The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (20 page)

Josiah Gorgas, chief of the Ordnance Bureau, had the foresight not to rely totally upon foreign purchases for the tools of war. He let contracts for as much materiel as civilian manufacturers could produce and then faced the fact that the South had little or no manufacturing base to convert to war industries. In the early spring of 1862, Gorgas was in the process of reorganizing the Ordnance Bureau so that the government could create its own war industries. His plans were sound. He realized that government enterprise was necessary if the Confederacy were to be self-sufficient and hoped to involve his bureau in everything from mining operations to the production of arms and ammunition. But although the Ordnance shops, arsenals, works, and laboratories were soon producing, they were not producing fast enough. Gorgas’ plans, like Huse’s contracts, had not borne sufficient fruit. To make matters worse, the Confederates had lost the Nashville Ordinance Depot to fire in December and the powder works there to the Federals in February.
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In early 1862, otherwise rational men proposed arming Southern soldiers with pikes, and General Daniel H. Hill complained about the weapons issued to his troops: “I have long believed that there was treachery in the Ordnance Dept.”
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Other operations relating to war materiel were equally unsuccessful. In 1861 Quartermaster-General Abraham C. Myers inherited troops most of whom were clothed and shod by the states which furnished them. He also had the good fortune to secure quantities of tents, blankets, and shoes by foreign purchase. Yet Myers made few if any long-range plans, and in the spring of 1862 the troops were ill-equipped and Myers’ reserves dangerously low. Commissary-General for Subsistence Lucius B. Northrup had displayed little more foresight than had Myers.
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As early in the war as July 1861, Mary Chesnut recorded in her famous “insiders’ “ diary, “Now, if I were to pick out the best abused one, where all catch it so bountifully, I should say Mr. Commissary-General Northrup is the most cursed and vilified.”
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The Southern Confederacy did not have the material resources to fight a mass industrial war. Nor did the Confederates have much success purchasing the tools of war in Europe; the tightening of the blockade, lack of specie, and the neutral posture of the European powers frustrated Confederate efforts. To fight its war for survival the South needed to organize and husband every resource it had. Some Confederate leaders realized these facts of life early in the conflict; others learned the lesson from bitter experience. But in the spring of 1862, the efforts of men like Gorgas had not yet been rewarded, and the short-sightedness of men like Myers had been only partially revealed. The hope of a short war had faded, and Southern preparations for a long war were woefully inadequate.

The short war mentality was equally evident in the Confederacy’s army organization. Secretary of War Benjamin’s figures were by his own admission inexact; but in his report of February 1862, more than two-thirds of the Confederate army were listed as twelve-month volunteers. The enlistment terms of these soldiers were due to expire during the campaigning season of 1862, and if the men chose not to reenlist, the Confederacy confronted disaster.
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After Southern soldiers found that war involved more than picnics and parades, volunteering had lagged considerably. Many Southern soldiers discouraged friends and relatives at home from duplicating their mistakes. “Jord[an] you spoke as if you had some notion of volunteering. I advise you to stay at home,” a Louisianian counseled his brother-in-law in October 1861.
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Similar advice came from many homesick men during the first winter of war. Congress attempted to stimulate reenlistment by legislation that offered bounty money, furloughs, and elected officers to those who extended their service, but had little success. Between the lines of President Davis’ message to Congress on February 25, 1862, was the uncertainty of a commander-in-chief who did not know how many soldiers he commanded or would command in the coming months. Davis had always opposed short enlistments, and he spoke candidly about the chaos attending reenlistment: “the process of furloughs and re-enlistment in progress for the last month has so far disorganized and weakened our forces as to impair our ability for successful defense.”
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The Confederacy, then, faced renewed Union assaults in 1862 uncertain of its manpower and all but devoid of the martial enthusiasm of the previous spring and summer.

Waning confidence in Southern military performance, foreign aid, war materiel, and manpower also infected Confederate economic and fiscal policy. The economic impact and dislocation of the war were not too widespread during the first year. Nor was the strangling effect of the Union blockade yet evident. But economic ills did exist locally, and long-range prospects were less than sanguine in early 1862.

In Richmond, for example, proximity to the battle front, the influx of the national government, and the disruption of established trading patterns with the North had produced ferment in the business community. The report of the city council’s finance committee for January 1862 was especially revealing. Part of the report urged the city fathers to extend the time limit for business license applications, owing to the large numbers of new enterprises opening in the city. Another portion of the report, however, dealt with the high rate of failures among the city’s established businesses. An auction company had requested the council to refund its license fee because the company had dissolved. The finance committee rejected the plea: “if this should be considered sufficient reason for remitting a tax, the Council may expect to be flooded with petitions for the remission of taxes; as it has, unhappily, been the case during the past year that many persons in the city have found their business unprofitable and have stopped it; and to remit the taxes in all such cases will materially and injuriously affect the finances of the city.”

Economic instability also affected the capital’s food markets as rising prices plagued the city’s consumers. The price of flour rose $1 Confederate per barrel between September 1861 and January 1862. During the same period the price of coffee doubled; common whiskey rose from $.65 to $1.50 per gallon; and butter increased from $.26 to $.40 per pound. To be sure, Richmond was exceptional—many localities in the Southern interior remained undisturbed by rising prices and business instability in 1861 and 1862— but Richmond was also a bellwether. Sooner or later, to some degree, the same economic problems that beset the capital affected the Confederate hinterland.
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The government’s financial policies were little help. To his credit, Secretary of the Treasury Christopher G. Memminger advocated taxation as the proper method for financing the war. Congress, however, balked, and Memminger settled for a system involving a series of loans and treasury note issues to pay the government’s expenses. By the early spring of 1862 Memminger’s department was in serious trouble. The Treasury had made no concerted effort to collect staple commodities pledged to the produce loans, and planters began selling those items on which the government’s credit depended. By February 1862, treasury notes—fiat money—comprised 76 percent of the government’s income; at the same time, a gold dollar in Richmond was worth $ 1.40 in Confederate money. Only the good will and faith of the Southern people held the inflation rate that low, when in New York a dollar in gold brought only $1.01 in United States currency. In August 1861, Congress had imposed a war tax of $.50 per $100 assessed value on various kinds of property. However, Memminger had not yet constructed the administrative organization to collect the tax, and when he did, state governments undertook to pay the levies for their citizens—largely in unsupported state currency.
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Had the war lasted only one year, Memminger might have restored fiscal confidence and funded the Confederate debt with tariff revenues, but as the war continued, the flow of government paper money increased. Memminger realized the folly of unsupported paper money but could do little about it. A great deal of Southern specie—gleaned from banks under the government’s first loan the previous spring—had gone to Europe for the purchase of war supplies. Cotton was white gold only when Confederates could ship it to markets. Beyond the limited amount of specie, estimated at $27 million, and the uncertain potential of cotton, the Confederacy had little in the way of economic resources, hence its reliance on fiat money and popular faith in its domestic economy. Popular faith, in turn, depended upon the capability of the government to defend the country and to stabilize the war economy. As the second year of the war began, the nation appeared to be living not only on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.

Politics and public morale both reflected and contributed to the Confederate failures during the eight months following Manassas. The provincialism which characterized the ante-bellum period, the naivete which attended secession, and the faith in a short, easy victory seemingly confirmed at Manassas combined to convince Confederate Southerners that they were invincible. Frustration and failure came hard to a people so assured of the righteousness of their cause and so buoyed by the initial success of their revolution. Reasons for the new nation’s failures were complex and fundamental, but most Confederates, even if they grasped the sources of their national frustration, had neither the time nor the inclination to attack the roots of their dilemma. Instead, they focused their concern upon men and issues nearer at hand, an exercise in corporate psychological transference. Such behavior was natural. If their cause was just and their armies were valiant, Confederates could only look to their leadership as the source of failure. Thus, in the fall and winter of 1861–62, dissent, charges of bungling, and hints of treachery further weakened public confidence and threatened to rend the fabric of Southern nationhood.
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The discord began at the top, among the leaders of the would-be nation. Already the administration had warred with state governors over troop and arms requisitions. Tension between state and national governments was a constant fact of Confederate life. But in the adversity which mounted as the Confederacy approached the first anniversary of its founding, the veneer of unanimity and personal harmony among the national leaders vanished. The President and Vice-President fell out. During the early months of his tenure, Alexander Stephens had seemed to be one of Davis’ trusted advisors. He made speeches supporting administration policies, and in securing Virginia’s early alliance with the Confederacy, he rendered important service. Then, as military affairs assumed first call upon the government’s attention, the President consulted Stephens less and less, and Stephens agreed with the administration policy of nationalism less and less. During 1862 the Vice-President found little to do in Richmond, and after that year he seldom even visited the capital. Eventually he abandoned his disgruntled silence and began publicly criticizing as “tyrannical” the administration he supposedly served.
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Other political leaders were similarly dissatisfied with the Davis administration and with each other. T. R. R. Cobb confided to his wife in March 1862 that the President ”
would be deposed
if the Congress had any more confidence in Stephens than in him.”
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Congress did pass a bill which created the post of commanding general of all Confederate armies. Davis recognized the bill for what it was, an oblique expression of no confidence in the constitutional commander-in-chief, and accordingly he vetoed the measure. In the House, Representative Henry S. Foote of Tennessee introduced a formal motion of no confidence in the secretaries of war and navy, Benjamin and Mallory. Although the motion failed, both Benjamin and Mallory had become political liabilities to the administration.
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Even though no “court” and “country” political parties ever developed in the Confederate Congress, a “floating” antiadministration faction was emerging. Louis T. Wigfall of Texas, for example, had generally supported Davis’ military legislation; but from early 1862 the Texan opposed Davis’ strategy, domestic policy, and person in ever increasing degree. If Wigfall and men like him did not display the cohesion of a consistent antiadministration faction, they harmed the Davis government on selected issues.

It was unfortunate for the Confederacy that no loyal opposition party ever formed. A rival party would have had the obligation to pose responsible alternatives to the administration program and might have had the discipline to forestall political vendettas against Davis by men such as Wigfall and Foote. As it happened, factors more personal than party allegiance—pre-Confederate party affiliation, stance on secession, and proximity of enemy armies to a congressman’s home district or state—lay at the base of the structure of Confederate politics. Southern congressmen and senators assumed individual stances on issues which defied consistency.
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Perhaps the South’s heritage of individualism, conditioned by rural isolation and mastery of plantation empires, fed self-assertion among Confederate leaders. Maybe Southern politicians had been naysayers so long in the United States Congress that they were unable to shuck the habit when the South became a nation. For whatever reason, even before the succession of failures following Manassas, quarrels and carping were frequent among rebel leaders. South Carolinian James H. Hammond recognized the condition even while the illusion of harmony prevailed at the Montgomery Convention. In February 1861, he wrote, ”
Big-man-me-ism
reigns supreme & every one thinks every other a jealous fool or an aspiring knave.”
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Predictably, Hammond succumbed to the general despair of March 1862. He advised his friend, Congressman W. W. Boyce, “Impeach Jeff Davis for incompetency
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call a convention of the States. Ad interim make Floyd [John B.] or Price [Sterling] or Toombs [Robert] Dictator. West Point is death to us & sick Presidents & Generals are equally fatal.”
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Boyce responded to such desperate sentiments on at least two occasions that spring by telling Hammond, “I think you are even too hopeful,” and “I assure you that things are in a more critical condition than you imagine.”
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