CHAPTER X. THE CONFEDERACY AS SEEN FROM WITHIN. PRIDE, PASSION, AND WANT
IN THE BACKGROUND.
SINCE the war, we have seen, and had long conversations with, a reverend doctor, whom we had known for many years previous to the war, who resided in Virginia when the war commenced, was among the first to take part in it, and who continued in the service until the war closed. We have also met other Confederate officers since the war, some of whom had extraordinary facilities for obtaining information while the war continued. From all these we learned much beyond anything we had ever known before, or ever seen in newspapers or books. To put on record some of the things so learned is the object of the present chapter.
The South well knew, in the very beginning of the contest, that in point of numbers, in wealth, and in material resources, it was greatly inferior to the North. They had hope, however, of dividing the North, or, rather, of having the North divide against itself; and had the one-hundredth part of the promises made them by Northern men been kept, there would indeed have been a division of force, as well as a division of political sentiment, in the North; and the result of such division might have given the final victory to the Confederacy, instead of to the Union cause. But what the South relied upon still more, was assistance from England. They had been led to believe that King Cotton was almost, if not quite, as powerful in England as Queen Victoria, and they had laid the "flattering unction to their souls" that so soon as King Cotton saw those who had made him king in distress, he would rush, pell-mell, to their rescue; scatter the Yankee blockading squadrons to the winds; throw open all the Southern ports; bring men, ammunition, clothing, and provisions to exchange for their cotton, and thus, beyond any reasonable doubt, insure success to the Southern cause.
As well assured as they felt of all this, they still regarded it as important to keep all the while the "best foot foremost;" to keep up an appearance of strength, however weak they might be; to keep up a show of independence, however much they might be hoping and praying for help. Like as an expectant bride, though she has the plighted faith of her lover, will continue to smile, to dress, to allure in every way she can, up to the very hour of the marriage ceremony, so the South continued to smile, to dress, to allure, in every way she could, her Northern allies, who had solemnly plighted their faith to her, and her English sympathizers, whose pecuniary interests lay all in that direction, and these things she continued to do up to the very moment when the Confederacy collapsed, and when it was found that nothing was left of the egg but the shell. As our reverend friend said to us, over and over again, and as other Confederate officers have said to us, over and over again, "none but those within the lines, and behind the scenes, knew of the destitution, of the suffering, of the heart-aches, of the skeletons within closets while those who held the keys were smiling as if they were full of good things, of the turns and shifts which not only the army but which almost every family in the South had to make, in order to preserve life, and yet keep up a fair outside show, during those four terrible years of war." And now for the illustrations—little or none of which has ever before been published.
After the first year of the war, so much in want of food was the Confederate army at times, that, in one instance, an officer, with an escort, travelled sixty miles before he could purchase food enough to load one six-mule wagon which he had with him. Even then they had to go within the Union lines, and run very great risk of being captured.
The same officer from whom we learned the above incident, also told us that, on one occasion, he and the men with him were so ravenous from hunger that he shot an old sow that had had a large litter of pigs only the day before, and that while he and his fellow officers ate the meat (if meat it could be called) of the old sow, his men ate not only the one-day-old pigs, but even the very entrails of the mother.
On another occasion this same officer shot an opossum that had just been having its young, and while, under ordinary circumstances, he could no more have eaten its flesh than he could have eaten a viper, yet such was his hunger at the time that the dish seemed palatable. Often, he said, he had gone for a whole day, and occasionally two or three days at a time, without one "square meal;" and this he knew to be an ordinary experience among officers of the Confederate army, especially during the last year of the war, and largely so during the two or three last years of the war. Certainly, if there was an officer in that army who had opportunities to live on the "fat of the land," he was one of them, and if he suffered thus, God only knows what must have been the sufferings of others!
Early in the war, coffee became scarce, and, during the last year or two, hardly to be had at all within the lines of the Confederacy. To procure it, all manner of devices were resorted to. On one occasion, when two sentinels were within calling distance of each other—one on either side of an intervening deep ravine—a Confederate officer present told his sentinel to ask the Union sentinel whether his company had any coffee which they would exchange for tobacco. The Union sentinel inquired of his captain, and after a time hallooed back that they had of their company rations a bag of coffee left over, which they would exchange for tobacco, provided they could make a good trade. The Confederate officer instructed his sentinel to reply that they would give twenty-five boxes of plug tobacco for one bag of coffee. The offer was accepted, and as soon after as the coffee and the tobacco could be brought to the spot, the Union sentinel rolled down the bag of coffee, the Confederate sentinel rolled down the twenty-five boxes of tobacco, to the foot of the ravine, when, with assistants, each took away the article traded for—hostilities being suspended meanwhile. Each of the parties was highly pleased with the trade. Before the war one or two boxes of tobacco would have brought in the New York market as much, if not more, than one bag of coffee.
Pins and needles became so scarce in the Confederacy that at least one man—a Mr. Webster Sly, of Charles County, Md., brother to a celebrated doctor in that vicinity—made quite a fortune by smuggling trunks full of these articles across the Union lines and selling them within the Confederate lines.
As early as 1863, one of our informants saw dogs in the streets of Charleston so emaciated that they could scarcely walk, and at one time saw one of these animals leaning against a fence and chewing upon an old shoe. In that city and in Richmond he knew of families who had once been wealthy that were, during the war, compelled to sell not only their clothing, but even their beds, to procure food to live upon. Our reverend friend himself, though at one time the owner of a handsome house and of slaves, had, while at Petersburg, been compelled to live, with his wife and daughter, in a garret, and upon food that a dog would scarcely have eaten under ordinary circumstances.
Not only did such destitution prevail throughout the Confederate States during the war, but still worse evils prevailed, engendered by pride, jealousy, and passion. While this fact was carefully concealed from Northern eyes and ears, and from English eyes and ears, yet it prevailed to an alarming extent, and when occasionally it would burst forth in such violence as to cause death, no mention of the fact was made in the newspapers at Richmond lest it might reach Northern or English ears.
Almost at the beginning of the war two parties sprang up in the Confederacy, known as the "Davis party" and the "Stephens party." President Davis advocated one line of policy; Vice-President Stephens advocated another line of policy. Their respective friends took sides, each with his chief, and so bitter became the strife between the two, that when the Government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond Mr. Stephens would not come there to preside over the deliberations of the Senate. At one time, in 1863, the strife between their respective partisans in the Confederate Congress, then meeting in Richmond, became so great, that a Virginian (a Davis man) shot and killed a Georgian (a Stephens man) upon the floor of the House for some words uttered in debate. The excitement for the moment was intense. Pistols and bowie-knives were drawn by dozens of Congressmen, and it seemed that many additional lives would have to be sacrificed then and there before the affray could end, but erelong quiet was restored and the dead body of the slain member removed from the chamber. Our informant saw the dead body as it was carried along the street, inquired after and learned all the incidents of the bloody affair, but neither on that day nor on any day thereafter was a word said about it in the Richmond newspapers.
Another cause of much irritation, much jealousy, and much bad blood, arose in the appointing of general officers for the Confederate army. Mr. Davis, being himself a "West-Pointer," it was not unnatural that he should prefer, in all cases, graduates of West Point; but, as the people of the several States had to furnish not only the money, but the men for the army, it was not unnatural that they should desire to see some of their leading citizens in command of the men they furnished. The people believed that brains were quite as essential to success as technical military knowledge, and were not willing to trust all their interests, personal and pecuniary, to the direction of such as knew little or nothing beyond military tactics. The demand became so strong and so persistent that the administration yielded, so far as to appoint Bishop Polk, Rev. Dr. Pendleton, John C. Breckinridge, and Bradley Johnson, to generalships; but beyond this, few, if any, held high positions in the army, other than West-Point-ers. Towards the close of the war, General Lee said, at a dinner given to army officers, at Orange Court-House, near his headquarters, that from thenceforth the "policy of the government would be to give promotion to such, and such only, as fairly earned it on the field of battle, without regard to their previous military education." This speech was reported at once in every part of the Confederacy, and as he was presumed to speak by authority, it had the effect to quiet, in a great measure, the excitement which had so long existed relative to military appointments.
Another source of demoralization, and, consequently, of weakness in the Confederacy, was the disposition to gamble among so many of its officers and leading citizens. At Richmond, while so many, who had been affluent, were almost starving; while the gradual disappearance, and finally the entire absence, of cats and dogs in the city, proved that meat other than lamb was supplying the tables of many of its citizens; while even the highest officers of State were, at times, sorely perplexed about food for their families, the gambling houses of that city were doing a splendid business, and furnishing free lunches to their patrons far superior to what could be found upon the table of President Davis or any member of his cabinet. Indeed, it became well known among Confederate army officers, and among the leading gentlemen of the city as well, that the best eatables and the best drinkables to be had in the Confederacy were to be had at these gambling saloons, and many a one was induced to patronize them on this account more than on any other. It was said that the proprietors of these saloons could obtain, and did obtain, supplies from the North, when the highest officers and the wealthiest men of Richmond could not obtain them. How done, except through pals and noted gamblers, some of whom were well-known spies, and often in Washington, was never known. Notwithstanding the expensive free lunches given by these gambling houses every day, they made immense amounts of money. What they made in gold and greenbacks they carefully stored away, or made use of in the purchase of supplies. What they got in Confederate money they invested in real estate, so that, when the war ended, the gamblers of Richmond owned more real estate than any other class of persons, if not more than all other classes combined. What was true of Richmond, in all these particulars, was probably true of every other city in the Confederacy.
Still another source of weakness in the Confederacy was the lack of confidence; almost from the beginning, in the currency issued by the government, or by its authority. It was thought to be a terrible condition of things in the North when a gold dollar commanded $2.85 in greenbacks; when muslin, that had sold for ten cents per yard, sold for thirty; when coffee, sugar, meats, almost everything, commanded double, and, in some cases, treble the prices at which they had sold before the war; but these were as nothing when compared with the South. A single chicken leg, or a single chicken wing, with a small piece of corn-bread tied to it, sold at from one to two dollars at many of the railroad depots; a drink of brandy or whiskey, at the Ballard House, Richmond, cost five dollars; a single meal, at the same house, ten dollars; a gentleman's dressing-gown, smuggled through from the North by a land blockade-runner, sold, in Richmond, for eleven hundred dollars. Of course, all these prices mean Confederate currency. Such as were wise enough to invest their Confederate money in real estate had something of real value after the war. Such as failed to do this, had large amounts in what purported to be money, but not one penny in real value, after the war ended. Every dollar of gold or silver that came within the Confederate lines, after the second year of the war, was either hoarded or hid away, or expended for needed supplies, in which case it soon found its way back to the North or to England.
And thus we close this tenth scene of the drama, in which we have endeavored to give our readers a glimpse of the Southern Confederacy as seen from within; and to show, too, that pride, passion, and want formed a fearful picture in the background.
