Dixie Betrayed (37 page)

On November 10 the argument shifted and became murkier. Impressment of up to forty thousand slaves into the army, with prospective
emancipation for faithful service, would require consent of the states, Congress concluded. Said a congressman,

Some have claimed that our army is decreasing by death, disease, and desertion, but our president says it has not suffered
half as much as has the Yankee army. President Davis, in his Macon Speech, said that two-thirds of the army is absent, and
that this problem should be addressed by Congress, rather than in making plans to recruit negroes as soldiers. Do the gentlemen
of the South propose to fight alongside negroes? Should the slaves be commingled with our brave white troops? The negro race
has been ordained to slavery by the Almighty.
¹⁴

Still others opposed the use of slaves as soldiers because it could be seen as a confession of weakness.

On December 12 senators resumed debate on a bill to furnish slaves and free blacks to work on fortifications and provide labor
for the armies. “Regarding the limitation of not more than one in five slaves shall be impressed who is working on agriculture,
or that the last slave between 18 and 45 shall not be impressed,” Virginia congressman Robert M. T. Hunter offered, “as long
as any state was not exempted from furnishing its fair quota.”
¹⁵
The amendment was then adopted, and the bill passed.

Six days later in the House, members proposed a resolution disapproving the government’s purchasing slaves as laborers in
the army and liberating them after faithful service had been rendered. The topic was referred to committee. Since Davis’s
opening remarks in November, thousands of Confederate troops had been killed. Amid the blood the politicians argued. “I cannot
bring my mind to the conviction that arming our slaves will add to our military strength,” wrote William Porcher Miles shortly
afterward, “and the prospective and inevitable evils resulting from the measure make me shrink back from the step as only
to be taken when on the very brink of the precipice of ruin. At first I was inclined to think we might with some advantage
employ negro soldiers—but the more I think of it, the more disinclined I am to resort to what at best can only be regarded
as a doubtful experiment.”
¹⁶
James Leach of North Carolina later offered a House resolution “condemning the use of negroes as soldiers in the Confederate
army.” Leach said that arming slaves would “be wrong in principle, disastrous in practice, an infringement upon the States
rights, an endorsement of the principle contained in President Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, an insult to our brave
soldiers and an outrage upon humanity which, if carried into effect, will degrade us in the eyes of the civilized world, endanger
our liberties, and jeopardize the lives of our wives and children.”
¹⁷

“It would be a fatal stab to the institution of slavery,” added Porcher Miles, “and would overturn the whole social fabric
of our country. The negro is unfit by nature for a soldier, and he cannot be expected to fight on our side when the Yankees
offer him far greater inducements than we can.”
¹⁸

T
HE
Davis administration desired nothing but a fight to the end, convinced it could separate successfully and live on as a sovereign
nation. But by late 1864 senators and representatives had been calling for peace in more frequent, urgent terms. On November
7 the Senate had resolved that the president should inform the Senate whether he had information that any state in the United
States had expressed a willingness to negotiate a peace with the Confederate States. Davis issued no reply, suggesting there
had been none.
¹⁹

In mid-December the issue reared its head in the House. Josiah Turner of North Carolina introduced a resolution asking the
president to appoint thirteen peace commissioners, one from each state, to seek an end to the war. After discussion, however,
debate was postponed.
²⁰

The next day Representative Lafayette McMullen of Virginia derided the Davis administration for not seeking peace proposals.
“Governor Brown and Vice President Stephens have said that we are unwilling to open negotiations with the enemy for securing
a peace,” screamed McMullen. “Let the Government open negotiations for peace—let Congress despatch its commissioners into
the enemy’s line—let us show to the world that we are willing to accept an honourable peace—and the mouths of Governor Brown
and his friends will be stopped.”
²¹

Finally, without support of either administration, high officials began to come to terms with opening a negotiation. On December
30 Yankee politician Francis P. Blair Sr. wrote Davis about a meeting to discuss peace terms. “In candor I must say to you,
in advance, that I come to you wholly
unaccredited,
except in so far as I may be by having permission to pass our lines and to offer you my own suggestions.”
²²

The assistant secretary of war of the Confederacy, John A. Campbell, also took it into his own hands to find a pathway toward
peace. He wrote an old colleague, Associate Justice Samuel Nelson of the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for a meeting to discuss
possible peace terms. But nothing would come from these political ripples—not for a few weeks, at least.
²³

Meanwhile, the old, tired issue of conscription—who was eligible and who wasn’t—again confronted both President Davis and
the annoyed Congress. More outraged than either of these two parties was Brig. Gen. John S. Preston, the Virginian who had
been appointed chief of the Bureau of Conscription in 1863. Fed up with Congress seemingly meddling in the issue and tying
his hands for months, coupled with the fuming anger over the fact that many congressmen disliked him, Preston accelerated
an already weeks-long letter-writing campaign to the War Department and to members of Congress. “I am aware that there is
a project on foot under high military sanction to abolish the existing system of Conscription and substitute for it a military
organization to be regulated by purely rigid military rules,” he ranted, “and by the operation of Law to remove me from the
control delegated to me by you.” As was so often the case for the Confederacy, each state for its own sake could contribute
to a distinct individual selfishness. Preston was as much concerned about his own position as he was the war effort; who decided
was as important as what was decided. “Nothing will tend more rapidly to disintegrate the Confederacy—than the adoption of
these petulant undisguised and revolting schemes of military Conscription.” Congress also lashed back. The House

resolved that the report of John S. Preston, Supt. of Conscription, shows laxity, and culpable neglect in the execution of
the conscript law. Resolved that neither Congress nor the country looks to Gen. [Gideon] Pillow for a faithful expression
of its laws, and any failure, delay, or partiality in their execution must rest on the President and not upon General Pillow.
Resolved that General Preston is in error to the number of conscripts furnished by the State of North Carolina, as well as
the number of his so-called quasi-volunteers.

On March 6 in the House, a resolution was offered condemning Preston for mismanagement. A week later President Davis returned
to Congress, with his approval, an act to regulate the business of conscription. He did ask for one modification: a medical
board requested by Congress to examine soldiers for discharge seemed impractical to Davis because it would result in the discharge
of too many soldiers.
²⁴
The messy business of conscription would rage on, making everyone unhappy for weeks to come, even as the South’s shorthanded
military machine gradually fell to pieces.
²⁵

And with times becoming ever more desperate, the old subject of habeas corpus only inflamed the souls of men in Congress more
than ever. “A dangerous conspiracy exists in some of the counties of southwestern Virginia and in the neighboring portions
of North Carolina and Tennessee,” Davis warned Congress, “which it is found impracticable to suppress by the ordinary course
of law. . . . I deem it my duty to recommend the suspension of the writ of
habeas corpus
in order that full efficacy may be given to the military power for the repression of the evil.”
²⁶
On December 3 on the floor of the House, Henry Foote demanded his bill on limiting habeas corpus be debated openly. With
Foote and William Porcher Miles voting for it, the bill still lost, fifty to forty. By year’s end in the House, a resolution
that “no exigency exists justifying the [suspension of habeas corpus]” failed to pass, forty-one to thirty-one. The House
was betwixt and between, and again, no one would be fully happy with the outcome.

I
N
Georgia the little cabal arranged by Vice President Aleck Stephens and comrades Bob Toombs, Howell Cobb, and friends continued
to gain momentum. This group now determinedly supported an overthrow of the Davis administration if the South should survive
intact. Davis’s failure to see the war as it really was frustrated the Georgia cabal to no end. The group clearly believed
that some sort of a negotiated end to the struggle was on the horizon. “I see Mr. Davis in his speech at Columbia refers to
the traitorous conduct of states that would attempt to negotiate,” Georgia governor Joe Brown wrote to his fellow conspirator
Aleck Stephens, in wonderment about the sensibility of the chief executive.
²⁷
Aleck Stephens thought that he ought to meet with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, seeking an end to the bloodshed. But Bob
Toombs steered the frail politician away from the notion. “Do not by any means go to see Sherman,” he wrote, “whatever may
be the form of his invitation. It will place you in a wrong,
very wrong
position. . . . If Sherman means anything he means to detach Georgia from the Confederacy. Better any fate than that. Davis
is impregnable upon the peace issue. In every shape and form and at all times he has professed to seek peace, and in truth
up to this time his actions have conformed to his professions.”
²⁸

The rift that existed between Stephens and Davis widened considerably as the year closed. The
Augusta Constitutionalist
printed a letter from Stephens to Senator Thomas Semmes that claimed some in the South, perhaps even Jefferson Davis, would
prefer the reelection of Lincoln to the election of George McClellan, the Union general who opposed him. “Perhaps the President
belongs to that class,” Stephens wrote. “Judging by his acts I should think that he did.” Astounded, Davis wrote Stephens:
“I am quite at a loss to imagine the basis for your conclusion, and have therefore to ask to what acts of mine you refer.”
²⁹

Setting aside the collapsing military situation, the Confederacy was in a complete shambles. What began as a precarious relationship
among Davis, the Congress, and the supporting politicians in key areas had collapsed into total dysfunction. The Confederacy
was now—politically and functionally—on the ropes. Its lifeblood was flowing out and running away, and no one on any level
seemed to have an idea about how to stop the bleeding.

A
S
a new year began, the Confederacy was on its last legs. The siege operations around Petersburg ground on, sapping the remaining
resources and supplies that could be brought to bear against the Union army. Hood’s disastrous campaign in Tennessee had effectively
eliminated the Army of Tennessee from further meaningful service in the war. A combined operation by the Federal army and
navy was closing in on Wilmington, North Carolina, the last port open to supply the Confederacy. The Lincoln administration
had won the autumn election decisively, pushing into the shadows the possibility of a peace movement in the North dominating
the Yankees’ actions. The Confederacy had lost many a hero in the past couple of years—Stonewall Jackson more important than
anyone—and many had lost faith in Jefferson Davis. They had now a single general in the field on whom to place their great
hopes: Robert E. Lee.

The growing sense of despair on the Confederate home front and in the ranks led to consideration of some measures that would
have been thought insane a year before. An increasing number of officers and politicians toyed with the idea of emancipating
slaves as a source of new soldiers. Lee himself supported the idea, which finally gave it the kind of approval to be taken
seriously in the Confederate Congress. Still, in January 1865, the measure was debated without a conclusion. Summed up Howell
Cobb, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”
¹
And for the moment theory trumped reality.

By contrast the psychology of the Union military was strongly unified. Soldiers and civilians alike began to sense the impending
victory, and heroes had multiplied on the Federal side. Grant was locked in the struggle, along with Meade, against Lee in
Virginia, and Sherman had emerged in 1864 as a leading figure. “I do think that in the several grand epochs of this war, my
name will have a prominent part,” Sherman wrote to his wife, Ellen, from Savannah on January 5. “And not least among them
will be the determination I took at Atlanta to destroy that place, and march on this city, whilst Thomas, my lieutenant, should
dispose of Hood.”
²

Having arrived at Savannah before Christmas, Sherman now trained his armies on the Carolinas. Panic already had struck South
Carolina. “Depend upon it,” wrote Andrew Magrath, the state’s governor, “the order which evacuates Charleston destroys the
last hope of our success.”
³
Robert E. Lee, meanwhile, wrote to Porcher Miles, who had asked for more troops to be sent to the state. Lee’s reply stated
that the government would send them, “if any troops could be obtained.” It was a very big “if.” “It will be impossible for
me to send sufficient troops from this army to oppose Sherman’s, and at the same time resist Grant,” said Lee.
⁴