The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (35 page)

Since then, despite continued successful resistance by the armies in the field, symptoms of unrest among civilians had culminated in the rash of so-called Bread Riots, the largest of which had occurred in the capital itself and had been broken up only by the personal intervention of the Chief Executive. Two days later—on April 10, just short of three months since his confident prediction of an early end to the conflict—Davis issued, in response to a congressional resolution passed the week before, a proclamation “To the People of the Confederate States.” Observing that “a strong impression prevails throughout the country that the war … may terminate during the present year,” Congress urged the people not to be taken in by such false hopes, but rather to “look to prolonged war as the only condition proffered by the enemy short of subjugation.” The presidential proclamation, issued broadcast across the land, afforded the people the unusual opportunity of seeing their President eat his words, not only by revoking his previous prediction, but by substituting another which clearly implied that what lay ahead was a longer and harder war than ever.

Though “fully concurring in the views thus expressed by Congress,” he began with the same boldness of assertion as before. “We have reached the close of the second year of the war, and may point with just pride to the history of our young Confederacy. Alone, unaided, we have met and overthrown the most formidable combination of naval and military armaments that the lust of conquest ever gathered together for the subjugation of a free people.… The contrast between our past and present condition is well calculated to inspire full confidence in the triumph of our arms. At no previous period of the war have our forces been so numerous, so well organized, and so thoroughly disciplined, armed, and equipped as at present.” Then he passed to darker matters. “We must not forget, however, that the war is not yet ended, and that we are still confronted by powerful armies and threatened by numerous fleets.… Your country, therefore, appeals to you to lay aside all thoughts of gain, and to devote yourselves to securing your liberties, without which those gains would be valueless.… Let fields be devoted exclusively to the production of corn, oats, beans, peas, potatoes, and other food for man and beast; let corn be sown broadcast for fodder in immediate proximity to railroads, rivers, and canals, and let all your efforts be directed to the prompt supply of these articles in the districts where our armies are operating.… Entertaining no fear that you will either misconstrue the motives of this address or fail to respond to the call of patriotism, I have placed the facts fully and frankly before you. Let us all unite in the performance of our duty, each in his own sphere, and with concerted, persistent, and well-directed effort … we shall maintain the sovereignty and independence of these Confederate
States, and transmit to our posterity the heritage bequeathed to us by our fathers.”

As usual, the people responded well for the most part to a clear statement of necessity. But there were those who reacted otherwise. The Georgia fire-eater Robert Toombs, for example, who had left the cabinet to join the army on the day of First Manassas and then had left the army to re-enter politics after his one big day at Sharpsburg, petulantly announced that he was increasing his plantation’s cotton acreage. Nor were opposition editors inclined to neglect the opportunity to launch the verbal barbs they had been sharpening through months of increasing dissatisfaction. “Mr Davis is troubled by blindness,” the Mobile
Tribune
told its subscribers, “is very dyspeptic and splenetic, and as prejudiced and stubborn as a man can well be, and not be well.”

Thus did the Confederacy enter upon its third year of war.

  4  

Disenchantment was mainly limited to civilians, but it was by no means limited to the sphere of civilian activities. Illogically or not—that is, despite the lopsided triumphs at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bluffs, the flood-reversing coups at Holly Springs and Galveston, the brilliant cavalry forays into Kentucky and West Tennessee, and the absence of anything resembling a clear-cut defeat east of the Mississippi—there was a growing impression that victory, on field after field, brought little more than temporary joy, which soon gave way to sobering realizations. The public’s reaction was not unlike that of a boxer who delivers his best punch, square on the button, then sees his opponent merely blink and shake his head and bore back in. People began to suspect that if the North could survive Fredericksburg and the Mud March, Chickasaw Bluffs and the loss of the
Cairo
to a demijohn of powder, it might well be able to survive almost anything the South seemed able to inflict. A whole season of victories apparently had done nothing to bring peace and independence so much as one day closer. Howell Cobb of Georgia could say, not altogether in jest, “Only two things stand in the way of an amicable settlement of the whole difficulty: the Landing of the Pilgrims and Original Sin,” while the Richmond
Examiner
could simultaneously call attention to the chilling fact that, aside from Sumter, “[Lincoln’s] pledge once deemed foolish by the South, that he would ‘hold, occupy, and possess’ all the forts belonging to the United States Government, has been redeemed almost to the letter.”

Fredericksburg had been hailed at the outset as the turning point of the war. Presently, however, as Lee and his army failed to find a way to follow it up, the triumph paled to something of a disappointment. In time, paradoxically, the more perceptive began to see that it had indeed
been a turning point, though in a sense quite different from the one originally implied; for no battle East or West, whether a victory or a defeat, showed more plainly the essential toughness of the blue-clad fighting man than this in which, judging by a comparison of the casualties inflicted and received, he suffered the worst of his several large-scale drubbings. But this was an insight that came gradually and only to those who were not only able but also willing to perceive it. Murfreesboro was more immediately disappointing in respect to Confederate expectations, and no such insight was required. Here the contrast between claims and accomplishments was as stark as it was sudden. First it was seen to be a much less brilliant victory than the southern commander had announced before his guns had hushed their growling. Then it was seen to be scarcely a victory at all. It was seen, in fact, to have several of the aspects of a typical defeat: not the least of which was the undeniable validity of the Federal claim to control of the field when the smoke had cleared. “So far the news has come in what may be called the classical style of the Southwest,” the
Examiner
observed caustically near the end of the first week in January, having belatedly learned of Bragg’s withdrawal. “When the Southern army fights a battle, we first hear that it has gained one of the most stupendous victories on record; that regiments from Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, &c. have exhibited an irresistible and superhuman valor unknown in history this side of Sparta and Rome. As for their generals, they usually get all their clothes shot off, and replace them with a suit of glory. The enemy, of course, is simply annihilated. Next day more dispatches come, still very good, but not quite as good as the first. The telegrams of the third day are invariably such as make a mist, a muddle, and a fog of the whole affair.”

No mist, muddle, or fog could hide Bragg from the ire aroused when the public learned the premature and insubstantial basis for his wire announcing that God had granted him and them a Happy New Year. What saved him from the immediate consequences of their anger was his adversary Rosecrans, who, despite his recent promise to “press [the rebels] to the wall,” not only refused to follow up the victory he claimed, but resisted with all his strength—as he had done through the months preceding the march out of Nashville, pleading the need to lay in “a couple of millions of rations”—the efforts by his superiors to prod him into motion. Crittenden, who had commanded the unassailed left wing throughout the first day’s fight and then repulsed his fellow-Kentuckian Breckinridge on the second, stated the case as it appeared to many in the Union ranks: “The battle was fought for the possession of Middle Tennessee. We went down to drive the Confederates out of Murfreesboro, and we drove them out. They went off a few miles and camped again. And we, although we were the victors, virtually went into hospital for six months before we could march after them again.” He added, by way of developing a theory: “As in most of our battles, very meager fruits
resulted to either side from such partial victories as were for the most part won. Yet it was a triumph. It showed that in the long run the big purse and the big battalions—both on our side—must win; and it proved that there were no better soldiers than ours.”

Rosecrans disagreed with much of this critique, particularly the remark that the army had gone “into hospital,” but he not only subscribed to Crittenden’s opinion about the big purse and the big battalions, he also took it a step further by insisting that the last ounce be wrung from the advantage. What good were riches, he seemed to be asking, unless they were at hand? When he swung the purse he wanted it to be heavy. “I believe the most fatal errors of this war have begun in an impatient desire of success, that would not take time to get ready,” he protested in mid-February, by way of reply to Halleck’s continuous urging. So the general-in-chief changed his tack. “There is a vacant major generalcy in the Regular Army,” he wired on March 1, “and I am authorized to say that it will be given to the general in the field who first wins an important and decisive victory.” The implication was that Rosecrans had better get to Chattanooga before Grant got to Vicksburg; but Old Rosy did not react at all in the way that had been intended. “As an officer and a citizen, I feel degraded to see such auctioneering of honor,” he replied. “Have we a general who would fight for his own personal benefit, when he would not for honor and the country? He would come by his commission basely in that case, and deserve to be despised by men of honor.” Halleck in turn resented this show of righteous indignation, and said so, which only served to increase their differences. Rosecrans was convinced by now that all of Washington was against him: especially Stanton, who had promised, in the first flush of excitement over the news of a hard-fought triumph, to withhold “nothing … within my power to grant,” but who lately had bridled at filling the balky commander’s many requisitions and requests, including one that his latest promotion be predated so as to give him rank over Grant and all the other western generals. Finally he protested to the President himself, who gave him little satisfaction beyond assurances of admiration. “I know not a single enemy of yours here,” Lincoln wrote, and added: “Truth to speak, I do not appreciate this matter of rank on paper as you officers do. The world will not forget that you fought the battle of Stones River, and it will never care a fig whether you rank Gen. Grant on paper, or he so ranks you.”

By then it was mid-March. The bloody contest, ten weeks back, had done much to increase Old Rosy’s appreciation of the dangers involved in challenging the rebs on their own ground. The rest of March went by, and all of April. Still he would not budge. May followed. Still he would not move until he was good and ready, down to the final nail in the final horseshoe. As June came on, approaching the end of the six-month term which Crittenden said the army spent “in hospital,” Rosecrans made a virtue of his immobility, claiming that by refraining from
driving Bragg southward he was preventing him from co-operating with Pemberton against Grant. Besides, he added, he had held a council of war at which it had been decided to “observe a great military maxim, not to risk two great and decisive battles at the same time.” He thought it best to wait till Vicksburg fell or Grant abandoned the effort to take it, whereupon he himself would advance against Bragg and Chattanooga. Halleck by now was fairly frantic. A master of maxims, he fired one back at Rosecrans: “Councils of war never fight.” But this had no more effect than the earlier proddings had done; Old Rosy stayed exactly where he was. If Bragg would only leave him alone, he would gladly return the favor, at any rate until he was good and ready to advance. Just when that would be he would not say.