Dixie Betrayed (35 page)

Two days later in the House, Henry Foote, “flanked by legal and documentary reports,” spoke on habeas corpus for two and a
half hours. “The country is engaged in a great war for independence,” he said, “the maintenance of State rights and State
sovereignty . . . these depend on our failure or triumph in this war. . . . I will do nothing to weaken the Executive arm;
nothing to palsy the government vigour; nothing to thwart the common zeal. God forbid!” Foote, quoting from Magna Carta and
the Bill of Rights, variously proclaimed, “True, O king!” and “Thank God for James Madison!” He attacked the government for
suspending the writ in Richmond and in North Carolina, saying that anyone who called the suspension in those places a necessary
act was telling “a garnished lie.” He said, “The suspending act clothes the President with extraordinary powers, executive,
legislative, judicial—centering in one human being the Congress and the Court. The whole civil fabric and law is under his
feet. Great God! What an exhibition for a free people in this boasted nineteenth century!” The disloyalty the act is intended
to fight is a “phantom, a myth, a vapour,” said Foote, “the mirage arising from a diseased eye. There is no such thing as
disloyalty, neither in Richmond nor North Carolina.” William Rives of Virginia attempted to reply to the rambling speech,
but was cut short and had to promise to speak again on the subject later.
²³
Foote’s resolution was tabled by a vote of fifty-five to twenty-five.
²⁴

The next day Davis responded. The president favored suspension, he argued, because it had been beneficial more than once,
caused no abridgment of the rights of law-abiding citizens, and no good citizens had suffered wrongfully. “In my opinion the
reasons given in the special message transmitted to Congress at its last session, recommending the suspension of the writ
of
habeas corpus,
still exist in undiminished force and the present juncture especially requires the continuance of the suspension,” he penned.
“It would be perilous, if not calamitous, to discontinue the suspension while the armies of the enemy are pressing on our
brave defenders.”
²⁵
But many members of Congress responded that Davis’s claims were vague, general, and mysterious.

As habeas corpus provided fireworks, the old subject of appointments reared its head. In mid-May the Senate Judiciary Committee
was asked to rule on whether nominations from the first Senate should still be considered in the second Senate. By a vote
of seventeen to zero, the Senate declared all unconfirmed nominations should lapse at the end of the session. This naturally
inflamed Davis, who wanted control over such matters. On May 28 the Senate additionally ruled that all nominations not acted
upon during a session of the Senate must be renominated (the nomination itself begun again from scratch) and may not be “carried
over” to the next session—a step further than the seventeen-to-zero vote.
²⁶

Matters pertaining to the subject of a general staff bill did not go any more smoothly. Davis insisted on flexibility in staffing
to conform to differing requirements in various departments and armies. Specifications for the commissary of subsistence,
quartermaster general, adjutant general, inspector general, chief of ordnance, and chief engineer all vary greatly, he argued.
Rigid rules for the qualifications of various staff officers would limit those officers for transfer to other assignments.
Transfers would be awkward, Davis reasoned, as well as create difficulties for the assignment of aides-de-camp.
²⁷

Instead of an independent staff corps, with fixed numbers and grades of officers assigned to commanding generals’ staffs,
Davis favored assignments based on merit made from anywhere within the army. Officers with such staff assignments would retain
their line and/ or staff commissions. When requirements changed, staff officers would revert to their line and/ or staff grades
without the loss of relative rank. But Congress disagreed, and the president found himself vetoing the bill they sent forward.
²⁸

A
GAIN
and again the leaders of the Confederacy chose to spend their energies on questions of bureaucracy and patronage, circling
round and round while the Union swept forward. Nothing, however, was gaining more momentum against the administration this
long, hot summer than the splintering of loyalty from state governors. The greatest trouble was growing in Georgia, centered
around Aleck Stephens. The fire of the vice president’s disloyalty had many sources, one of which was his friendship with
a cranky, antiadministration newspaper editor, Henry Cleveland, who ran the
Augusta Constitutionalist.
The two struck up a long, detailed correspondence in which they openly discussed the president’s incompetence and what ought
to be done about it. The two men also raised the idea of a peace conference that could somehow wrest the war from the hands
of Davis and restore tranquillity to the South before the Davis administration ruined it forever.

On June 8 Cleveland wrote the vice president, “Since my second letter to you, I have received your last, and confess that
I did suppose you had hope of terms from Lincoln. For my self (from reasons I will some day give you) I am satisfied that
the States can to day get terms and good terms, but Mr. Davis never can.” Continued Cleveland,

No human power can change Mr. Davis, and consequently, no human power can save the Confederacy from war and speeches. I am
satisfied that the immediate secession of Georgia from the Confederate States would be the best thing we could do, and am
equally satisfied that nine-tenths of the people of Georgia will follow the lead of the Administration, until our cause is
beyond the hand of resurrection. . . . The Stars and Stripes will float over the Government works in Augusta before a year
expires, and Mr. Davis be dead or in exile. . . . To win this fight, under this Administration, would be a result without
a reason—an effect without a cause. Is this treason? I am afraid you will think so, but it is difficult to look back at all
we have suffered, and see blood and life and desperate valor
thrown away,
and still think calmly.
²⁹

Local politics and business intervened to muzzle Cleveland’s public discontent. “A letter from Henry Cleveland informs me
that the majority of the stock of the
Constitutionalist
is now owned by Administration men,” wrote Joe Brown, a fellow conspirator, “and that he will be obliged to change his course,
keep silent, or be ousted. Could not enough of the stock be purchased to control and keep the paper on the rights lines?”
³⁰
But despite the shift more and more people picked up on an increasing and tangled web of conspiracy in Georgia. “Our Vice
President is a dangerous man,” Brig. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman wrote his friend Louis Wigfall, “the more so because of his stealthy
policy and his bogus reputation for fairness and honesty. I consider him the head of a faction that is ready to betray the
Confederacy and sell the blood of the Army. ‘Crushing him out’ is doing God’s service.”
³¹

With Sherman’s army bearing down on Atlanta, the conspiracy took a backseat to more practical matters—though these, too, only
added to the discontent. “I fully appreciate the importance of Atlanta,” Jefferson Davis wrote Governor Brown, “as evinced
by my past action. I have sent all available reinforcements, detaching troops even from points that remain exposed to the
enemy. The disparity of force between the opposing armies in Northern Georgia is less as reported than at any other point.”
³²
But Brown wanted more troops, more ammunition, more everything to protect Georgia. “I regret exceedingly that you cannot
grant my request as I am satisfied Sherman’s escape with his army would be impossible if ten thousand good cavalry under Forrest
were thrown in his rear this side of Chattanooga and his supplies cut off,” Brown raged. “The whole country expects this,
though points of less importance should be for a time overrun. . . . If your mistake should result in the loss of Atlanta
and the occupation of other strong points in this State by the enemy, the blow may be fatal to our cause and remote posterity
may have reason to mourn over the error.”
³³

The president, who was losing patience entirely with Brown, shot back at him sharply. “Your dicta cannot control the disposition
of troops in different parts of the Confederate States,” the president snapped. “I will be glad also to know the source of
your information as to what the whole country expects, and posterity will judge.”
³⁴

Brown and Davis had other problems besides the defense of Atlanta. At Andersonville, Georgia, where thousands of Yankee prisoners
were starving and held in the stockade (making the prison temporarily the third largest city in the Confederacy, with more
than thirty-three thousand residents), John Winder, the hated former provost marshal of Richmond, had a crisis on his hands.
“Matters have arrived at that point
where I must
have reinforcements,” he urgently wrote Howell Cobb. “Now General it is morally certain that if the Government or the people
of Georgia don’t come to my relief and that instantly, I cannot hold these prisoners, and they must submit to see Georgia
devastated by the
prisoners.
There is not a moment to spare. . . . Twenty-four hours may be too late.”
³⁵
“It is dreadful. My heart aches for the poor wretches, Yankees though they are,” wrote Eliza Andrews, a nurse, of the prisoners
at Andersonville, “and I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting such things happen.”
³⁶

In doubt Davis turned to Lee, as he always seemed to do. “
Genl. Johnston
has
failed
and there are strong indications that he will
abandon Atlanta,
” he wrote. “He urges that
prisoners
should be removed immediately from
Andersonville.
It seems necessary to
relieve him
at once. Who should
succeed
him? What think you of Hood for the position?”
³⁷
Meanwhile, Johnston, seemingly at a loss about what to do, received direction from the president. “You have all the force
which can be employed, to
distribute
or
guard prisoners,
” wrote Davis. “Know the condition of the country and the prospects of military operations. I must rely on you to advise
Genl. Winder
as to the proper and practicable action in relation to
U.S. Prisoners.
”
³⁸
How should they be taken care of with the Yankees closing in?

As the situation deteriorated around them, Stephens and Cleveland kept up their correspondence, searching for a newspaper
that could be bought and turned into an antagonistic enemy of the administration, perhaps leading to Georgia’s secession.
“I enclose a letter which speaks for itself,” wrote Cleveland of a prospective purchase. “The circulation is exactly that
of the
Constitutionalist.
. . . It is the best bargain I have heard of in two years.”
³⁹
Soon afterward he wrote again. “I am ‘in for the war’ against Davis,” he declared, “if I can do any good. Mr. Morse to day
for the first time, talks about giving up control of the paper [the
Constitutionalist
], but asks a week to decide.”
⁴⁰

Howell Cobb, meanwhile, still held out hope for Atlanta. “There has been quite a bloody fight at Atlanta resulting favorably
to our army,” he informed his wife. “As yet we have very few details and the extent of the victory is wholly unknown. . .
. The loss of generals is severe on both sides. Genl. McPherson was the next man to Sherman in the Yankee army and some people
regard him as the ablest man of the two. The other Yankee generals killed were small potatoes.”
⁴¹

Cleveland was not so hopeful. “If the Yankees come to Crawfordsville [
sic;
Crawfordville, between Atlanta and Augusta, where the vice president lived],” he penned to Stephens, “send your effects to
my care and come and stay with me. I would be glad of your society for the next ten years. My little twelve year old would
not object to a playmate of her own age, but I would not have room for a family.”
⁴²

Governor Brown, meanwhile, mourned the worsening situation in Georgia and believed it was all Davis’s fault. At least now,
however, Brown acknowledged the national authorities the ability to control his troops. In the Georgia field Bob Toombs approved
of Johnston’s removal and felt some confidence in the new commander, whose reputation was as a reckless fighter. “Hood is
getting ridd [
sic
] of Bragg’s worthless pets as fast as he can,” he informed Stephens, “but Davis supports a great number of them, and many
other incompts. are sent from other places to take their commands. Hood I think the very best of the generals of his school;
but like the rest of them he knows no more of business than a ten year old boy, and [I] don’t know who does know anything
about it.”
⁴³

Not knowing went straight to the top. Despite the losses, despite mounting evidence of the Georgia conspiracy, despite the
sorrowful shape of the Confederate war effort overall, one man still believed fervently that the South would win the war.
He was Jefferson Davis, and in his office in Richmond he was fed a regular diet of suspicious information and conclusions
that allowed him to believe such a thing regardless of what transpired on the battlefield. “The Northern mind, as a whole,
is in an extremely malleable condition,” S. J. Anderson, a clerk with Southern sympathies in the mayor’s office in New York
City, informed the Confederate president. “It fully appreciates the historical fact that Southern Statesmen and Southern policy
moulded the character and guided the prosperity of the country prior to the election of Lincoln, and they pant and sigh for
the restoration of that statesmanship and policy.”
⁴⁴
With that kind of idea in the Northern mind, how could the Confederacy, in the end, possibly lose?