The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 93

She turned to the grave again, her gaze fixed on the striking figure of the grief-stricken father, bare-headed, straight as an arrow, his fine face silhouetted against the shining Southern sky. The mother stood back amid the shadows, in her somber wrappings, her tall figure drooped in pitiful grief.

The leader turned quickly from his personal sorrows to those of his country, his indomitable courage rising to greater heights as dangers thickened.

Two weeks later General Sheridan attempted what Dahlgren tried and failed to accomplish.

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

The crack of rifles could be distinctly heard from the Executive Mansion.

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

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

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

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

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

"I should have liked to have seen her," he said gently, "but G.o.d's will be done."

The doctor felt his fast fading pulse.

"Doctor, I suppose I'm going fast now," Stuart said. "It will soon be over. I hope I have fulfilled my duty to my country and my G.o.d--"

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

"All right," was the even answer. "I'll end my little affairs down here.

To Mrs. Robert E. Lee I give my gold spurs, in eternal memory of the love I bear my glorious Chief. To my staff, my horses--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm going fast now--G.o.d's will be done--"

So pa.s.sed the greatest cavalry leader our country has produced--a man whose joyous life was one long feast of good will toward his fellow men.

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

Lee had baffled Grant's great army at every turn and now held him securely at bay before Petersburg. The North was mortally tired of the b.l.o.o.d.y struggle. The party which demanded peace was greater than any political division--it included thousands of the best men in the party of Abraham Lincoln.

The nomination of General McClellan for President on a platform declaring the war a failure and demanding that it end was a foregone conclusion. Jefferson Davis knew this from inside information his friends had sent from every section of the North.

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

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

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

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

No effort was spared by Davis to enable Johnston to stay Sherman's advance and a.s.sume the offensive. The whole military strength of the South and West was pressed forward to him. His commissary and ordnance departments were the best in the Confederacy. His troops were eager to advance and retrieve the disaster at Missionary Ridge--the first and only case of panic and cowardice that had marred the brilliant record of the Confederacy.

The position of Johnston's army was one of commanding strength. Long mountain ranges, with few and difficult pa.s.ses, made it next to impossible for Sherman to turn his flank or dislodge him by direct attack. Sherman depended for his supplies on a single line of railroad from Nashville.

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

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

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

He gave this up and ran thirteen miles further into Georgia to Adairsville. Not liking the looks of Adairsville he struck camp and ran to Ca.s.sville seventeen miles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brown answered:

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

The President of the Confederacy now faced the most dangerous and tragic decision of his entire administration. The removal of Johnston from his command before Sherman's victorious army in the heart of Georgia could be justified only on the grounds of the sternest necessity. The Commanding General not only had the backing of his powerful junta in Richmond who were now busy with their conspiracy to establish a dictatorship and oust the President from his office, but he was immensely popular with his army. His care for his soldiers was fatherly.

His painful efforts to save their lives, even at the cost of the loss of his country, were duly appreciated by the leaders of opinion in the army. Johnston had the power to draw and hold the good will of the men who surrounded him. He had the power, too, of infecting his men with his likes and dislikes. His hatred of Davis had been for three years the one mania of his sulking mind.