Robert Toombs Part 12

Secretary Seward declined to receive the commissioners in any diplomatic capacity, or even to see them personally. He acknowledged the receipt of their communication and caused the commissioners to be notified, pointedly, that he hoped they would not press him to reply at that time.

Mr. Seward was represented as strongly disposed in favor of peace, and the Confederate Government was semi-officially informed that Fort Sumter would probably be evacuated in a short time, and all immediate danger of conflict avoided. There is no doubt that such were Mr.

Seward's intentions. He had cordially agreed with General Winfield Scott that the possession of Fort Sumter amounted to little in a strategical way, and that the peace-loving people, North and South, should not be driven into the war party by premature shock over the provisioning of a fort that no Federal force could have held for a week. Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet took this position and, by a vote of five to two, favored the abandonment of Sumter. The commissioners were apprised of this feeling, and in a dispatch to Secretary Toombs, on the 20th of March, declared that there was no change in the status. "If there is any faith in man,"

they wrote, "we may rely on the a.s.surances we have as to the status.

Time is essential to the princ.i.p.al issue of this mission. In the present posture of affairs, precipitation is war."

On the 26th of March the commissioners, having heard nothing more, asked the Confederate Secretary whether they should delay longer or demand an answer at once. Secretary Toombs wired them to wait a reasonable time and then ask for instructions. He gave them the views of President Davis, who believed that the counsels of Mr. Seward would prevail in Washington. "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, it affords the Confederate States the advantage of both positions, and enables them to make all necessary arrangements for public defense and the solidification of government more safely, cheaply, and expeditiously than if the att.i.tude of the United States was more definite and decided."

Meanwhile new pressure was brought to bear on President Lincoln. On the 2d of April, the commissioners, who kept up pretty well with the situation, telegraphed Secretary Toombs: "The war party presses on the President; he vibrates to that side." The rumor was given that the President had conferred with an engineer in regard to Fort Sumter.

"Watch at all points." Three days later they telegraphed that the movement of troops and the preparation of vessels of war were continued with great activity. "The statement that the armament is intended for San Domingo," they said, "may be a mere ruse." "Have no confidence in this administration. We say, be ever on your guard.... Glad to hear you are ready. The notice promised us may come at the last moment, if the fleet be intended for our waters."

On the 6th of April Governor Pickens of South Carolina was informed that the President had decided to supply Fort Sumter with provisions, and on the 10th, Hon. Levi P. Walker, Secretary of War at Montgomery, notified General Beauregard, then in command of the Confederate forces at Charleston, to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and, if refused, to proceed to reduce it.

There is no doubt that the Lincoln Cabinet reversed its position about Sumter. The pressure of New England and the West became too strong. What Sumter lacked in military importance, it made up in political significance. The Lincoln Government had already been taunted with weakness by the people who had placed it in office. Mr. Lincoln decided, against the better judgment of Mr. Seward, to make the issue in Charleston Harbor.

Seward's mind was of finer and more reflective cast than Mr. Lincoln's.

He had all the points of a diplomatist, ingenuity, subtlety, adroitness.

He was temporizing over the natural antipathy of the North to war and the probable transient nature of the secession feeling in the South. At that very moment he was a.s.suring England and France that "the conservative element in the South, which was kept under the surface by the violent pressure of secession, will emerge with irresistible force."

He believed "that the evils and hardships produced by secession would become intolerably grievous to the Southern States."

Mr. Lincoln was not temporizing at all. He was looking the crisis in the face. What he wanted was support at the North, not at the South. He was willing to force the fighting at Sumter, knowing that the mere act of the Confederates in firing upon the flag would bring to his aid a united North.

Secretary Toombs was one man in the Montgomery Cabinet who was not deceived by Seward's sophistries. He knew the temper of Mr. Lincoln better than Mr. Seward did. He appreciated the feeling at the North, and gave his counsel in the Davis Cabinet against the immediate a.s.sault upon Sumter. There was a secret session of the Cabinet in Montgomery. Toombs was pacing the floor during the discussion over Sumter, his hands behind him, and his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr.

President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both conditions." But just as President Lincoln overruled Secretary Seward, so President Davis overruled Secretary Toombs.

No event in American history was more portentous than the first gun fired from Fort Johnson at 1.30 o'clock in the morning of April 12, 1861. As the sh.e.l.l wound its graceful curve into the air and fell into the water at the base of Sumter, the Civil War was an accomplished fact.

Major Anderson replied with his barbette guns from the fort. He had but little more than 100 men, and early in the engagement was forced to rely entirely upon his casemate ordinance. The Confederate forces numbered about five thousand, with thirty guns and seventeen mortars, and served their guns from the batteries on Mount Pleasant, c.u.mmings Point, and the floating battery. Fort Sumter was built on an artificial island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, and was about three and a half miles from the city. It had cost the government one million dollars, and had not been entirely completed at the time of the bombardment.

The excitement in Charleston at the opening gun was very great. People rushed from their beds to the water-front, and men and women watched the great duel through their gla.s.ses. The South had gone into the war with all the fervor of conviction. The gunners in Moultrie and on Morris Island would leap to the ramparts and watch the effect of their shots, and jump back to their guns with a cheer. There was all the pomp and sound, but few of the terrors of war. On the morning of the second day the quarters in the fort caught fire and the whole place was wrapped in flames and smoke, but Major Anderson's men won the admiration of their enemies by standing by their guns and returning the fire at regular intervals. The battle lasted thirty-two hours; more than fifty tons of cannon-b.a.l.l.s and eight tons of powder were expended from weapons the most destructive then known to warfare; not a life was lost on either side. Sumter and Moultrie were both badly damaged. Major Anderson surrendered on Sat.u.r.day, April 13.

The London _Times_ treated this remarkable event in humorous style. The proceedings at Charleston were likened to a cricket match or a regatta in England. The ladies turned out to view the contest. A good shot from Fort Sumter was as much applauded as a good shot from Fort Moultrie.

When the American flag was shot away, General Beauregard sent Major Anderson another to fight under. When the fort was found to be on fire, the polite enemy, who had with such intense energy labored to excite the conflagration, offered equally energetic a.s.sistance to put it out. The only indignation felt throughout the affair was at the conduct of the Northern flotilla, which kept outside and took no part in the fray. The Southerners resented this as an act of treachery toward their favorite enemy, Major Anderson. "Altogether," says the _Times_, "nothing can be more free from the furious hatreds, which are distinctive of civil warfare, than this bloodless conflict has been." Another London paper remarked "No one was hurt. And so ended the first, and, we trust, the last engagement of the American Civil War."

Mr. Toombs' prediction, that the attack upon Fort Sumter would "open a hornet's nest" in the North, was sustained. The effect of the a.s.sault at that time and the lowering of the national flag to the forces of the Confederacy acted, as Mr. Blaine has stated, "as an inspiration, consolidating public sentiment, dissipating all differences." In fact it brought matters to a crisis all around, and prepared the two sections for the great drama of the War.

An important part of the work of Secretary Toombs was the selection of a commission to proceed to Europe and present the Confederate position to England and France, in order to secure recognition of the new nation.

Mr. William L. Yancey was placed at the head of this commission, and with him were a.s.sociated Mr. A. D. Mason of Virginia, and Mr. A. P. Rost of Louisiana. The first month of the term of the Confederate Secretary of State was occupied in the issue of letters of marque. On the 19th of April President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Southern ports, and declared that privateers with letters of marque from the Southern Confederacy should be treated as pirates. This gave Secretary Toombs a strong point in dealing with foreign powers. The new government had been organized with promptness and ability. Great energy was shown in getting the civil and military branches equipped. The Southern position had been presented with great strength abroad, and France and England were not slow in framing proclamations recognizing the Confederate States as belligerents. Next to immediate recognition as a separate nationality, this step was significant, and was the first triumph of the diplomacy of Secretary Toombs over Secretary Seward. Then came the demand from the foreign powers that the blockade must be effectual, imposing a heavy burden upon the Northern States. Lord Lyons, acting in Washington in concert with the French Government, declared that "Her Majesty's Government would consider a decree closing the ports of the South, actually in possession of the Confederate States, as null and void, and they would not submit to measures on the high seas pursuant to such a decree." Mr Seward bitterly complained that Great Britain "did not sympathize with this government." The British Minister accordingly charged the British Consul at Charleston with the task of obtaining from the Confederate Government securities concerning the proper treatment of neutrals. He asked the accession of the Lincoln government and of the Davis government to the Declaration of Paris of 1856, which had adopted as articles of maritime law that privateering be abolished; that the neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war; that neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag; that a blockade, in order to be binding, must be effectual, that is, must be maintained by a force sufficient to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. These conditions, except the first, were accepted by the Confederate Government.

The Southern Confederacy thus became parties, as Mr. Blaine says, to "an international compact"; and when, a few months later, Mr. Seward offered to waive the point made by Secretary Marcy many years before, and accept the four articles of the Paris convention, he found himself blocked, because the Confederate States had not accepted the first article, abolishing privateering, and her privateers must, therefore, be recognized. It was by these privateers that great damage was inflicted upon American shipping.

The Confederate States had no regular navy, and but few vessels; they were an agricultural community, not a commercial or a ship-building people. Quite a number of vessels were put in commission under letters of marque, and these reached the high seas by running the blockade. Many prizes were taken and run into Southern ports. Later on steamers were fitted out and sent to sea under command of experienced officers. This naval militia captured millions of the enemy's property, and produced a great sensation at the North. A Southern agent was sent abroad by the naval department to get ships and supplies. "In three years' time," says Mr. Blaine, "fifteen millions of property had been destroyed by Southern privateers, given to the flames, or sunk beneath the waters. The shipping of the United States was reduced one-half, and the commercial flag of the Union fluttered with terror in every wind that blew, from the whale fisheries of the Arctic to the Southern Cross."

On the 21st of May, the Confederate Congress, after providing for the disposition of these naval prizes, and the treatment of prisoners of war brought into Southern ports, adjourned to meet on the 20th of July in the City of Richmond, now selected as the permanent seat of Government of the Confederacy.

The powers of Europe never recognized the Confederate States as a separate nation. The leaders of the English Government were, no doubt, inclined to this step, but the rank and file of the Liberal party, under the leadership of John Bright, refused to sanction such a course toward a government whose corner stone was slavery. Mr. Seward ingeniously pressed the point that Southern success meant a slave oligarchy around the Gulf of Mexico. Russia remained the strong ally of the Northern States. England, with the Crimean War fresh upon her hands, hesitated before engaging Russia again or imperiling India in the East. France could not afford to take the step without the aid of England. Secretary Toombs dispatched a Minister to Mexico to look into the interesting tumult then going on. Louis Napoleon was filled with his desire of establishing Maximilian in Mexico, but his movement did not succeed.

Maximilian was defeated and executed, and Napoleon found himself too much engaged with the House of Hohenzollern in Germany to follow any new or original policy in America.

Carlyle declared with dyspeptic acrimony that the Civil War was the foulest chimney of the century, and should be allowed to burn out.

Secretary Toombs had issued credentials to commissioners to the unseceded Southern States. On the 17th of April Virginia seceded; on the 28th of May North Carolina went out of the Union; these were followed by Tennessee and Arkansas. The border States of Kentucky and Missouri did not formally secede, but indignantly declined to furnish troops in response to Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. They appointed delegates to a Peace Congress to meet in Washington.

The tedious routine of the State Department did not suit the restless spirit of Robert Toombs. He had established relations abroad as belligerents, and had placed the new government in touch with its Southern neighbors. His dispatches were remarkable for brevity, clearness, and boldness; his public papers are models of nervous style, but he longed for a more active field in the revolution. He chafed under red-tape and convention. Toombs charged the new administration with too much caution and timidity. He declared that ninety per cent of war was business, and that the South must organize victory rather than trust entirety to fighting. He urged the government to send over cotton to England and buy arms and ships forthwith. "Joe Brown," he impatiently declared, "had more guns than the whole Confederacy. No new government,"

said he, "ever started with such unlimited credit." Mr. Toombs believed that the financial part of the Confederacy was a failure. "We could have whipped the fight," said he, in his impetuous way, "in the first sixty days. The contest was haphazard from the first, and nothing but miraculous valor kept it going." Mr. Toombs said that had he been President of the Confederacy, he would have mortgaged every pound of cotton to France and England at a price that would have remunerated the planters, and in consideration of which he would have secured the aid of the armies and navies of both countries.

But Robert Toombs concluded that his place was in the field, not in the Cabinet. Too many prominent men, he explained, were seeking bombproof positions. He received a commission as brigadier general, and on the 21st of July, 1861, joined Generals Beauregard and Johnston at Mana.s.sas.

CHAPTER XXII.

BRIGADIER GENERAL IN ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.

When Robert Toombs resigned the Cabinet and took the field, he still held the seat, as was his prerogative, in the Confederate Congress. This body, like the British Parliament, sat in chairs, without desks. One morning Congress was discussing the Produce Loan. By this measure, invitations were given for contributions of cotton and other crops in the way of a loan. By the terms of the act these articles were to be sold and the proceeds turned over to the Secretary of the Treasury, who was to issue eight per cent bonds for them. This was an extraordinary measure, and never really amounted to much. Colonel A. R. Lamar, at one time Secretary of the Provisional Congress, relates that during this debate General Toombs walked into the hall. "He was faultlessly attired in a black suit with a military cloak thrown over one shoulder and a military hat in his left hand. He made a rattling speech against the measure. Drawing himself up, he said: "Mr. Speaker, we have been told that Cotton is King, that he will find his way to the vaults of the bankers of the Old World; that he can march up to the thrones of mighty potentates, and drag from the a.r.s.enals of armed nations the dogs of war; that he can open our closed ports, and fly our young flag upon all the seas. And yet, before the first autumnal frost has blighted a leaf upon his coronet, he comes to this hall a trembling mendicant, and says, 'Give me drink, t.i.tinius, or I perish.'" The effect was magical; Colonel Lamar, in commenting upon this dramatic incident, sums up the whole character of Robert Toombs:

"He was cautious and safe in counsel, while wild and exasperating in speech."

When Mr. Toombs was once asked by an Englishman, where were the files of the State Department, he answered that "He carried the archives in his hat." When he resigned the position of Secretary of State, Hon. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was appointed in his stead. General William M.

Browne had been a.s.sistant Secretary under Mr. Toombs. He was an Englishman, who came to this country during Buchanan's administration and edited a Democratic paper in Washington. When General Toombs joined the Army his staff was made up as follows; D. M. DuBose, Adjutant General; R. J. Moses, Commissary General; W. F. Alexander, Quartermaster Major; DeRosset Lamar, Aid-de-camp.

General Toombs' entry into the field, just after the first battle of Mana.s.sas, found the army of the Confederacy flushed with victory, but badly scattered after the first serious engagement of the war. General Johnston had declared that even after the decisive advantage at Bull Run, pursuit was not to be thought of, for his troops were almost as much disorganized by victory as the Federals by their defeat. Many soldiers, supposing the war was over, had actually gone home. "Our men,"

said General Johnston, "had in a larger degree the instincts of personal liberty than those of the North, and it was found very difficult to subordinate their personal wills to the needs of military discipline."

The battle of Mana.s.sas had a powerful effect upon the Northern mind. The Lincoln Cabinet was seized with fear for the safety of Washington. New troops were summoned to that city, and the materials for a magnificent army were placed in the hands of General McClellan, who had succeeded McDowell, the luckless victim of Mana.s.sas. More than one hundred thousand men were now ma.s.sed in front of Washington, while Joseph E.

Johnston, with fifty-four thousand, advanced his outposts to Centreville, and at Munson's Hill Toombs' brigade was in sight of the national capital. His troops could easily watch the workmen building one of the wings of the Capitol, and the victorious Confederates, with prestige in their ranks, were actually flaunting their flag in the face of Mr. Lincoln. This movement, we are told by good generals, was of no military value, but it kept the Northern administration in a white heat.

It confused the Union commanders by crossing their counsels with popular clamor and political pressure, and it crippled McClellan when he finally moved down the Chesapeake to the peninsula, by detaining a large part of his force to pacify the authorities in Washington.

When McClellan and Mr. Lincoln were disputing over their change of base, the military situation was suddenly shifted by the evacuation of Mana.s.sas by the Confederate army, and its retirement first behind the Rappahannock, then along the Rapidan. Johnston, it seems, wanted to be nearer his base, and on the 8th of March skillfully managed his withdrawal, so that the enemy had no idea of his movements. General Toombs' brigade started in retreat from Centreville. He did not relish this movement. He writes home from Culpepper:

This has been a sad and destructive business. We were ordered to send off all our heavy baggage, but so badly did they manage that none of it was sent back, and every particle of that baggage, blankets, and every imaginable useful article, was burned up to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. My brigade must have lost half a million of property and all the rest were in the same condition. Millions of stores with guns and ammunition were destroyed. Never was any business worse managed. The enemy had no more idea of attacking us in Centreville than they had of attacking the Peaks of Otter. Of course, when we retreated, they sent marauding parties in our trail to watch our retreat and take possession of the country, and now the whole of the beautiful Counties of Loudon, Fauquier, Prince William, Fairfax, and the Lord only knows how many more, are in the possession of the enemy. It was a sad, distressing sight, all the way along, and one that frequently drew tears from my eyes. I do not know what it means, but I would rather have fought ten battles than thus to have abandoned these poor people. We have got to fight somewhere, and if I had my way, I would fight them on the first inch of our soil they invaded, and never cease to fight them as long as I could rally men to defend their homes. The great body of the army is now in the neighborhood, and I suppose we shall abandon these people and retreat back toward Richmond.... My command is in excellent condition. A few broke down on the way, but I managed to have them taken care of there and lost none of them on the march.

One of the great features of General Toombs' control of his brigade was the excellent care he took of his men. He never allowed them to be imposed upon by the officers or by other commands.

This letter betrays the impatience of General Toombs over any mismanagement. He was the soul of business, and as the transportation facilities at Mana.s.sas were meager, he chafed under the heavy loss to which his brigade was subjected in this retreat. With impetuous ardor he calls for resistance, not retreat. He did not approve of the "Fabian policy" of Joseph E. Johnston. As General Longstreet afterward remarked, "Toombs chafed at the delays of the commanders in their preparations for battle. His general idea was that the troops went out to fight, and he thought that they should be allowed to go at it at once." Near Orange Court House, he wrote to his wife on the 19th of March, 1862, "I know not what is to become of this country. Davis' incompetency is more apparent as our danger increases. Our only hope is Providence."

In January, 1862, the General a.s.sembly of Georgia elected Robert Toombs a member of the Confederate States Senate. Benjamin H. Hill was to be his colleague. But General Toombs had a different conception of his duty. He realized that he had been prominent in shaping the events that had led to the Civil War, and he did not shirk the sharpest responsibility. He felt that his duty was in the field. He had condemned the rush for civil offices and what he called "bombproof positions," and he wished at least to lead the way to active duty by remaining with his army.

Two months later an effort was made by some of his friends to have him appointed Secretary of War. This would have brought him in close contact with the army, which he was anxious to serve. The parties behind this movement believed that the great abilities of Mr. Toombs should not be hidden behind the command of a brigade. He would have made an ideal war minister. His genius for details and his ability to manage affairs and plan campaigns would have overmatched Edwin M. Stanton. But Mr. Toombs promptly cut off this movement in his behalf.

On 22d March, 1862, he wrote to his wife from Orange Court House, Va.:

I thought I had been very explicit on that point. I would not be Mr. Davis' chief clerk. His Secretary of War can never be anything else. I told my friends in Richmond to spare me the necessity of declining if they found it in contemplation. I have not heard that they had any occasion to interfere.... So far as I am concerned, Mr. Davis will never give me a chance for personal distinction. He thinks I pant for it, poor fool. I want nothing but the defeat of the public enemy and to retire with you for the balance of my life in peace and quiet in any decent corner of a free country. It may be his injustice will drive me from the army, but I shall not quit it until after a great victory, in which I shall have the opportunity of doing something for the country. The day after such an event I shall retire, if I live through it. I have grievances enough now to quit, but I shall bide my time. I get along very well with the army. I have not seen Johnston but once; he was polite and clever. George W. Smith I see every day. He is a first-rate gentleman and a good officer. I hear from Stephens constantly, but from n.o.body else in Richmond....

You say you pray for me daily. I need it. Put it in your prayers that if it be the will of G.o.d that I shall fall, a sacrifice in this great conflict, that I may meet it as becomes a gentleman.

An instance of General Toombs' impatience under red-tape rules may be recalled. A member of his brigade was taken ill, and he secured for him entrance into the hospital of Richmond. The hospital was crowded; regulations were stringent, and under some technical ruling his sick soldier was shipped back to his brigade. Toombs was fired with indignation. He proceeded to sift the affair to the bottom, and was told that General Johnston had fixed the rules. This did not deter him.

Riding up to the commander's tent and securing admission, he proceeded to upbraid the general as only Toombs could do. When he returned to his headquarters he narrated the circ.u.mstance to Dr. Henry H. Steiner, his brigade surgeon and lifelong friend. Dr. Steiner, who had been a surgeon in the regular army, and had served in the Mexican war, was a better tactical officer than Toombs. He was himself fearless and upright, but full of tact and discretion. "General," said Dr. Steiner, "you have been too rash; you will be arrested." Toombs replied that he thought so, too.

He held himself in antic.i.p.ation for two or three days, but he was not disturbed. When he was finally summoned to General Johnston's tent, it was to consult over a plan of movement, and it was noticed that Toombs was the only brigadier in counsel. General Johnston subsequently remarked that Toombs was the biggest brained man in the Confederacy. The boldness and clearness of the impetuous Georgian had captured the grim hero of Mana.s.sas, who forgave the affront in the face of the overmastering mind of the man.