Dixie Betrayed (11 page)

But a new war actually was brewing, a war of second-guessing between Beauregard and Davis—or perhaps more accurately, between
the general and most everyone else. Beauregard began sniping at Lucius Northrop over reportedly inadequate supplies for his
army. He pecked at Secretary of War Judah Benjamin for supposedly interfering with his command decisions. And his report to
the Confederate Congress on the battle of Manassas caused a bombshell: Davis’s political opponents claimed Beauregard’s account
showed the president prevented the general from pursuing the retreating Yankee army.
Davis fumed at Beauregard:

Yesterday my attention was called to various newspaper publications purporting to have been sent from Manassas, and to be
a synopsis of your report of the battle of the 21st of July last, and in which it is represented that you had been over ruled
by me in your plan for a battle with the enemy south of the Potomac, for the capture of Baltimore and Washington, and the
liberation of Maryland. . . . With much surprise I found that the newspaper statements were sustained by the text of your
report. I was surprised because if we did differ in opinion as to the measures and purposes of contemplated campaigns, such
fact could have no appropriate place in the report of a battle; further because it seemed to be an attempt to exalt yourself
at my expense; and especially because no such plan as that described was submitted to me.
¹⁰

In the autumn of 1861, Davis reflected on his critics in a letter to Johnston. “Though such statements may have been made
merely for my injury,” penned the president, “they have acquired importance in that they have served to create distrust, to
excite disappointment, and must embarrass the Administration in its further efforts to reinforce the armies of the Potomac.”
¹¹
Beauregard denied he had said anything designed to damage Davis, but he did suggest that the Confederate leader had blown
the chance to capture Washington by rejecting Beauregard’s original battle plan and insisting on his own. In fact Davis had
arrived on the Manassas battlefield to witness Beauregard directing the battle, and Johnston, who ranked him, playing, in
effect, a secondary command role. And while Davis had suggested sober strategy, Beauregard had actually shown himself indecisive
at the critical hour. Davis had never been against seizing the momentum and dealing a knockout blow. It had been Beauregard
who chose instead to take a defensive stance. The lack of action on his part would haunt everyone in the high command for
months to come, as it gradually became clear that the best opportunity for ending the war early would have been immediately
following First Manassas.
¹²
All this was taking place with the knowledge that Beauregard might run against Davis for the permanent presidency of the
Confederacy in elections to be held in the spring of 1862. Given Beauregard’s immense popularity with Congress and with the
people, Davis had plenty of reason to be nervous.

After days and weeks of intense squabbling, the “Report on the Battle of Manassas Affair” took on a life of its own. Davis
was furious with Beauregard, flatly stating that the general was attempting to reach loftier heights by attacking his commander
in chief. In response Beauregard sent a letter to the
Richmond Whig
attacking the president obliquely and ensuring that their relationship would be fractured forever.

As if to make himself certain of that fact, Beauregard also attacked another front, one close to Davis’s heart. Beauregard
(aided by Johnston) began making harsh assertions that the Commissary and Quartermaster-General’s departments were not properly
supporting the armies with food and equipment. While this may have been largely true, the available amounts of food and the
logistics of getting it to the right place were difficult questions to work out early in the war. Beauregard didn’t give a
damn about how difficult the task was—to him, Abraham Myers and Lucius Northrop were clearly failing in their jobs. He was
particularly harsh on Northrop regarding the food issue, and Northrop being an old, close friend of Davis’s, the president
defended him staunchly. Davis angrily wrote Beauregard: “Some excitement has been created by your letter. The Quartermaster
and the Commissary Genl. both feel that they have been unjustly arraigned. . . . I think you are unjust to yourself in putting
your failure to pursue the enemy to Washington on account of short supplies of subsistence and transportation. . . . Let us
. . . give form and substance to the criticisms always easy to those who judge after the event.”
¹³

None of this boded well for the rebellion. And within the boundaries of the Confederate capital itself, the arguments were
just beginning.

I
N
Richmond many hopeful senators and representatives looked at the fight that had arisen over Beauregard’s actions at First
Manassas in disbelief. Surely this was not the time to fight within the Confederate nation; there were Yankees to kill and,
as time marched on, more and more supplies ready for a conquest that might spell Confederate doom. Although Richmonders were
flushed with success, Davis knew what lay ahead. He warned that hard battles would follow against a determined enemy, but
few believed him until, during a pouring rain, trains rolled into Richmond bearing the Manassas wounded, and men without limbs
and soldiers with heads wrapped in bloody bandages were carried off to makeshift hospitals.

“Richmond was then one vast general hospital,” wrote Sallie Putnam, the nurse, a native of Madison County, Virginia, who moved
to Richmond in 1858 and who kept a celebrated wartime diary. “Our surgeons were kept constantly busy in the rounds of their
profession, and we were told, as far as it was in their power . . . they practiced the principles of conservative surgery,
although much blame has been attached to the surgeons of both armies for reckless waste and sacrifice of human limbs.”
¹

Along with the wounded came Yankee prisoners, to the point where the town was “crowded to the caves.”
²
(One of those brought to Richmond was the congressman captured at Manassas, Alfred Ely of New York.) Many houses, schools,
and other institutions had been converted into hospitals, and now prisons had to be created. For Yankee officers a warehouse
and ship chandlery near the James River, owned by the estate of Luther Libby, was converted and renamed Libby Prison. Common
soldiers were held on Belle Isle, an isolated spit of land that housed a tent city for the prisoners. All together some eighteen
hundred prisoners were housed in Richmond during the last weeks of 1861.

Not everyone appreciated the growth of Richmond. As Sallie Putnam wrote,

With the incoming of the Confederate government, Richmond was flooded with pernicious characters. . . . Speculators, gamblers,
and bad characters of every grade flocked to the capital, and with a lawlessness which for a time bade defiance to authority,
pursued the rounds of their wicked professions, and grew rich upon their dishonest gains. Thieving, garroting, and murdering
were the nightly employments of the villains who prowled around the city.
³

In this arena of strange politics, relations between President Davis and his generals became further strained. The argument
between Davis and Beauregard over First Manassas failed to dissipate. Davis was faring no better with Joe Johnston, who also
was annoyed with Secretary of War Judah Benjamin. Johnston had added to the Manassas controversy by writing that following
the battle the president had been “satisfied with the victory as it was” and that he gave “no instructions” about pursuing
the Yankees, later summarized in his memoirs.
⁴
Davis professed continued anger over the Confederate lack of pursuit. All sides continued to point fingers.

As 1861 dragged on and Johnston’s armies stayed encamped at Fairfax Court House and Centreville, Johnston maintained a positive
correspondence with the War Department and with President Davis. In mid-September, however, the glue that held the relationship
between these old associates came apart. On August 31 Davis finally sent the names of the five full generals of the Army of
the Confederate States to the Senate for confirmation, in rank order of Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joe
Johnston, and Beauregard. The news struck Johnston “like a slap in the face,” and he immediately sat down to pen a letter
to the president. He declared:

It seeks to tarnish my fair fame as a soldier and a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service.
I had but this, the scars of many wounds, all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father’s Revolutionary
sword. It was delivered to me from his venerated hand, without a stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when
it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war, not for rank or fame, but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and
hearths, the women and children, aye, the men of my mother Virginia, my native South.
⁵

Sending the letter may have been the worst decision Johnston ever made. Davis was furious, and the relationship never was
mended.

Two of the five generals now were very angry with their president. To Davis’s credit, he was probably right in both situations.
But the tension among the three men would be palpable for years to come.

Such was not the case with Robert Edward Lee, who—after leaving the old Union and taking command of the Virginia state forces
in April—had spent the first few months of the war in a succession of assignments. In January 1861 he had turned fifty-four
years old, his hair and mustache still black with just a sprinkling of gray, and he had not yet grown a beard. He stood five
feet eleven inches in height, and weighed 170 pounds. His father, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, had been Washington’s cavalry commander
and governor of the commonwealth before falling from grace, drinking, gambling, and losing his family’s money. His son’s career
as an engineer in the U.S. Army had been stellar, and his service in the Mexican War outstanding. Lee’s loyalty to the U.S.
Army was intense, but he felt he had no choice but to turn southward when Virginia departed from the Union.

Early in the war Lee had hastily organized a defensive force of militia troops in Richmond, helped to initiate a Confederate
naval force, protected Norfolk, and helped to reinforce Manassas, Harpers Ferry, and Fredericksburg. By midsummer about forty
thousand Confederate troops were in Virginia’s fields. Arms, ammunition, cannon, powder, and other supplies had been furnished
for $3.8 million, all in about eight weeks. Six days later, at First Manassas, Lee wrote his wife, Mary, about the battle:
“That indeed was a glorious victory and has lightened the pressure on our front amazingly. Do not grieve for the brave dead.
Sorrow for those they left behind—friends, relatives, and families.”
⁶

On July 28 Lee departed for western Virginia to coordinate operations and ensure that commanders were working well together
in that mountainous region. It was a bland assignment, and on August 4 he wrote Mary from Huntersville. After mentioning that
he had traveled on the same road in 1840, he commented that “if any one had then told me that the next time I traveled that
road I would have been on my present errand, I should have supposed him insane.”
⁷

A few days later, on August 6, the
Memphis Daily Appeal
described the overseer of western Virginia: “His life, since he assumed the chief command of the Virginia forces, has been
a model of soldierly patience and energy and watchfulness. Six o’clock in the morning has seen him regularly enter his office,
which, with rare exceptions, he has not left, save at meal times, till eleven at night. A man of few words, of unvarying courtesy,
but of a singularly cold and distant manner.”
⁸

This same week at Valley Mountain, young John Worsham recalled seeing the visitor for the first time. “General Robert E. Lee
. . . joined us here and pitched his headquarters tent about one or two hundred yards from our company. He soon won the affection
of all by his politeness and notice of the soldiers.” Articles of food and gifts delivered to Leewere “sent to some sick soldier
as soon as the messenger got out of sight.” This was consistent behavior for a general already celebrated for showing compassion
to his men. Considering the case of a soldier accused of being asleep on guard duty, an offense that could have seen him shot,
Lee told the supervising officer, “Captain, you know the arduous duties these men have to do daily. Suppose the man who was
found on his post asleep had been you, or me. What do you think should be done to him?”
⁹
Suffice it to say this was an uncommon generosity.

In August Leedescribed his temporary home to Mary. “The mountains are beautiful,” he wrote, “fertile to the tops, covered
with the richest sward of bluegrass and white clover, and inclosed fields waving with the natural growth of timothy. The habitations
are few and the people sparse. This is a magnificent grazing country.”
¹⁰
A few days later Stonewall Jackson wrote Col. Thomas Bennett, auditor of Virginia: “My hopes for our section of the state
[western Virginia] have greatly brightened since General Lee has gone there. Something brilliant may be expected.”
¹¹
But difficulties lay ahead. Federal Brig. Gen. William S. Rosecrans had a sizable force in the vicinity of Cheat Mountain,
in the hills north of White Sulphur Springs, ready to attack southeastward toward the upper Shenandoah Valley. Rains were
relentless, and mud was everywhere. On September 1 Lee wrote Mary, who was now at an estate called Audley, in Clarke County,
Virginia: “We have a great deal of sickness among the soldiers, and now those on the sick-list would form an army. The measles
is still among them. . . . The constant cold rains, with no shelter but tents . . . with impassable roads, have paralyzed
our efforts.”
¹²