The Life of Jefferson Davis

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

33

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

34

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

35

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

36

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

37

General Jubal A. Early.

38

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

“Fellow-citizens of the Confederate States:

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

39

The Harper’s Magazine article of General Jordan.

40

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

41

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

42

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

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

43

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

44

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

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

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

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

45

Inaugural Address, February 22, 1862.

46

The order was in these terms:

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

“General Orders,

No. 14.

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

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

47

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

48

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

49

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

50

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

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