The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis

by Thomas Dixon

  CHAPTER XL

  IN SIGHT OF VICTORY

  When Grant crossed the Rapidan with his army of one hundred forty-onethousand one hundred and sixty men Lee faced him with sixty-fourthousand. The problem of saving Richmond from the tremendous force underthe personal command of the most successful general of the North was notthe only danger which threatened the Confederate Capital. Butler waspressing from the Peninsula with forty thousand men along the line ofMcClellan's old march, supported again by the navy.

  Jefferson Davis knew the task before Lee to be a gigantic one yet he didnot believe that Grant would succeed in reaching Richmond.

  The moment the Federal general crossed the Rapidan and threw his armyinto the tangled forest of the Wilderness, Lee sprang from the junglesat his throat.

  Battle followed battle in swift and terrible succession. At Cold Harborthirty days later the climax came. Grant lost ten thousand men in twentyminutes. The Northern general had set out to hammer Lee to death bysteady, remorseless pounding. At the end of a month he had lost morethan sixty thousand men and Lee's army was as strong as when the fightbegan.

  Grant's campaign to take Richmond was the bloodiest and most tragicfailure in the history of war. The North in bitter anguish demanded hisremoval from command. Lincoln stubbornly refused to interfere with hisbulldog fighter. He sent him word to hold on and chew and choke.

  As Grant in his whirl of blood approached the old battle grounds ofMcClellan, Davis rode out daily to confer with Lee. He was never morecheerful--never surer of the safety of his Capital. His faith in God andthe certainty that he would in the end give victory to a cause so justand holy grew in strength with the report from each glorious field. Nodoubt of the right or justice of his cause ever entered his mind. Dayand night he repeated the lines of his favorite hymn:

  "I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand, Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand."

  Again and again he said to his wife half in soliloquy, half in exaltedprayer:

  "We can conquer a peace against the world in arms and keep the rights offreemen if we are worthy of the privilege!"

  The spirit which animated the patriotic soldiers who followed theircommander in this bloody campaign was in every way as high as that whichinspired their President.

  Jennie spent an hour each day ministering to the sick prisoners who hadreturned from the North and were unable to go further than Richmond. Itwas her service of love for Jimmie's friends and comrades.

  A poor fellow was dying of the want he had endured in prison. He liftedhis dimmed eyes to hers:

  "Will you write to my wife for me, Miss?"

  "Yes--yes--I will."

  "And give her my love--"

  He paused for breath and fumbled in his pocket.

  "I've a letter from her here--read it before you write. Our little girlhad malaria. She tried willow tea and everything she could think of forthe chills. The doctor said nothin' but quinine could save her. Shecouldn't get it, the blockade was too tight, and so our baby died--andnow I'm dyin' and my poor starvin' girl will have nothin' to comforther--but--"

  He gasped and lifted himself on his elbow.

  "If our folks can just quit free men, it's all right. It's all right!"

  The women and children of Richmond were suffering now for food. TheThirteenth Virginia regiment sent Billy Barton into the city with acontribution for their relief.

  Billy delivered it to Jennie with more than a boy's pride. There wassomething bigger in the quiet announcement he made.

  "Here's one day's rations from the regiment, sis," he said--"all ourflour, pork, bacon and meal. The boys are fasting to-day. It's theirlove offering to those we've left at home--"

  Jennie kissed him.

  "It's beautiful of you and your men, boy. Give my love to them all andtell them I'm proud to be their countrywoman--"

  "And they're proud of their country and their General, too--maybe youwouldn't believe it--but every regiment in Lee's army has reenlisted forthe war."

  She seized Billy's hand.

  "Come with me--I want you to see the President and tell him what yourregiment has done. It'll help him."

  As they approached the White House a long, piercing scream came throughthe open windows.

  "What on earth?" Jennie exclaimed.

  "An accident of some kind," the boy answered, seizing her arm andhurrying forward. Every window and door of the big lonely house setapart on its hill swung wide open, the lights streaming through them,the wind blowing the curtains through the windows. The lights blazedeven in the third story.

  Mrs. Burton Harrison, the wife of the President's Secretary, met them atthe door, her eyes red with weeping.

  She pressed Jennie's hand.

  "Little Joe has been killed--"

  "Mrs. Davis' beautiful boy--impossible!"

  "He climbed over the bannisters and fell to the brick pavement and dieda few minutes after his mother reached his side--"

  The girl could make no answer. She had come on a sudden impulse to cheerthe lonely leader of her people. Perhaps his need in this dark hour hadcalled her. She thought of Socola's story of his mother's vision andwondered with a sudden pang of self-pity where the man she loved wasto-night.

  This beautiful child, named in honor of his favorite brother, was thegreatest joy of the badgered soul of the Confederate leader.

  Suddenly his white face appeared at the head of the stairs. A courierhad come from the battlefield with an important dispatch. Grant and Leewere locked in their death grapple in the Wilderness. He would try evenin this solemn hour to do his whole duty.

  He passed the sympathetic group murmuring a sentence whose pathosbrought the tears again to Jennie's eyes.

  "Not my will, O Lord, but thine--thine--thine!"

  He took the dispatch from the courier's hand and held it open for sometime, staring at it with fixed gaze.

  He searched the courier's face and asked pathetically:

  "Will you tell me, my friend, what is in it--I--I--cannot read--"

  The courier read the message in low tones. A great battle was joined.The fate of a nation hung on its issue. The stricken man drew from hispocket a tiny gold pencil and tried to write an answer--stopped suddenlyand pressed his hand on his heart.

  Billy sprang to his side and seized the dispatch:

  "I'll take the message to General Cooper--Mr. President--"

  The white face turned to the young soldier and looked at him pitifully:

  "Thank you, my son--thank you--it is best--I must have this hour withour little boy--leave me with my dead!"

  Jennie stayed to help the stricken home.

  She took little Jeff in her arms to rock him to sleep. He drew her headdown and whispered:

  "Miss Jennie, I got to Joe first after he fell. I knelt down beside himand said all the prayers I know--but God wouldn't wake him!"

  The girl drew the child close and kissed the reddened eyes. Over herhead beat the steady tramp of the father's feet, back and forth, backand forth, a wounded lion in his cage. The windows and doors were stillwide open, the curtains waving wan and ghost-like from their hangings.

  Two days later she followed the funeral procession to thecemetery--thousands of children, each child with a green bough or bunchof flowers to pile on the red mound.

  A beautiful girl pushed her way to Jennie's side and lifted a handful ofsnowdrops.

  "Please put these on little Joe," she said wistfully. "I knew him sowell."

  With a sob the child turned and fled. Jennie never learned her name.She turned to the grave again, her gaze fixed on the striking figure ofthe grief-stricken father, bare-headed, straight as an arrow, his fineface silhouetted against the shining Southern sky. The mother stood backamid the shadows, in her somber wrappings, her tall figure drooped inpitiful grief.

  The leader turned quickly from his personal sorrows to those of hiscountry, his indomitable courage rising to greater heights as dangersthickened.

  Two weeks l
ater General Sheridan attempted what Dahlgren tried andfailed to accomplish.

  The President hurried from his office to his home, seized his pistols,mounted his horse and rode out to join Generals Gracie and Ransom whowere placing their skeleton brigades to repulse the attack.

  The crack of rifles could be distinctly heard from the ExecutiveMansion.

  The mother called her children to prayers. As little Jeff knelt heraised his chubby face and said with solemn earnestness:

  "You had better have my pony saddled, and let me go out and helpfather--we can pray afterwards!"

  In driving Sheridan's cavalry back from Richmond General Stuart fell atYellow Tavern mortally wounded--the bravest of the brave--a full MajorGeneral who had won immortal fame at thirty-one years of age. Hisbeautiful wife, the daughter of a Union General, Philip St. GeorgeCooke, could not reach his bedside before he breathed his last.

  The President reverently entered the death chamber and stood for fifteenminutes holding the hand of his brilliant young commander.

  They told him that he could not live to see his wife.

  "I should have liked to have seen her," he said gently, "but God's willbe done."

  The doctor felt his fast fading pulse.

  "Doctor, I suppose I'm going fast now," Stuart said. "It will soon beover. I hope I have fulfilled my duty to my country and my God--"

  "Your end is near, General Stuart," the doctor responded softly.

  "All right," was the even answer. "I'll end my little affairs down here.To Mrs. Robert E. Lee I give my gold spurs, in eternal memory of thelove I bear my glorious Chief. To my staff, my horses--"

  He paused and turned to the heavier officer who stood with bowed head.

  "You take the larger one--he'll carry you better. To my son I leave mysword--"

  He was silent a moment and then said with an effort:

  "Now I want you to sing for me the song I love best:

  "'Rock of ages cleft for me Let me hide myself in thee'"--

  With his fast-failing breath he joined in the song, turned and murmured:

  "I'm going fast now--God's will be done--"

  So passed the greatest cavalry leader our country has produced--a manwhose joyous life was one long feast of good will toward his fellow men.

  * * * * *

  In spite of all losses, in spite of four years of frightful carnage, inspite of the loss of the Mississippi, the States of Louisiana andTennessee, the Confederacy was in sight of victory.

  Lee had baffled Grant's great army at every turn and now held himsecurely at bay before Petersburg. The North was mortally tired of thebloody struggle. The party which demanded peace was greater than anypolitical division--it included thousands of the best men in the partyof Abraham Lincoln.

  The nomination of General McClellan for President on a platformdeclaring the war a failure and demanding that it end was a foregoneconclusion. Jefferson Davis knew this from inside information hisfriends had sent from every section of the North.

  The Confederacy had only to hold its lines intact until the first Mondayin November and the Northern voters would end the war.

  The one point of mortal danger to the South lay in the mental structureof Joseph E. Johnston, the man whom Davis had been persuaded, againsthis better judgment, to appoint to the command of one of the greatestarmies the Confederacy had ever put into the field.

  Johnston had been sent to Dalton, Georgia, and placed in command ofsixty-eight thousand picked Confederate soldiers with which to attackand drive Sherman out of the lower South.

  Lee with sixty-four thousand had defeated Grant's one hundred and fortythousand. Richmond was safe, and the North was besieging Washington withan army of heart-broken mothers and fathers who demanded Grant'sremoval.

  No effort was spared by Davis to enable Johnston to stay Sherman'sadvance and assume the offensive. The whole military strength of theSouth and West was pressed forward to him. His commissary and ordnancedepartments were the best in the Confederacy. His troops were eager toadvance and retrieve the disaster at Missionary Ridge--the first andonly case of panic and cowardice that had marred the brilliant record ofthe Confederacy.

  The position of Johnston's army was one of commanding strength. Longmountain ranges, with few and difficult passes, made it next toimpossible for Sherman to turn his flank or dislodge him by directattack. Sherman depended for his supplies on a single line of railroadfrom Nashville.

  Davis confidently believed that Johnston could crush Sherman in thefirst pitched battle and render his position untenable.

  And then began the most remarkable series of retreats recorded in thehistory of war.

  Without a blow and without waiting for an attack, Johnston suddenlywithdrew from his trenches at Dalton and ran eighteen miles into theinterior of Georgia. He stopped at Resaca in a strong position on apeninsula formed by the junction of two rivers fortified by rifle pitsand earthworks.

  He gave this up and ran thirteen miles further into Georgia toAdairsville. Not liking the looks of Adairsville he struck camp and ranto Cassville seventeen miles.

  He then declared he would fight Sherman at Kingston. Sherman failing todivide his army, as Johnston had supposed he would, he changed his mindand ran beyond Etowah. He next retreated to Alatoona. Here Shermanspread out his army, threatened Marietta and Johnston ran again.

  On July fifth he ran from Kenesaw Mountain and took refuge behind theChattahoochee River.

  From Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Adairsville, from Adairsville toAlatoona (involving the loss of Kingston and Rome with their mills,foundries and military stores), from Alatoona to Kenesaw, from Kenesawto the Chattahoochee and then tumbled into the trenches before Atlanta.

  Retreat had followed retreat for two months and a half over one hundredand fifty miles to the gates of Atlanta without a single pitchedbattle!

  Davis watched this tragedy unfold its appalling scenes with increasingbitterness, disappointment and alarm.

  The demand for Johnston's removal was overwhelming in the State ofGeorgia whose gate city was now besieged by Sherman. The people of thewhole South had watched this retreat of a hundred and fifty miles intotheir territory with sickening hearts.

  Again Johnston began his nagging and complaining to the Richmondauthorities. His most important message was an accusation of disloyaltyagainst Joseph E. Brown. He telegraphed in blunt plain English:

  "The Governor of Georgia refuses me provisions and the use of hisroads."

  Brown answered:

  "The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have furnishedhim abundantly with provisions."

  The President of the Confederacy now faced the most dangerous and tragicdecision of his entire administration. The removal of Johnston from hiscommand before Sherman's victorious army in the heart of Georgia couldbe justified only on the grounds of the sternest necessity. TheCommanding General not only had the backing of his powerful junta inRichmond who were now busy with their conspiracy to establish adictatorship and oust the President from his office, but he wasimmensely popular with his army. His care for his soldiers was fatherly.His painful efforts to save their lives, even at the cost of the loss ofhis country, were duly appreciated by the leaders of opinion in thearmy. Johnston had the power to draw and hold the good will of the menwho surrounded him. He had the power, too, of infecting his men with hislikes and dislikes. His hatred of Davis had been for three years theone mania of his sulking mind.

  To remove him from command in such a crisis was to challenge a mutiny inhis army which might lead to serious results. Yet if he should continueto retreat, and back out of Atlanta without a fight as he had backed outof every position for the one hundred and fifty miles from Dalton, theresults would be still more appalling.

  The loss of Atlanta at this moment meant the defeat of the peace partyof the North, and the reelection of Lincoln. If Lincoln should beelected it was inconceivable that the South could continue the unequalstruggle for four years more.<
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  If Johnston would only hold his trenches and save Atlanta for a few daysthe South would win. Lee could hold Grant indefinitely.

  The thought which appalled Davis was the suspicion which now amounted toa practical certainty that his retreating General would evacuate Atlantaas he had threatened to abandon Richmond when confronted by McClellan,and had abandoned Vicksburg without a blow.

  He must know this with absolute certainty before yielding to the demandfor his removal. That no possible mistake could be made, he dispatchedhis Chief of Staff, General Braxton Bragg, to Atlanta for conferencewith Johnston and make a personal report.

  Bragg reported that Johnston was arranging to abandon Atlanta without abattle and the President promptly removed him from command and appointedHood in his place.

  When Hood assumed command of the disgruntled army, it was too late tosave Atlanta. Had Johnston delivered battle with his full force atDalton, Sherman might have been crushed as Rosecrans was overwhelmed atChickamauga.

  Hood's army was driven back into their trenches. Sherman threw his hostsunder cover of night on a wide flanking movement and Atlanta fell.

  Under the mighty impulse of this news Lincoln was reelected, the peaceparty of the North defeated and the doom of the Confederacy sealed.