Dixie Betrayed (31 page)

Incensed, Davis continued his barrage:

This view of the question was fortified by the fact that the law last referred to did not create an office, but only provided
that during the war the officer discharging the duties of Quartermaster General should have the rank of Brigadier General,
and by the further fact that the original act of 26th February, 1861, for the establishment and organization of the general
staff, contained a provision, still in force, that officers of the Quartermaster General and other staff departments might
by order of the President be assigned to the command of troops, according to their rank in the Army, thus indicating that
positions in the Quartermaster’s and other staff departments were not distinct offices, but were posts of duty to which officers
of the Army were appointed, and from which they might be withdrawn and assigned to other duties at Executive discretion. This
provision of our law that did not exist in the former service of the United States, in which when an officer of the Army entered
the Quartermaster’s Department he surrendered his commission in the line and his right to command troops.

“I am advised, however,” Davis continued, “that such is not the construction given to the law by many Senators”—an understatement
to say the least.
³
The Senate was not about to take up Davis on his nomination offer. The House, for its part, worked on its own general staff
bill. The controversy would smolder for months, leaving Lawton in place. The president seemed to have won the technical debate
but lost potential supporters in Congress by doing so. He was not the only loser: regarding the staff bill, Joe Johnston wrote
Wigfall from the field, full of fury. “My objection to the bill is that it will take so many of the best officers from their
proper places with the troops,” said Johnston, “for others in which they have not been tried. . . . The officer who had distinguished
himself in the command of a brigade might utterly fail as a staff officer.”
⁴
Another major area seemed to have been resolved to the satisfaction of nearly no one in the Confederacy.

M
EANWHILE,
soldiers on both sides survived as best they could through the long winter and wondered about the campaigns to come. Religion
filled the lives of an increasing number of soldiers in 1864, as the war dragged on. “The church was very neat and filled
with soldiers, but one woman in the audience,” wrote Jenkin Jones of the Sixth Wisconsin Artillery, at church in Huntsville,
Alabama, on January 17. “Chaplain of 18th Wisconsin officiated, of the Calvinistic school, and but ill agreed with my views,
but it seemed good to be once more listening to an earnest speaker and hear the old-fashioned tunes swell in the bass voices
that filled the room. Returned to camp, if not better a more thoughtful man.”

In the Army of Northern Virginia, however, earthly concerns made for a tone that was becoming increasingly grim. “Short rations
are having a bad effect upon the men, both morally and physically,” wrote Lee to Seddon on January 22. “Desertions to the
enemy are becoming more frequent, and the men cannot continue healthy and vigorous if confined to this spare diet for any
length of time. Unless there is a change, I fear the army cannot be kept together.”
⁵

With the Rapidan River separating the opposing eastern armies, little action occurred. A number of relatively small engagements
took place in the western theater, however. In Mississippi Sherman launched an expedition to destroy railroads and military
resources in the central portion of the state, in somewhat of a dress rehearsal for his March to the Sea later the same year.
On February 3 he moved from Vicksburg with twenty-five thousand men and faced scattered forces under four Confederate commanders.
After five skirmishes Sherman’s army wrecked the facilities at Meridian before withdrawing to Vicksburg.

As Sherman was busily ruining the military value of Meridian, the largest battle of the war fought in Florida occurred. At
Olustee, west of Jacksonville, the clash was a relatively small engagement, but nonetheless it ended as a spectacular Confederate
victory, with heavy losses. On the same day to the north, fighting in northern Georgia accelerated. Since the Union occupation
of Chattanooga, Joe Johnston had positioned forces around Dalton, Georgia. A reconnaissance on February 22 by Union major
general John M. Palmer checked the enemy’s positions and produced clashes at Tunnel Hill, Rocky Face Ridge, and Varnell’s
Station. Johnston’s defensive tactics constituted an approach that would be debated heavily in the weeks to come.

The recapture of Arkansas and Louisiana continued to trouble the Lincoln administration. Lincoln also worried over the French
governance of Mexico and desired a strong show of Federal force in Texas. He, therefore, acquiesced to Henry Halleck’s request
to launch an operation that became known as the Red River campaign. This befuddled series of maneuvers, led by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel
P. Banks, was coordinated with Sherman and Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele. It was a combined operation, with naval gunboats providing
support. The campaign lasted until May 18, produced a large series of small skirmishes and a few battles, and entrapped the
gunboats near Alexandria due to low water. Only Lt. Col. Joseph Bailey’s engineering genius saved the fleet. Wrote Porter
from his flagship
Black Hawk
to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles on May 16: “I have the honor to inform you that the vessels lately caught by low water above
the falls at Alexandria, have been released from their unpleasant position. . . . Lieut.-Colonel Bailey, Acting Engineer of
the 19th Army Corps, proposed a plan of building a series of dams across the rocks at the falls, and raising the water high
enough to let the vessels pass over.”
⁶
The campaign ended with virtually nothing accomplished but causing a great deal of disarray on both sides.

W
HAT
is wanting in Richmond is ‘
brains,
’” Howell Cobb wrote to his Georgia friend Aleck Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. “I did not find the temper and
disposition of Congress as bad as I expected, but there is a lamentable want of brains and good sound common sense.”
⁷
Lawrence Keitt, writing his wife, echoed Cobb’s fears:

I hear that Toombs is on the stump in Geo., and is arraigning Davis in a terrible manner. I have always feared the divisions,
which I saw would spring up among us. You cannot have liaison—connexion—unity—among a planting community. Too many Revolutions
have shipwrecked upon internal division. This Revolution proves that canonized imbecility is but a straw before the wrath
of masses—it seems to be a law of humanity that generation after generation must rescue its liberties from the insidious grasp
of a foe without or within. In our case, we have to seize them from both foes—we have a worthless government, and are reduced
to the humiliation of acknowledging it, because we cannot, with safety, shake it.
⁸

Some congressmen tired of the constant bickering and grew fearful of the potential advance of Grant’s army toward Richmond.
Wrote Wigfall in April,

If Lincoln has, as the Northern papers say, at last found out, that he cannot . . . wound the armies of the United States
longer with safety to either his country or himself & Grant is not a greater fool than he is usually taken to be, Lee will
have no child’s play this spring & the sooner Congress adjourns & we get South the better. Richmond is an entrenched camp
without depots & subsistence & if Lee is ever driven with the lines around the city & it is thoroughly invested, the surrender
of his Army will be only a question of time.
⁹

Those were strong words from the fire-eating Texan.

If the conventional war was appearing increasingly unlikely for the Confederate authorities to win, then they would introduce
and experiment with other options. “I have not been unmindful of the necessity for prompt action in the matter to which you
refer,” Jefferson Davis wrote Robert M. T. Hunter, on April 14, 1864, “and have made attempts to engage for the service in
Canada several gentlemen deemed competent; but they have declined for various reasons. The subject is too delicate to permit
entering into details until I have the pleasure of seeing you. I confine myself to saying that two persons specially qualified
are now on their way here from the South. . . . One of them, the General Agent, is well known to you.”
¹⁰
Davis was referring to hiring spies who would conduct secret operations on behalf of the Confederacy, one of which would
be a raid on St. Albans, Vermont. Other actions also were planned, such as blowing up ships on the Great Lakes. These quasiterrorist
acts reflect the onrushing sense of despair that Davis and other Southern politicians were beginning to feel this spring.

Two weeks later, Clement Clay began a mission. “I am on my way to Canada, for the purpose of arming the country as I best
can,” he wrote to his friend Wigfall. “You know how as well as I do. It is a very responsible, difficult, and delicate duty,
for which I am not suited by my talents, tastes or habits. . . . I cannot enjoy secret service. I expect to suffer daily annoyances
from the hounds who will be set to watch & pursue me.”
¹¹

While future terror plans were being drafted in Canada, another radical act, this one by the Yankees, was unfolding. In February
Union cavalrymen hatched and carried out a raid on the outskirts of the Confederate capital that sent a chill through the
spines of Richmonders. Civil War prisons held thousands of Southern and Northern soldiers in their brutal grip throughout
the war. The most notorious prisons in the South were part of a group in Richmond that included Libby Prison (for Yankee officers)
and Belle Isle (for enlisted men). During the late winter thaw of 1864, a dashing young Union cavalry brigadier general named
H. Judson Kilpatrick had hatched a plan to raid Richmond, free Northern prisoners, and generally wreak havoc on the city.
This was prompted by intelligence reports of horrible overcrowding in the prisons, inadequate food, and a supposed garrison
force in Richmond of only 3,000. The Union high command approved of the plan, and Kilpatrick, Col. Ulric Dahlgren, and 3,584
troopers set out on the raid on February 28. Dahlgren was of particular value to the Yankee general. He was just twenty-one
years old and the son of the highly respected Union rear admiral John A. B. Dahlgren, a close friend of President Lincoln’s.
Young Dahlgren had a reputation for hard fighting—he had lost a leg at Hagerstown, Maryland, the previous summer.

On the twenty-ninth the raiders reached Spotsylvania Court House, where Dahlgren took a detachment of five hundred to attack
Richmond from the south. Kilpatrick—with enemy forces behind him—would enter the city from the north. The only nuisance was
a cold rain that transformed into sleet by the following night. Meanwhile, Confederate Brig. Gen. George Washington Custis
Lee—Robert E. Lee’s eldest son—shifted his local defense forces to block an attack he predicted would come from the west.

Strangely, Kilpatrick—who was known for reckless bravery—halted at the outer defenses of Richmond on March 1, even though
only a small opposing force met him there. By nightfall Confederate cavalry had caught up with Kilpatrick and attacked him
in camp. Kilpatrick retreated, aborted the plan, and left Dahlgren in the lurch.

At Goochland, twenty miles northwest of the city, Dahlgren split his force and then recombined it, finally reaching a point
two and a half miles south of the city on the evening of March 1. After dark General Lee’s forces fought a sharp skirmish
with Dahlgren. One day later, during Dahlgren’s retreat, Confederates ambushed his men, capturing ninety-two and killing Dahlgren.

Then came the controversy. A thirteen-year-old boy named William Littlepage found on Dahlgren’s body papers that disclosed
a plan to release fifteen thousand prisoners, who would act as a guard until fresh Federal troops arrived. The papers also
contained information about burning the city and killing Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.

The papers, at the time alleged by some to be either Confederate forgeries or at least not written in Dahlgren’s hand, sparked
intense debate in the South. (In modern times the papers have been conclusively judged authentic.) The responses ranged from
Confederate Col. Josiah Gorgas’s proposed plan to execute all Yankee prisoners to Robert E. Lee’s more rational and restrained
response of sending a letter of inquiry to the Federals. Kilpatrick issued a statement to George G. Meade, his commanding
general, that he knew nothing. Therefore, officially, the responsibility for the idea had died with Dahlgren. But in a time
of war and heated passions, such plots undoubtedly were contemplated more than once in both Washington and Richmond.

To coordinate Southern military affairs and prevent such attacks, many Confederate politicians had long wanted a general-in-chief.
Jefferson Davis was always reluctant to dilute his nearly absolute power, but in February he came as close as he could get
by appointing a special adviser to the president on military affairs—the same role, in essence, that Lee had played before
taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia. He now gave that lofty post to none other than Braxton Bragg, his good friend
in whom many others, including most congressmen, had almost no faith. Nevertheless, on February 24, 1864, Bragg was “charged
with the conduct of military operations in the armies of the Confederacy.” About the same time Congress toyed with two volatile
ideas that infuriated Davis. First, the Senate introduced a bill to limit the terms of the president’s cabinet members. The
matter was debated to no conclusion, but the discussion sent Davis into convulsions of anger over the assumed power of Congress
over the executive branch. Further, Virginian Thomas S. Bocock, Speaker of the House, introduced a vote of no confidence in
the administration. This, too, was debated with no significant conclusion.