Dixie Betrayed (22 page)

T
HROUGHOUT
all the military actions, Jefferson Davis persisted with his micromanagement, using his War Department chieftain like an
executive secretary. By November 1862 the toll was too much for George Wythe Randolph, who suddenly resigned his post. Randolph
had been frustrated not only by Davis’s henpecking, but also because he fundamentally disagreed with the president on grand
strategy. Davis’s primary strategy was an offensive-defensive one, in which he could maximize the effect of interior supply
lines and lines of movement and use inferior Southern resources against Northern strength. In this way Southern armies would
employ men and matériel conservatively, retreating in the face of superior forces. They would choose the great moments for
boldness on their own, as Lee had with the Antietam campaign. Chief among the disagreements between Randolph and Davis was
where the strategy would best be employed. The secretary repeatedly emphasized the western theater, whereas Davis focused
mostly on the east. In the west Pemberton and Bragg were not succeeding against Grant and Rosecrans, and this frustrated Randolph
almost beyond measure. When Davis belittled Randolph’s ideas about rectifying the situation during October and the first days
of November, the secretary bailed.
⁴¹

Davis seemed shocked. “As you have thus without notice and in terms excluding inquiry retired from the post of a constitutional
advisor to the Executive of the Confederacy,” he wrote, “nothing remains but to give you this formal notice of the acceptance
of your resignation.”
⁴²
Others seemed shocked, too. “Usually when a cabinet member resigns,” wrote Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory, “he remains in
possession of the post until the installation of his successor; but Genl. Randolph walked out of it on Saturday, leaving much
business that he might have concluded on that day, unattended to. . . . The fact is that the Presdt’s familiarity with army
matters induces his desire to mingle in them all & to control them & this desire is augmented by the fear that details may
be wrongly managed without his constant supervision.”
⁴³

For his new war secretary, Jefferson Davis turned to another Virginian, James A. Seddon, an attorney and former U.S. representative
who had served in the Confederate Congress. Seddon, Davis knew, would be content to be subservient. He suffered from neuralgia,
was an Episcopalian, and a staunch follower of John C. Calhoun. In 1845 he had married Sallie Bruce, a daughter in a very
wealthy family, who bought for them the mansion on the corner of Clay and Twelfth streets, which later became the Confederate
White House. Seddon was a staunch defender of state rights but also could remember very clearly for whom he worked. He established
residence at the Spotswood Hotel to be near the government offices, while his family lived at an estate known as Sabot Hill,
about twenty miles up the James River.

Seddon’s office was in Mechanic’s Hall, on the southwestern corner of Capitol Square. Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell
and Clerk John B. Jones worked alongside him in the two-room war office. Seddon concentrated on recruiting men and gathering
supplies, while the president handled most of the strategy and personnel details. By this time it was becoming clear to Richmond’s
politicians that Seddon, Judah Benjamin, Lee, and Bragg were the president’s closest friends—which meant they were good candidates
as potential enemies.
⁴⁴

Some had doubts about the new secretary. “I see that Mr. Randolph has resigned,” wrote Albert Bledsoe, who had recently left
his post as assistant secretary of war. “I have taken up my pen to suggest, for your consideration, Genl. Polk as his successor.
. . . Seddon would be a failure. A man of fine parts, a most estimable character, an accomplished gentleman, and as fine a
patriot as ever lived; but his
physique
is too feeble. The labors of the office would kill him in a month.”
⁴⁵

After one month in office, Seddon was still breathing, but hard; he faced considerable challenges spread across the whole
landscape. One missive, from Louis Wigfall, underscores the nature of what Seddon faced. “I have just received a letter from
Genl. Johnston which contains gloomy forebodings as to our future in the west,” Wigfall advised. “Pemberton he says has fallen
back before a superior force & he [Johnston] is ordered to reinforce him with troops from Bragg’s command. Consider the positions
of these armies. As Pemberton falls back he will be each day one march further from Bragg. Grant is between them with, I suppose,
a superior force to either. If he falls upon either before their junction may he not destroy him & then turn upon the other?”
⁴⁶

Such difficult challenges on the battlefield sparked a strange twist in Congress from one of its most unusual members, Henry
Foote. Why not simply send peace commissioners to Washington to see if they would call off the whole war? Foote suggested
negotiating a “just and honourable” peace. “I have but little confidence, I confess, sir,” said Foote, “in the wisdom and
sagacity, the statesmanship, or the true manliness of spirit, of Mr. Lincoln and his deluded cabinet counselors,” said Foote.
But he still felt the effort worthwhile:

In sheer magnanimity, we are bound to offer terms of peace to the enemy. With us alone can a proposition of peace originate,
without the deepest dishonour. . . . Mr. Speaker, I know well that I shall be denounced in certain quarters for my present
conduct. I shall probably be charged with excessive moderation, and perchance even of pusillanimity. I shall not be at all
surprised if all who are specially interested in the continuance of the war shall resort even to ridicule and denunciation.

John Wilcox of Texas asked if the Confederacy didn’t already have great commissioners in Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Hines Holt of Georgia offered a modified resolution, similar to Foote’s. The president, on hearing of all this, must have
simply shaken his head.
⁴⁷

As if his worries weren’t enough, Jefferson Davis spent the final weeks of 1862 with a growing level of noise from a collection
of Southern governors who felt he should do more for each of them—much more. Often he could do little other than simply thinking
on paper. “I have not been unmindful of the condition of the Eastern portion of your State and can make allowance for the
anxiety felt by those who reside there,” the president wrote newly elected governor Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina.
⁴⁸
Davis’s thoughts about Joe Brown, who carped at him, were no more specific. “Nothing could be more unfortunate,” wrote the
president, “not only for the success of the cause in which we are engaged, but also for the future reputation of the great
State of Georgia than any other conflict between the authorities of that State and the Confederate Government.”
⁴⁹

He was mildly reassuring to Governor John Shorter of Alabama that the Richmond government sympathized with the potential loss
of Mobile to the Yankees. “I entirely concur with you as to the immense importance of Mobile and the adjacent country,” Davis
penned, “and the unfortunate results that would follow its fall. I have felt long and deeply the hazard of its condition and
an anxious desire to secure it, but have vainly looked for an adequate force which could be spared from other localities.”
⁵⁰
Shorter was outraged, feeling left alone by the Richmond government. Governor John Milton of Florida also received vague
assurances of support. “Your letter of the 10th ult., calling my attention to the dangers now threatening the State of Florida,”
wrote Davis, “and asking for additional forces and munitions of war, was submitted to the perusal of the Secretary of War
and Genl. Lee. . . . General Lee reports he cannot send the Florida regiments home; and we have no other reinforcements that
could be spared without injustice to other sections equally important and equally threatened.” Could the national government
of the Confederacy do much of anything for Confederate States that existed away from the central war zone of the east? It
seemed to many the answer was a clear no.
⁵¹

Yet the governors still pleaded for help from Richmond, which in turn, actually needed all the help it could get from the
states. “Can you not spare us a few thousand arms for this State?” wrote Francis Lubbock of Texas, increasingly seeming an
island in the far west. “If we could get back the old rifles & shot guns that have been cast off by our men, & which we trust
have been laid aside for more improved ones, we would feel better able to defend our state.”
⁵²
This, when the Confederate army begged for manpower.

Near the end of 1862, Davis begged the governors to help the Confederacy as a whole. He wrote asking them for special cooperation
with enrolling conscripts, restoring to the army all officers absent without leave or who had recovered from disability, and
sending to the Confederacy all supplies not absolutely essential to home state use. He also begged the governors to enact
legislation that “will enable the Governors to command slave labor to the extent which may be required in the prosecution
of works conducive to the public defence.”
⁵³

The war was a desperate struggle, and the resources of the Confederacy were stretched badly. Yet those who should have known
better seemed to have blind faith in the Cause and self-interest. They still felt that victory was inevitable. “Lee has an
army which I believe is invincible,” wrote the politician-turned-soldier Lawrence Keitt.
⁵⁴
Indeed.

W
ITH
the New Year the topic on everyone’s mind—in the South and the North—was exactly what Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
would mean to the country and to the world. “The Emancipation proclamation upsets the peaceful and contented condition of
the slaves in the Confederacy,” wrote Davis. “[The black soldiers of the North] are encouraged to assassinate their masters.
. . . All commissioned officers of such assassins, hereafter captured by our forces, will be turned over to State authorities
to be dealt with as criminals inciting servile insurrection.”
¹

By now the toll of tens of thousands of deaths had saddened, shocked, and grieved every family in the land either directly
or by acquaintance. Soldiers in the army and sailors in the navy felt a sad, sinking feeling that they might not return to
see another New Year’s Day at home. There was good reason for such dread. As 1863 opened, with Congress convening again in
Richmond, the sounds of battle spread thickly across the fields and in the woods of Tennessee. Farther east the principal
army of the Union, the Army of the Potomac, was entrenched in the hills around Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Robert E. Lee’s
Confederates could pause to rest for a short time—but only a short time. Other threats from the Union army and navy existed.
Along the Mississippi River the stronghold of Vicksburg was endangered, and Union forces slowly occupied more of the Atlantic
coastline. Amid these conflicts many in the South began to consider geography in a new way: east versus west. Which area was
more important? Which should garner the preeminent resources? Which should the Richmond government bolster most quickly?

But despite the challenges the Rebels had plenty of reason to hope. The Confederacy’s military necessities were still far
different from those of the Yankees. Rebel armies were fighting essentially a defensive strategy, hoping that Union citizens
would grow weary of war and that Britain or France would recognize the burgeoning Southern nation. As long as the Federals
had to attack southward, sustaining heavy losses, and as long as the daring chances taken by commanders such as Lee and Jackson
paid off, the Confederacy could look forward to increasing odds for a peace movement and an armistice. The chances looked
good during the first few weeks of 1863, and during the coming months, they would look even better. In both theaters, east
and west, short-term military successes seemed to favor the Confederacy. The South had the momentum and the spirit. Lee’s
Army of Northern Virginia had been turned back from Northern soil the previous autumn, but it had scored a stunning victory
over the disorganized and apparently dazed Federal army at Fredericksburg just two weeks before New Year’s Day 1863. Braxton
Bragg’s inconclusive campaign in Tennessee had, nevertheless, upset the Federal army under Rosecrans, and Bragg had the notion
to telegraph President Davis from the battlefield at Stones River that God had “granted us a victory.” In the far west John
Pemberton seemed to be holding off a succession of attacks aimed at capturing Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold on the
Mississippi.

For the armies in the field, the first weeks of cold winter in 1863 were quiet. As the Confederacy anticipated a spring thaw
and a new series of victories, the aims of the war were slowly changing in Washington. The issuance of Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation on New Year’s Day transformed the struggle in the minds of many Yankees into a holy war for freedom. No longer
was it simply a fight for the continuance of the Federal government, but now was for a nobler, higher cause.

Yet in the ranks the conflict remained earthbound, a soup of mud and blood. “In every direction around men were digging graves
and burying the dead,” wrote David Hunter Strother, a western Virginian colonel in the Federal army, following the battle
of Antietam. He continued:

Many [dead soldiers] were black as Negroes, heads and faces hideously swelled, covered with dust until they looked like clods.
Killed during the charge and flight, their attitudes were wild and frightful. One hung upon a fence killed as he was climbing
it. One lay with hands wildly clasped as if in prayer. From among these loathsome earth-soiled vestiges of humanity, the soldiers
were still picking out some that had life left and carrying them in on stretchers to our surgeons. All the time some picket
firing was going on from the wood on the Hagerstown turnpike near the white church.
²