The Life of Jefferson Davis

CHAPTER XIX

General Johnston had failed to realize either the expectations of the public, or the hope of the Government, in his direction of the campaign in Georgia. His tactics were those uniformly illustrated by this officer in all his operations, of falling back before the enemy, and seeking to obviate the disadvantage of inferior numbers by partial engagements in positions favorable to himself. There was, indeed, some parallel between his campaign and that of Lee, between the Rapidan and James, but the results in Virginia and Georgia were altogether disproportionate. The advance of Sherman was slow and cautious, but nevertheless steady; and when the campaign had lasted seventy days, he was before Atlanta, the objective point of his designs, and in secure occupation of an extensive and important section of country, heretofore inaccessible to the Federal armies. Not only were Sherman’s losses small, as compared with those of Grant, but his force was relatively much weaker.

There can be no just comparison of these two campaigns, either as illustrating the same system of tactics, or as yielding the same results. The aggregate of Federal forces in Georgia did not exceed, at the beginning of the campaign, one hundred thousand men, if indeed it reached that figure. To oppose this, Johnston had forty-five thousand. We have already stated the aggregate of Federal forces in Virginia to have been at least four times the force that, under any circumstances, Lee could have made available. The public did not interpret as retreats, the parallel movements by which Lee successively threw himself in the front of Grant, wherever the latter made a demonstration. Not once had Lee turned his back upon the enemy, nor abandoned a position, save when the baffled foe, after enormous losses, sought a new field of operations. At its conclusion, Grant had sustained losses in excess of the whole of Lee’s army, abandoned altogether his original design, and sought a base of operations, which he might have reached in the beginning, not only without loss, but without even opposition.

Some explanation of the widely disproportionate results achieved in Virginia and Georgia, is to be found in the different tactics of the Federal commanders. Sherman, whose nature is thoroughly aggressive, yet developed great skill and caution. Instead of fruitlessly dashing his army against fortifications, upon ground of the enemy’s choosing, he treated the positions of Johnston as fortresses, from which his antagonist was to be flanked.

But while this explanation was appreciated, the public was much disposed to accept the two campaigns as illustrations of the different systems of tactics accredited to the two Confederate commanders. It was seen that in Virginia the enemy occupied no new territory, and, at the end of three months, was upon ground which he might easily have occupied at the beginning of the campaign, but to reach which, by the means selected, had cost him nearly eighty thousand men.76 In Georgia, on the other hand, Sherman had advanced one hundred miles upon soil heretofore firmly held by the Confederacy, and without a general engagement of the opposing forces. In Virginia, the enemy had no difficulty as to his transportation, and the farther Grant advanced towards James River, the more secure and abundant became his means of supply. In Georgia, Sherman drew his supplies over miles of hostile territory, and was nowhere aided by the proximity of navigable streams.

When in a censorious mood, the popular mind is not over-careful of the aptness of the parallels and analogies, wherewith to justify its carping judgments. Without denying his skill, or questioning his possession of the higher qualities of generalship, people complained that “Johnston was a retreating general.” Whatever judgment may have arisen from subsequent events, it can not be fairly denied that when Johnston reached Atlanta, there was a very perceptible loss of popular confidence, not less in the issue of the campaign than in General Johnston himself. It was in deference to popular sentiment, as much as in accordance with his views of the necessity of the military situation, that President Davis, about the middle of July, relieved General Johnston from command. Sympathizing largely with the popular aspiration for a more bold, ample, and comprehensive policy, and appreciating the value of unlimited public confidence, Mr. Davis had lost much of his hope of those decisive results, which he believed the Western army competent to achieve.

The dispatch relieving General Johnston was as follows:

“To General J. E. Johnston:

“Lieutenant-General J. B. Hood has been commissioned to the temporary rank of General, under the law of Congress. I am directed by the Secretary of War to inform you, that as you have failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood.

This order sufficiently explains the immediate motive of Johnston’s removal, but there was a train of circumstances which, at length, brought the President reluctantly to this conclusion. The progress of events in Georgia, from the beginning of spring, had developed a marked difference in the views of General Johnston and the President. Early in the year Mr. Davis had warmly approved an offensive campaign against the Federal army, while its various wings were not yet united. The Federal force, then in the neighborhood of Dalton, did not greatly exceed the Confederate strength, and Mr. Davis, foreseeing the concentration of forces for the capture of Atlanta, believed the opportunity for a decisive stroke to exist before this concentration should ensue. General Hood likewise favored this view of the situation. He urged that the enemy would certainly concentrate forces to such an extent, if permitted, as would gradually force the Southern army back into the interior, where a defeat would be irreparable, with no new defensive line, and without the hope of rallying either the army or the people. General Johnston opposed these views, on the ground that the enemy, if defeated, had strong positions where they could take refuge, while a defeat of the Confederate force would be fatal. This difference of opinion is to be appropriately decided only by military criticism, but it can not be fairly adjudged that an offensive in the spring would not have succeeded, because it failed in the following autumn. Circumstances were altogether different.

General Johnston’s operations between Dalton and Atlanta were unsatisfactory to Mr. Davis. Here again arises a military question, which we shall not seek to decide, in the evident difference as to the capacity of the Army of Tennessee, for any other than purely defensive operations. It was, indeed, not so much an opposition on the part of the President, to Johnston’s operations, as the apprehension of a want of ultimate aim in his movements. Whatever the plans of General Johnston may have been, they were not communicated to Mr. Davis, at least in such a shape as to indicate the hope of early and decisive execution. Alarmed for the results of a policy having seemingly the characteristics of drifting, of waiting upon events, and of hoping for, instead of creating opportunity, Mr. Davis yet felt the necessity of giving General Johnston an ample trial. During all this period strong influences were brought to bear against Johnston, and upon the other hand, he was warmly sustained by influences friendly both to himself and the President.

For weeks the President was importuned by these conflicting counsels, the natural effect of which was to aggravate his grave doubts as to the existence of any matured ultimate object in General Johnston’s movements. Upon one occasion, while still anxiously deliberating the subject, an eminent politician, a thorough patriot, a supporter of Mr. Davis, and having to an unlimited extent his confidence, called at the office of the President, with a view to explain the situation in Georgia, whence he had just arrived. This gentleman had been with the army, knew its condition, its enthusiasm and confidence. He was confident that General Johnston would destroy Sherman, and did not believe that the Federal army would ever be permitted to reach even the neighborhood of Atlanta. Mr. Davis, having quietly heard this explanation, replied by handing to his visitor a dispatch just received from Johnston, and dated at Atlanta. The army had already reached Atlanta, before the gentleman could reach Richmond, and he acknowledged himself equally amazed and disappointed.

Despite his doubts and apprehensions, however, Mr. Davis resisted the applications of members of Congress and leading politicians from the section in which General Johnston was operating, for a change of commanders, until he felt himself no longer justified in hazarding the loss of Atlanta without a struggle. There appeared little ground for the belief that Johnston would hold Atlanta, nor did there appear any reason why his arrival there should occasion a departure from his previous retrograde policy. Of the purpose of General Johnston to evacuate Atlanta the President felt that he had abundant evidence. Not until he felt fully satisfied upon this point, was the removal of that officer determined upon. Indeed, the order removing Johnston sets forth as its justification, that he had expressed no confidence in his ability to “repel the enemy.” If Atlanta should be surrendered, where would General Johnston expect to give battle?77

Subsequently to his removal, General Johnston avowed that his purpose was to hold Atlanta; and, therefore, we are not at liberty to question his purpose. But this does not alter the legitimate inference drawn by Mr. Davis at the time of his removal. Can it be believed that the President would have taken that step, if satisfied of Johnston’s purpose to deliver battle for Atlanta?

This entire subject belongs appropriately only to military discussion, and no decision from other sources can possibly affect the ultimate sentence of that tribunal. Yet the most serious disparagement of Mr. Davis, by civilian writers, has been based upon the removal of Johnston from the command of the Western army. Granting that General Johnston would have sought to hold Atlanta, can it be believed that the ultimate result would have been different? When Sherman invested Atlanta, the North found some compensation for Grant’s failures in Virginia; and even though his force should have been inadequate for a siege, can it now be doubted that he would have been reënforced to any needed extent? The mere presence of Sherman at Atlanta was justly viewed by the North as an important success. He had followed his antagonist to the very heart of the Confederacy, and was master of innumerable strong positions held by the Confederates at the outset of the campaign. To suppose that he would, at such a moment, be permitted to fail from a lack of means, is a hypothesis at variance with the conduct of the North throughout the war.

General Johnston has that sort of negative vindication which arises from the disasters of his successor, though, as we shall presently show, Mr. Davis was nowise responsible for the misfortunes of General Hood.78 The question is one which must some day arise as between the general military policy of the Confederacy, and the antagonistic views which have been so freely ascribed to General Johnston by his admirers. We have no desire to pursue that antagonism, which, if it really existed, can hardly yet be a theme for impartial discussion. Towards the close of the war, it was usual to accredit Johnston with the theory that the Confederacy could better afford to lose territory than men, and that hence the true policy of the South was to avoid general engagements, unless under such circumstances as should totally neutralize the enemy’s advantage in numbers. We are not prepared to say to what extent these announcements of his views were authorized by General Johnston, or to what extent they were based upon retrospection. Some confirmation of their authenticity would seem to be deducible from General Johnston’s declaration since the war, that the “Confederacy was too weak for offensive war.” Certainly there could be no theory more utterly antagonistic to the genius of the Southern people, and that is a consideration, to which the great commanders of history have not usually been indifferent. Nor was it the theory which inspired those achievements of Southern valor, which will ring through the centuries. It was not the theory which Lee and Jackson adopted, nor, we need hardly add, that which Jefferson Davis approved.

Indeed, the philosophy of the Southern failure is not to be sought in the discussion of opposing theories among Confederate leaders. The conclusion of history will be, not that the South accomplished less than was to be anticipated, but far more than have any other people under similar circumstances. Southern men hardly yet comprehend the real odds in numbers and resources which for four years they successfully resisted. Other questions than those merely of aggregate populations and material wealth, enter into the solution of the problem.

By the census of 1860, the aggregate free population of the thirteen States, which the Confederacy claimed, was 7,500,000, leaving in the remaining States of the Union a free population of over twenty millions. This statement includes Kentucky and Missouri as members of the Confederacy; yet, by the compulsion of Federal bayonets, these States, not less than Maryland and Delaware, were virtually on the side of the North. Kentucky proclaimed neutrality, but during the whole war was overrun by the Federal armies, and, with her State government and large numbers of her people favoring the North, despite the Southern sympathies of the majority, her moral influence, as well as her physical strength, sustained the Union. The legitimate government of Missouri, and a majority of her people, sided with the South; but early occupied and held by the Federal army, her legitimate government was subverted, and her moral and physical resources were thrown into the scale against the Confederacy.

To say nothing of the large numbers of recruits obtained by the Federal armies from Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, (chiefly from their large foreign populations,) their contributions to the Confederate army were nearly, if not quite, compensated by the accessions to Federal strength from East Tennessee, Western Virginia, and other portions of the seceded States. It would be fair, therefore, to deduct the population of these two States from that of the South, and this would leave the Confederacy five and one-half millions. Dividing their free populations between the two sections, and the odds were six and a half millions against twenty and a half millions. This is a liberal statement for the North, and embraces only the original populations of the two sections at the beginning of hostilities. There can hardly be a reasonable doubt, that had the struggle been confined to these numerical forces, the South would have triumphed. But hordes of foreign mercenaries, incited by high bounty and the promise of booty, flocked to the Federal army, and thus was the North enabled to recruit its armies to any needed standard, while the South depended solely upon its original population. As the South was overrun, too, negroes were forced or enticed into the Federal service, and thus, by these inexhaustible reserves of foreign mercenaries and negro recruits, the Confederate army was finally exhausted.

The following exhibition of the strength of the Federal armies is from the report of the Secretary of War, at the beginning of the session of Congress in December, 1865:

Official reports show that on the 1st of May, 1864, the aggregate national military force of all arms, officers and men, was nine hundred and seventy thousand seven hundred and ten, to-wit:

Available force present for duty 662,345

On detached service in the different military departments 109,348

In field hospitals or unfit for duty 41,266

In general hospitals or on sick leave at home 75,978

Absent on furlough or as prisoners of war 66,290

Absent without leave 15,483

Grand aggregate 970,710

The aggregate available force present for duty May 1st, 1864, was distributed in the different commands as follows:

Department of Washington 42,124

Army of the Potomac 120,386

Department of Virginia and North Carolina 59,139

Department of the South 18,165

Department of the Gulf 61,866

Department of Arkansas 23,666

Department of the Tennessee 74,174

Department of the Missouri 15,770

Department of the North-west 5,295

Department of Kansas 4,798

Head-quarters Military Division of the Mississippi 476

Department of the Cumberland 119,948

Department of the Ohio 35,416

Northern Department 9,540

Department of West Virginia 30,782

Department of the East 2,828

Department of the Susquehanna 2,970

Middle Department 5,627

Ninth Army Corps 20,780

Department of New Mexico 3,454

Department of the Pacific 5,141

Total 662,345

And again:

Official reports show that on the 1st of March, 1865, the aggregate military force of all arms, officers and men, was nine hundred and sixty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-one, to-wit:

Available forces present for duty 602,598

On detached service in the different military departments 132,538

In field hospitals and unfit for duty 35,628

In general hospitals or on sick leave 143,419

Absent on furlough or as prisoners of war 31,695

Absent without leave 19,683

Grand aggregate 965,591

This force was augmented on the 1st of May, 1865, by enlistments, to the number of one million five hundred and sixteen, of all arms, officers and men (1,000,516).

And again he says:

The aggregate quotas charged against the several States under all calls made by the President of the United States, from the 15th day of April, 1861, to the 14th day of April, 1865, at which time drafting and recruiting ceased, was 2,759,049

The aggregate number of men credited on the several calls, and put into service of the United States, in the army, navy, and marine corps, during the above period, was 2,656,553

Leaving a deficiency on all calls, when the war closed, of 102,596

This statement does not include the regular army, nor the negro troops raised in the Southern States, which were not raised by calls on the States. It may be safely asserted that the “available force present for duty,” of the Federal armies at the beginning or close of the last year of the war, exceeded the entire force called into the service of the Confederacy during the four years. The aggregate of Federal forces raised during the war numbered more than one-third of the free population of the Confederate States, including men, women, and children.79

But this disparity of numbers, apparently sufficient of itself to decide the issue against the South, was by no means the greatest advantage of the North. When it is asserted that the naval superiority of the North decided the contest in its favor, we are not limited to the consideration merely of that absolute command of the water, which prevented the South from importing munitions of war, except at enormous expense and hazard, which made the defense of the sea-coast and contiguous territory impossible, and which so disorganized the Confederate finances. The Confederacy encountered strategic difficulties, by reason of the naval superiority of the North, which, at an early period of the war, counter-balanced the advantages of its defensive position.

In the beginning the enemy had easy, speedy, and secure access to the Southern coast, and wherever there was a harbor or inlet, was to be found a base of operations for a Federal army. Thus, at the outset, the Confederacy presented on every side an exposed frontier. In every quarter, the Federal armies had bases of operations at right angles, each to the other, and thus, wherever the Confederate army established a defensive line, it was assailable by a second Federal army advancing from a second base. The advantage of rapid concentration of forces, usually belonging to an interior line, was obviated by the easy and rapid conveyance of large masses by water.

Probably the most serious strategic disadvantage of the South was its territorial configuration, through the intersection of its soil in nearly every quarter by navigable rivers, either emptying into the ocean, of which the North, at all times, had undisputed control, or opening upon the Federal frontier. In all the Atlantic States of the Confederacy navigable streams penetrate far into the interior, and empty into the sea. The Mississippi, aptly termed an “inland sea,” flowing through the Confederacy, was, both in its upper waters and at its mouth, held by the North. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, with their mouths upon the Federal frontiers, navigable in winter for transports and gunboats, in the first twelve months of the war, brought the Federal armies to the centre of the South-west. In the Trans-Mississippi region, the Arkansas and Red Rivers gave the enemy convenient and secure bases of operations along their margins. Each one of these streams having inevitably, sooner or later, become subject to the control of the Federal navy, afforded bases of operations against the interior of the South, while it was likewise threatened from the Northern frontier.