The Brothers' War Part 17

In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from confusion and an alertness that is very rare. But the second thing which I have to tell is still more remarkable.

While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set out in a boat with some men to cut timber, accompanied by two _voyageurs_.

"At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to have no hostile intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley.

However, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were only a cloak. They warned Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time they could up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into their canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the white men to escape such experienced rowers.... If taken ... death by torture was inevitable. They would have been captured had not Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very boisterous. As it was a choice between certain death by the hands of the Indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of the slender chance left and escaped."[125]

These things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the excellent soldier. They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in Mexico. I must say here that I do not mean to claim first-rate ability for him; but I do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted officer and not those of the few born generals of the world.

It is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. He cordially sacrificed for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. He had had as brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and service against the Indians. It must be remembered he had been promoted to first lieutenant for gallantry.

It is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. He had resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help execute the force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though he never was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way the coercion of a sovereign State, as he always believed each one of the United States to be.

His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a fell blow. Her husband mourned her for nearly ten years. Then he made a most happy marriage with the lady who survives him.

In 1836--the next year after the death of his first wife--he settled on a plantation. Mr. Knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder brother Joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. To quote:

"During the period of their residence together, the time not required by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the Const.i.tutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost every conceivable question that could arise under the const.i.tution of the United States."

Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and precisian than can be found in any other one of these.

In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it seems to me.

He had now but one acquisition to make--to think on his legs and tell his thoughts at the same time. Extempore speakers are generally made. But Davis was a born one. He did not have that experience at the bar and in the State legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous American orators. The democrats of his county nominated him for the legislature in 1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in a stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable S. S. Prentiss, Davis then being thirty-five years old. The debate consumed most of the day. The disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result of the campaign was in favor of Prentiss. As Davis, a democrat, was merely leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be expected. But the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this, his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the State, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed.

The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr. Knight: "Mr. Davis took a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he should become a candidate for congress in the following year."

He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. In 1845 Calhoun was coming to Natchez. Davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. He made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took down at his dictation. But when Calhoun had come, after a moment or two of slowness in the exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking appropriateness.[126]

What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good taste, that I quote it:

"From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. Dates and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these sufficed. Mr. Davis's speeches never read as they were delivered; he spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice moved the mult.i.tude, and there were apparently no inattentive or indifferent listeners. He had one power that I have never seen excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. He was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to the necessity of stopping when he was done.

Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He was a parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his gracious manner. At first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses are models of grace and ready command of language."[127]

He took his seat in the United States house of representatives in December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their congressional careers together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the Oregon question early in February, 1846. He was a modest member, but he did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence.

Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and Webster a pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of Webster. The minority report of the committee which investigated the conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really made by Davis, who was one of the committee. The stand taken by the latter, and the true presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased with it.

Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis, supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high value of military education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, a tailor. Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next day, pa.s.sionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to Davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, scrub aristocracy." To this the latter, justly indignant, rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000 reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson--hoping his words would be reported to Johnson--that there was one man in the United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had signed the proclamation; "for," said Davis, "he at least knew that I preferred Lincoln to himself."

Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the highest and proudest.

It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the eye of the nation. Without canva.s.sing for the place--he never did canva.s.s for a place--he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers, and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." The president, authorized by a new law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: "My husband expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him."[128]

General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from pillaging.

As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among the front of the a.s.saulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break.

Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge.

With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of bullets and bursting sh.e.l.ls. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel]

burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans, and Davis's Mississippians, the latter again leading the a.s.sault, stormed and captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the city."[129]

Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone forth conspicuously in this affair.

He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened.

Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his regiment and Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge of a host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry.

The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis, as the colonel of a raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as I know, without any parallel. It was but natural that he should always afterwards believe himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had become famous throughout the whole country.

There was a vacancy in one of the United States senatorships from Mississippi, and Davis was appointed to fill it. I need not go into much detail at this point. He was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper house. He maintained himself with growing ability. While he was independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with Calhoun, in the main he followed the latter as his leader. There was a dignity and poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he a.s.serted later that he preferred the senate to any other place. As I contemplate his record at this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of every const.i.tutional protection of slavery. He loved the union most fondly. It was only the south that he loved more. Conscientious doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by the great ma.s.s of the northern people. He thought it was to encourage disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the Territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His antic.i.p.ation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. So he counselled with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing whatever--to go out of the union rather than so to do. Let the north understand this and the abolition party will disappear. That is the only way to save the union. This explains why he refused to support the compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for governor of Mississippi on that issue. He was cla.s.sed with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly untrue. Remember that in 1860 he actually contemplated being the democratic presidential candidate, and that Ma.s.sachusetts sent a delegation to the Charleston convention instructed for him.

A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He was as up to date in adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were truly exemplary. I wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two things belonging here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. When remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the preference in compet.i.tion for appointments, he declared positively that he should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such selection. And his actions as long as he held the important office spoke even louder than his words. Surely here is an example for these times to profit by. The second thing really belongs to the same cla.s.s as the first.

It is that when civil war actually prevailed in Kansas between the anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the commander of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, "whose honor, ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult duty."[130]

The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in which Davis's thoughts and tastes had long been moving.

He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February 2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the Territories, congress was bound to pa.s.s efficiently protecting laws, to remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a const.i.tution that authorized or prohibited slavery.

Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly into the gulf of the brothers' war into which his measure has been made by the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows t.i.tanic mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in the highest cla.s.s of great speeches.

Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs's justification of secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can answer. Davis's does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side.

It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here parallel them in another place that is strikingly ill.u.s.trative. Some years after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, "No.

And G.o.d d.a.m.n 'em, I haven't pardoned them." Of course the average man or woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis's reply, and on reflection will censure the other.

Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section.

When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him far superior to Lincoln--this was said by the general. Thus were his disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south.

His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough.

His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he often exclaimed, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from those people."[131]

But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the facts which I will now tell.

He was on the field at First Mana.s.sas when that unprecedented panic seized the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "We ought to press forward and go into Washington with 'em." Davis with his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight, during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary supplies of all sorts--in short, the entire baggage of the enemy--that would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's pontoons, or captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have crossed somehow, and at the place which circ.u.mstances and the insight of genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would have happened if Davis had been a Caesar and had Caesar-like used the one great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted himself to be reasoned out of it.

There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "You are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond Centerville without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington city!" And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun rose.

Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military chieftain of the Confederate States.[132] I would abridge what can be said here under these heads:

1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy dictated the abandonment of many places in order to a.s.semble by using our shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion.

McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were.

2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications.

3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to him.

It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He did not want it. Compare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air, was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and b.l.o.o.d.y brothers' war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: "When reading the telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a sentence of death."[133]

Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: "The audience was large and brilliant. Upon my weary heart were showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns innumerable."[134]