Nathaniel W. Stephenson

“ Can we hesitate, can we doubt, when the question is, whether the enemy shall use our slaves against us or we use them against him; when the question may be between liberty and independence on the one hand, or our subjugation and utter ruin on the other?
With their Governor as leader for the Administration, the Virginians found this issue the absorbing topic of the hour. And now the great figure of Lee takes its rightful place at the very center of Confederate history, not only military but civil, for to Lee the Virginia politicians turned for advice. ”

“ Napoleon's purpose all along seems to have been quite plain. He meant to help the South to win by itself, and, after it had won, to use it for his own advantage. So precarious was his position in Europe that he dared not risk an American war without England's aid, and England had cast the die. In this way, secrecy was the condition necessary to continued building of the ships. Now that the secret was out, Napoleon began to shift his ground. He sounded the Washington Government and found it suspiciously equivocal as to Mexico. ”

“ In the course of the summer, while the military fortunes of the Confederacy were toppling at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the North Carolina farmers in a panic of self-preservation held numerous meetings of protest and denunciation. They expressed their thoughtless terror in resolutions asserting that the action of Congress "in secret session, without consulting with their constituents at home, taking from the hard laborers of the Confederacy one-tenth of the people's living, instead of taking back their own currency in tax, is unjust and tyrannical." ”

“ In South Carolina, too, a wealthy leisure class with a passion for affairs had cultivated enthusiastically 29 that fine art which is the pride of all aristocratic societies, the service of the State as a profession high and exclusive, free from vulgar taint. In South Carolina all things conspired to uphold and strengthen the sense of the State as an object of veneration, as something over and above the mere social order, as the sacred embodiment of the ideals of the community. ”

“ There remains one incident of these closing days, the significance of which was not perceived until long afterward, when it immediately took its rightful place among the determining events of American history. The unconquerable spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia found its last expression in a proposal which was made to Lee by his officers. If he would give the word, they would make the war a duel to the death; it should drag out in relentless guerrilla struggles; and there should be no pacification of the South until the fighting classes had been exterminated. ”

“ From the districts over which the waves of war rolled back and forth helpless families—women, children, slaves—found precarious safety together with great hardship by withdrawing to remote places which invasion was little likely to reach. An Odyssey of hard travel, often by night and half secret, is part of the war tradition of thousands of Southern families. And here, as always, the heroic women, smiling, indomitable, are the center of the picture. ”

“ Conditions that the Government was powerless to control were cruelly exaggerated, and the motives of the Government were falsified. For all this exaggeration and falsification the press was largely to blame. Moreover, the press, at least in dangerously large proportion, was schooling the people to hold Davis personally responsible for all their suffering. General Bragg was informed in a letter from a correspondent in Mobile that "men have been taught to look upon the President as an inexorably self-willed man who will see the country to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose." ”

“ Almost invariably they had to traverse desolate country, with few attendants, through forests, and across rivers, where the arm of the law was now powerless to protect them. 111 Outlaws, defiant of the authorities both civil and military,—ruthless men of whom we shall hear again,—roved those great unoccupied spaces so characteristic of the Southern countryside. Many a family legend preserves still the sense of breathless caution, of pilgrimage in the night-time intently silent for fear of these masterless men. ”

“ And yet, with each day, political as well as military necessity grew more imperative. Both at Washington and Richmond the effect that the fighting in Georgia had on Northern opinion was seen to be of the first importance. Sherman was staking everything to break the Confederate line and take Atlanta. He knew that a great victory would have incalculable effect on the Northern election. Davis knew equally well that the defeat of Sherman would greatly encourage the peace party in the North. But he had no general of undoubted genius whom he could put in Johnston's place. ”

“ While the Confederate Executive was building up its military establishment, the Treasury was struggling with the problem of paying for it. The problem was destined to become insoluble. From the vantage-point of a later time we can now see that nothing could have provided a solution short of appropriation and mobilization of the whole industrial power of the country along with the whole military power—a conscription of wealth of every kind together with conscription of men. ”

“ The result of battle must be accepted. The Southern spirit must not perish, luxuriating blindly in despair, but must find a new form of expression, must become part of the new world that was to be, must look to a new birth under new conditions. In this spirit he issued to his army his last address:
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. ”

“ Jonathan Worth wrote in his diary, on hearing that the influential North Carolina Standard had come out for peace: "I still abhor, as I always did, this accursed war and the wicked men, North and South, who inaugurated it. The whole country at the North and the South is a great military despotism." With such discontent in the air, the elections in North Carolina drew near. The feeling was intense and riots occurred. Newspaper offices were demolished—among them Holden's, to destroy which a detachment of passing soldiers converted itself into a mob. ”

“ During that year the South became a great buyer in Europe. Arms, powder, cloth, machinery, medicines, ships, a thousand things, had all to be bought abroad. To establish the foreign credit of the new Government was the arduous task of the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury, Christopher G. Memminger. The first great campaign of the war was not fought by armies. It was a commercial campaign fought by agents of the Federal and Confederate governments and having for its aim the cornering of the munitions market in Europe. ”

“ There is a wonderful soft strength in the peaceful brightness of the sun. In such an atmosphere the 23 harbor was flecked with brilliantly decked craft of every description, all in a flutter of flags and carrying a host of passengers in gala dress. ”

“ What strange sad pages in the history of American valor were filled by these women outwardly calm, their children romping after butterflies in a glory of sunshine, while horrid tales drifted in of deeds done by the masterless men in the forest just beyond the horizon, and far off on the soul's horizon fathers, husbands, brothers, held grimly the lines of last defense! ”

“ But it must be added in all fairness that the great opposition journals, such as the Mercury, took up this new issue with the President because they professed to see in his attitude toward the press a determination to suppress freedom of speech, so obsessed was the opposition with the idea that Davis was a monster! Whatever explanations may be offered for the prevalence of graft, the impotence of the Government at Richmond contributed to the general demoralization. In regions like Georgia and Alabama, the Confederacy was now powerless to control its agents. ”

“ The easy popular cries were all sounded: "We are standing still!" "The country is being invaded!" "The President is a do-nothing!" From the coast regions especially, where the blockade was felt in all its severity, the outcry was loud.
Nevertheless, the South in the main was content with the Administration during most of the first year. In November, when the general elections were held, Davis was chosen without opposition as the first regular Confederate President for six years, and Stephens became the Vice-President. The election was followed by an important change in the Southern Cabinet. ”

“ Or by conscription? Or by temporary impressment?
Though Davis and his advisers were prepared to face all the hazards involved in the purchase or confiscation of slaves, the traditional Southern temper instantly recoiled from the suggestion. A 101 Government possessed of great numbers of slaves, whether bought or appropriated, would have in its hands a gigantic power, perhaps for industrial competition with private owners, perhaps even for organized military control. Besides, the Government might at any moment by emancipating its slaves upset the labor system of the country. ”

“ Too much has been said lately, however, in justification of the poorer classes who were thus wakened suddenly to a distrust of the aristocracy; and too little has been said of the proud recoil of the aristocracy in the face of a sudden, credulous perversion of its motives—a perversion inspired by the pinching of the shoe, and yet a shoe that pinched one class as hard as it did another. It is as unfair to charge the planter with selfishness in opposing 104 the appropriation of slaves as it is to make the same charge against the small farmers for resisting tithes. ”

“ Should this revolutionary scheme, if accepted at all, be handled by the general Government or left to the several States? On the last of the three questions the Governor of Virginia was silent; by implication he treated the matter as a concern of the States. Upon the first and second questions, however, he was explicit and advised arming the slaves. He then added:
Even if the result were to emancipate our slaves, there is not a man who would not cheerfully put the negro into the Army rather than become a slave himself to our hated and vindictive foe. ”

“ Armed with this, Davis braced himself for the great task of making head against the enemies that now surrounded the Confederacy. It is an axiom of military science that when one combatant possesses the interior line, the other can offset this advantage only by exerting coincident pressure all round, thus preventing him from shifting his forces from one front to 126 another. On this principle, the Northern strategists had at last completed their gigantic plan for a general envelopment of the whole Confederate defense both by land and sea. ”