The Brothers' War Part 16

Something like that stated in the quotation just made did happen, as Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty Hall--the name which he gave his hospitable home at Crawfordville, Georgia. I was present more than once at such times.

Such could have been the work of the directors.

Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation, was by many conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs she had two other men, far abler statesmen than Davis and then as conspicuous in the public eye--A. H.

Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one of these would really have been the same almost as the election of Toombs, for the three were in complete accord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So great was their fealty to him that neither one could have been induced to stand for the place after he had missed it. The directors saw to it that neither one of the three should be president of the Confederate States.

Suppose that Toombs--or that either Stephens or Cobb--had been made president, what a different conduct there would have been of the war.

Besides being the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its very ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis in practical and business talent as a trained and experienced man is to an untrained and inexperienced woman. Not intending to disparage the other great qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of all his contemporaries he alone evinced a clear understanding of the principles according to which the confederate currency could have been better managed than were the greenbacks by the other side. A letter of his during the war to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta, Georgia, published at the time in the paper of which the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of the subject equal to Ricardo's. Toombs as president of the confederacy would have had congress enact proper currency measures. When he was in place to advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of any other man that I ever knew.

But this, important as it is, is far from being the most important. He and Stephens were fully convinced at the very first of the overruling importance to the confederacy of these two things: (1) to make full use of cotton as a resource; (2) to prevent a blockade of the southern ports. I make these extracts following from a speech of Stephens's at Crawfordville, Georgia, November 1, 1862:

"What I said at Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton, many of you have often heard me say in private conversation, and most of you in the public speech last year to which I have alluded. Cotton, I have maintained, and do maintain, is one of the greatest elements of power, if not the greatest at our command, if it were but properly and efficiently used, as it might have been, and still might be. Samson's strength was in his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I believed from the beginning that the enemy would inflict upon us more serious injury by the blockade than by all other means combined. It was ... a matter of the utmost ... importance to have it raised. How was it to be done?... I thought it ... could be done through the agency of cotton.... I was in favor, as you know, of the government's taking all the cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent bonds at a rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain on this plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average commercial weight, would have cost the government one hundred millions of bonds. With this amount of cotton in hand and pledged, any number, short of fifty, of the best ironclad steamers could have been contracted for and built in Europe--steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been procured, equal in every way to the 'Monitor.' Thirty millions would have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough for our purpose. Five might have been ready by the first of January last to open some one of the ports blockaded on our coast. Three of these could have been left to keep the port open, and two could have conveyed the cotton across the water if necessary. Thus, the debt could have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher price than it cost, and a channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as many as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the same way. At a cost of less than one month's present expenditure on our army, our coast might have been cleared. Besides this, at least two more millions of bales of the old crop on hand might have been counted upon--this with the other making a debt in round numbers to the planters of $200,000,000. But this cotton, held in Europe until its price became fifty cents a pound, would const.i.tute a fund of at least $1,000,000,000 which would not only have kept our finances in sound condition, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the entire expenses of the war for years to come."[113]

The reader who carefully reflects over the pa.s.sage just quoted may well think that the extravagant profit pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers than of a cool-headed statesman; but if the war price of cotton be recalled he readily agrees that under the plan proposed the south could easily have got a fleet of the best ironclads. Such a fleet would have kept the southern ports open. The advantage of which would have been very great. It would have held the Mississippi from the first, or have recovered it after the capture of New Orleans. It would have cleared the gunboats out of all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast, perhaps capturing New York, and forcing an early peace.

I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a resource. There has been from soon after the invention of the gin a steadily increasing world demand for it, and the south has practically monopolized its production. I can think of no other product of the soil except wine and liquor that is as imperishable. But wine and liquor spill, leak, and evaporate, while cotton does neither. If you but safe it against fire it will not deteriorate by age. In 1884 I was told of a sale just made of some cotton for which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865. It brought the market price of the day, and experts said it sampled as well as new cotton. It was at least 19 years old. Wine and liquor cannot be compressed, but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less bulky every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is always the equivalent of cash in hand. Now add the effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and remember how easy it was during the first two years of the war to carry out cotton in spite of the blockade. The European purchasing agent of the Confederate States government says "it possessed a latent purchasing power such as probably no other ... in history ever had."[114] He means cotton. There were several million bales of it in the confederacy, all of which could be had for the taking--much of it for merely the asking. And there were a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot understand how Professor Brown could have ever written, "The government had not the means either to buy the cotton or to transport it."[115]

Surely the government could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all the men of military age, and collected the t.i.thes in kind.

If Toombs had been president of the southern confederacy, the very best possible use of its cotton as a resource would have been made. At the time, if but managed with the financial skill which he always showed, that cotton would have been a great war chest in a secure place, always full and appreciating. It is very probable that almost at the beginning of the war the confederacy would have struck terror into its adversaries with some warships far superior to any with which the United States could have then supplied itself. In this case there never would have been any Monitor. And the south would have had all the benefits of wise husbandry and conduct.

During his short premiership of the confederacy Toombs showed marked ability. Note his extraordinary insight when instructing the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both conditions;" and consider how accurately he foresaw that the north would be rallied as one man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort Sumter, and how earnestly he opposed the proposed attack.[116]

Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many pitched battles. He counselled from the very first that we should draw the invaders within our territory, where, having them far from their base and taking advantage of our shorter interior lines, we could when the right moment came, by attacking with superior numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this was the true way for us to have fought. Stephens's influence would have been so great with Toombs or Cobb as president that he would have shaped the conduct of the war.

There would have been no keeping of inefficient men in high command; and no efficient one would have been kept out. Mr. Lincoln would have had an executive rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched diligently and with rare judgment for his commander-in-chief and at last found him in Grant, so Toombs would in all probability have found the proper southern general in the west. It would have been Forrest. The marvellous military genius of this illiterate man, who at the beginning of the war could not have put a recruit through the manual of arms, showed him far superior to his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort Donelson. The lieutenant-colonel would not surrender, and his escape with his entire command proved that he could have executed the offer he had made to the commander to pilot the whole army out. From this moment Forrest moves on and upward with the stride of a demiG.o.d. The night after Johnston has fallen at Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that Grant is receiving by the river thousands as re-enforcement, and he gives Beauregard wise counsel which the latter is not wise enough to heed. Read his letter of August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general of the Confederate States,[117] in which he proposes to do what will virtually wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the sane comment thereon of his biographer.[118] Think of him just after the battle of Chickamauga; how, had Bragg listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a great victory which he was too stupid to know he had won. Meditate the capture of Fort Pillow, in spite of its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, by dispositions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though made and executed on the spur of the moment, are the most superb and brilliant tactics of all the engagements of the brothers' war. And his incomparable conduct by which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at Brice's Cross-Roads. The conception of Forrest is as yet, even in the south, very untrue. He is thought of only as always meeting charge with countercharge, in the very front crying "Mix!" sabring an antagonist, and having his horse killed under him. When he is rightly studied he is found to be a happy compound of the characterizing elements of such fighters as mad Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure retirers as Marion and Stonewall Jackson, of such as Hannibal, whose action both before, during, and after the engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the northern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the military problem. I think Forrest's grasp was equal. Toombs would have divined the genius of Forrest. The confederate army under him would probably have equalled--possibly surpa.s.sed--the achievements and glory of that under Lee.

It was one of Toombs's epigrams that the southern confederacy died of too much West Point. Of course one must not unjustly disparage the military school. Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had in them too much of it. This was true of Halleck and McClellan; also of Davis and Bragg. Mr. Davis, by reason of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not nearly so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few real generals in the south. Toombs, with the help of Stephens and all the real statesmen of the section, would have kept the best generals in command.

Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been president these things would have followed:

1. The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource, would have given her an adequate gold supply, a stable currency, and an unimpaired public credit. It would have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats out of our rivers.

2. There would have been no unwise waste of our precious soldiers. As it was, their very gallantry in our contest with a foe so greatly outnumbering, was made a guaranty of defeat.

3. These magnificent soldiers would have been led always by the best commanders.

These were resources enough, and more than enough, to have won for the south. I often paralleled her neglect to use them with the supineness of the French Commune in 1871. La.s.sigaray tells us how there were piles of money and money's worth in the bank deposits and reserves, which could have all been had by mere taking.[119] But the Commune made no use of this great treasure. It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to him that the new French government was in the hands of men who generally had had no experience in government whatever. It was widely different with the southern confederacy. No other revolutionary government ever started with so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves along which it was to run were all ready. "Confederate States" was instantaneously subst.i.tuted for "United States" in the const.i.tution, organic federal statutes, and the thoughts of the people, and the administration of the new government seemed to everybody in the south but a continuation of that of the United States. And this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained statesmen in America. That these men should have overlooked the great resources we have pointed out is a far more strange and wonderful blunder than was that of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune. You can explain it only by recognizing it as the accomplishment of fate. Fate put in charge of the fortunes of the confederacy an executive as just as ever was Aristides, and as much respected and confided in by his people.

That executive most conscientiously drove out of the public counsels the only men who could have saved the southern cause.

To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances briefly told.

Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place which taught him the importance of gunboats, and held there until his skill in using them had given him resistless prestige. Beauregard's failure to make use of the daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S. Johnston seems to have been prompted by the powers who had the future conqueror in charge. Had he been sent against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done better than McClellan, Burnside, or Hooker. Compare how the powers in charge of the Roman empire prevented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal.

Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan instead of driving him to the James. The tone of McClellan's boasting over the flank movement by which he successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's army within cannon shot is really that of a man who feels that he has miraculously escaped an unshunnable peril.

The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee into believing that Gettysburg was to be another Chancellorsville.

They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest. Especially to be thought of here is the rejected proposal of the latter to recover the Mississippi shortly after the fall of Vicksburg.

I need not go further. The student of the brothers' war can add to the foregoing many other favors shown the union cause by the powers in the unseen.

Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting to the last against increasing odds with the resoluteness of hereditary freemen. In spite of all their potency the powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate soldiers. These should have some such eternizing epitaph as this:

"For four years they kept the fates banded against them uneasy."

The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that of Troy has incalculably deepened the interest I take in Vergil's great description.

Especially of late years do I realize more vividly how his G.o.ddess mother removed the cloud darkening his vision, and gave aeneas to see Neptune, Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the burning city; and a lurid illumination falls upon the statement,

"Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae Numina magna deum."[120]

CHAPTER XIII

JEFFERSON DAVIS

For some time after the brothers' war it was very generally believed that Davis had been one of the Mississippi repudiators; that through all his ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist--what we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the Confederate States he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the murder of President Lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a woman. I suppose that these accusations--all of which are utterly untrue--are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have attained some currency abroad. I note that the leading German encyclopedia--that of Brockhaus--repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But "The Real Jefferson Davis," as Landon Knight has of late presented him,[121]--without hostile bias and with something like an approach to completeness--is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south.

It is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all detraction from the moral character and patriotism of Davis will after some while wear itself out. I believe far greater favor than mere vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every part of his own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I shall try to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will, as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. Here I can take time to mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have looked upon. We saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. We saw him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped upon him--we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment.

Then we saw him set free--his innocence confessed by the acts of his accusers. Then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate States, giving him there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a legal holiday in different States. This--which we impressively mark now as only a beginning of glory--must develop into something far larger.

Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that with which his name is most closely connected--his elevation and his great fall. Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point, which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. He is one of a few who, like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates a rival more than sovereignty--which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct nationality. Note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own mother when found in the hive by the latter. Humanity has not in this particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a surprise that the life of Davis was spared when American frenzy was at its height. Think of some of the things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz were hanged; the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites; it was provided _ex post facto_ that the high moral duty of paying for the emanc.i.p.ated slaves should never be done. While good men and women both of the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the treatment which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a most significant sign of American progress that he was at last allowed to go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old followers.

Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing leaders of revolutions mentioned above. Richard Cromwell could be tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere accident. It was the mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and beheaded Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These, when he died, came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. They who set him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him.

His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled himself. Richard Cromwell, having been cast out of the protectorate, living forgotten in England, is no parallel to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored by the entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. Had Napoleon lived in France and Kruger in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they would be parallels. As it is, the subsequent life of Davis is without any parallel.

Having thus shown you what it is that Davis especially examples, let us now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book.

The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien, and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus, nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and the members of his cabinet were pa.s.sing by Princeton, a throng of citizens and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New York State cried, "He's an Apollo!" and all the hearers a.s.sented with enthusiasm. This placed him right,--at the head of the Olympians in the third circle.

Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his debut in politics he had become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. He completed his West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: "He did not pa.s.s very high in his cla.s.s; but he attached no significance to cla.s.s standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his cla.s.smates of much more importance."[122]

He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his army life which are characteristic.

Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge.

Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that there was something in Davis's appearance that invited full trust, and that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient.

How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice the affair officially, ill.u.s.trates his talent for command.

Men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and they were to be removed. He tried to induce their consent by making them a speech. Some weeks later he sought another conference. Finding a number of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in.

"They will be certain to kill you," the orderly said; "I heard one of them say they would."

"Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it, 'gave them the time of day' [that is, he said "Good-morning" or what the hour demanded]. He immediately added, after saluting them, 'My friends, I am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my success. So I shall treat you all.' They gave him a cheer."[123]

How much more heroic is such Caesar-like courage and tact in quelling the mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry.

I have reserved for emphasis here, as ill.u.s.trating Davis's presence of mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time than what I have just been telling. The first is this. One of the professors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while he was a cadet at West Point. Lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed his eye on Davis "and said he doubted not there were many who, in an emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from the mediocre nature of their minds. The insult was intended, and the recipient of it was powerless to resent it. A few days afterwards, while the building was full of cadets, the cla.s.s were being taught the process of making fireb.a.l.l.s, when one took fire. The room was a magazine of explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty instructor, 'What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited.' The professor said, 'Run for your lives!' and ran for his. Cadet Davis threw it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives thereby."[124]