Dixie Betrayed (26 page)

Privately, however, the president knew how fragile the war standing was on several fronts. Joe Johnston, having returned to
the field, reported from Tennessee. “Should all, or a large part of [Grant’s] troops, come into middle Tennessee,” he wrote
the president, “this army would be forced to leave it. We can not attack now with probability of success & should strong reinforcements
arrive, we could not hold our ground against the Federal army.”
²⁰

Davis also received alarming news from governors, none more so than from Zebulon Vance of North Carolina. “I receive information
from our Generals in the field that desertion is alarmingly on the increase in the army,” Vance wrote, and went on,

I do not believe that one case in a hundred is caused by disloyalty—have no apprehensions whatever on this score. Homesickness,
fatigue, hard fare, &c., have of course much to do with it. The promise of the law of Conscription, that they
should
have furloughs, which has never been redeemed, is one
principal
cause beyond a doubt. . . . Another great cause—in fact almost the only one assigned by the last class of conscripts, is
that they were refused permission to enter the regiments of their choice with their neighbors and relations. Large numbers
actually threaten to desert before they leave camp and generally make good their threats.
²¹

Davis replied that he did not believe calling out the militia to force the return of Confederate troops to the field, as Vance
suggested, was the answer.

Generals in the field went right on with meddling in Richmond politics, as they had for months. “There is a fair prospect
of forward movement,” wrote James Longstreet, Lee’s senior corps commander, to his old friend Louis Wigfall. The letter was
headed: “None of these matters are mentioned to anyone but Genl. Lee and yourself.” “That being the case,” Longstreet continued,
“we can spare nothing from this Army to re-enforce in the West. If we could cross the Potomac with one hundred & fifty thousand
men I think we could demand of Lincoln to declare his purpose. If it is a Christian purpose enough of blood has been shed
to satisfy any principles. If he intends extermination we should know it at once and play a little at that game whilst we
can.”
²²

Wigfall also heard from his old friend Beauregard. “Knowing your zeal, energy, and enlarged views on all military matters,”
wrote the Little Creole, from Charleston, “I send you herewith the copy of a hastily written letter to my friend Genl. J.
E. Johnston, proposing to him the plan of a campaign in his Department, which I feel confident, if it met with the cordial
support of the War Department, would soon give us back Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana, relieve the States of Mississippi
and Arkansas of the presence of every Yankee in them—and probably give us Missouri also.”
²³
Beauregard’s enthusiasm for Johnston’s ideas may have been overzealous, but it would give Wigfall more ammunition to interfere
with Davis and the War Department as the war dragged on.

Davis, for his part, became frustrated not only with officers who seemed to be fighting the War Department, but also with
his old favorites. The foggy communication between Davis and the field generals, not always transformed into clarity by Samuel
Cooper, the adjutant general of the army, gave rise to Davis venting to his most trusted field officer. “It is embarrassing
to be called on for orders,” he wrote Robert E. Lee, “and when they are given to be met with opinions previously invited but
withheld.”
²⁴

For its part the Confederate Congress continued on with arguments over a great array of topics big and small. They debated
the merits of a Confederate motto at length, the House desiring an improvement on
e pluribus unum
(“one from many”), which several members thought should be “translated” as “The eagle’s flight is out of sight.” The proposed
motto, to be placed on the official seal, was
Deo duce vincemus
(“With God as our leader, we will conquer”). After much discussion, however, the motto was changed to
Deo vindice
(“Under the protection of God”) and placed below the equestrian statue of George Washington on the official seal of the Confederacy.
²⁵

In the House Henry Foote proposed moving the seat of government away from Richmond. “Richmond is no place for the capital
of the Confederacy,” he shouted. Foote complained of “a lack of supplies” and “a spirit of extortion manifested here which
I hope to never encounter elsewhere.” Charles Conrad of Louisiana said that moving the government would appear to the Yankees
like “Congress was taking steps for the evacuation of Richmond” and that “nothing [would be] more dangerous than a transfer
of the seat of government during war.”
²⁶

Many of the squabbles seemed petty. Davis wrote the Senate regarding an act to authorize newspapers to be mailed to soldiers
free of postage. Davis objected to the bill, claiming it would be “unconstitutional” for the post office’s charges to become
a burden on the Treasury. Nevertheless, Davis believed that the official mail of the government being sent for free was a
different matter. This infuriated some senators, who saw the verdict as an attack on the little people, while privileges were
held fast for wealthy officials.
²⁷

In the Senate arguments erupted over the requirements for the chief of ordnance, and—once again the issue of rank—whether
he should be a brigadier general in the provisional army. Several senators believed that all bureau chiefs should be made
brigadier generals. But the problem, according to Albert Brown of Mississippi, was that “many [incumbent bureau chiefs] never
led a squadron in the field, and knew no more of battle than a spinster. . . . By what justice should high military rank be
conferred upon them?”
²⁸
The bill was postponed indefinitely.

Still webbed in personal disputes, Davis did his best to untangle. “In the last [letter] you inform me that you had learned
after writing the first [letter] that I entertained personal enmity towards you,” the president wrote Senator William Yancey
of Alabama, who frequently referred to Davis as “a military dictator.” “Will you have the goodness to inform me how you acquired
that information? Not having made any declaration to that effect, I think I have a right to inquire. It is true that for some
time past the impression has been made upon me that you were in opposition to my Administration.”
²⁹
That was a major understatement, and the rift only would widen between the Alabaman and the president.

When Davis and his war secretary, Seddon, attempted to solve problems, as with asking Howell Cobb to replace the beleaguered
quartermaster general, Abraham Myers, they often did not meet with success. “I beg to assure you that the offer you have tendered
to me to take the head of the Q.M. General’s Department is received in the spirit in which it was offered,” Cobb replied to
Seddon. “So far from regarding it as an unpleasant light, I receive it as an expression of confidence both on yours and the
President’s part—to which I do not feel entitled. . . . I cannot accept it because I feel certain that I am not qualified
for the place.”
³⁰

During the spring of 1863, a lot seemed to be on the verge of being out of control for the Confederacy. Not all were surprised.
“I do not know that events have taken a different turn from what I had contemplated in the beginning,” penned Assistant Secretary
of War John A. Campbell, “& which I labored with all my energy to avert for the country.”
³¹
And yet perhaps one, grand campaign could turn it all around.

T
HERE
had been one preeminent battlefield hero in the minds of many Southerners. With Stonewall Jackson dead, where would the Confederacy
turn?

Robert Edward Lee now had the supreme confidence of his men and of the Southern nation, and he believed his Army of Northern
Virginia could do nearly anything he asked. He needed much from them, no doubt: the Confederacy was feeling the crunch of
a war that had lasted two years, killing many of its young men, exhausting many of its resources, and destroying much of Lee’s
beloved Virginia. As the summer of 1863 approached, Lee sought a plan that would strike fear into the Northern populace, accelerate
Northern cries for peace, carry the burdens of the war away from Virginia, and perhaps gain foreign recognition for the Richmond
government. It was a bold gamble, but such risks had worked in a tactical sense before, during the Peninsular campaign and
at Chancellorsville. Lee needed to begin with a grand strategic victory, and Pennsylvania would be the target.

Meanwhile, the Army of the Potomac was in disarray. Haunted by the failures at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the soldiers
utterly lacked confidence in Joe Hooker. Lincoln had no choice but to change commanding generals once again, this time opting
for the bookish and occasionally quick-tempered Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, reputedly only after the senior corps commander,
Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds, declined the assignment.

On June 9, as the armies began moving northward, a great cavalry battle erupted at Brandy Station, near Culpeper, Virginia.
It would be the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America, and the Yankees under Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton held
their own against the fabled Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart’s troops. As the Confederates moved northward toward Pennsylvania, screened
by the Blue Ridge Mountains, Hooker and then Meade groggily pursued. The Confederate movement was really a giant raid; Lee
had no intention of attempting to occupy Pennsylvania. But while penetrating he could strike toward Harrisburg, York, or even
Philadelphia, terrorizing the North’s sense of security and perhaps winning a pitched battle on Yankee soil.

By the last hours of June, the Confederate corps under Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill, and particularly the division under Maj. Gen.
Henry Heth, was moving slowly eastward toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, having been ordered to scout for supplies. Also in
the vicinity, where there was a major convergence of roads, was a brigade of Federal cavalry under Brig. Gen. John Buford.
When the two forces first clashed, early in the morning of July 1, neither side anticipated a battle at that position or at
that time, but piecemeal attacks and counterattacks escalated as Confederate reinforcements moved in from the west and, eventually,
under Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, from the north.

Buford’s cavalry stubbornly resisted the Confederate infantry for a short time before Reynolds’s First Corps arrived and deployed
west of town. Shortly thereafter, Reynolds was killed. “He had taken his troops into a heavy growth of timber on the slope
of a hill-side, and, under their regimental and brigade commanders, the men did their work well promptly,” wrote Joseph Rosengarten,
a major in the Union army. “Returning to join the expected divisions, he was struck by a Minié ball, fired by a sharpshooter
hidden in the branches of a tree almost overhead, and killed at once; his horse bore him to the little clump of trees, where
a cairn of stones and a rude mark on the bark, now almost overgrown, still tells the fatal spot.”
¹

Pushed back through the town by superior Confederate forces, the Federals made a stand on Cemetery Hill, where Maj. Gen. Winfield
Scott Hancock, dispatched by Meade to command the field, assembled the men in order. By the end of the first day, Union corps
were still marching toward the field, and Meade himself had not yet arrived. Hancock had analyzed the situation with foresight,
however, and formed the basis for a fishhook-shaped battle line that would hold the high ground east and south of the town—Culp’s
Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and the Round Tops, hills on the southern terminus of the Federal line of battle. Lee, desperately attempting
to control a fight that had spiraled away too quickly, deployed Ewell to the north, assigning him the task of taking Cemetery
Hill, with A. P. Hill and his most experienced corps commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, forming a line of battle along
a ridge running southward from the town’s Lutheran Theological Seminary into the countryside.

Early in the morning of July 2, major portions of the battle lines exploded, and intense fighting in various regions flared
all through the day, multiple attacks and counterattacks capturing and recapturing the same parcels of ground. The fight for
Culp’s Hill required several bloody Confederate assaults, the position having been attained by the Federals after dark. Cemetery
Hill, with the town’s small plot, Evergreen Cemetery, erupted into a scene of terror. Gunshot victims were strewn around the
grounds, as well as those who had been grotesquely wounded by artillery shells. A sign beside the small cemetery gatehouse
warned that anyone using firearms on the premises would be prosecuted.

To the south huge attacks moved on spare words such as those of Hancock, who at one point snapped: “Do you see those colors?
Take them!” Nothing more needed saying. Soon dead men and horses from both sides littered regions of the battleground.

It was now clear that one of the largest battles yet was well under way, and many soldiers felt the war would turn on this
conflict. Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, Meade’s chief engineer, realized that Little Round Top was the key position. Artillery
posted on this hill could command the field. (Big Round Top, also known as Round Top, was too heavily wooded to serve usefully.)
A scramble ensued, and elements of the Union Fifth Corps posted themselves along the ridge of Little Round Top, a craggy,
rocky hill.

The attack would come from Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood’s division of Longstreet’s corps. Hood’s soldiers faced a long assault
over a relatively open stretch, a slight elevation to the boulder field of the Devil’s Den, and then an uphill march through
the draw between Round Top and Little Round Top. During the maneuver Hood himself would be wounded and lose the use of his
left arm. “With this wound terminated my participation in this great battle,” Hood later wrote. “As I was borne off on a litter
to the rear, I could but experience deep distress of mind and heart at the thought of the inevitable fate of my brave fellow-soldiers
. . . and I shall ever believe that had I been permitted to turn Round Top mountain, we would not only have gained their position,
but have been able to finally rout the enemy.”
²