Embattled Rebel

by James M. McPherson

  18.Davis to governors, Apr. 10, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:230; Joseph E. Brown to Davis, Apr. 10, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:139; Davis to Brown, Apr. 11, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:230.

  19.Beauregard to Samuel Cooper, May 19, 1862, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 10, pt. 2:529–30.

  20.Beauregard to Cooper, June 12, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:245n; Davis to Varina Davis, June 13, 1862, ibid., 8:243–44.

  21.Davis to William Preston Johnston, June 14, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:279–80.

  22.Davis to Bragg, copy to Beauregard, June 20, 1862, ibid., 283. See also Crist, PJD, 8:254, and T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1955), 156–58.

  23.Beauregard to Thomas Jordan, July 12, 1862, in Williams, Beauregard, 161.

  24.Crist, PJD, 8:119–20; Archer Jones, Confederate Strategy from Shiloh to Vicksburg (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 46–49; George Green Shackelford, George Wythe Randolph and the Confederate Elite (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 120–21; Frank E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags: The Epic of the Confederacy (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1970), 131.

  25.Brown to Davis, May 8, June 21, 1862, O.R., ser. 4, vol. 1:1116–20, 1156–69.

  26.Davis to Brown, May 29, July 10, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:254–62, 292–93.

  27.Davis’s inaugural address, ibid., 5:199.

  28.James M. Mathews, ed., Public Laws of the Confederate States of America (Richmond, Va., 1862), 1.

  29.Mark E. Neely, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 167.

  30.Davis to Joseph E. Johnston, Feb. 19, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:197.

  31.Steven E. Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 94–105; Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 136–38; letters and telegrams in Crist, PJD, 8:56, 67–68, 76, 81–82; Davis to Joseph Johnston, Mar. 10, 15, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:214, 222.

  32.Davis to Robert E. Lee, Mar. 2, 1862, Lee to Davis, Mar. 2, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:75, 76.

  33.Ibid., 8:99; Cooper, Davis, 379–80; Paul D. Escott, Military Necessity: Civil-Military Relations in the Confederacy (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006), 61.

  34.Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 112–17; Joseph Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998), 36–37; Symonds, Johnston, 141–42.

  35.Davis to Joseph Johnston, May 1, 11, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:239–40; Crist, PJD, 8:170–71.

  36.William K. Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972–89), 2:308, entry of May 19, 1862; Helen Keary to her mother, May 7, 1862, in Edward A. Pollard, Southern History of the War, 2 vols. (New York: C. B. Richardson, 1866), 1:381–82.

  37.Davis to Varina Davis, May 9, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:168–69 and n; John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Howard Swiggett, 2 vols. (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 1:126, entry of May 19, 1862.

  38.Davis to Joseph Johnston, May 11, 1862, Johnston to his wife, May 12, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:170–71 and 172n. See also Davis to Varina Davis, May 13, 1862, ibid., 8:174.

  39.Letter headnote, ibid., 8:168; Cooper, Davis, 388.

  40.Richmond Examiner, May 19, 1862, in Trexler, “The Davis Administration and the Richmond Press,” 184.

  41.Davis to Joseph Johnston, May 17, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:184–85.

  42.John H. Reagan, Memoirs, with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War (reprint of 1906 ed., Austin, Tex.: Pemberton Press, 1968), 138–39; Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 133–34.

  43.Davis to Varina Davis, May 19, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:248.

  44.Reagan, Memoirs, 139.

  45.Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 1:127, entry of May 20, 1862.

  46.Davis to Johnston, May 23, 1862, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 11, pt. 3:536; Davis to Varina Davis, May 28, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:252–54.

  47.Davis to Varina Davis, May 30, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:203.

  48.Johnston to Louis T. Wigfall, Nov. 12, 1863, in Symonds, Johnston, 154.

  49.Memphis [Grenada] Appeal, June 9, 1862, in Crist, PJD, 8:208.

  50.Davis to Lee, June 1, 1862, Davis to Varina Davis, June 2, 1862, ibid., 207, 209.

  3. WAR SO GIGANTIC

  1.Richmond Dispatch, May 6, 1862, Charleston Mercury, May 8, 1862, quoted in Richard Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 65.

  2.Joseph Brown to Jefferson Davis, May 3, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:162; Davis to Brown, May 5, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:241–42.

  3.Robert E. Lee to Davis, June 5, 10, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:225–26, 235; Steven E. Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 154; Joseph Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998), 54.

  4.Davis to Varina Davis, June 11, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:235–36.

  5.Slightly different versions of this incident were told by Burton Harrison, Davis’s private secretary, and by James Chesnut, both of whom were present. Constance Cary Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 72–73; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 410–11, diary entry of July 10, 1862.

  6.James I. Robertson, General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (New York: Random House, 1987), 88.

  7.Crist, PJD, 8:275–76.

  8.Davis to John Forsyth, July 18, 1862, ibid., 8:293–95; Davis to Col. J. Foster Marshall, July 11, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:293.

  9.Davis to Edmund Kirby Smith, July 28, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:305.

  10.Davis to Lee, Aug. 26, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:330. See also Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising, 143–44.

  11.Lee to Davis, Sept. 3, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:373–74.

  12.Lee to Davis, Sept. 8, 1862, in Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 301.

  13.William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 468–69; Crist, PJD, 8:379–89; Davis to Lee, Sept. 28, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:409.

  14.Braxton Bragg to Davis, July 21, 22, Crist, PJD, 8:298, 299.

  15.Davis to Edmund Kirby Smith, June 25, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:286.

  16.Davis to Kirby Smith, July 28, 1862, Davis to Bragg, Aug. 5, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:305, 322.

  17.O.R., ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 2:596, 601–2.

  18.Rowland, JDC, 5:338–39. Rowland dates this document Sept. 19, 1862, but Crist, PJD, 8:366, more convincingly dates it Sept. 12.

  19.Bragg to Davis, Oct. 2, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:417. See also ibid., 8:419n.

  20.Davis to Theophilus Holmes, Oct. 21, 1862, ibid., 8:454–55; Robert Garlick Hill Kean, Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean, ed. Edward Younger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 28, 86, entries of Oct. 19, 1862, July 27, 1863.

  21.Davis to Zebulon Vance, Oct. 17, 1862, Frontis W. Johnston and Joe A. Mobley, eds., The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance, 2 vols. (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1963–95), 1:268–69; Davis to John C. Pemberton, June 4, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:267.

  22.John Milton to Davis, Oct. 10, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:438; Davis to John G. Shorter, Oct. 28, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:361.

  23.Thomas O. Moore to Davis, June 2, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:212–15. See also Davis to Lucien J. Dupree, Oct. 11, 1862, and Thomas O. Moore to Davis, Dec. 1, 1862, ibid., 8:352–53, 525.

  24.Proclamation of Arkansas governor, ibid., 8:1
94n.

  25.Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 31–32; Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 66–67; Mark E. Neely, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 24–25; Davis to Earl Van Dorn, May 20, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:193–94; Davis’s endorsement on a letter from Thomas Moore, July 10, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:287; Davis to Francis R. Lubbock, Aug. 15, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:318.

  26.Davis to Holmes, Dec. 21, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:561–62.

  27.Holmes to Davis, Dec. 29, 1862, ibid., 8:585; Harris Flanagin to Davis, Jan. 5, 1863, ibid., 9:10.

  28.Davis to Holmes, Jan. 28, 1863, ibid., 8:587n.

  29.Diary of Robert G. H. Kean, 100, entry of Aug. 23, 1863; John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Howard Swiggett, 2 vols. (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 1:204, 44, entries of Dec. 4, 1862, May 26, 1861.

  30.Stephen Mallory’s diary, entry of Sept. 19, 1862, Mallory to his son “Buddy,” Sept. 27, 1865, in Joseph T. Durkin, Stephen R. Mallory: Confederate Navy Chief (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 249, 176.

  31.Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 1:190, entry of Nov. 15, 1862; Diary of Robert G. H. Kean, 30–31, entry of Nov. 25, 1862.

  32.George Green Shackelford, George Wythe Randolph and the Confederate Elite (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 44–45.

  33.Davis to George W. Randolph, Nov. 12, 14, 1862, Rowland, JDC, 5:369, 371–72; Randolph to Davis, Nov. 15, 1862, Davis to Randolph, Nov. 15, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:495–96.

  34.Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 1:190, entry of Nov. 17, 1862.

  35.Diary of Robert G. H. Kean, 153, entry of May 30, 1864.

  36.Davis to Bragg, Aug. 5, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:321–22.

  37.Davis to Edmund Kirby Smith, Oct. 29, 1862, ibid, 8:468–70.

  38.William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 412–14; W. C. Davis, Davis, 475–76; Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 173–80.

  39.W. C. Davis, Davis, 481–84; Cooper, Davis, 415–17; Archer Jones, Confederate Strategy from Shiloh to Vicksburg (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), 117–18, 125.

  40.Davis to Lee, Dec. 8, 1862, Crist, PJD, 8:553.

  41.Rowland, JDC, 5:114; Crist, PJD, 7:416–17.

  42.Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 179–80.

  43.Crist, PJD, 8:566–67, 9:11–13.

  44.O.R., ser. 1, vol. 15:906–8.

  45.Rowland, JDC, 5:408–11.

  46.General H. W. Mercer to General Thomas Jordan, Nov. 14, 1862, James Seddon to General P. G. T. Beauregard, Nov. 30, 1862, O. R., ser. 2, vol. 4:945–46, 954.

  47.Crist, PJD, 8:575.

  4. THE CLOUDS ARE DARK OVER US

  1.O.R., ser. 1, vol. 20, pt. 1:662; vol. 52, pt. 1:402.

  2.Jefferson Davis to Joseph E. Johnston, Jan. 21, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:35; Davis to Johnston, Jan. 22, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:420–21.

  3.Leonidas Polk to Davis, Feb. 4, 1863, Bragg to Davis, Jan. 17, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:50–51, 28.

  4.Johnston to Louis T. Wigfall, Jan. 26, 1863, in Louise Wigfall, A Southern Girl in ’61: The Wartime Memories of a Confederate Senator’s Daughter (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905), 122–23.

  5.Johnston to Davis, Feb. 3, 12, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:48–49, 59–60.

  6.Davis to Johnston, Feb. 19, 1863, ibid., 9:66–67.

  7.O.R., ser. 1, vol. 23, pt. 2:674; William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 423.

  8.Johnston to Davis, Apr. 10, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:137.

  9.Davis to Robert E. Lee, May 4, 1863, Davis to Joseph Davis, May 7, 1863, ibid., 9:165, 167.

  10.Davis to Johnston, Jan. 7, 1863, Davis to Joseph Davis, May 7, 1863, ibid., 9:17, 166.

  11.James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1895), 218; Lee to James Seddon, May 10, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:179.

  12.Steven E. Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 227–33; John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Howard Swiggett, 2 vols. (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 1:325–26, entries of May 15 and 16, 1863; John H. Reagan, Memoirs, with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War (reprint of 1906 ed., Austin, Tex.: Pemberton Press, 1968), 121–22, 150–51.

  13.Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, ed., The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857–1878 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 57, entry of Mar. 23, 1863.

  14.James Seddon to Johnston, May 9, 1863, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 23, pt. 2:825–26; Johnston to Seddon, May 13, 16, ibid., vol. 24, pt. 1:215–16.

  15.Davis to John C. Pemberton, May 7, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:482; Steven E. Woodworth, Jefferson Davis and His Generals (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 206–7; James R. Arnold, Presidents Under Fire: Commanders in Chief in Victory and Defeat (New York: Orion Books, 1994), 170.

  16.Rowland, JDC, 5:489–90; Crist, PJD, 9:186–200, 202–3, 215–19, 239–40.

  17.Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 201; Michael B. Ballard, Pemberton: A Biography (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 177.

  18.Quotations in Samuel Carter, The Final Fortress: The Campaign for Vicksburg 1862–1863 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 207, and Peter F. Walker, Vicksburg: A People at War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 187–88.

  19.Johnston to Seddon, June 15, 1863, Seddon to Johnston, June 16, 1863, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 1:227; Robert Garlick Hill Kean, Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean, ed. Edward Younger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), entry of June 14, 1863.

  20.Wiggins, Journals of Gorgas, 74, entry of July 17, 1863.

  21.Davis to Johnston, July 8, 11, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:264, 271; Richard M. McMurry, “‘The Enemy at Richmond’: Joseph E. Johnston and the Confederate Government,” in John T. Hubbell, ed., Conflict and Command (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2012), 198.

  22.Davis to Robert W. Johnson, July 14, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:276; Davis to Theophilus Holmes, July 15, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:555.

  23.Davis to Johnston, July 15, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:556–63; Johnston to Davis, Aug. 8, 1863, O.R., ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 1:209–13; Symonds, Johnston, 209–11.

  24.Symonds, Johnston, 212–14, quotation on p. 212.

  25.Brandon Republican, Oct. 29, 1863, reprinted in Richmond Whig, Nov. 9, 1863, in Crist, PJD, 9:335n.

  26.Ethelbert Barksdale to Davis, July 29, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:581–82; James Phelan to Davis, Aug. 14, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:343.

  27.Richmond Examiner, Aug. 5, 1863, in Frederick S. Daniel, The Richmond Examiner During the War (reprint of 1868 ed., New York: Arno Press, 1970), 107–9.

  28.C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 482–83, entry of October 1863 (no day).

  29.Richmond Examiner, July 7, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg had been over for three days when this editorial appeared, but the news took several days to reach Richmond.

  30.Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York: Bramhall House, 1961), 507–9.

  31.Alexander H. Stephens to Davis, June 12, 1863, Davis to Stephens, July 2, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:513–16; Davis to Stephens, June 18, 1863, C
rist, PJD, 9:229.

  32.Thomas E. Schott, “The Stephens ‘Peace’ Mission,” North and South 1 (Oct. 1998): 39–40.

  33.Davis to Lee, June 28, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:247–49. See also Lee to Davis, May 7, June 7, 23, 1863, Davis to Lee, May 9, 31, 1863, ibid., 9:170, 198, 202, 209, 236–37; and Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 234–39.

  34.Lincoln to Samuel Phillips Lee, July 4, 1863, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 6:317.

  35.Davis to Lee, July 28, 1863, Wigfall to Clement C. Clay, Aug. 13, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:308, 311n.

  36.Lee to Davis, Aug. 8, 1863, Davis to Lee, Aug. 11, 1863, ibid., 326–27, 337–38.

  37.B. T. Kavanaugh to Davis, Aug. 13, 1863, Davis to Holmes, Nov. 19, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 5:590–92, 6:84–85.

  38.Davis to Edmund Kirby Smith, Apr. 28, 1864, ibid., 6:237. See also Davis to Smith, July 14, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:279.

  39.Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972).

  40.Woodworth, Davis and His Generals, 226–28.

  41.Davis to Lee, Aug. 24, Sept. 8, 1863, Lee to Davis, Sept. 6, 14, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:353, 373, 375, 385–86, 387n; Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, 255–57; Cooper, Davis, 453–54.

  42.Woodworth, Davis and His Generals, 230–33.

  43.Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 2:50, entry of Sept. 22, 1863.

  44.Polk to Davis, Sept. 27, 1863, Crist, PJD, 9:410.

  45.Braxton Bragg to Davis, Sept. 25, 1863, ibid., 9:404–6; Davis to Bragg, Sept. 30, 1863, Rowland, JDC, 6:53; Davis to Bragg, Oct. 3, 1863, Crist, PJD, 10:6.

  46.Dated Oct. 4, 1863, in Crist, PJD, 10:9.

  47.Ibid., 10:40–41n; Woodworth, Davis and His Generals, 238–44.

  48.Bragg to Davis, Oct. 11, 1863, Davis to Bragg, Oct. 13, 29, 1863, Howell Cobb to Davis, Nov. 6, 1863, Crist, PJD, 10:23–24, 36–37, 54–55.

  49.Davis to Bragg, Oct. 29, 1863, ibid., 10:37–38.

  50.Crist, PJD, 10:35–54.

  51.Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 2:88, entry of Nov. 3, 1863.