Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders., Chapter 39:

[645] There was nothing fatal in a military point of view in Sherman's memorable march; and yet it dated the first chapter of the subjugation of the Confederacy. It brought the demoralization of the country to the surface; it had plainly originated in the pragmatic and excessive folly of President Davis; it furnished a striking occasion for recrimination, and was accompanied with a loss of confidence in his administration, that nothing but a miracle could repair.

We have already referred in another part of this work to the physical impossibility of the subjugation of the South at the hands of the North, as long as the integrity of the public resolution was maintained. This impossibility was clearly and distinctly stated, in an address of the Congress to the people of the Confederate States as late as the winter of 1864-5. That body then declared, with an intelligence that no just student of history will fail to appreciate: “The passage of hostile armies through our country, though productive of cruel suffering to our people, and great pecuniary loss, gives the enemy no permanent advantage or foothold. To subjugate a country, its civil government must be suppressed by a continuing military force, or supplanted by another, to which the inhabitants yield a voluntary or forced obedience. The passage of hostile armies through our territory cannot produce this result. Permanent garrisons would have to be stationed at a sufficient number of points to strangle all civil government before it could be pretended, even by the United States Government itself, that its authority was extended over these States. How many garrisons would it require? How many hundred thousand soldiers would suffice to suppress the civil government of all the States of the Confederacy, and to establish over them, even in name and form, the authority of the United States? In a geographical point of view, therefore, it may be asserted that the conquest of these Confederate States is impracticable.”

The “geographical point of view” was decisive. The Confederacy was yet far from the extremity of subjugation, even after Sherman had marched from Northern Georgia to the sea-coast. He had left a long scar on the State; but he had not conquered the country; he had been unable to leave a garrison on his route since he left Dalton; and even if he passed into the Carolinas, to defeat him at any stage short of Richmond would be to re-open and recover all the country he had overrun. It was the fashion in the North to get up painted maps, in which all the territory of the South traversed by a Federal army, or over which there was a cob-web line of military occupation, was marked as conquest, and the other parts designated [646] as the remnant of the Confederacy. This appeal to the vulgar eye was not without effect, but it was very absurd. Lines drawn upon paper alarmed the multitude; it was sufficient for them to know that the enemy was at such and such points; they never reflected that a title of occupation was worthless, without garrisons or footholds, that it often depended upon the issue of a single field, and that one or two defeats might put the whole of the enemy's forces back upon the frontiers of the Confederacy.

But the military condition of the Confederacy must be studied in connection with the general decay of public spirit that had taken place in the country, and the impatience of the hardships of the war, when the people had no longer confidence in its ultimate results. This impatience was manifested everywhere; it amounted to the feeling, that taking the war to be hopeless, the sooner it reached an adverse conclusion the better; that victories which merely amused the imagination and insured prolongation of the war, were rather to be deprecated than otherwise, and that to hurry the catastrophe would be mercy in the end. Unpopular as the administration of President Davis was, evident as was its failure, there were not nerve and elasticity enough in the country for a new experiment. The history of the last Confederate Congress is that of vacillating and bewildered attempts to reform and check the existing disorder and the evident tendency to ruin-weak, spasmodic action, showing the sense of necessity for effort, but the want of a certain plan and a sustained resolution.

In the last periods of the war, the demoralization of the Confederacy was painfully apparent. The popular resolution that had been equal to so long a contest, that had made so many proffers of devotion, that had given so many testimonies of sacrifice and endurance, had not perhaps inherently failed. But it had greatly declined in view of Executive mismanagement, in the utter loss of confidence in the Richmond Administration, and under the oppressive conviction that its sacrifices were wasted, its purposes thwarted, and its efforts brought to nought, by an incompetent government. This official mismanagement not only impaired the popular effort, but by the unequal distribution of burdens incident to weak and irregular governments, even where such is not designed, incurred the charge of corrupt favour, and exasperated large portions of the community. Rich and powerful citizens managed to escape the conscription — it was 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;” but the rigour of the law did not spare the poor and helpless, and the complaint was made in the Confederate Congress that even destitute cripples had been taken from their homes, and confined in the conscription camps, without reference to physical disability so conspicuous and pitiful. It was not unusual to see at the railroad stations long lines of squalid men, with scraps of blankets in their hands, or small pine boxes of provisions, or whatever else they [647] might snatch in their hurried departure from their homes, whence they had been taken almost without a moment's notice, and ticketed for the various camps of instruction in the Confederacy.

In armies thus recruited, desertions were the events of every day. There were other causes of desertion. Owing to the gross mismanagement of the commissariat, and a proper effort to mobilize the subsistence of the Confederacy, the armies were almost constantly on short rations, some times without a scrap of meat, and frequently in a condition bordering on absolute starvation. The Confederate soldier, almost starving himself, heard constantly of destitution at home, and was distressed with the suffering of his family, and was constantly plied with temptation to go to their protection and relief. A depreciated currency, which had been long abused by ignorant remedies and empirical treatment reduced nearly every home in the Confederacy to the straits of poverty. A loaf of bread was worth three dollars in Richmond. A soldier's monthly pay would scarcely buy a pair of socks; and paltry as this pay was, it was constantly in arrears, and there were thousands of soldiers who had not received a cent in the last two years of the war. In such a condition of affairs it was no wonder that desertions were numerous, where there was really no infidelity to the Confederate cause, and where the circumstances appealed so strongly to the senses of humanity, that it was impossible to deal harshly with the offence, and adopt for example the penalty of death. For every Confederate soldier who went over to the Federal lines, there were hundreds who dropped out from the rear and deserted to their homes. It was estimated in 1864, that the conscription would put more than four hundred thousand men in the field. Scarcely more than one-fourth of this number were found under arms when the close of the war tore the veil from the thin lines of Confederate defence.

Condition of the commissariat.

We have elsewhere noticed the mismanagement of the Confederate commissariat, and the rapid diminution of supplies in the country. The close of the year 1864, was to find a general distress for food, and an actual prospect, even without victories of the enemy's arms, of starving the Confederacy into submission.

On the 2d May, two days before the battles of the last spring commenced, there were but two days rations for Lee's army in Richmond. On the 23d June, when Wilson and Kautz cut the Danville Railroad, which was not repaired for twenty-three days, there were only thirteen days rations on hand for Gen. Lee's army, and to feed it the Commissary General had to offer market rates for wheat, then uncut or shocked in the field-thereby [648] incurring an excess of expenditure, which, if invested in corn and transportation, would have moved ten millions of bread rations from Augusta to Richmond.

At the opening of the campaign, Gen. Lee had urged the importance of having at least thirty days reserves of provisions at Richmond and at Lynchburg. We have just seen how impossible it was to meet his views. It is a curious commentary on the alleged cruelty of Confederates to their prisoners, that in the winter of 1863-4, our entire reserve in Richmond of thirty thousand barrels of flour was consumed by Federal prisoners of war, and the bread taken from the mouths of our soldiers to feed them!

In the course of the campaign there had been the most serious reductions of supplies. The exhaustion of Virginia, the prevalence of drought and the desolation of the lower Valley and the contiguous Piedmont counties by the enemy, reduced her yield very considerably. The march of a Federal army through the heart of Georgia, and the possession of Savannah as a secure base for raids and other military operations, was, of course, calculated to reduce her yield. The amount of tithe had proved a very imperfect guide to the quantity of meat that might be obtained under its indications. Thus, in South Carolina, only two and one-half per cent. of the sum of the tithe was reported as purchased.

In Virginia the supply even of bread was practically exhausted, and but little more could be expected, even after the next wheat crop came in. The present corn crop was no better, probably worse, than the last. Add to this the destruction of whole districts by Federal armies, the effect of calling out the whole reserve force, and subsequently of revoking and putting into the field or in camp all detailed farmers at the period of seeding wheat, the absconding of numerous negroes under the fear of being placed in our armies, and it was apparent that no bread could be expected from Virginia.

In November, 1864, President Davis applied to the Commissary General to know if his magazines were increasing or diminishing. He sent back word that they were diminishing, and to give him more accurate information forwarded the following statement, made in the previous month, disclosing the alarming fact, that thirty million requisitions were unfilled.

Bureau of Subsistence. Richmond, October 18, 1864.
Col. L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General of Subsistence

Colonel: I have the honour to submit for your consideration the inclosed memorandum of meats on hand at the various depots and posts in the Confederate States, from which you will see at a glance the alarming condition of the commissariat. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi are the only States where we have an accumulation, and from these all the armies of the Confederacy are now subsisting, to say nothing of the prisoners. [649] The Chief Commissary of Georgia telegraphs that he cannot send forward another pound. Alabama, under the most urgent call, has recently shipped 125,000 pounds, but cannot ship more. Mississippi is rendering all the aid possible to the command of Gen. Beauregard, in supplying beef. She is without bacon. Florida is exhausted, and can only respond to the local demand. South Carolina is scarcely able to subsist the troops at Charleston and the prisoners in the interiour of the State. During my late trip to North Carolina I visited every section of the State, for the purpose of ascertaining the true condition of affairs, and, under your orders, to send forward every pound of meat possible to the Army of Northern Virginia, and to supply the forts at Wilmington. After a thorough and careful examination I was unable (taking into consideration the local daily issues) to ship one pound to either Virginia or Wilmington; and but for the timely arrival of the steamer Banshee at Wilmington, Gen. Lee's order for thirty days reserve at the forts could not have been furnished. From the enclosed memorandum you will notice that we have only on hand in the Confederate States 4,105,048 rations of fresh meat, and 3,426,519 rations of bacon and pork, which will subsist three hundred thousand men twenty-five days. We are now compelled to subsist, independent of the armies of the Confederacy, the prisoners of war, the Navy Department, and the different bureaus of the War Department.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S. B. French, Major and C. S.

On the 5th December, the Commissary General brought the condition of things to the attention of the Secretary of War, coupling it with a statement of subsistence on hand, which showed nine days rations on hand for Gen. Lee's army; and, quoting a letter from the commander, that day received, stating that his men were deserting on account of short rations, he urged prompt action. But none was taken. On the 14th December, nine days afterwards, Gen. Lee telegraphed President Davis that his army was without meat. This disaster was averted for the time by the timely arrival of several vessel loads of supplies at Wilmington.

In a secret session of the Confederate Congress in Richmond, the condition of the Confederacy, with respect to subsistence was thus enumerated:

First.--That there was not meat enough in the Southern Confederacy, for the armies it had in the field.
Second.--That there was not in Virginia either meat or bread enough for the armies within her limits.
Third.--That the bread supply from other places depended absolutely upon the keeping open the railroad connections of the South.
Fourth.--That the meat must be obtained from abroad through a seaport, and by a different system from that which prevailed.
Fifth.--That the bread could not be had by impressment, but must be paid for in market rates.
Sixth.--That the payment must be made in cash, which, so far, had not been furnished, and from present indications could not be, and, if possible, in a better medium than at present circulating. [650]
Seventh.--That the transportation was not now adequate, from whatever cause, to meet the necessary demands of the service.
Eighth.--That the supply of fresh meat to Gen. Lee's army was precarious, and if the army fell back from Richmond and Petersburg, there was every probability that it would cease altogether.

To meet these great necessities, nothing was done by the Government beyond a visionary scheme enacted in the last days of Congress, to raise three millions in specie to purchase supplies from those producers of the Confederacy, who were no longer willing to take scrip for their commodities. Probably a tithe of the sum was raised, and the paltry scheme actually executed in a few of the Western counties of Virginia.

The condition of the currency.

In 1864, the Confederate Government had given the finishing blow to the currency.

By the end of 1863, the policy of paying off all debts and making all purchases with money manufactured for the purpose as needed, had swollen the volume of the currency to more than six hundred millions of dollars. If we recollect that, before the war, fifty millions of bank notes, and twenty millions of specie, had sufficed for the currency of eleven States; and observe that about one-third of the area of these States was, in the beginning of 1864, under the control of the invader, we can apprehend how excessively redundant a circulation exceeding six hundred millions of dollars must have proved to be in the restricted territory remaining under the Confederate sway. Legislation was deemed to be absolutely necessary to bring down the bulk of this circulation, and to give greater value to the paper dollar. Accordingly, on the 17th February, 1864, an act of Congress was passed of a very sweeping character. The design of the law was, to call in from circulation, the whole outstanding six hundred millions of paper money; and to substitute for the old a new issue of greatly enhanced value. Its provisions were well calculated to effect this object. It provided that until the 1st day of April next succeeding the passage of the law, east of the Mississippi, and the 1st day of July west of this river, the holders of the outstanding currency above the denomination of five dollars, should be at liberty to exchange the same at par for four per cent. bonds of the government; which bonds should be receivable in the payment of all Confederate taxes. The law, however, did not exempt these bonds from taxation. It further provided that after the period first specified, this liberty of funding at par should cease, and that the entire body of the currency, except notes under the denomination of five dollars, should cease to be current, and should be exchangeable for the notes of a [651] new issue at the rate of three dollars of the old issue for two dollars of the new; and that non-interest-bearing notes of the denomination of one hundred dollars should be subject in addition to a further tax of ten per cent. per month, for the time they should remain outstanding after the 1st of April. All the notes of the old issue were to be receivable in payment of taxes after the 1st of April, 1864, at the reduced rate at which they were exchangeable for the new issue. But it was provided that notes of the denomination of one hundred dollars should not be exchangeable for notes of the new issue. The privilege of exchanging should continue until the 1st day of January, 1865, and should then cease. After that date, all treasury notes of the old issue remaining outstanding were to be subject to a tax of one hundred per cent. Notes of the new issue, and notes of the old scaled to two-thirds of their full value, might be exchanged at the treasury for call certificates, bearing four per cent. interest and payable two years after the notification of a treaty of peace with the United States; but notes of the old issue of the denomination of one hundred dollars were not to be thus exchangeable.

The effect of this measure was, to compel the conversion of all notes of the denomination of one hundred dollars into the four per cent. bonds. It also presented to the holders of notes of the other denominations, the alternative of exchanging them at par for the four per cent. bonds, or of submitting to the tax of one-third, and converting them into notes of the new issue. This latter course was preferred by a large majority of the note holders, under the conviction, that the reduction effected by the Act in this volume of the circulation, would so strengthen the value of the new issues, as to render the two new dollars which they received for the three old ones more valuable than the three.

The effect of the measure was, to produce a reduction in the mass of currency to the extent of rather less than three hundred millions of dollars; and to leave, during the latter part of the year 1864, and the beginning of 1865, the amount of treasury notes in circulation in the Confederacy, at three hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars, an amount which was found to be perfectly manageable; and which, indeed, under the depreciation of the new issue, which took place towards the close, was found to be inadequate to the wants of the country. For, at the rate of sixty for one, at which the Confederate Government itself sold specie for several months in Richmond, this three hundred and twenty-five millions of currency represented only the value of five millions in specie and general property; and the natural result was a very great stringency in the money market.

But the currency act of February signally failed in its object. The new currency was not issued promptly. The old currency remained in circulation, depreciated in value by the operation of causes which preceded the currency act, aided by the trenchant provisions of the Act itself. The exchange [652] of the new for the old money, was not effected in the country at large for many months; during which the worthlessness of the currency became an idea too firmly fixed in the public mind to be removed. One sad blunder, committed in the month of August, 1864, gave the money the coup-de-grace. The commissioners of the State of Virginia, charged with the duty of assessing the value of property taken by government, were directed by the Secretary of War, Mr. Seddon, to raise the price of wheat to forty dollars per bushel. At this rate the Secretary of War himself sold a large crop of wheat to the government, as did also a considerable number of his neighbours, who were large farmers on the James River. This action gave great dissatisfaction, and cheapened Confederate money to a degree from which it never recovered. Previously to this action, the people at large had for a long time received and paid the money at the rate of twenty for one. But when a prominent member of the Cabinet put down the value to forty for one, and authorized the commissioners of the government to shift the prices of commodities on this basis, the twenty dollar scale was discarded everywhere; and the public mind conceived a distrust of the money of which it never divested itself. The commissioners soon discovered their blunder, and re-established the old scale; but it was too late. From forty to one the price of the money went gradually down until, in February, it reached the low figure of sixty for one. For several months about this time, and until the evacuation of Richmond, the government steadily sold specie in Richmond at prices approximating that rate; and but for the value thus given, the money would have completely lost its purchasing power.

The statements of insufficiency of food in the army; the distress from the currency, the peculiar temptations which Confederate soldiers had to desert, not to the enemy, but to their own poverty-stricken homes; and the impracticability of executing the death penalty upon an offence which had so many circumstances to palliate it, sufficiently indicate how difficult to deal with was the question of desertions in the armies of the Southern Confederacy. The strong mind of Gen. Lee was long and painfully employed in devising a remedy for an evil which was eating into the vital parts of our resources, and which was indeed “the army-worm” of the Confederacy. But the evil was but little within the reach of any remedy and was logically uncontrollable. Appeals to patriotism were of but little avail, for in nine cases out of ten Confederate desertions had not happened from political disaffection, but from causes which had over-ridden and borne down public spirit. Attempts to reclaim deserters by force were equally unavailing, for whole regiments would have to be detached for the purpose, and there were unpleasant stories of the murder of enrolling officers in some parts of the Confederacy.

The fact is, the prime evil was behind desertions. In contemplating [653] the decline of the Confederate armies, we must not rest on secondary causes, such as desertions; for these we have shown were almost entirely the consequence of a mismanaged commissariat, and a currency wrecked by mal-administration at Richmond. All the stories of Confederate decay are traced at last to one source: the misgovernment that had made makeshifts in every stage of the war, at last to the point of utter deprivation, and had finally broken down the spirit of its armies and the patience of its people. The disaffection in the Confederacy that was original, that was purely political, that did not proceed from some particular grievance of the administration in Richmond, was utterly inconsiderable, and was perhaps less than was ever known in any great popular commotion in the history of the world.

President Davis and the Confederate Congress, &c.

There was a series of measures in the Confederate Congress directed against the administration of President Davis; it was the faint shadow of a counter-revolution; but as we have said, the disposition was not firm enough for a decisive experiment, and perhaps the public affairs of the Confederacy had lapsed too far to be reclaimed by legislative remedies. This series of measures was the appointment of Lee to a military dictatorship; the restoration of Johnston to active command; and the reform of the Cabinet, so far at least as to secure a purer and better administration of the War office, then in the hands of Mr. Seddon, the wreck of a man, a walking skeleton, industrious, but facile, and at a period of life when the professional politician readily falls to the office of a tool in the hands of an arbitrary master. The two first measures were accomplished but imperfectly. The command of all the Confederate armies was given to Gen. Lee, but this conscientious chieftain never practically asserted it. The restoration of Johnston was ungraciously conceded by President Davis; but he was not put in command of the forces south of Richmond until they had been swept by Sherman through two States into the forests of North Carolina, and were so broken and disorganized that the campaign may be said to have been already lost.

A delegation of the Virginia members of Congress, headed by Mr. Bocock, the speaker of the House, addressed to President Davis an earnest but most respectful paper, expressing their want of confidence in the capacity and services of his Cabinet. The President resented the address as impertinent; and when Mr. Seddon, Secretary of War, recognizing the censure as particularly directed against himself, a Virginian, insisted upon resigning, President Davis took occasion to declare that the event of this resignation would in no manner change the policy or course of his administration, [654] and made it very plain that the course of Mr. Seddon was to be ascribed to his punctilio, and to be taken in no manner as a triumph of the Opposition in Congress.

No man within the limits of the Southern Confederacy had such influence over its President as Gen. Lee. It was the only happy instance of well-bestowed confidence and merited deference on the part of President Davis; and to the last period of the war entire accord, and a warm personal friendship existed between himself and the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. It will naturally be asked why, in such relations, Gen. Lee did not impose his views upon the President, varying as they did from the actual conduct of his administration, and inclined, as all the Confederacy knew, to a policy very different from that which President Davis actually pursued. Gen. Lee was in favour of enlisting negro troops, and he was anxious for the reorganization of the forces south of Richmond, and the restoration of Johnston to command. But for a long time Davis carried both points against him. Gen. Lee was offered the entire and exclusive conduct of the military affairs of the Confederacy; Congress made him commander-in-chief; the Legislature of Virginia passed a resolution declaring that “the appointment of Gen. Robert E. Lee to the command of all the armies of the Confederate States would promote 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.” Yet Gen. Lee did not accept the trust; he remained with his limited command in Virginia; he made no effort to carry out his views against the administration at Richmond. And what is most remarkable in all these differences between President Davis and Gen. Lee, there never was even a momentary disturbance of kindly relations, as between themselves, and of mutual compliments. Indeed, President Davis replied to the Legislature of Virginia, that he had desired to surrender all military affairs to Gen. 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 Gen. R. E. Lee has my full concurrence. Virginia cannot have a higher regard for him, or greater confidence in his character and ability, than is entertained by me. When Gen. 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 immediate 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 between his withdrawal from the command of the army in the field, and relieving him of the general command [655] 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 Virginia. On several subsequent occasions, the desire on my part to enlarge the sphere of Gen. 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 Gen. Grant.”

The explanation of these differences between President Davis and Gen. Lee, without any issue ever being declared between them, is easy when the character of the latter is understood. No great actor in history had ever less self-assertion than Gen. Lee; outside of the limits of his particular command, he was one of those who never gave an opinion, except in the shape of a suggestion; his warm personal friendship resisted any attitude of hostility to the President; and although he differed from much of his policy, he went so far as to declare to several members of the Richmond Congress, that whatever might be Davis' errours he was yet constitutionally the President, and that nothing could tempt himself to encroach upon prerogatives which the Constitution had bestowed upon its designated head. The world will see in such conduct some pleasing traces of modesty and conscientiousness; although it is much to be regretted, in view of the circumstances and sequel of the Confederacy, that Gen. Lee was not an ambitious man, or did not possess more of that vigorous selfishness that puts the impressions of individuality on the pages of history. The fact was that, although many of Gen. Lee's views were sound, yet, outside of the limits of the Army of Northern Virginia, and with reference to the general affairs of the Confederacy, his influence was negative and accomplished absolutely nothing.

The last occupation of the Confederate Congress appears to have been a sharp recrimination between it and President Davis, as to the responsibility for the low condition of the public defences. A raging debate took place in secret session of the Senate. It was charged that the President had resisted all measures looking to the restoration of public confidence and the energetic administration of military affairs; that he had robbed the conscription of its legitimate fruits, by a weak and corrupt system of details; and the statistics of the conscription bureau were brought up to show that east of the Mississippi River, twenty-two thousand and thirty-five men had been detailed by executive authority, and so much subtracted from the strength of the Confederate armies by a single measure of the President's favour.

When in secret session, confidence in the President's military administration [656] was put to the test, on the proposition to take the control and conduct of the armies from his hands, it was found that his party had dwindled down to an insignificant number, and that many who had previously supported him in much of evil report, now joined in recording the verdict of incompetency against him. When the vote came to be taken upon the proposition to put Lee in command of all the Confederate armies, Senator Henry of Kentucky, long the constant and intelligent friend of President Davis-indeed the leader of his party in the Confederate Senate-felt constrained to vote for this important change in the Administration of the Southern Confederacy. On the occasion of a social visit to the family of the President, he was called to task by Mrs. Davis, who bitterly inveighed against the purpose of Congress to diminish the power of her husband. She spoke with a spirit so extraordinary, that her words were well remembered. “If I were Mr. Davis,” she said, “I would die or be hung before I would submit to the humiliation.”

The man who was by general assent leader of the Congressional party against the President, was Senator Wigfall, of Texas. He had one of the largest brains in the Confederacy. He was a man of scarred face and fierce aspect, but with rare gifts of oratory; in argument he dealt blows like those of the sledge-hammer; he was bitter in his words, his delivery was careless and slovenly to affectation, but some of his sentences were models of classic force, and as clear-cut as the diamond. The terrible denunciations of this extraordinary man will be remembered by those who visited the halls of legislation in Richmond; but the newspapers were afraid to publish his speeches, beyond some softened and shallow sketches of the reporters. It is a pity that all of this splendid, fiery oratory, which might have matched whatever we know of historical invective, has been lost to the world. It is only now in the faint reflection of these censures of President Davis, we may study the character of the man who, while be did much to ornament the cause of the Confederacy, yet persisted to the last in a long course of practical errours, and was dead alike to censure and expostulation.

President Davis had a great reputation in the Confederacy for a certain sort of firmness. He was almost inaccessible to the advice and argument of those who might aspire to intellectual equality, and possibly dispute with him the credit of public measures. No man could receive a delegation of Congressmen, or any company of persons who had advice to give, or suggestions to make, with such a well-bred grace, with a politeness so studied as to be almost sarcastic, with a manner that so plainly gave the idea that his company talked to a post. But history furnishes numerous examples of men who, firm as flint in public estimation, and superiour to the common addresses of humanity, have yet been as wax in the hands of small and unworthy favourites. Severest tyrants have been governed by [657] women and court-jesters. President Davis, firm, cold, severe to those who from position or merit should have been admitted into his counsels, was notoriously governed by his wife; had dismissed the Quarter-Master General of the Confederacy, on account of a woman's quarrel and a criticism of Mrs. Davis' figure; surrounded himself with and took into his household and intimate confidence men who had been “Jenkinses” and court-correspondents in Washington; was imposed upon by “travelled gentlemen” and obsequious adventurers; and frequently placed in the most important commands and positions in the Confederacy, men who had no other claim on his favour, than an acquaintance at West Point, or some social pleasantry in Washington. Those who knew Mr. Davis best testified that he was the weakest of men, on certain sides of his character, and that he had a romantic sentimentalism, which made him the prey of preachers and women. John M. Daniel, the editor of the Richmond Examiner-a single press so powerful in the Confederacy, that it was named “the fourth estate” --once remarked to Senator Wigfall, that the President was contemptibly weak; that his eyes often filled with tears on public occasions; and that a man who cried easily was unfit for a ruler. “I do not know about that,” said the rugged Texas Senator; “there are times in every man's life, when it is better to take counsel of the heart than the head.” “Well,” replied Daniel, “I have only to say that any man whose tears lie shallow, is assuredly weak and unreliable. For myself, I admire the manner of the austere Romans: when they wept, the face was turned away and the head covered with the mantle.”

It must be admitted that in the last periods of the war, the influence of President Davis was almost entirely gone, and that the party which supported him was scarcely anything more than that train of followers which always fawns on power and lives on patronage. There was a large party in the Confederacy, that now accepted its downfall as an inevitable result, in view of what stared them in the face, that all the public measures of Mr. Davis' administration had come to be wrecks. The foreign relations of the Confederacy were absurdities; its currency was almost worthless rags; its commissariat was almost empty; its system of conscription was almost like a sieve for water. Surely when all these wrecks of a great system of government lay before the eyes, it was no longer possible to dispute the question of maladminstration, debate the competency of President Davis, and give him a new lease of public confidence.

Much had been imagined in Richmond of propositions for peace negotiations, vaguely reported as pending in secret session of Congress. But this part of the secret history of the Confederacy is easily told; covers no very important facts; and will disappoint the reader, who may have expected from these chambers of mystery some startling revelations.

The propositions for pacification in the last Confederate Congress, [658] never came to a practical point, and were loose efforts indicative of its weak and bewildered mind. None of these propositions ever originated in the Confederate Senate; no vote was ever taken there; they came from the House and were generalities.

Almost during the entire period of the war, there had been a certain Union party in some of the States of the Confederacy. Its sentiment was uniform during the term of its existence; but its designs varied at different stages of the war. Early in 1863, a party organization was secretly proposed in Georgia, to introduce negotiations with the enemy on the part of the States separately, without regard to their Confederate faith. It was supposed that the excessive vanity of Gov. Brown could be easily used in this matter; and he was weak enough to give his ear to the coarsest flattery and to believe what a charlatan told him, that “he (Gov. Brown) held the war in the hollow of his hand.” The party of State negotiation obtained a certain hold in Georgia, in Northern Alabama, and in parts of North Carolina; but the great object was to secure the Legislature of Virginia, and for a long period an active and persistent influence was used to get the prestige of Virginia's name for this new project. But it failed. The intrigue caught such third-rate politicians as Wickham, and such chaff as James Lyons, and men who had balanced all their lives between North and South. But this was a low order of Virginians. In the last stages of the war, the Legislature of Virginia was besieged with every influence in favour of separate State negotiation with the Federal Government; propositions were made for embassies to Washington; but the representative body of the proudest State in the Confederacy was true to its great historical trust, and preferred that Virginia should go down to posterity proudly, starkly, with the title of a subjugated people, rather than a community which bartered its Confederate faith, its honour, and its true glory for the small measure of an enemy's mercy, and the pittance of his concessions. The deliberate choice of Virginia, in the very last period of the war, was to stand or fall by the fortune of the Confederate arms, holding her untarnished honour in her hands, and committing to history along with the record of success or of disaster the greatest and most spotless name of modern times.

In the month of January, 1865, Virginia raised her voice for the last time in the war, and gave official expression to her heroic choice. In a public letter of the two Houses of her Legislature to President Davis, it was then declared: “The General Assembly of Virginia desire in this critical period of our affairs, by such suggestions as occur to them, and by the dedication, if need be, of the entire resources of the Commonwealth to the common cause, to strengthen our hands, and to give success to our struggle for liberty and independence.” The reply of President Davis was noble. Almost his last official writing was a tribute to the grand State of [659] Virginia. To the presiding officer of her Legislature, he wrote: “Your assurance is to me a source of the highest gratification; and while conveying to you my thanks for the expression of the confidence of the General Assembly in my sincere devotion to my country and sacred cause, I must beg permission, in return, to bear witness to the uncalculating, unhesitating spirit with which Virginia has, from the moment when she first drew the sword, consecrated the blood of her children and all her material resources to the achievement of the object of our struggle.”

If the spirit of Virginia had animated the entire Confederacy, a cause now prostrate might have been still erect and in arms, and perhaps triumphant. For after all, the main condition of the success of the Confederacy was simply resolution, the quality that endures; and as long as the people were resolved to be free, there was no military power that could have been summoned by the enemy, to bring under subjection a country occupying so many square miles, and so wild and difficult as that of the South. The mind may easily discover many causes that concurred in the decline and downfall of the Southern Confederacy, and contributed something to the catastrophe; but one rises uppermost, and, for the purposes of the explanation, is sufficient and conclusive — the general demoralization of the people, and that demoralization consequent upon such a want of confidence in the administration of President Davis, as was never before exhibited between a people and its rulers in a time of revolution. He who takes broad and enlightened views of great historical results, and is not satisfied to let his mind rest on secondary causes and partial explanations, will ascribe the downfall of the Southern Confederacy to a general breaking down of the public virtue, and the debasement of a people who, having utterly lost hope in their rulers, and having no heart for a new experiment, descend to tame and infamous submission to what they consider fortune.

We may properly add here some considerations of an extraordinary measure to restore the fortunes of the Confederacy, indicative, indeed, of the desperate condition of the country, and of the disposition of the government to catch at straws. Throughout the entire session of the last Congress in Richmond there was an ill-natured debate of a proposition to arm the slaves, and thus repair the strength and organization of the armies. The circumstances in which this proposition was discussed showed plainly enough that the yield of the conscription law had been practically exhausted, and were the occasion of prejudicial dissensions, which contributed to the overthrow of the Confederacy. It may easily be calculated that out of three million slaves, two hundred thousand might have been spared, and brought into the field. This addition, if made some time ago, might have turned the scale in favour of the South, considering how evenly the balance hung in the early campaigns of the war. But the time for this measure was past; soldiers could not be improvised; [660] there was no time to drill and perfect negro recruits before the resumption of the active and decisive campaign; and it is a striking evidence of the shiftlessness of the Confederate Government and the impracticability of the Congress, that there should have been debated a bill to put two hundred thousand negroes in the Confederate armies at a time when there were not five thousand spare arms in the Confederacy and our returned prisoners could not actually find muskets with which to resume their places in the field.

Whatever may have been the general merits of the question of enlisting the negro and competing with the enemy in this branch of the recruiting service, the time and circumstances in which the measure was actually discussed in Richmond rendered it impracticable and absurd, and gave occasion to a controversy which, however barren of proper results, created parties and drew lines of exasperated prejudice through different classes of the people. The country, in its exhausted state, could not half feed and clothe the few soldiers left in the ranks. Hence, under all possible circumstances, the negroes could but add to the painful embarrassments already existing. The policy of the government in this, as well as nearly all its measures, was lamentably weak and short-sighted. To suppose that it could accomplish with negro soldiers what it had totally failed to do with the white, who had a much greater interest in the issue, was supremely absurd. The actual results of the legislation of Congress on the subject were ridiculously small, and after the pattern of all its other productions in its last session — a pretence of doing something, yet so far below the necessities of the case, as to be to the last degree puerile, absurd, and contemptible. The proposition to arm negroes was made in November, 1864; it was debated until March, 1865; and the result was a weak compromise on the heel of the session by which the question of emancipation as a reward for the negroes' services was studiously excluded, and the President simply authorized to accept from their masters such slaves as they might choose to dedicate to the military service of the Confederacy.

Such paltry legislation indeed, may be taken as an indication of that vague desperation in the Confederacy which grasped at shadows; which conceived great measures, the actual results of which were yet insignificant; which showed its sense of insecurity-and yet, after all, had not nerve enough to make a practical and persistent effort at safety.

1866.

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Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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Chapter 39:

Condition of the commissariat.

The condition of the currency.

President Davis and the Confederate Congress, &c.