The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (44 page)

Earlier in the year Davis had muzzled Cleburne’s Memorial and shut off debate within the army on the topic of arming and freeing the slaves. Now amid a growing volume of rhetoric on the same subject, the Confederate President acted. He made a tentative beginning at becoming “the great emancipator” for Southern blacks.

For the moment the President’s bid was in vain. The Confederate Congress effectively buried President Davis’ military labor and emancipation proposal by the evasive device of patching up the original Military Laborers Act of February 17, 1864. In the meantime, however, the debate swept past the merits of Davis’ November 7 suggestion. The immediate issue quickly became whether or not to arm the slaves, and every new indication of the South’s military decline during the fall and winter of 1864–1865 impelled Confederates to confront that issue. Beyond the immediate matter of tapping the South’s last source of military manpower, however, lay a more fundamental question. If black men could be soldiers in the South, then they could never again be considered less than men; they could never again be slaves. At base the debate over arming the slaves was a debate over the South’s entire racial attitude.

Howell Cobb said it best. He had had a frustrating Confederate career as—more or less—a “political general.” Now commander of Georgia’s reserve forces, he wrote to War Secretary Seddon in early January 1865 pleading with the administration to abandon the effort to arm the slaves. “The day you make soldiers of them,” Cobb insisted, “is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Cobb did not believe that slaves could make good soldiers and advised Seddon to “purchase” the aid of England and France by emancipation before resorting to black troops.
³²

However wrong Cobb was in his racial preconceptions, he perceived the real issue. Nor was he the only Southerner to see that the Confederacy was debating far more than a military expedient. Confederates divided on the issue in rough accord with their response to the Confederate experience. Those who had most resisted expedient change in the wartime South lined up on the side of the racial status quo. Those most caught up in the positive aspects of the Confederate experience were also most ready to alter the South’s racial mores in the hope of independence.

The emancipation debate raged publicly in newspaper editorials and correspondence, in legislative debates, at mass meetings of concerned citizens, and in political speeches. The immediate response to Davis’ November 7 address to Congress was a barrage of heavy attacks in the columns of some of the Confederacy’s most influential newspapers. In Richmond the
Examiner
led the charge, followed closely by the
Whig
and the
Dispatch;
in Charleston, both the
Mercury
and the
Courier
opposed the direction of the President’s policy. Yet the proposal attracted vigorous defenders, too; the Richmond
Enquirer
supported the measure, as did the Richmond
Sentinel,
the Mobile
Register,
and the Wilmington
Journal.
³³

The issue divided Confederate leaders as well. Cabinet members, with Benjamin in the lead, generally favored arming the slaves, although Seddon was less than enthusiastic. They were joined by Governors Allen of Louisiana and William Smith of Virginia. Among more vocal opponents of the ploy were powerful Governors Joe Brown of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina. Perhaps most formidable in the opposition was R. M. T. Hunter, senator from Virginia and president pro tem. of the Confederate Senate. Sooner or later the issue would require congressional action, and Hunter was a powerful obstacle to that action.
³⁴

The debate continued on hypothetical and theoretical levels during the last two months of 1864. Then, with the fall of Savannah and Hood’s failure in Tennessee, the nation’s military position went from grave to desperate, and President Davis determined to take personal action. Late in December he called in Louisiana Congressman Duncan F. Kenner, who for some time had tried to convince the President that slavery was the major stumbling block in the way of Southern independence. Now that Davis had converted to Kenner’s view, he asked the Louisianian to undertake a secret mission to Britain and France. Kenner would propose emancipation to the powers in exchange for their recognition. Kenner agreed and traveled to Wilmington in time to witness the fall of Fort Fisher and the closing of the port. Undaunted, he slipped through the battle lines and sailed to Europe from New York in late January.

In Paris, Kenner delivered his message indirectly to Napoleon III, and the Emperor responded that he would follow the lead of England. In London, Kenner’s offer received a firm rebuff; again by indirect communication, Palmerston informed the Confederate that Great Britain would under no circumstances recognize the South as a nation. The Kenner mission was a desperate hope; there was no reason to expect anything from it. The mission did reveal, however, the state of Davis’ and Benjamin’s thinking at the time regarding the primacy of independence over all other considerations.
³⁵

Hints of the secret mission on which Kenner had embarked stimulated the emancipation debate in the South during January. Then in early February an event unrelated to the substance of the debate triggered the Confederates’ decision on the matter.

Many of those Southerners who believed that emancipation was too radical a departure from the Southern status quo had pinned their hopes and arguments upon the possibility of a negotiated peace with the United States. Such a peace, they hoped without rational basis, might preserve the South’s national identity and slavery as well. In all probability Jefferson Davis realized the futility of attempting to negotiate peace with an all but victorious enemy. Nevertheless he decided to try—perhaps in the same way that he decided to try the Kenner mission.

Through the good offices of Francis Preston Blair, Sr., scion of a Maryland political family, Davis and Lincoln agreed to a discussion of peace on February 3 aboard the steamboat
River Queen
in Hampton Roads. Blair spoke to Davis of a military alliance between North and South to uphold the Monroe Doctrine against France in Mexico; Lincoln, although he must have known Blair was trying to arrange a peace conference, surely had no knowledge of the Mexican scheme. Lincoln attended the conference in person accompanied by Secretary of State Seward. Significantly Davis did not attend; instead he sent Vice-President Stephens, Senator Hunter, and former supreme court justice from Alabama John A. Campbell. Stephens and Hunter were Davis’ political opponents. Campbell was assistant secretary of war in addition to being a would-be peacemaker. Did Davis choose his representatives because he wished them to realize the folly of believing the war might end short of independence or unconditional surrender? Perhaps. At any rate the President made independence his only demand. Lincoln’s demand was reunion; and the Hampton Roads Conference quickly reached an impasse. The five men met for some time, and discussions were cordial. Yet they never could surmount the fundamental barrier erected by the two presidents.
³⁶

Reaction to the failure of the Hampton Roads Conference in the South revealed the depth of many Confederates’ faith in a negotiated peace. When the peace conference shattered that faith by demonstrating the lack of anything to negotiate, Southerners responded with a final surge of national fervor. Mass meetings held in Richmond, Mobile, Lynchburg, and elsewhere stirred a renewed patriotism. And one of the chief measures advocated at these mass meetings was arming the slaves for the salvation of the war effort.
³⁷
At this juncture the administration decided the time was right for Congressional action. Davis had proposed a halfway measure in November, then acted covertly in dispatching Kenner to Europe in December. On February 10, Congressman Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi introduced what became the administration bill to arm the slaves. The Virginia legislature was considering similar action, and from a military perspective the time seemed now or never.
³⁸
A few days earlier Congress had taken some pride in providing a new command for Robert E. Lee, commanding general of all Confederate armies. Naturally, when the bill to authorize black troops came before Congress, Lee’s opinion was crucial. Indeed for some time both proponents and opponents of the measure had sought guidance from Lee. To this point, however, the General had believed that he should remain silent on a question of politics.

Mounting pressure and his new responsibilities now drove Lee into the open. First privately, then publicly, he endorsed the measure; in a more or less open letter to Congress addressed to Barksdale on February 18, Lee asserted that blacks would make “efficient” soldiers and expressed his opinion that they should fight as free men, not slaves.
³⁹

From officers and men in Lee’s army came other endorsements of the plan to arm the slaves. Virginia Military Institute (VMI) offered to help train black recruits, and in the face of such approval in the army, the
Examiner
and
Whig
newspapers changed their editorial stance. Still Congress delayed action. Not until March 13 did Congress pass the Act to Increase the Military Force of the Confederate States, and even that action was equivocal. The final section included the provision “that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners.” The Confederate Congress agreed to arm the slaves (by one vote in the Senate) but not to emancipate them.
⁴⁰
Virginia’s General Assembly had already endorsed the measure on March 4 and 5 and resolved to offer slaves in the state to the army, but again, the legislators did not endorse emancipation. It was left to President Davis and his War Office to close the emancipation debate; they did so by bureaucratic fiat. General Order Number Fourteen was the adjutant and inspector general’s implementation of Congress’ law, and that directive contained two crucial sentences which transformed an ambiguous public law into a radical public policy. “No slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument conferring, as far as he may, the rights of a freedman.” Black troops in Confederate armies would serve not as slaves or even with the hope of future emancipation; they were to serve as free men. And more, “All officers … are enjoined to a provident, considerate, and humane attention to whatever concerns the health, comfort, instruction, and discipline of these troops, and to the uniform observance of kindness, forbearance, and indulgence in their treatment of them, and especially that they will protect them from injustice and oppression.” However paternalistic was the tone of this provision, it prescribed equal treatment for black soldiers.
⁴¹

By March 23, 1865, when the War Office issued General Order Number Fourteen, the Confederacy had little time left to live. Nevertheless the recruiting and training of black Confederates went forward, and on March 25 newspapers in Richmond reported the formation of the first black company under the new law. The
Dispatch
with “no hesitation” stated that black troops displayed at drill “as much aptness and proficiency … as is usually shown by any white troops we have ever seen.”
⁴²
At this point Richmond had just over one week of life as the Confederate capital. Like many other Confederate concessions to reality, Southern leaders made the decision to recruit black soldiers too late. The wonder was, however, that the Confederates made the decision at all.
⁴³

During the South’s last several months of national existence, the Confederacy hovered between life and death. In a very real sense Southerners were undergoing a final fling at defining themselves as a people. Both those who accepted the South’s death as a nation and those who persisted in clinging to national life contributed to this process of Southern self-discovery. In so doing they simply carried to conclusion the search for Southern identity which had already characterized much of the Confederate experience.

In the beginning the Confederate South was a cause, the sanctification of the Old South status quo. Because the South began as a section instead of a nation, the cause of Southern nationalism most often found negative expression within the United States. In 1861, however, the cause was incarnate. The Confederacy was the political expression of Southern nationalism and the logical extension of ante-bellum Southern ideology. At that point the process of positive identification began.

At first, while the South’s political leaders formed a national government and girded for a war of national survival, the Confederacy was essentially a national replica of the sectional status quo. And in July of 1861 the Confederates confirmed their static self-image at the First Battle of Manassas. Up to that point the Confederate South was a republic of slaveholders, a “peculiar people” whose political economy and whose social and cultural mores had been grafted to the superstructure of a nation.

During the months which followed the triumph at Manassas, however, the war experience began to test and temper the new nation. By the spring of 1862 the Confederacy had been tried and found wanting. The Southern nation had suffered a series of shocks and setbacks which threatened its continued existence. Then, when their national experiment seemed almost a failure, Confederate Southerners began to respond to their circumstance by redefining themselves—or, more precisely, by defining themselves as a national people. The war did not permit sage debate by learned men about the Southern soul; the pressure of time and the pace of events demanded that Confederate Southerners define themselves in deeds. Accordingly the Confederacy acted out its national identity.

In many respects the Southern nationalism of the Confederacy resembled that of the United States from which the Southerners were trying so desperately to separate. The administration of Jefferson Davis reversed the state rights political philosophy which had called it into being and bade fair to make the Confederacy a centralized, national state. Draft laws, impressment, confiscatory taxation, habeas corpus suspension, economic management, and more affronted the South’s state rights tradition.