Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  In Raleigh, Varina did more than write letters to her husband and look after children. The household she managed required her to keep track of expenses. The deaths of soldiers she knew, and their growing number, disturbed her and occasioned letters of condolence. Even so, she enjoyed an active social life, even commenting on the hospitality and kindness of the people in Raleigh, which made it “a pleasure to be with them.” Her basic personality had not changed, however. A luncheon host reported: “she is a very smart, intelligent and agreeable person, quite independent, says what she pleases and cuts at people generally.” She also found time for reading what she rightfully termed “solid books,” specifically the great New England historian John L. Motley’s The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The Lives of the Queens of Scotland by the English historical writer Agnes Strickland.48

  Varina’s full days did not bring her satisfaction with life in a place she depicted to a friend as “this N. Carolina Sleepy Hollow.” She wanted to get back to Richmond, to her husband and the capital. Although she did make a brief trip there in mid-July, another month passed before Jefferson decided conditions were safe enough for her permanent return.49

  When Jefferson Davis named Robert E. Lee to command his most visible army, he and Lee had already forged a mutual bond; but Lee had numerous doubters. His performance in western Virginia had been uninspiring, and protecting the South Carolina-Georgia coast did not equal leading an army in battle. Moreover, his private advice to the president had been private, and not available for public judgment. Davis had no doubts, however. He saw Lee in his own image—a man totally dedicated to the Confederacy, with no interest in seeking or gaining personal advantage. Lee never complained about assignment or rank; he also never became involved with Confederate politics, except when directed by the president on issues like conscription. Davis’s confidence in him was “unbounded.” In addition, president and general shared a common strategic vision and approach to the war. Both preferred the offensive, and they believed that risks had to be taken, “movements which are not without great hazard,” in Davis’s words. And to get “at the Enemy,” both were willing to take them. Convinced that military boldness was essential for Confederate victory, Davis grasped and applauded Lee’s audacity. After the war Davis avowed that between him and Lee “there was such entire accord that he wrote to me as fully as he thought.…”50

  In command of what he had termed the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee saw only one way to drive McClellan from the gates of Richmond and rescue the faltering Confederate standard. He would maneuver McClellan out of his fieldworks into the open. As he designed his strike, he developed the plan he and Davis had attempted to get Johnston to implement. Lee would mass his forces on McClellan’s right, threaten his supply lines resting on the York River, and force him to fight in the open, where Lee and the president thought the Confederates could prevail. Agreed on the need for a powerful thrust, they also concurred on bringing Jackson from the Valley to enhance their chances. To Varina, Davis wrote, “General Lee rises to the occasion … and seems to be equal to the conception.”51

  Just as Davis had confidence in Lee, the general trusted the president. Realizing that Johnston’s secretiveness had frustrated Davis, Lee always kept him fully informed on both his intentions and his actions. He understood the faith Davis had in him, and he respected his commander in chief as a man as well as president. As the great battle for Richmond loomed, Davis embraced Lee’s daring plan, which he had undoubtedly helped formulate, yet he began to worry that denuding the city’s defenses to augment Lee’s attack would gravely endanger the capital. Understanding the president’s anxiety, Lee reassured him, “Directions have been repeated to the Officers commanding the lines & batteries around Richmond to hold their positions at all hazards.” Late in life, Davis remembered Lee’s assurance that if McClellan did attack first, “before he reaches the outerworks of Richmond I will be upon his heels.” Lee’s skills as a subordinate equaled his ability as a commander.52

  With Lee so close, President Davis could indulge his penchant for visiting the army, the troops as well as the commanding general. As the June days passed, he detected a palpable improvement in morale. He and Lee enjoyed a friendly as well as respectful relationship, and the president came out often, perhaps too often. During the initial major engagement of the Seven Days, the battle for Richmond that lasted from June 25 until July 2, Davis appeared with an entourage at the scene of heavy fighting, shots whizzing all about. Facing this cavalcade, a formally correct Lee saluted and asked the president to whose army the group belonged. A startled Davis answered that it was not his army. Thereupon Lee replied that neither was it part of his army and certainly it was in the wrong place. Now composed, Davis responded that if he withdrew, all would probably follow; the president then promptly retreated out of Lee’s sight. Davis never revealed any hard feelings, underscoring the rapport that had developed between the two men.53

  The Seven Days had enormous consequences. Lee did not succeed in destroying McClellan’s army or even in cutting its supply lines, for McClellan shifted his base to the James River. Lee had, of course, turned back the immediate threat to Richmond, but, more important, he had seized the initiative for the Confederacy. A pleased Jefferson Davis wrote glowingly to his wife of Lee’s achievement. He had found a general who not only comprehended his view of the war but had proved his mettle on the battlefield. In a fundamental sense Lee replaced the dead Sidney Johnston. Davis viewed Lee as a confidant and friend, not just as a superb general. When Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, he no longer retained an office in the War Department. His appointment as military adviser to the president was never formally terminated, though Davis later recalled that because of Lee’s repeated requests he did relieve him of the responsibility. In fact, the basic relationship between the commander in chief and his senior general in the field never changed. Davis regularly called on Lee for counsel on matters far removed from the Army of Northern Virginia, and until the end Lee remained the president’s closest military adviser.54

  While President Davis had a profoundly successful search for a general in the East, he did not have the same good fortune in the West. After Shiloh, Beauregard fell back to Corinth, the strategic rail junction in northeastern Mississippi. Calling this critically important town the key to the lower Mississippi Valley, Beauregard proclaimed to the War Department he would hold it “to the last extremity.” He faced a difficult task, for a huge Federal force under Major General Henry W. Halleck, the overall Union commander in the West, was making its way toward Corinth. Much like McClellan in Virginia, Halleck approached slowly and cautiously, but he came closer and closer to Corinth. Even though he had been reinforced since Shiloh, Beauregard was outnumbered by at least two to one. He could not possibly withstand a siege or a direct assault. Like Lee before Richmond, his only hope lay in maneuver and quick strikes to disrupt and possibly defeat his enemy. Unlike Lee, Beauregard considered the risks in such a campaign far too great. As a result, he adopted the only course he left himself: retreat.55

  He withdrew fifty miles south to Tupelo. News of his withdrawal shocked Davis. This general who bragged about how vigorously he would defend a site he deemed essential had departed without firing a shot. When pressed to explain his retrograde movement, Beauregard pleaded that the urgency of his business precluded an early explanation. His pride in the mastery of his retreat did not boost him in Davis’s opinion. Davis wrote to Varina, “there are those who can only walk a log when it is near to the ground, and I fear he has been placed too high for his mental strength, as he does not exhibit the ability manifested on smaller fields.” He dispatched an officer from his personal staff to inspect the army and obtain answers to a series of written questions about Beauregard’s actions. The president also began thinking about whether to reassign this general who talked and wrote, but did not fight.56

  Thus, Davis was appalled to learn in mid-June that without requesting permission from the War De
partment or even prior notification Beauregard had placed himself on sick leave, departed for a salubrious resort, and turned his army over to his second-in-command, Braxton Bragg. To Davis, who knew something about illness on the job, this smacked of dereliction of duty. He did not hide his feelings, sarcastically telling Varina “the sedentary life at Corinth must have been hard to bear.…” In the cabinet, talk was of abandonment, absence without leave, desertion. In Davis’s view, Beauregard had once more placed his own personal concerns ahead of duty and cause, this time in a crucial situation. If Beauregard believed his army could do without him, Davis concurred. On June 20 he relieved Beauregard and moved Bragg from interim to permanent commander.57

  Beauregard was furious. Believing his removal solely the result of a presidential vendetta, he castigated Davis as “that living specimen of gall and hatred.” He called on his political allies to rescue him, asserting that if they did not, “I shall think but poorly of them & of human nature.” Later the two senators from Louisiana did present to the president a petition with sixty congressional signatures decrying the general’s removal and urging his reappointment. From that moment Beauregard was convinced that Davis would never give him a fair chance. Over time his enmity only hardened, and the gulf between general and president steadily deepened.58

  Sacking Beauregard meant appointing another commanding general, and Davis had no doubt as to the proper man. The new chief in Tupelo had been with the army since before Shiloh. A West Pointer, the forty-five-year-old Bragg had fought in Mexico, where his artillery battery had a vital role at Buena Vista. After his marriage to a Louisiana sugar heiress, he used her resources to buy his own sugarcane plantation, which he left the army to manage. Upon secession he became commander first of Louisiana state forces and subsequently of Confederate Pensacola. A stern man, with a bad temper and little sense of humor, the bushy-browed Bragg was no hail-fellow-well-met, but he was a tough, effective trainer of troops and a superb organizer. At this point Bragg enjoyed a good reputation in the army and had even been promoted to full general after Shiloh. Not knowing Davis well, he doubted that the president had a good impression of him, though his brother Thomas had served as attorney general between November 1861 and March 1862.59

  But Davis did look favorably upon Bragg, forming his opinion early in the war. Based on what he had learned in late 1861 about units trained by Bragg at Pensacola, he considered the general the best commander of volunteer troops in the entire Confederate army. His confidence grew so that by early 1862, he believed Bragg one of his ablest generals. Moreover, he thought Bragg was honest and direct with him. From close friends and family members he received positive reports on Bragg’s performance at Shiloh and in Mississippi. But even more important, Davis perceived Bragg as the opposite of Beauregard, a general who placed the cause before self. During the initial months of the war, Bragg never complained about his station in a backwater. He diligently trained troops and sent them off to other generals who had the prospect of directing them in battle. Bragg seemed to have that most valuable combination, ability and commitment. Davis could hope his new western leader could become a second Lee.60

  While Bragg was familiarizing himself with his responsibilities, Lee in Virginia confronted new dangers. Although he had thwarted McClellan’s advance and seized the initiative, the Federal general remained on the Peninsula with his massive army. In guarding against McClellan’s resurgence, Lee learned that another Union force under Major General John Pope was moving southward from Washington into central Virginia. To counter Pope’s advance, Lee in mid-July dispatched 15,000 troops under Stonewall Jackson, but kept most of his army in front of Richmond. A month later Lee recognized that Pope constituted a major threat and marched with the bulk of his force toward this new menace. President Davis did not stop his general because he realized the necessity of this decision.

  McClellan did get underway, but not toward the capital; instead, he withdrew down the James River and up the Chesapeake Bay from whence he came. With McClellan heading toward a possible junction with Pope, Lee knew he had to move quickly. Employing a daring maneuver to get to Pope’s rear, he drew the Federal commander all the way back to Manassas. On the site of the first great Confederate victory, Lee gained another stunning triumph, the Battle of Second Manassas, on August 29 and 30. Through all of his marching and fighting, Lee kept Davis fully informed, writing almost daily. The president never doubted. With every confidence in this general, he worried only about Lee’s personal safety.61

  Fresh from his battlefield success, Lee contemplated his course. Within a few days he decided to lead the first major Confederate advance into Maryland. On September 3 he wrote the president of his plans, emphasizing “we cannot afford to be idle,” even though he did not consider his army “properly equipped” for a full-scale invasion. The very next day, Lee sent another message underscoring his convictions about the benefits of crossing the Potomac River. Unless the president overruled him, he would move into Maryland, and if all went well advance into Pennsylvania. By September 6, he was across the Potomac.62

  Although Lee never received specific authorization for his undertaking, he had no reason to doubt presidential approval. Never during the Maryland campaign or thereafter did Davis express any reservation about the propriety of Lee’s decision. Moreover, just after the Seven Days he voiced his hope that the Confederate success could lead to an invasion of Maryland, a hope Lee shared. To an officer, Davis confided that Lee “is fully alive to the advantage of the present opportunity, and will, I am sure, cordially sustain and boldly execute my wishes to the full extent of his power.”

  Not only did Davis approve, he attempted to join Lee. Despite Lee’s warning about the hazards of the journey, even the possibility of capture because of the continued Federal presence in northern Virginia, Davis left Richmond on the morning of September 7. But when he reached Warrenton, he realized that Lee was too far away, and the next day he returned to the capital.63

  As Lee entered Maryland, Braxton Bragg had begun a massive offensive that would carry him all the way from Tupelo to Kentucky. Taking command of the Army of Tennessee, Bragg faced the same overwhelming Union numbers that had caused Beauregard to fall back from Corinth. The War Department told Bragg he could adopt the strategy he thought best. Apprised about Bragg’s army by the report of an aide sent out to inspect it, President Davis hoped General Halleck would divide his force, giving Bragg the opportunity to attack a portion of his enemy. Halleck did just that when he dispatched a substantial segment under Major General Don Carlos Buell eastward to Chattanooga, Tennessee, an important rail junction and the gateway to Atlanta.64

  Eastern Theater, July-December 1862.

  From W. J. Cooper and T. E. Terrill, The American South: A History (2d ed.), with permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies

  Bragg had worked on organization and training and now felt his army ready for action, though he had not been permitted to reshape his officer corps fully. He requested that the president waive regulations requiring promotion by seniority so that meritorious young generals could be advanced to replace some less able senior men. Among those Bragg had in mind in the latter category was his ranking major general and Davis’s friend Leonidas Polk, who detested his commander. Davis would not relax the rule, however.65

  Considering his options, Bragg decided on an imaginative and daring plan. When the Confederate commander in East Tennessee called for help, Bragg dispatched a division. The rail trip from Tupelo to Chattanooga was long and involved—some 800 miles, south to Mobile, by ferry across Mobile Bay, up to Montgomery, over to Atlanta, and finally Chattanooga. In addition, different gauges on the rail lines necessitated several changes of trains. Bragg watched this single division make a successful transit and then decided to follow with the bulk of his command. Reaching Chattanooga before Buell would not only secure the city but also open up the possibility of a Confederate advance into middle Tennessee or even into Kentucky. In an impressive operation Bragg put
his infantry into motion on July 21, transferred it to Chattanooga in less than three weeks, and arrived ahead of Buell.

  Like Lee, Bragg did not ask for Davis’s specific permission to implement his strategy, but he too kept the president informed. Davis was delighted with the possibility that the Confederates could retake Tennessee and possibly move into Kentucky. He was also satisfied that Bragg had left a sufficient force in Mississippi to protect the state, and even to mount a concurrent advance into western Tennessee.66

  In Chattanooga, Bragg thought about his movement northward and attempted to coordinate operations with Major General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Department of East Tennessee. A full general, Bragg outranked Smith, only a major general, but the War Department issued no order extending his official authority over Smith’s department. When they were together, Bragg was clearly in charge, but when apart, the relationship turned murky. The trouble stemmed in part from army organization. In structuring army commands, Davis basically used geographical boundaries, the system widely employed in the pre-1860 U.S. Army and by his opponents between 1861 and 1865. These departments could be huge or small and their limits could change. Sidney Johnston’s Department No. 2 had originally extended from the Appalachians across the Mississippi; after his death and Beauregard’s dismissal, it eventually became several departments, including the Department of East Tennessee. Each departmental commander reported directly to the War Department in Richmond, in reality to President Davis, who was literally as well as constitutionally commander in chief.