Dixie Betrayed (14 page)

S
TATE
governors who might not comply with Jefferson Davis’s wishes were just another growing worry for the Confederate president.
Comfortable in the Confederate White House, on January 1, 1862, Davis and his family opened their abode to anyone who wanted
to come and see it. For four hours on this New Year’s Day, the president welcomed all who stopped by, greeting them with cheer
and high spirits for the Confederacy. (His wife, Varina, stayed in her room, too ill to join the fray.) A continuous string
of visitors was treated to the music of the Armory Band and a “very large bowl of apple brandy toddy.”
¹

At the war’s outset Davis and Stephens had been inaugurated as president and vice president of the provisional government
of the Confederate States. Now February 22 would mark their inauguration as president and vice president of the permanent
government. The symbolism was intentional: the birthday of George Washington would provide the Southern nation with a touchstone
of credibility that recalled the earliest days of the Republic. To strengthen the philosophical bond, Davis was set to deliver
his inaugural address at the base of the great equestrian statue of Washington that stood adjacent to Richmond’s Capitol.
It was a neat public-relations package, one that seemed fluently constructed, and with the new president commanding armies
that stretched from the Atlantic coast to west of the Mississippi River, the Confederacy seemed in good shape.

In Richmond February can be mild, but this year, the sky was gray, the temperatures cold, and the streets wet with rain. This
dampened the mood for the city’s inaugural festivities, but Davis was determined to press on with his speech. Numerous umbrellas
dotted the hillside around the Capitol, and despite mud that approached being “ankle-deep,” a throng of visitors pushed forward
to hear the president, amid a band that belted out “Dixie,” just as at the Montgomery inauguration.

The Senate and House assembled at 7:30 a.m. and then moved to the House of Delegates. Davis and Stephens were conducted there
at 11:45 a.m. At 12:30 p.m. the procession moved from the House of Delegates to the Washington statue.
²
Prayer was followed by the inaugural address. As Davis rose he seemed oblivious to the rain that fell on him, and a guest
nearby stuck an umbrella up to cover him. With, according to one observer, “a fine manner and with a loud voice,” the president
told his fellow countrymen that “on this birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American independence,
and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled to usher
into existence the Permanent Government of the Confederate States.”

Justifying the war, he flatly said, “The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism,
has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the
holy cause of constitutional liberty.” Davis pointed to the “lights and shadows” of the first year of the war and commented
that difficult times lay ahead. But he had no doubt that Southerners would prevail in the “great strife” they suffered through.

Following his remarks, which were met by loud cheers and sustained applause, the oath of office for Davis and Stephens was
administered by Judge J. D. Halyburton, and the result announced by the Confederate Senate. The band commenced playing “La
Marseillaise,” and Davis, this time along with Varina, hosted a reception at the White House that evening. All around town
was a sense that Richmond was back on its feet with a permanent president. The country could move forward; the confidence
with which the president spoke gave all hope for a speedy end to the war.

It didn’t take long for the president and Congress to begin to have sharp differences about their permanent government. State
rights reared its philosophical head right away. The president, jealously attempting to hold onto his national power, vetoed
a bill that would have allowed the state of Texas to assign a regiment to frontier duty after it had joined the Provisional
Army of the Confederate States. Davis would have none of that; he wanted to preserve his authority over how and where troops
would be assigned.
³
Rationality departed the chambers. Robert Toombs and Robert Barnwell Rhett, along with eight others in the House, strongly
protested a bill that would furnish Davis with one million dollars to connect the Richmond & Danville Railroad with the North
Carolina Railroad in downtown Richmond in order to expedite the transportation of military supplies. Casting an immense spotlight
on state rights over national ones, Toombs and Rhett were willing to forgo what was clearly best for supplying battlefronts
because they wanted Virginia to make such decisions—not the national government.

There were other problems, too. A week after the session opened, for example, Davis wrote Congress complaining of the short-term
(one year or less) enlistment of soldiers and their frequent absences home, both practices Congress approved of and the War
Department fought tooth and nail against. “The policy of enlistment for short terms, against which I have steadily contended
from the commencement of the war, has, in my judgment, contributed in no immaterial degree to the recent reverses which we
have suffered,” Davis said. “Now that it has become probable that the war will be continued through a series of years, our
high-spirited and gallant soldiers, while generally reenlisting, are, from the fact of having entered into the service for
a short term, compelled in many instances to go home to make the necessary arrangements for their families during their prolonged
absence.”
⁴
The “recent reverses” Davis spoke of to Congress referred to the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson in early and mid-February
at the hand of the then little-known Yankee general Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had attacked the perimeter line of Kentucky defenses
held by Davis’s trusted friend and admired general Albert Sidney Johnston, and Johnston’s failure to hold his line and to
supervise the defense of the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, which now opened up a potential deep penetration
southward by Grant, became a hot topic in Congress. In the House of Representatives, meddlesome politician Henry S. Foote
of Tennessee argued that the cause of the disasters in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina should be investigated. Not
only had Johnston, touted as the South’s greatest general, completely failed in his duty, but a succession of commanders on-site,
John B. Floyd and Gideon J. Pillow, had escaped and left the Confederate troops to surrender under a junior general officer,
Simon B. Buckner. The whole affair smacked of total incompetence and wholesale evasion of responsibility for what happened.
The matter was discussed and then tabled. A week later Foote again argued about the cause of the disasters at Fort Henry,
Fort Donelson, and Nashville. The inquiry was again tabled, but it wouldn’t go away forever.

In March the House finally passed a resolution to determine what prevented Johnston, who was at Bowling Green, from relieving
Fort Donelson during its investment by Grant. Congress also overwhelmingly passed a bill demanding an explanation from the
executive branch
⁵
and debated holding a vote of no confidence in Johnston, a discussion that was inconclusive.
⁶

Davis hoped to cheer up a shocked Congress. “The hope is still entertained that our reported losses at Fort Donelson have
been greatly exaggerated,” he wrote, “in as much as I am not only unwilling, but unable to believe that a large army of our
people have surrendered without a desperate effort to cut their way through the investing forces, whatever have been their
numbers, and to endeavor to make a junction with other divisions of the army.”
⁷
But it was clear to everyone in Richmond that disaster had struck. The surrender at Fort Donelson sent about 11,500 Confederate
soldiers to Yankee prisons. Moreover, Nashville—also under Johnston’s jurisdiction—fell into Federal hands at month’s end.
“The terrible disaster at Fort Donelson is a terrific shock upon weak nerves—and somewhat trying to strong ones,” wrote Howell
Cobb, former president of the Provisional Congress.
⁸
Moreover, Roanoke Island, North Carolina, fell to Union forces, and the South lost 2,500 soldiers to prisons.

It didn’t take long for the finger pointing to begin. Judah Benjamin tried to help Davis and Johnston escape the blame. “The
bearer Capt. Wickliffe, aid of Genl. A. S. Johnston, can give you some interesting details of the escape of Genls. Floyd and
Pillow from Fort Donelson,” he wrote Davis. “He says we had 17,000 men there, and the enemy only 30,000, and that all the
army could easily have been saved.”
⁹
Replied the president, “The reports of Brig. Genls. Floyd and Pillow of the defense and fall of Fort Donelson are unsatisfactory.
. . . You will order Genl. A. S. Johnston to relieve both of these officers from command.”
¹⁰
This did not sit particularly well with senators and representatives. The anger and sense of frustration with Johnston in
Congress simmered on.

Nevertheless, Davis, ever true to his close friends, seemed to shake any sense of holding Johnston responsible. “You have
done wonderfully well,” he wrote his old friend late in March, “and I now breathe easier in the assurance that you will be
able to make a junction of your two armies. If you can meet the division of the enemy moving from the Tenn. before it can
make a junction with that advancing from Nashville, the future will be brighter. If this can not be done, our only hope is
that the people of the South West will rally en masse with their private arms.”
¹¹

Meanwhile, the distrust between Congress and the friends of Davis grew. With no one in the administration apparently holding
anyone accountable for the Fort Donelson disaster, Congress discussed a vote of no confidence against Secretary of War Benjamin.
They tabled the debate after much talk, and Davis responded by appointing Benjamin secretary of state, replacing Robert M.
T. Hunter. In this way Davis could move his close friend and intellectual aide out of the direct fire of Congress when it
came to military affairs. In his place Davis chose Virginia loyalist George Wythe Randolph, who became secretary of war on
March 18.

Randolph was a gentleman from Charlottesville who happened to be a grandson of Thomas Jefferson’s. He had a diverse background
as a naval officer, an attorney, and a militia captain and was an influential member of Richmond’s City Council. Randolph
had spent the first months of the war in the field as a major and subsequently as a colonel of Virginia troops, conducting
himself well in the Army of the Peninsula. He had just become a brigadier general a month before his appointment as war secretary,
and Randolph’s credentials seemed impeccable: his family pedigree was exceptional; his experience as an administrator and
lawyer was solid; his education and military experience were unassailable; and he had the confidence of the president. However,
within days of inhabiting the War Department building, receiving frequent communication from Davis, it became clear to Randolph
that the president really wanted to run the war. Instead of being a leader in his own right, Randolph quickly found himself
a Davis functionary and a relative nonentity.

The Navy Department—what there was of it—was not shaping up well, either. In the Senate South Carolinian James L. Orr led
a fight to block the confirmation of Secretary Stephen Mallory; a significant group of politicians in Richmond lacked confidence
in Mallory’s ability and was not particularly sympathetic to the enormity of the job before him. On March 18 the Senate debated
Mallory’s confirmation, tabled the issue, and then returned to it and voted to confirm the Floridian, thirteen to six. Davis
had dodged another political bullet—but it was clear further shots would be fired.
¹²

Still contentious were Davis’s executive authority versus that of the Provisional Congress and the provisional government’s
authority versus the new, permanent government. For example, the House passed a bill allowing generals who had been confirmed
during the provisional session to continue in their grade throughout the entire war. Debates about the status of general officers
ensued. In the House the Judiciary Committee tried to determine whether army officers also could hold seats in Congress. The
South Carolina fire-eater Roger Pryor introduced the first of many attempts to create an enlarged general staff for the army.
The Congress also argued over the confirmation of Davis’s friend Lucius B. Northrop as commissary general of subsistence,
the officer charged with providing food to the armies. Congress then resolved that its members could not concurrently hold
commissions in the army or navy, thereby mixing legislative and executive functions. This regulation was not always obeyed,
however. Members believed this did not apply to the militia. The issue was debated from time to time without a clear regulation.
¹³
Two weeks after Pryor’s proposed legislation, the Senate followed suit by introducing a bill to expand the general staff.
This time the bill came from the chair of the Military Affairs Committee, Edward Sparrow.

To the administration all this was Congress sticking its nose into the business of the War Department—plain and simple.
¹⁴
And it kept going. In March Congress, alarmed over what appeared to be a lack of leadership among military officers in the
field and the War Department, called for and debated the merits of assigning a general-in-chief for the entire Confederate
army. This was the last thing Jefferson Davis wanted, of course, given his desire to manage every military campaign and all
aspects of the war office. In the House of Representatives, Pryor raised the issue, and subsequently, Foote jumped in with
an even more radical approach: Foote moved that a commander in chief should
replace
the secretary of war, whose office would be discontinued. Jefferson Davis was not amused.