take them home. What of the Treasury 
 gold that remained was divided among them. So fearful 
 were they of marauders that many buried their coin in the 
 woods, and in unfrequented places. With the disbandment 
 of the troops Mr. Benjamin suggested a separation of the 
 Cabinet officers from the President, making an excuse that 
 so large a party would advertise their flight, and increase 
 the chances of capture. Mr. Davis was left to make his way 
 to Georgia, Postmaster-general Eeagan continuing to journey 
 with him, and General Breckinridge only to a point where he 
 thought it convenient to leave for Florida. There were also 
 in the party two or three of his staff officers, and a few 
 straggling soldiers, who still kept up some show of an escort. 
 Mrs. Davis had already preceded her husband to Georgia, 
 and he now travelled slowly, and almost desolately, on horse 
 back, having arranged that she should await him in the town 
 of Washington. 
 
 From this place, the now hunted President was soon 
 driven again on his journey by news of the occupation of 
 Augusta. He had also received news of the assassination of 
 President Lincoln, and that event, he declared, confirmed 
 his resolution not to leave the country. He inferred from 
 the newspapers that he was accused as an accomplice in the 
 crime, and he remarked to one of his staff officers that he 
 " would prefer death to the dishonor of leaving the country 
 
522 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 under such an imputation." But with such a sentiment, it 
 will occur to the reader that it would have been noble and 
 decorous for Mr. Davis to have surrendered himself at the 
 nearest Federal post, and to have demanded a trial. It 
 would have placed him in a grand and winning -attitude, one 
 becoming a great man, one honorable to himself and the 
 South, and redeeming him more than anything else in the 
 eyes of the world. But unfortunately, he accepted the base 
 alternative of continuing his flight, and- that too with the 
 artifice of a mean disguise. 
 
 On continuing his journey, accompanied by his wife, 
 whom he had overtaken at Washington, it was determined 
 that the President and his friends should thereafter travel as 
 an emigrant po.rty. Mr. Eeagan was still in his company. 
 General Breckinridge had left outside the town of Washing 
 ton, taking with him forty -five Kentucky soldiers a strag 
 gling remnant of Morgan s old brigade. Ten mounted men 
 had offered to escort Mrs. Davis, and although they had 
 accepted their paroles, justly considered that they might pro 
 tect a distressed lady from marauders. All tokens of the 
 President s importance, in dress and air, were laid aside; 
 a covered wagon, pack-mule and cooking utensils were pro 
 vided at Washington ; and it was designed that Mr. Davis, 
 his wife, and his wife s sister should pass as a simple country 
 family emigrating from Georgia, and having fallen in with 
 straggling soldiers for their protection. Mr. Davis s dignity 
 was laid aside without much difficulty. Carlisle says : "A 
 king in the midst of his body-guard, with all his trumpets, 
 war-horses and gilt standard-bearers, will look great, though 
 he be little ; but only some Roman Carus can give audience to 
 satrap ambassadors while seated on the ground, with a woolen 
 cap, and supping on boiled peas, like a common soldier." 
 Mr. Davis, in the dress of a country farmer, had none of these 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 523 
 
 traces of imperialism which cling to those "born to the 
 purple." His features, just and handsome, without being 
 remarkable, were those which might command by assumed 
 airs, or might be practiced to particular expressions, but 
 scarcely those which could assert superiority without an 
 effort and at a glance. He incurred but little chance of de 
 tection in the dress he had assumed of an honest, well-to-do 
 emigrant. 
 
 But the last device of the distinguished fugitive, the only one 
 in which he had shown any ingenuity, and had confessed his 
 real anxiety for escape, was in vain, and he was captured three 
 day s journey from Washington. He had scarcely expected 
 to fall in with any enemy north of the Chattahoochie river, 
 the boundary of "the department of the Southwest," and 
 there he had designed to part with his wife, and to commit 
 her to her journey to the Shenandoah. He was overtaken by 
 a small body of Federal cavalry, originally sent out to post 
 a skirmish line through that part of Georgia, reaching to 
 Augusta, but now diverted to his pursuit. 
 
 The wicked and absurd story that Mr. Davis was captured 
 disguised in female attire is scarcely now credited. He was 
 aroused in the early grey of the morning by a faithful negro 
 servant (the same who has since attended his broken fortunes), 
 who had been awakened by the sound of firing in the woods. 
 The President had not laid off his clothes, and, in a moment, 
 he had issued from the tent where he had been sleeping. The 
 woods were filled with mounted troops, ill-defined in the mist 
 of the breaking morning, and, noticing that they were de 
 ploying, as if to surround the camp, he quickly imagined 
 their character and design, and returned within the tent, 
 either to alarm Mrs. Davis or there to submit decently to cap 
 ture. She besought him to escape, and, urging him to an 
 opening in the tent, threw over his shoulders a shawl which 
 
524 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 he had been accustomed to wear. His horse, a fleet and 
 spirited one, was tied to a tree at some distance. He was 
 within a few steps of the animal that might have borne him 
 out of danger, when a Federal soldier halted him, and de 
 manded to know if he was armed. 
 
 In relating the encounter afterwards, in his prison at 
 Fortress Monroe, Mr. Davis reported himself as saying. " If I 
 were armed you would not be living to ask the question." If 
 he did say so, it was a sorry bravado and, as none of his 
 captors appear to have recollected such words of defiance, we 
 are permitted to hope that Mr. Davis s memory is at fault, and 
 that he submitted to his fate really with more dignity than he 
 claims for himself. While he was parleying with the soldier, 
 Colonel Pritchard, commanding the body of cavalry, rode up, 
 and, addressing him by name, demanded his surrender. Not 
 one of his escort or companions came to his aid. He sub 
 mitted, walked back to the tent, and, in the presence of his 
 wife, asked Colonel Pritchard that she might continue her 
 -journey. The reply of the Colonel was that his orders were 
 to arrest all the party. Mr. Davis rejoined, with sarcasm : 
 " Then, sir, what has been said is true, your government does 
 make war upon women !" These were the only words of dis 
 pleasure or of bitterness in the dialogue of the capture. The 
 unhappy prisoner, after these words, was coldly silent. Ask 
 ing no questions of his fate, not intruded upon by any curiosity 
 of his captors, conversing only with the faithful and devoted 
 wife from whom he was not yet divided, and whose whispers 
 of affectionate solicitude by his side were all to lighten the 
 journey, he rode moodily in the cavalcade back to Ma con, 
 where first he was to learn the extent of his misery, and to 
 commence the dread career of the penalties he had accumu 
 lated bv four long and bitter years of war. 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 525 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Mistake of the Federal Government in the Imprisonment of Mr. Davis An Intrigue of Secretary 
 Stanton How Mr. Davis Repaired his Reputation in Prison Celebration of his Release in 
 Richmond A Transport of Affection for him in the South Ingenious Explanation of the Sen 
 sitiveness of the Southern People concerning Criticisms of Mr. Davis This Disposition Uu^sa- 
 sonable, and really Injurious to the Whole South Mr. Davis in Canada A Commercial 
 Errand to England The Ex-President of the Southern Confederacy as a Commission-Merchant 
 The Proposition of an Infamous and Hideous Traffic in Historical Notoriety Reflections on 
 the Employments of Confederate Leaders since the War An Important Distinction Honora 
 ble Example of General Lee The Prosecution of Mr. Davis Dismissed An Order of Nolle Pro- 
 sequi The Great Significance of this Event Imperfect Commentaries of the Dull and Barren 
 Press of the South The Discharge of Mr. Davis, the Greatest Triumph the South could have 
 Obtained after the War The Event Important in Three Aspects Exit of Mr. Davis from the 
 Political Stage. 
 
 BUT little remains to be told of a life, in which the blank of 
 imprisonment has been closely followed by the obscurity of 
 neglect. 
 
 It has been well said that if the Federal authorities, cap 
 turing Jefferson Davis, had turned him loose, or had wisely 
 refrained from treating him with invidious or exceptional 
 rigor, he would have remained to-day the most unpopular 
 man in the South. He would have been subject not only to 
 those censures and derisions of his countrymen which assailed 
 him in the last periods of his administration, but to the natu 
 ral increase and exasperation of them from the failure of the 
 war, and in the bitter daily experience of evils, of which he 
 would have stood, in the estimation of his people, the chief 
 author, the embodied, living cause, constantly displayed be 
 fore their eyes. Such an effect would have been logical ; and 
 
526 LIFE OF JEFFEKSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 the Government at Washington would have been wise if it 
 had thus left Mr. Davis to the natural operations of the senti 
 ment of his own countrymen, the results of which would have 
 been not only to appropriately punish him, but to aid the re 
 action, so much desired, in the South in favor of the restora 
 tion of the Federal authority. 
 
 Indeed, it is known that the Federal government was first 
 impressed with this view; that Mr. Davis was not pursued 
 through the Carolinas, and that there was every disposition 
 to wink at his escape, until Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, 
 procured his capture on an accusation which he probably in 
 vented merely to furnish an immediate occasion for pursuit. 
 The true explanation of the infamous and absurd charge 
 against Mr. Davis of complicity in the assassination of Presi 
 dent Lincoln is that it was a fictitious process got up by Mr. 
 Stanton, to defeat ingeniously the first intentions of the gov 
 ernment towards the distinguished fugitive ; and that, for the 
 gratification of his malice, the North had imposed upon it, for 
 four years, the embarrassment of an impracticable prisoner, 
 and fell into the irretrievable mistake of making him a martyr 
 rather than an example. Mr. Davis was pursued as a mur 
 derer, not as a traitor ; but when once the gates of Fortress 
 Monroe closed upon him, the Federal Government found 
 itself embarrassed by divided public opinions in the North, 
 urging the most various dispositions of the prisoner, and it 
 finally discovered that, so far as the people of the South were 
 concerned, instead of "making treason odious " to them in the 
 person of Jefferson Davis, it was making itself superlatively 
 odious in the character of his jailor and persecutor. 
 
 The imprisonment of Mr. Davis was the best thing that 
 could have happened for his fame. What he suffered, lying 
 as a prisoner in a casemate of Fortress Monroe for two years, 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 527 
 
 and for the first few weeks degraded by fetters, and especially 
 the manner of his suffering, not only disarmed much of the 
 old resentment of his countrymen, but displayed him in an 
 attitude so touching, and in conduct so becoming and noble, 
 that, when released on bail in the month of May, 1867, he 
 found himself welcomed by nearly every heart in the South, 
 and hailed with a pride and tenderness that his countrymen 
 had not before shown him, even in the best of his former 
 estate. 
 
 Old enmities were forgotten, old offences were forgiven, 
 and not an injurious memory of the past war was allowed 
 to disturb the tribute which the whole South seemed now 
 anxious to pay to the martyr of "the lost cause." He 
 came back to Eichmond as one who, by his sufferings, had 
 conquered the resentment of his people ; he found himself 
 holding a brilliant levee at the Spotswood Hotel, which some 
 of the newspapers maliciously compared with the mean assem 
 blies which President Lincoln and General Grant had drawn 
 in the same city ; men thronged the hotel, asking to see " our 
 President;" and, at last, such were the demonstrations of 
 popular affection, that the judicious friends of the pleased re 
 cipient had to compel him to desist from encouraging them, 
 for fear that they might attract jealous attention at Washington, 
 and have the effect of returning him to the pain and obscurity 
 of his prison. 
 
 This transport of public opinion in the South concerning 
 its ex- President, is easily explained. Mr. Davis had certainly 
 borne imprisonment with a dignity scarcely to be expected 
 from him. The actual extent of his sufferings, the patience 
 with which he bore them, his brave abstention from the 
 common complaints and revilings of the prison, at once en 
 treated for him the pity of his countrymen, and commanded 
 
528 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 their admiration. Again, the North committed the mistake of 
 making him an exception to the general rule of its treatment 
 of the leading men of the Confederacy ; from this point it was 
 easy for his countrymen to imagine him as a vicarious suf 
 ferer, bearing punishment for the sins of the whole South ; 
 yet further, this habitual view easily passed into the romantic 
 regard of him as an impersonation of the cause of the 
 Southern Confederacy ; and it is remarkable that, in this re 
 gard, the argument or the invocation is most frequently made 
 that any severe criticism of Mr. Davis from Southern sources 
 is to be deprecated and resented. 
 
 This is probably the whole ingenious explanation of the 
 recent transport of affection of the Southern people for Mr. 
 Davis, and its extreme sensitiveness to any commentary on 
 the errors of his administration. It contains an illogical ar 
 gument one naturally heard most from the women of the 
 South and persons of weak mind ; and it makes an appeal 
 mixed with the transitory passions and interests of the day, 
 and utterly unworthy to touch the severe conscience of the 
 historian. His duties to Jefferson Davis are the same as to 
 any other actor in history ; and paltry, indeed, is the idea 
 that he should withhold any truth for fear of wounding the 
 sensibilities with which a living generation of men would con 
 ceal the chief actor among them. And sensibilities, too, 
 utterly mistaken as we account them ; for we hold that Mr. 
 Davis, so far from being the impersonation of what was good 
 and reverential in the lost cause of the South, represented only 
 its follies and the reasons of its failure ; and if we have striven 
 to make clear any particular point in this work, it is that that 
 cause is best to be vindicated, and the merit and honor of the 
 South maintained therein, on the hypothesis of the unworthi- 
 ness of the man who presumed to conduct it, and who sacri- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 529 
 
 ficed and betrayed in it the true courage and virtue of his 
 countrymen ! 
 
 On his enlargement on bail, Mr. Davis, after a brief stay in 
 Richmond, and an unpleasant visit to New York, retired to 
 Canada. Thence, in the summer of 1868, he proceeded to 
 England, in pursuance of an offer of a commission house in 
 Liverpool to take him in as a partner, and thus afford him a 
 handsome pecuniary profit or bonus. The terms of this sin 
 gular proposition, as reported in the newspapers, were that 
 Mr. Davis was to become a member of the house referred to 
 without the contribution of any capital, and that he should 
 continue to reside in America, if he preferred to do so, repre 
 senting the interests of the firm at New Orleans. On arriving 
 in England, Mr. Davis did not find the house of that character 
 as to induce the advertisement of his name in connection with 
 it ; and, partly through the persuasions of friends who recog 
 nized the offer attempted to be imposed upon his credulity or 
 his avarice, as a disreputable advertising "dodge," a scheme 
 of trading through the name of the ex-President of the 
 Southern Confederacy, the matter was dropped, but not until 
 it had obtained for Mr. Davis considerable scandal. Since 
 then he has been residing, alternately, in England and in 
 France, living quietly but comfortably ; his descent into ob 
 scurity being rather faster than most of revolutionary refugees, 
 who have generally continued to be objects of curiosity after 
 having ceased to excite any other interest. 
 
 But although Mr. Davis declined the peculiar adventure in 
 commercial life just referred to, it is greatly to be regretted 
 that he ever entertained it ; that he ever came near to a de 
 scent so unexampled from that historical heroism and dignity 
 which he was expected to support in the sight of Europe and 
 the world. His commercial errand to England was, indeed, 
 34 
 
530 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 a mortifying episode ; and for some time it was feared by his 
 countrymen that the unfortunate ex-President of the South, 
 at the end. of his public career, might fall to exhibiting the 
 dregs of his character, in a way to shame them as well as to 
 disgrace himself. The people of the South have always 
 prided themselves upon their nice and delicate observances 
 of honor, and, in this respect, Mr. Davis had been their master 
 of ceremonies, their pattern of deportment, the very prince 
 of punctilios. It would have been excessively awkward if he 
 had turned out to be an excellent accountant of pelf, doing 
 precisely at Liverpool what the South has so often reviled as 
 "the Yankee trick" of utilizing public and social advantages, 
 turning such to the mean account of dollars and cents. The 
 world would have accused him of selUng out his historical 
 fame, and turning the Southern Confederacy into a tradesman s 
 advertisement ! He had not money enough to buy an interest 
 in a large commission- house ; he had no skill or experience 
 in commercial affairs ; there must have been some considera 
 tion for a place so lucrative as that temptingly offered to him ; 
 and in the range of human speculation, it could have been 
 none other than that Mr. Davis had formerly been President 
 of the Southern Confederacy ; and that there was a certain 
 available commercial notoriety in that bulk of blood and 
 tears of a despairing people that the American member 
 would contribute to the firm ! 
 
 We admit something for the exigencies of misfortune. A 
 oankrupt cannot be select in his choice of occupation. But 
 certainly it would have exceeded all that could be allowed in 
 this respect, that the former ruler of a noble and cultivated 
 community should descend to a commission merchant, with 
 his capital in trade a historical name, and his profits accruing 
 out of the eight millions of people who had served him in a 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 531 
 
 disastrous cause. There is something inexpressibly low and 
 offensive in the idea. History demands, even in the extremity 
 of misfortune, a certain dignity from those who have shared 
 in its lofty scenes. If Mr. Davis has been compelled to choose 
 a hard and honorable poverty, it is far better than that he 
 should have accepted this gilded shame in the streets of 
 Liverpool. There are many ways to fortune ; but Mr. Davis 
 could scarcely find one so easy and degraded as that of spell 
 ing his name in golden letters, and selling out his historical 
 fame as commercial capital. It is this barter which would 
 have been offensive to honorable instincts not the grade of 
 employment, as long as it was honest. There are those who 
 will say that it is both decent and noble for any unfortunate 
 man to win his livelihood from a sacrifice of his pride ; that 
 labor is honorable, and that the day is past when even the 
 insolent aristocracy, in which Mr. Davis was bred, may deride 
 the vulgarity of trade. We shall not dispute on these points. 
 Labor is honorable ; it has been decorated by modern opinion. 
 But the true and precise complaints of those who deprecated 
 the descent of Mr. Davis to the counting-room, was that the 
 former chief of the Southern Confederacy, as partner of the 
 Liverpool commission house, would have meanly avoided 
 labor by a commercial sinecure, the place of a distinguished 
 loafer, in which he might live on the reputation of the past. 
 It would be said, and apparently not without justice, that he 
 had sold his name and that of his people purely as an adver 
 tisement, to avoid the real and honorable exigencies of labor. 
 What is historical dignity, what the glory of heroes, what all 
 the noble proprieties of a nation s misfortune, when the chief 
 of eight millions of people might hang out a tradesman s sign 
 board over all of it, and make of the grand catastrophe a 
 first-rate commercial advertisement ! 
 
532 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WITH A 
 
 The case of Mr. Davis thus employed and that of other 
 leading men of the Southern Confederacy, working in obscure 
 occupations for a livelihood, are essentially different, in the 
 fact of the latter being really engaged in labor, and being 
 really capable of the services which they undertake to render, 
 and which they actually perform. If General Johnston 
 manages a railroad, or if General Lee supervises a college, 
 they are capable of doing the duties required of them ; there 
 is a real service, a real consideration for which they are paid. 
 But if General Lee is offered a large sum of money to have 
 his name appear in some money-making enterprise, where his 
 services would be nominal, and only the benefit of his name 
 was sought and it is notorious that he has been thus tempted 
 by joint-stock concerns, insurance companies, etc., in all parts 
 of the United States he would wrong his conscience, and 
 shame his great reputation in history to accept it. The dis 
 tinction is interesting and valuable. If we have asked the 
 reader s attention at some length on the subject, it is not to 
 pursue an old and trite speculation about the rights and 
 honor of labor, etc., or, yet, to indulge in an essay, however 
 interesting, on the decline and fall of historical characters, 
 but to indicate a question of great practical importance in the 
 present condition of Southern society, where so many persons 
 are thrown back upon resources of livelihood much below 
 their former aspirations and habits, and where some safe rule 
 is required to determine the question of dignity in these de 
 scents of fortune. We believe that such a rule is suggested 
 in the distinction we have made between Jefferson Davis seek 
 ing a sinecure partnership in a commercial firm, and other 
 Confederate leaders engaged in occupations much below their 
 former positions, yet rendering in them actual and capable 
 services There can be no general guide as to how the dig- 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 533 
 
 nity of a past career may be maintained in poverty, beyond 
 the plain consideration that a man, fallen from his former 
 estate, may with honor betake himself to those resources of 
 livelihood which are most becoming and most decorous within 
 the limits of his remaining faculties and opportunities. Surely 
 it is to be hoped that within those of Mr. Davis, however 
 slender may be his remnants of pecuniary fortune, some re 
 source for his age may be secured if even in the open 
 charity of his countrymen more honorable than that of ad 
 vertising member of a foreign trade-firm. 
 
 After nearly four years of hesitation after a most injurious 
 exhibition of doubtfulness and weakness the North has 
 managed to rid itself of the awkward prisoner whom the 
 stupidity or blind rage of Mr. Stanton imposed upon it. At 
 the term of the United States Circuit Court, held in Eich- 
 mond, December, 1868, a nolle prosequi was entered in the 
 case of Mr. Davis, as on an indictment for treason, and the 
 prosecution on that charge, at least, was thus dismissed. 
 This conclusion had been foreseen, or it had been strongly 
 imagined ; yet it was the occasion of much rejoicing in the 
 South, and of not a little disembarrassment and relief on the 
 part of the North. The newspapers of the South teemed 
 with congratulations of Mr. Davis ; but they have generally 
 stopped there in the apprehension of the event, and have been 
 singularly deficient in their commentaries on it. 
 
 Indeed, it is very surprising that the vast importance of 
 this event, as affecting the morak of the past war, and as 
 involving the whole political history of the country, should 
 have escaped the apprehension of the press of the South ; 
 and especially, too, when it is apparently so much concerned 
 to discover whatever there is of hope and encouragement for 
 this section, and affects so much the tone of optimism in 
 
534 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, WUH A 
 
 public affairs. The most important triumph that the South 
 could have possibly achieved since the war, the most signifi 
 cant event that has happened since its close, the most inter 
 esting revelation that has lately been given to the world 
 from behind the scenes of our political history, has been 
 overlooked by a dull and barren press. The mere congratu 
 lations affecting the person of Mr. Davis, with which the 
 newspapers have generally stopped short in their com 
 mentaries on the abandonment of his prosecution, are utterly 
 inconsiderable, compared with the true significance of this 
 event, and the extent of the triumph of the whole South on if. 
 There can be no doubt that the North would have been 
 glad to exact of Mr. Davis the furthest penalties of the law, 
 if it could have made out a case for the prosecution ; that it 
 was immensely anxious to convict him. There were thou 
 sands in the North who even clamored for his blood, and 
 many who would have been glad to doom him to the cell of 
 the felon. This, to be sure, was a mistake ; for, as we have 
 already suggested, it is the kind and degree of punishment 
 that determines whether the victim shall be an example or a 
 martyr, and that the true economy of punishments is their 
 moderation. But for the thousands who thus demanded the 
 severity of the laws upon Mr. Davis, there were millions who 
 desired his conviction in another and indispensable sense 
 that of " making treason odious," that of obtaining a moral 
 vindication of the North in the past war, and securing the 
 future in its interest. The extent of the anxiety of the North 
 to procure such a vindication all, indeed, that was wanting 
 to crown the great victory of its arms, and to complete its 
 satisfaction has never been fully confessed. It has scrupled 
 at nothing. Its whole government in the South is based on 
 the idea of justifying the war; and its system of test-oaths in 
 
SECRET HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY. 535 
 
 that section was probably designed, as well as for other 
 reasons, to obtain a factitious declaration of public opinion 
 there, in favor of the legitimacy of its past contest of arms. 
 
 The full sense then of the abandonment of the indictment 
 of Mr. Davis for treason, is the confession of the North, that 
 it despaired of obtaining such a justification of the war on its 
 side as would have been implied in his conviction ; and, in 
 even proportion to this confession, the claim of the South that 
 the balance of justification was on its side, that it held the 
 vantage ground on whatever questions of law the war in 
 volved. Here is a vast admission, and it is as unequivocal 
 as it is important. The trial of Jefferson Davis was the trial 
 of the North. It was to determine whether a man could be 
 punished as a traitor for acting on an opinion which had 
 divided three generations of Americans, and even the founders 
 themselves of the Federal Constitution ; whether the party 
 and sectional dogma on which the North had waged war, 
 could be affirmed on the legal decision of a constitutional 
 question. Such a trial the North has declined. It has 
 shrunk from the august arbitration on which it once proposed 
 to enter in sight of the world to "make treason odious;" it 
 has feared to risk the question whether it had really any 
 superiority over the South in any respect but that of number 
 of its arms ; it has decided not to attempt, even at its own 
 judicial bar, the justification of its cause the determination 
 whether the war was the invocation of a violated Constitution, 
 or the temptation of sectional hate and ambition ; and it 
 leaves to the South whatever implications may arise from the 
 facts of its rival having withdrawn his challenge and aban 
 doned the. contest. 
 
 The release of Mr. Davis has become one of the most im 
 portant events of his life not so much so with reference to 
 
536 LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 
 
 his own fortunes, as in its application to the whole political 
 history of the country. It is interesting in three aspects. It 
 suggests a vindication of the cause of the Southern Confederacy 
 such a vindication as is to be desired next to success ; it 
 supplies some reflections upon the permanence and vitality 
 of the old schools of American politics ; and it has the sur 
 prising and most remarkable effect of exhibiting a tendency 
 of the American mind to the conservatism of the past, in ,the 
 midst of the public passions of the day of disclosing an under 
 current in the mad career to Consolidation that is apparently 
 but not really and entirely sweeping every thing before it. 
 Perhaps the South may think herself too ready to despair of 
 her record in the war and of restoration to something of her 
 ancient rights, since she has seen the chief of her so-called 
 "rebellion," a defiant and feared litigant in a Federal court 
 of justice, and walking forth released, even from accusation. 
 Such is the significance of the last public attitude of Jefferson 
 Davis such the unexpected loftiness and interest of his exit 
 from the stage of American politics. 
 
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