Dixie Betrayed (24 page)

In early February discussions arose in the House over the fall of New Orleans the previous year and exactly who should be
held responsible. The answer came through loud and clear: “The main offenders who were responsible for the catastrophe at
New Orleans were the former Secy. of War and the present Secy. of the Navy.” Although representatives named Randolph and Mallory,
their attack was a very thinly veiled one at the president, who had stood by the two cabinet members as their friend.
¹⁷

Davis himself had it out for certain officers. One of them was Bob Toombs, the Georgia politician and friend of Little Aleck
Stephens and the Georgia clan of anti-Davis agitators. Frustrated, Toombs finally reached a boiling point. “I have resigned
my commission as Brigadier General in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States,” he wrote in a proclamation to his soldiers.
“This separation from you is deeply painful to me. . . . It is only necessary now for me to say, that, under existing circumstances,
in my judgment, I could no longer hold my commission under President Davis with advantage to my country.”
¹⁸
Toombs went home to Georgia to take up criticizing Davis as a full-time enterprise.

Given the close scrutiny from the public and from the press, Davis had to tend house. One day he sent Abraham Myers, the much-criticized
quartermaster general, an article from the
Richmond Examiner
lambasting officers for supposedly selling excess army fabric to stores at a profit when enlisted men were short of proper
clothing. “The enclosed slip cut from a morning paper is sent to you for your attention,” wrote the president. “If the abuse
described exists it should be promptly corrected and the offenders held to a due responsibility.”
¹⁹
But such interventions did virtually nothing to pacify his critics.

While Davis was busy trying to mend fences, others spent their time second-guessing strategic and tactical decisions sent
from Richmond to the battlefront. “If we had [an engineer] corps now, with pontoons,” wrote John Bell Hood to his mentor,
Wigfall, “I believe we could destroy the Yankee army in our front.”
²⁰
Wigfall also heard more from Joe Johnston, who softly criticized the strategy under way in the west. Johnston wrote:

It is unfortunate that [Edmund] Kirby Smith was not sent across the Mississippi in September. In that event, both Grant &
Rosecrans would probably have been beaten. . . . At present we can’t do otherwise than stand on the defensive on the Missi.
The whole of its valley is said to be impassable for large wagon trains, while the enemy, on the river, can avoid without
difficulty, any movement of ours. . . . I don’t think the government appreciates the value of our position in Middle Tennessee.
If we lose it East Tennessee can not be held. It is not considered in Richmond either, that Rosecranz’ N. Western troops are
worth double their number of Yankees. . . . Troops of ours from Va. ought to reinforce Bragg. Tell Mr. Seddon so.
²¹

F
OR
most Confederate civilians on the home front, the war seemed to be making matters far worse, not better. Sons and husbands
were being killed by the scores, fear and disorganization dominated everywhere, the economy virtually had collapsed, and food
was getting scarce. So serious a problem was this as 1863 opened that the Georgia legislature enacted laws prohibiting the
growing of cotton in the state and requiring the growth of food crops to supply the Confederate army. Why supply the army
and not the home front? President Davis pressed the matter hard with the governors. “The possibility of a short supply of
provisions presents the greatest danger to a successful prosecution of the war,” he wrote Joe Brown of Georgia.
²²

Brown was so disgusted with Davis and the national government in Richmond he considered melting away from public life altogether.
“I do not intend to be a candidate for election to another term in the Executive office,” he wrote Aleck Stephens. “But I
feel a deep interest in seeing someone elected who, while he does his whole duty to the Confederacy, will contend for and
sustain to the extent of his ability the rights and sovereignty of the state. . . . In looking over the field for such a man
my mind rests upon your brother [Linton] as my first choice.”
²³
Two weeks later, informed that Linton Stephens might not be a viable candidate, Brown suggested that Bob Toombs should run.
The politics of Georgia would continue in flux for weeks to come. Davis, meanwhile, wanted to see if some of the war debt
could be transferred to state governments, which Aleck Stephens violently opposed. “You are right in opposing the assumption
of Confederate debt to the States,” his friend Toombs wrote. “I would not endorse a dime of it. It is puerile and disastrous.
. . . As to Geo[rgia], I suppose Joe Brown will run again.”
²⁴
In the end Toombs was right: Brown would run again.

In the House of Representatives, a lengthy discussion about state rights occurred centered on North Carolina’s loyalty. Because
of pro-Union sentiment scattered around the state, Southerners sometimes questioned whether North Carolina favored a restoration
of the Union. Burgess Gaither and William Lander, representatives from North Carolina, reassured the House that the state
would remain loyal to the Confederacy.
²⁵

North Carolina was not the only state wavering. “I take the liberty of informing you of the condition of affairs in this State,”
wrote Col. Guy Bryan, an aide of Lt. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes’s, to President Davis, from Waco, Texas. “There is a growing
feeling of discontent among the people at what is regarded as ‘the unwarranted exercise of powers by the military authorities,
and the unwise and illegal interference of the same with the rights of the citizen and civil authorities.’”
²⁶

Arkansas also offered a bubbling controversy. On March 30, 1863, Davis wrote the senators and representatives from Arkansas,
telling them he had already or would look after their requests about the Trans-Mississippi being cut off and most of their
state being occupied by the Yankees. Davis reported he had placed Kirby Smith in command of the Trans-Mississippi, as they
had wished; that Thomas C. Hindman had been withdrawn from command of the army in Arkansas, as they had wished; that arms
and ammunition should be sent at every possible opportunity; and that Lt. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes should be continued in
service in that theater. “It is not in my opinion wise or proper to encourage the idea of retaining in each State its own
troops for its own defence,” Davis added, “and thus giving strength to the fatal error of supposing that this great war can
be waged by the Confederate States
severally
and
unitedly,
with the least hope of success. Our safety—our very existence—depends on the complete blending of the military strength of
all the States into one united body, to be used anywhere and everywhere as the exigencies of the contest may require for the
good of the whole.”
²⁷
That the statement sounded like a straight call for a national—even “federal”— government was an irony lost on few.

While Davis was hoping that all politicians, local and national, would join to form one grand effort for war, some politicians
began to walk in another direction. On March 11, 1863, in the House, Charles Conrad of Louisiana introduced a resolution for
the restoration of peace. The states of the Confederacy and the Union, he said, “must ever be intimately connected by identity
of race, of language and of religion, and by the unalterable laws of geographical affinity and of mutual demand and supply.”
²⁸
The resolution was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. It was the second time any such peace offering came to the
floor of Richmond’s government and the first time it seemed to be taken seriously—at least by some. It would not be the last.

W
HILE
a major war transformed the nation, spreading death to countless battlefields and gloom over the civilians of Richmond, everyday
life in the Confederate capital continued. The ladies of Richmond would settle for nothing less.

Many women in the Confederate capital not only operated their households, looked after the events on the military side, and
paid careful attention to the politics of what was happening in the halls of Congress but also carried on full social schedules
during the war. This was particularly true of the high social circles of Richmond, where soul mates of top Confederate officials
mingled with an exclusive set of friends and wondered among their politically connected friends where the war would take them.

The ladies of Richmond had matured and stiffened by now, having passed through a first, intoxicating summer of life among
the elite during a period when no one knew what the war would bring. They next settled into a routine, accepting the hardships
and uncertainty of war. During the second autumn and winter of the conflict, the ladies seemed to come to peace with themselves,
their roles solidifying as mates of the esteemed and privileged, hostesses to a growing variety of social events, nurses to
the sick and wounded, and cheerleaders to a republic. “In various offices under the government,” Sallie Putnam wrote, “and
particularly in those of the Treasury Department,” the services of females were found useful. “Employment was given and support
secured to hundreds of intelligent and deserving women of the South, who, by the existence of the war, or other misfortunes,
had been so reduced in the means of living as to be compelled to earn a support.”
¹

A relatively small number of women, probably several hundred, took a far more creative and aggressive approach to warfare.
They impersonated men and enlisted as soldiers, fighting in the Civil War. One of these ladies, Loreta Janeta Vasquez, a Cuban
who was just twenty-five, aspired to be a “second Joan of Arc” after her husband died in Confederate service. She raised and
equipped a cavalry company, the “Arkansas Grays,” and, dressed as a man, called herself “Lieutenant Buford,” leading the company
into battle. After fighting at First Manassas, Vasquez traveled to fight in Kentucky and Tennessee and was wounded twice.

Late in 1862 Vasquez came to Richmond to find out what she could do to help further the Confederate cause. She recalled,

Richmond was a very different place from what it was on my first visit to it [in 1861], as I soon found out to my cost. Martial
law was in force in its most rigorous aspect, and General Winder, the chief of the secret service bureau, and his emissaries,
were objects of terror to everybody, rich and poor. . . . It is not surprising, therefore, that almost immediately upon my
arrival in Richmond I fell under the surveillance of Winder as a suspicious character, and was called upon to give an account
of myself.

Imprisoned, Vasquez confessed her soldierly activities and was urged not to repeat such unladylike functions and released
on an assignment to carry dispatches to Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn.
²

The Confederacy’s girls also had varied and amazing experiences in Richmond. The daughter of Senator Louis Wigfall, Louise,
was a schoolchild in Richmond during the last part of 1862. In spending time with her parents (and undoubtedly hearing a great
deal about the machinations of Congress), Louise counted Gen. and Mrs. Joe Johnston as housemates, as Johnston was still recovering
from his wound received at Seven Pines the previous spring. Shortages of fuel and goods were enough to put their mark on the
little girl: “Mama says as soap is $1.25 a cake you must economize!” she wrote her brother Halsey in the army.
³

The center of the social galaxy of the Confederacy was the White House, and its chief star, from a social standpoint, was
Varina Davis. In the Davis White House, receptions occurred weekly or every other week, with most of them taking place during
the winter months. Some were so-called levees, which invited the public. The most important of these was the New Year’s event,
which took place from noon to 3 p.m. on the first day of January. After paying respects to the first family of the Confederacy,
callers then would move on to other houses, in a sort of crawl around the city. At the White House a band serenaded visitors,
who entered the house on the Clay Street side. The first to greet—and announce—the guests were the president’s aides, including
Joseph R. Davis, the president’s nephew, and later William M. Browne and Joseph C. Ives, who acted as secretaries for the
president. After being received and saying hello to the president and Varina, visitors moved through the parlor and then back
out through the entrance hall. Most presidential receptions, however, accommodated a more select set of guests and were held
on Tuesday nights from 8 to 10 p.m.

Accounts of the frequency of other White House receptions vary, but it’s clear the Davises held many events. Mary Chesnut
assisted Varina Davis with a levee as early as March 1861, when the government was still in Montgomery. On moving to Richmond
the Davis family was caught up in a social scene that revolved around activities at the Spotswood Hotel. Richmond socialite
Mary Tucker Magill recalled a Christmas reception at the White House late in the war as “a wide hall brightly lighted,” in
which she waited with “the masses of people” and various officers as she listened to “the voice of our master of ceremonies
murdering our names most atrociously.” After moving into the house, Magill recalled “a gentleman in the uniform of a Colonel
ask our names and [took] us into the presence and the acquaintance of the President.” The crowd was filled with military and
civilian celebrities.
⁴

Thomas Cooper DeLeon, who wrote a book filled with his observations about the social life of wartime Richmond, claimed “bimonthly
levees” were held at the White House at which Davis and Varina received guests openly, but they seemed “a Washington custom
and smacked too much of the ‘old concern’ to become very popular.” (DeLeon’s writings suggest the big levees were rare during
the middle period of the war but reawakened in 1864, when a sense of togetherness in the cause fired a new social life into
the city.) “Evenings” and “drawing rooms” hosted regularly by Varina would bring together “a staff that numbered some of the
most noted men and brilliant women both of the stranger and resident society [and] assured all her varied guests a warm welcome
and a pleasant visit.” After finishing his business for the day, the president would join the group for an hour’s relaxation
before rejoining his business at candlelight deep into the night.
⁵