The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

President Davis indicated the following methods of adding to the army: “Restoring to the army all who are improperly absent, putting an end to substitution, modifying the exemption law, restricting details, and placing in the ranks such of the able-bodied men now employed as wagoners, nurses, cooks, and other employés as are doing service, for which the negroes may be found competent.”

These were evidently the last expedients by which the Confederate armies could be recruited from the white population. By successive enactments Congress had empowered the President to call into the field all persons between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. The exigency consequent upon the reverses of the summer had necessitated the requisition of the last reserves provided by Congress—the class between forty and forty-five. Conscription had failed to give the effective strength calculated upon. Each extension of the law exhibited, in the result, an accession of numbers greatly below the estimate upon which it was based. This was largely due to the inefficient execution of the law, and to the opposition which it encountered in many localities. But the results also indicated a most exaggerated estimate of the available arms-bearing population of the South. In the latter part of 1863, the rolls of the Adjutant-General’s office in Richmond showed a little more than four hundred thousand men under arms; and Secretary Seddon stated that, from desertions and other causes, “not more than a half—never two-thirds—of the soldiers were in the ranks.”

The message of Mr. Davis indicated defective features in the system of conscription, and suggested improvements as follows:

“On the subject of exemptions, it is believed that abuses can not be checked unless the system is placed on a basis entirely different from that now provided by law. The object of your legislation has been, not to confer privileges on classes, but to exonerate from military duty such number of persons skilled in the various trades, professions, and mechanical pursuits, as could render more valuable service to their country by laboring in their present occupation than by going into the ranks of the army. The policy is unquestionable, but the result would, it is thought, be better obtained by enrolling all such persons, and allowing details to be made of the number necessary to meet the wants of the country. Considerable numbers are believed to be now exempted from the military service who are not needful to the public in their civil vocation.

“Certain duties are now performed throughout the country by details from the army, which could be as well executed by persons above the present conscript age. An extension of the limit, so as to embrace persons over forty-five years, and physically fit for service in guarding posts, railroads, and bridges, in apprehending deserters, and, where practicable, assuming the place of younger men detailed for duty with the nitre, ordnance, commissary, and quartermaster’s bureaus of the War Department, would, it is hoped, add largely to the effective force in the field, without an undue burden on the population.”

The message further recommended legislation replacing “not only enlisted cooks, but wagoners, and other employés in the army, by negroes.” From these measures the President expected that the army would be “so strengthened, for the ensuing campaign, as to put at defiance the utmost efforts of the enemy.”

But the meagre results of conscription revealed not only an excessive calculation of the numerical strength of the Confederacy; they indicated the reluctance with which the harsh necessities of the war, in its later stages, were met. As the war was protracted, popular ardor naturally waned, and in the presence of losses and reverses, the spirit of voluntary sacrifice gradually disappeared. Draft and impressment were now required to obtain the services and the means, which, in the beginning, were lavishly proffered.

Partially the result of a natural popular weariness of the increasing exactions of a long and exhaustive struggle, these were also the legitimate fruits of the distrust so assiduously inculcated by the fault-finders. When reverses to their armies came with appalling rapidity, and, in many instances, in spite of the exertions of their ablest and most popular leaders, the people saw confidence and industry only in their Government, and that Government they were constantly taught to believe grossly incompetent and unworthy. Under such circumstances, how could there be that unity and coöperation, without which the cause was preordained to failure? In that industry which sought every possible occasion for censure, that ingenuity which exaggerated every error, that intemperance which filled the halls of Congress with denunciation, and the land with clamor and discontent, the North at last found allies which ably assisted its armies.

More violent, intemperate, and unscrupulous than ever, were the assaults upon the administration, in that long period of agony which followed the disasters in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Such was an appropriate occasion, when a grief-stricken country implored the unanimity which alone could bring relief, for agitation, revenge, and invective. In Congress Mr. Davis was assailed with furious vituperation, because he had refused, at the instance of a member, to remove Bragg, and place Johnston in command of the Western army. Yet General Johnston, after a visit to Tennessee, earnestly advised the President not to remove Bragg, as the public interests would suffer by that step. Almost daily Mr. Davis was assailed for not having properly estimated the war, in the diatribes of an able editor, who himself, but a few weeks before hostilities opened, declared there would be no war. Of such a character were the accusers and the accusations.

If Jefferson Davis courted revenge, he could find ample satisfaction in the contrast between himself and some of his foremost accusers, which the sequel has drawn. He fell at last, but only when that cause was lost, which he unselfishly loved, and which his heart followed to its glorious grave. His name is already immortal—the embodiment of the heroism, the virtues, the sufferings, the glory of a people who revere him and scorn his persecutors. Nor can the South forget that many, who, during her arduous struggle, constantly assailed her chosen ruler, have since taken refuge in the camp of those who first conquered, and now seek to degrade her people.