Dixie Betrayed (13 page)

The main focus of political thought in Richmond and throughout the South centered on Jefferson Davis and his wartime policy.
Although support had been solid when the conflict started, chinks in the armor began to appear through 1861. The war clerk,
John B. Jones, reflected this shift in his diary. “No Executive had ever such cordial and unanimous support,” he wrote early
in the war. But by summertime he reported “murmurs” against the president. Stephen Mallory, secretary of the navy, remarked
in August how Congress seemed to be unhappy with Davis and that a “spirit of opposition” was growing. At the same time Confederate
senator Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina openly termed Davis “a failure.”
²²

The focus was not exclusively on the president. In September Leroy Walker, the ineffectual war secretary from Alabama, had
resigned. Judah Benjamin succeeded him, with Thomas Bragg now becoming attorney general, and the legions who didn’t like Benjamin
were growing. “Benjamin is the supple boot of the President, a Eunuch,” wrote Milledge L. Bonham, a brigadier general who
would become governor of South Carolina before war’s end. Most members of Congress were bothered by this sense that Davis
had appointed an administrator and could act as his own de facto war secretary. Not only did they dislike Benjamin’s subservience,
but those who favored an aggressive war policy found him far too enamored with playing defense.
²³

Political issues were hardly limited to the capital. In the field Toombs, now a brigadier general hoping to win the war by
killing Yankees rather than arguing in Richmond, wrote to Aleck Stephens often, sharing his frustration:

As [to] the assignment of Smith’s regiment, [Judah P.] Benjamin wrote me the President instructed him to suggest to me to
call Genl. [Joseph E.] Johnston’s attention to it; that he was commander of both corps of the army. I replied to Benj[amin]
that I had good reasons to know that fact, “and in common with the army, not without reasons to lament it.” I never knew as
incompetent [an] executive officer. As he has been to West Point, tho’, I suppose he necessarily knows everything about it.
We are doing nothing here, and will do nothing. The army is dying. . . . Set this down in your book, and set down opposite
to it its epitaph, “
died of West Point.
”
²⁴

The following week Toombs turned his ire more directly toward the president. “Davis is here,” he confided to Stephens. “His
generals are fooling [him] about the strength of our force in order to shield their inactivity. [Davis] talks of activity
on the Potomac but I fear he does not feel it strong enough to move this inert mass.”
²⁵
Toombs was hardly alone in his vilification. “Pres. Davis was up the other day and reviewed about 12,000 troops at Fairfax
Court House,” wrote Thomas Thomas, colonel of the Fifteenth Georgia Infantry. “There was not a single cheer, even when some
one in the crowd among the staff called out for three cheers there was not a single response, everything was as cold as funeral
meats.”
²⁶

Members of Congress fancied themselves better managers of the army than their president, whether or not that may have been
the case. Since First Manassas, it seemed, nothing at all had been accomplished by the Southern armies. The repeated skirmishing
in western Virginia had led nowhere. Federal troops had landed along the southeastern coast, capturing positions at Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina, and Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. What had the Confederate armies accomplished? The gloom over Davis’s
management of the army spread during the inactive autumn. “All governments are humbugs and the Confederate government is not
an exception,” Thomas told Stephens in October. He went on:

Its President this day is the prince of humbugs and yet his nomination for the first permanent presidency meets with universal
acceptance, and yet I do know that he possesses not a single qualification for the place save integrity. . . . Imbecility,
ignorance, and awkwardness mark every feature of his management of this army. He torments us, makes us sick and kills us by
appointing worthless place-hunters to transact business for us on which depends our health, efficiency, and even our lives.
. . . He would make a good ordinary [judge of probate] of a county in Georgia and his capacity is not above that; but he is
king, and here where we are fighting to maintain the last vestige of republicanism on earth we bow down to him with more than
eastern devotion.
²⁷

Late in the year the clash between Beauregard and the president’s inner circle heated up again, disrupting the harmony between
Richmond and the field officers. In November Beauregard had argued repeatedly and over a multitude of subjects with Secretary
of War Benjamin. Davis had written Beauregard, trying to soothe him, but Beauregard replied that his “motives must not be
called into question” and that if his “errors are pointed out, it must be done in a proper tone and style.” Davis had responded
that he did not feel “competent to instruct Mr. Benjamin in the matter of style.”
²⁸

As the armies stood inactive, the weather turned cold, and the Congress reconvened in Richmond, patience for military victories
seemed to be running thin. They would come, but much more slowly than the people on the home front and the soldiers would
have liked. Davis, meanwhile, was saddled with a vast job, and the cards were stacked against him. The naysayers were growing
in numbers, and their complaints growing in volume. No one embodied the antiadministration rhetoric better than Robert Rhett.
“Jefferson Davis is not only a dishonest man, but a liar,” he wrote at year’s end. “What is to become of us, under this man
for six years?”
²⁹

W
ITH
the turn of the new year, hope sprang: Confederate commanders drew up plans for springtime battles; politicians planned their
returns to the House and Senate chambers in Richmond’s Capitol, thinking of how best to whip the Yankees as well as how to
put the best spin for their constituents on what was happening.

For his part Jefferson Davis planned on taking greater charge. The Confederacy remained mostly under his control, despite
the arguing and politicking that was growing slowly like an infection in Richmond. But just when Davis thought he had enough
to worry about, another deleterious effect appeared. A theme had emerged in this winter of discontent: who would wield the
real power of the Confederacy—the executives or the legislators? Davis began to wonder if the states would remain loyal to
his leadership. This was particularly scary because, after all, the states were held to be supremely powerful by nearly all
the politicians of the Confederacy.

The new fears were bound up most completely in the form of Joseph E. Brown, the governor of Georgia. Joe Brown, who often
wore stark black suits, was balding, with tufts of white hair on the sides. He sported a long, white-and-gray beard and looked
every inch like a preacher. To Davis he symbolized everything that could spin the Richmond government out of control. Infused
with supreme confidence from his South Carolina roots, Brown applied that fanatical sanctimoniousness to his adopted state.
Georgia was itself in a politically influential position at this time because it had to be held in solid, loyal form—militarily,
it was the gateway to the Deep South. If Georgia fell, Union troops could destroy the Confederacy from within by marching
and fighting through its heart. To Davis, Brown’s loyalty to Richmond was crucial.

A native South Carolinian, Brown was forty years old as the second calendar year of the war began. He had studied at Yale
Law School before winning election to the Georgia State Senate, where his family had moved. A leading Democrat, he was elected
governor in 1857. At the outset of war, Brown enthusiastically called for volunteers and vowed to support Confederate military
operations. But he would not budge on one issue: he wanted to maintain control of the Georgia troops—how they were supplied,
who commanded them, and where and when they fought. This sent chills through the War Department. A conflict with state governors
attempting to call the shots on the battlefield simply wouldn’t work. A sniping campaign commenced between members of the
Georgia State House and the authorities in Richmond.

Brown supported the Confederate war effort during the first months of the conflict, and he was a masterful state politician,
keeping the spirits of both his civilians and troops high. He acted ceaselessly to procure clothing and blankets for the Georgia
troops, pulling strings everywhere he could to obtain cotton for basic goods and salt to preserve the troops’ food. But Brown
felt the mounting wrath of Davis and the Richmond War Department, as well as another factor that was starting to turn public
sentiment at home: inflation. Like most state politicians of the time, Brown could not bring himself to see affairs through
a lens larger than the local view. He, therefore, dragged his heels on issues of Confederate unity, and the president could
see that a time would come when Brown would have a head-on collision with the Confederate States of America.

The other Confederate governors were a mixed bag. In North Carolina Henry Clark, the product of a plantation upbringing, was
no model of ambition and had failed to inspire the people of his state. A Yankee blockade made it impossible to get supplies
to the Tar Heel troops, so the state had to scramble to supply many of its own men. Federal troops had landed and secured
positions along North Carolina’s coast, so Clark initiated a draft of one-third of the state’s militia to help defend adjoining
areas along the coast. This created ill feeling in the now less-defended inner, central counties, which began to question
North Carolinians’ loyalty to the Confederate effort. Scattered protests against the Confederacy sprang up in the weeks following
secession; by 1862 Unionism in the state was real, though only among a small number of the citizens. More so than in other
Confederate states, however, a resentment by many over class distinctions—the war had to be fought for the rich and by the
poor—and a general distrust of the state and national governments began to erode the feeling of support for the Confederacy.
In Richmond this began to put Clark and other North Carolina politicians in a somewhat precarious position.

In Virginia Governor John Letcher was the middle-class product of comfortable Lexington, in the Shenandoah Valley. A moderate
conservative, Letcher worked frantically to mobilize Virginia in the early months of the war. The philosophical opposite of
Brown, Letcher realized that compromising state principles and closing ranks behind Jefferson Davis would be necessary if
the South were to have a chance of winning its independence. He continued to be demanding, though, expecting privileged treatment
for Virginia and her interests, which he generally got.

Another pro-Davis man, Francis Lubbock, was a South Carolinian who had become a Texas rancher and governor. A Democrat and
strong supporter of secession, Lubbock was a strong militarist who delighted in discussing strategy and tactics; in fact he
would not be able to keep himself away from the battlefield as the war drew on. Texas’s isolated nature meant that it held
limited political sway in Richmond.

In Florida Governor John Milton was a secession Democrat who had amassed a personal fortune as a planter and slave owner.
He was limited in ability by the scant resources the state had to bring to bear in the war. Pleased with Richmond’s plans
to defend the approaches to Apalachicola, the harbor at Fernandina, Jacksonville, and other towns along the coast, Milton
would be disappointed early in 1862, when Davis failed to follow through with them. As Federal forces began to threaten Kentucky
and Tennessee, Richmond ordered Florida’s forces and resources northward and, thus, began disillusionment in the Sunshine
State.

In Louisiana Governor Thomas Moore was a native Tar Heel who had become one of Louisiana’s largest sugar planters before the
war. He was a fanatical secessionist who seized Yankee property even before his state left the Union. Louisiana’s political
leaders offered trouble for Richmond authorities over the national government’s ability to build defensive works to protect
the state, but the state supported the Davis administration on most matters. Governor John J. Pettus of Mississippi was a
frontier lawyer and cotton planter who, politically, was another rabid secessionist. Support for the war in Mississippi started
strong, but strain on the home front quickly became apparent. Pettus felt the Davis administration did not adequately provide
for the state’s defense and, in early 1862, wanted to secure the state with its own troops under his control. South Carolina’s
governor, Francis Pickens, who had been involved in the Fort Sumter drama, was the grandson of a Revolutionary War general.
Pickens found himself publicly criticized for his inability to act independently since he was bound by a five-member state
Executive Council that limited his powers.

Arkansas governor Henry Rector was a Kentucky native who had led a revolt within Arkansas’s Democratic Party, subsequently
ordering the seizure of the U.S. Arsenal at Little Rock before the state seceded. Rector began his relationship with Jefferson
Davis in a series of clashes, partly because the state’s military board, which he chaired, wanted Arkansas troops employed
only within their home state—mirroring Joe Brown’s position in Georgia. In Alabama Governor John G. Shorter was a Georgian
who migrated to Alabama before becoming a lawyer, planter, and slave owner. A Davis supporter, Shorter told the folks in his
state in December 1861 that they would face “unaccustomed burdens” in the future. He had no idea what an understatement that
would turn out to be.

The governorships of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri were more muddled. Late in 1861, following pro-Confederate meetings
in Russellville, Kentucky was admitted as a Confederate state under the governorship of George Johnson. However, the government’s
jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate troops in the state advanced, so it withdrew from the state in early 1862.
The pro-Southern prewar governor, Beriah Magoffin, continued to act as the state’s government leader as recognized by the
Lincoln administration, although many Northern politicians didn’t trust him. Tennessee had seceded and set up a pro-Richmond
government under Isham G. Harris, but eastern Tennessee citizens refused to follow its authority. So Tennessee began as a
divided state, and the divisions would only deepen as time moved on. Missouri, another area with deeply split loyalties, left
the Union after a rump session had met at Neosho, late in 1861. The state’s prewar governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, was a rabid
secessionist. After raiding the U.S. Arsenal at St. Louis, Jackson’s militia troops thwarted Union efforts to maintain control
of the state. As with Kentucky and Tennessee, two governments arose in the state, and Hamilton R. Gamble led the one recognized
by the Yankees.