The Life of Jefferson Davis

When Lee had driven McClellan from his position along the Chickahominy, he had raised the siege of Richmond. The retreat of McClellan to the James River, conducted with such admirable skill, and aided by good fortune, placed the Federal army in a position where, secure itself, another offensive movement against the Confederate capital might, in time, be undertaken. Confederate strategy, however, soon relieved Richmond from the apprehension of attack, and in less than two months from the termination of the pursuit of McClellan, Lee, by a series of masterly strokes, demolished the armies under Pope, united for the defense of Washington, and was preparing an invasion of Maryland.

An almost magical change in the fortunes of the Confederacy was wrought by these active and brilliant operations, embracing so short a period, and marked by results of such magnitude.

Not only were the two main armies of the enemy defeated, but the entire Federal campaign in the East had been entirely disconcerted. Richmond was saved, Washington menaced, and McClellan forced back to the initial point of his campaign. Western Virginia, the Carolina coast, and other localities, for months past in Federal occupation, were almost divested of troops to swell the hosts gathering for the rescue of Washington, and to meet the dreaded advance, northward, of Lee’s invincible columns. From the heart of Virginia the cloud of war was again lifted to the Potomac frontier; the munificent harvests of the valley counties, of Fauquier, Loudon, and the fertile contiguous territory, were again in Confederate possession, and a numerous and victorious army was now anxious to be led across the Rubicon of the warring sections.

From harrowing apprehension, from vague dread of indefinable but imminent peril, the South was transported to the highest round of confident expectation. The North, which, in the last days of June, eagerly awaited intelligence of McClellan’s capture of Richmond, now regarded its own capital as doomed, and did not permit itself to breathe freely until McClellan announced the safety of Pennsylvania, when Lee had retired to Virginia.

The inducements which invited a movement of the Confederate forces across the Potomac were manifold. Whatever judgment the result may now suggest, the invasion of Maryland was alike dictated by sound military policy and justified by those moral considerations which are ever weighty in war. The overwhelming defeat of Pope more than realized the hope of President Davis and General Lee, when the strategic design of a movement northward was put in execution, by which was sought the double purpose of withdrawing McClellan from James River and effectually checking the advance of Pope. The successive and decisive defeats of Pope offered the prospect of an offensive by which the splendid successes of the campaign might be crowned with even more valuable achievements. Demoralized, disheartened, in every way disqualified for effectual resistance, the remnants of the armies which Lee had beaten, each in succession, and then combined, would be an easy prey to his victorious legions, could they be brought to a decisive field engagement. There yet remained time, before the end of the season of active operations, for crushing blows at the enemy, which would finish the work thus far triumphantly successful.

To inflict still greater damage upon the enemy – to so occupy him upon the frontier as to prevent another demonstration against Richmond during the present year – to indicate friendship and sympathy for the oppressed people of Maryland – to derive such aid from them as their condition would enable them to extend, were the potent inducements inviting the approbation of the Confederate authorities to a movement across the Potomac. President Davis was pledged to an invasion of the enemy’s country whenever it should prove practicable. Now, if ever, that policy was to be initiated. Hitherto the enemy’s power, not the will of the Confederate Government, had prevented. Now that power was shattered. The mighty fabric trembled to its base, and who would now venture to estimate the consequences of a brilliant victory by Lee, on Maryland soil, in September, 1862? What supporter of the Union can now dwell, without a shudder, upon the imagination, even, of a repetition, at Antietam, of the story of the Chickahominy, or Second Manassas?

The climax of the Maryland campaign was the battle of Antietam – a drawn battle, but followed by the early withdrawal of the Confederate army into Virginia. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the causes conspiring to give this portion of the campaign many of the features of failure. With a force greatly reduced by the straggling of his weary and exhausted troops, Lee was unable to administer the crushing blow which he had hoped to deliver.57 As a consequence, the people of Maryland, of whom a large majority were thoroughly patriotic and warm in their Southern sympathies, were not encouraged to make that effective demonstration which would inevitably have followed a defeat of McClellan.

Nevertheless, there was some compensation in the terrible punishment inflicted upon the enemy at Antietam; and there was the heightened prestige, so greatly valued by the South at this period, in the eyes of Europe, arising from the temper and capacity of the weaker combatant to undertake so bold an enterprise. In the tangible evidences of success afforded by the capture of Harper’s Ferry, with its numerous garrison supplies of arms and military stores, was seen additional compensation for the abandonment of the scheme of invasion.

An interval of repose was permitted the Army of Northern Virginia, after its return from Maryland, in its encampments near Winchester, during which it was actively strengthened and recruited to the point of adequate preparation for expected demonstrations of the enemy.

The operations of the Western army, in many respects, were a brilliant counterpart to the campaign in Virginia, though lacking its brilliant fruits. We have mentioned the circumstance which placed General Braxton Bragg in command of the Western army, after its successful evacuation of Corinth. General Bragg was equally high in the confidence of the President and the Southern people. Greatly distinguished by his services in Mexico, his skillful handling, at Shiloh, of the magnificent corps of troops, which his discipline had made a model of efficiency, more than confirmed his Mexican fame.

Space does not permit us to follow, in detail, the execution of the able and comprehensive strategy, by which General Bragg relieved large sections of Tennessee and Alabama from the presence of the enemy, penetrated the heart of Kentucky, maintained an active offensive during the summer, and transferred the seat of war to the Federal frontier. A part of these operations was the hurried retreat of Buell’s immense army, from its posts in Alabama and Tennessee, for the defense of Louisville and Cincinnati; large captures of prisoners, horses, arms and military stores; and the brilliant progress and successive victories of Kirby Smith and Morgan. For weeks the situation in Kentucky seemed to promise the unqualified success of the entire Western campaign. There was, indeed, reasonable hope of a permanent occupation of the larger portion of Kentucky and Tennessee by the Confederate forces.

But the battle of Perryville – an engagement not unlike Antietam in its doubtful claim as a Federal victory – was followed by the retreat of General Bragg, which was executed with skill, and with results going far to relieve the disappointment of the popular hope of a permanent occupation of Kentucky. Buell, on his arrival at Louisville, whither he had retreated, received heavy reënforcements, which greatly increased his already superior numbers; and Perryville, a battle which General Bragg fought, rather to secure his retreat than with the expectation of a decisive victory, would have been an overwhelming Confederate success, had Bragg been sufficiently strong to follow up his advantage.

No Confederate commander, save Lee and Jackson, was ever able to present a claim of a successful campaign so well grounded as the Kentucky campaign of Bragg. With a force of forty thousand men, he killed, wounded, and captured more than twenty thousand of the enemy; took thirty pieces of artillery, thousands of small arms; a large supply of wagons, harness, and horses; and an immense amount of subsistence, ample not only for the support of his own army, but of other forces of the Confederacy. During the succeeding autumn and winter, Bragg’s army was conspicuous for its superior organization, admirable condition and tone; was abundantly supplied with food and clothing, and in larger numbers than when it started upon its campaign in August. Moreover, General Bragg redeemed North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, and recovered possession of Cumberland Gap, the doorway, through the mountains, to Knoxville and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad – the main avenue from Richmond to the heart of the Confederacy. Evincing his determination to hold the recovered territory, General Bragg, within a month from his return from Kentucky, was confronting the principal army of the enemy, in the West, before Nashville.

Incidental to the movement of Bragg into Kentucky, and constituting a part of the programme, attempted upon the large theatre of the Western campaign, were the repulse of the first attack of the enemy upon Vicksburg, the partial failure of General Breckinridge’s expedition to Baton Rouge, and the serious reverse sustained by Van Dorn at Corinth. In connection with the more important demonstration into Kentucky, these incidents of the Western campaign may be briefly aggregated as the recovery of the country between Nashville and Chattanooga, and the important advantage of a secure occupation of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, thus closing the Mississippi to the enemy for two hundred miles.

Subsequent operations in Virginia, at the close of 1862, were entirely favorable to the Confederacy. While the two armies were confronting each other, with the imminent prospect of active and important operations, General McClellan was relieved, and one of his corps commanders, General Burnside, assigned to the command of the Federal army of the Potomac. As is now universally acknowledged, General McClellan was sacrificed to the clamor of a political faction. By this act Mr. Lincoln became responsible for much of the ill-fortune which awaited the Federal arms in Virginia.

Perhaps among his countrymen, a Southern tribute to General McClellan may constitute but feeble praise. He was unquestionably the ablest and most accomplished soldier exhibited by the war on the Northern side. “Had there been no McClellan,” General Meade is reported to have said, “there would have been no Grant.” In retirement, if not exile, General McClellan saw the armies which his genius created, achieve undeserved distinction for men, his inferiors in all that constitutes true generalship. He saw the feeble and wasted remnant of an army, with which he had grappled in the day of its glory and strength, surrender to a multitudinous host, doubly as large as the army with which he had given Lee his first check at Antietam. A true soldier, McClellan was also a true gentleman, an enemy whose talents the South respects none the less, because he did not wantonly ravage its homes, nor make war upon the helpless, the aged, and infirm. President Davis, who, while Federal Secretary of War, conferred upon McClellan a special distinction, held his genius and attainments in high estimation. He received the intelligence of his removal with profound satisfaction.

The North was not required to wait long for a competent test of the new commander’s capacity. Foiled and deceived by Lee, in a series of maneuvres, the results of which made him only less ridiculous than the gasconading Pope among Federal commanders, Burnside finally assailed Lee, on the 13th December, at Fredericksburg. The result was a bloody slaughter, unequaled in previous annals of the war, an overwhelming repulse, and a demoralized retreat across the Rappahannock.

The Western campaign terminated with the battle of Murfreesboro’. The Federal commander, Rosecrans, the successor of Buell, advanced from Nashville to drive Bragg from his position. A brilliant and vigorous attack by Bragg, on the 31st December, routed an entire wing of the Federal army; on the second day the action was more favorable to Rosecrans, who had retreated, after his reverse on the first day, to stronger positions. Receiving information that the enemy was strongly reënforcing, General Bragg fell back to Tullahoma, a position more favorable for strategic and defensive purposes.

The transfer, after the battle of Shiloh, of the troops of Price and Van Dorn to the army east of the Mississippi, had almost divested the Trans-Mississippi Department of interest in the public mind. After Elk Horn, there was but one considerable engagement, in 1862, west of the Mississippi. This was the battle of Prairie Grove, a fruitless victory, won by General Hindman, about the middle of December. The country north of the Arkansas River continued to be nominally held by the Federal forces.

Thus, in nearly every quarter, the second year of the war terminated with events favorable to the prospects of Southern independence. Though the territorial jurisdiction of the Confederacy was contracted, the world was not far from regarding the task of subjugation as already a demonstrated and hopeless failure. All the invasive campaigns of the enemy, save the first shock of his overwhelming onsets against weak and untenable posts, in the winter and early spring, had been brought to grief, and nowhere had he maintained himself away from his water facilities. An unexampled prestige among nations now belonged to the infant power, which had carried its arms from the Tennessee to the Ohio, had achieved a week of victories before its own capital, and carried the war back to its threshold. After such achievements the Southern Confederacy rightly claimed from those powers which have assumed to be the arbiters of international right an instant recognition upon the list of declared and established nationalities.

In our brief and cursory glance at military operations, we have omitted to mention the action of the Government designed to promote the successful prosecution of the war. This action is mainly comprehended by the various suggestions of the President’s messages to Congress. These recommendations related chiefly to measures having in view the increased efficiency of the service. He invited the attention of Congress, especially, to the necessity of measures securing the proper execution of the conscription law, and the consolidation of companies, battalions and regiments, when so reduced in strength as to impair that uniformity of organization, which was necessary in the army. Legislation was urged, having in view a better control of military transportation on the railroads, and the improvement of their defective condition. The President also recommended various propositions relating to organization of the army, and an extension of the provisions of the conscription law, embracing persons between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five years.

About the middle of December President Davis visited the camps of the Western Department, spending several weeks in obtaining information as to the condition and wants of that section of the Confederacy, and devising expedients for a more successful defense in a quarter where the Confederate cause was always seriously menaced. His presence was highly beneficial in allaying popular distrust, founded upon the supposition that Virginia and the Atlantic region engrossed the attention of the Government to the exclusion of concern for the West and the Mississippi Valley. When the President returned to Richmond, there were signs of popular animation in the South-west, which justified a more confident hope of the cause, than the South was permitted to indulge at any other period of the struggle.

An incident of this visit was the address of the President before the Mississippi Legislature. The warm affection of Mr. Davis for Mississippi is more than reciprocated by the noble and chivalrous people of that State. He was always proud of the confidence reposed in him by such a community, and Mississippi can never abate her affection for one who so illustrated her name in the council chamber and upon the field of battle. In this address he alluded, with much tenderness, to this reciprocal attachment, declaring, that though “as President of the Confederate States, he had determined to make no distinction between the various parts of the country – to know no separate State – yet his heart always beat more warmly for Mississippi, and he had looked on Mississippi soldiers with a pride and emotion, such as no others inspired.”

Declaring that his course had been dictated by the sincere purpose of promoting the cause of independence, he admonished the country to prepare for a desperate contest, with a power armed for the purposes of conquest and subjugation. He characterized severely the conduct of the war by the North. Reviewing its progress, and recounting the immense disadvantages, with which the South contended, he maintained that the South should congratulate itself on its achievements, and not complain that more had not been accomplished. The conscription law was explained and defended as to many of its features not clearly understood by the people. We give an extract from Mr. Davis’ remarks as to the Confederate conscription, a subject of vast misrepresentation during the war, and of much ignorant censure since:

“I am told that this act has excited some discontentment, and that it has provoked censure far more severe, I believe, than it deserves. It has been said that it exempts the rich from military service, and forces the poor to fight the battles of the country. The poor do, indeed, fight the battles of the country. It is the poor who save nations and make revolutions. But is it true that, in this war, the men of property have shrunk from the ordeal of the battle-field? Look through the army; cast your eyes upon the maimed heroes of the war whom you meet in your streets and in the hospitals; remember the martyrs of the conflict; and I am sure you will find among them more than a fair proportion drawn from the ranks of men of property. The object of that portion of the act which exempts those having charge of twenty or more negroes, was not to draw any distinction of classes, but simply to provide a force, in the nature of a police force, sufficient to keep our negroes in control. This was the sole object of the clause. Had it been otherwise, it would never have received my signature. As I have already said, we have no cause to complain of the rich. All our people have done well; and, while the poor have nobly discharged their duties, most of the wealthiest and most distinguished families of the South have representatives in the ranks. I take, as an example, the case of one of your own representatives in Congress, who was nominated for Congress and elected, but still did a sentinel’s duty until Congress met. Nor is this a solitary instance, for men of largest fortune in Mississippi are now serving in the ranks.”

The President strongly and eloquently recommended the provision by the Legislature for the families of the absent soldiers of Mississippi. Said he: “Let this provision be made for the objects of his affection and his solicitude, and the soldier, engaged in fighting the battles of his country, will no longer be disturbed in his slumbers by dreams of an unprotected and neglected family at home. Let him know that his mother Mississippi has spread her protecting mantle over those he loves, and he will be ready to fight your battles, to protect your honor, and in your cause to die.”

The address concluded with an earnest appeal for unrelaxed exertion, and the declaration that, “in all respects, moral as well as physical, the Confederacy was better prepared than it was a year previous” – a declaration verified not less by the favorable situation than by the evident apprehension of the North and the expectations of Europe.