The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

Meanwhile the siege of Petersburg had progressed drearily through the months of summer and autumn. The “hammering” principle was abandoned by General Grant, for a series of maneuvres having in view the possession of the railroads extending southward and eastward.

About the middle of August a portion of Grant’s army was established upon the Weldon road. This was by no means a line of communication vital to General Lee, though several heavy engagements ensued from its disputed possession. The Federal losses in these engagements were very heavy, and were hardly compensated by any immediate advantage following the permanent acquisition, by General Grant, of the Weldon Railroad. The location of the Federal army gave ample opportunity for the transfer of forces to either side of the river, and General Grant did not fail to avail himself of his facilities, for aiding the more important operations before Petersburg, by numerous diversions in the direction of Richmond. One of these movements upon the north side of James River, in the last days of September, resulted disastrously to the Confederates, in the loss of Fort Harrison, a position of great importance in the defense of that portion of the Confederate line. Efforts to recapture it were unavailing, and attended with heavy loss. The enemy was left in secure possession of a position from which Richmond could be seriously menaced. The last serious demonstration by General Grant, before winter, was the movement of a heavy force, with the view of turning the Confederate position, and obtaining the possession of Lee’s communications with Lynchburg and Danville. Though sustained by a strong diversion on other portions of the line, this demonstration was barren of results.

Thus, the beginning of winter found the Confederate forces still safely holding the lines of Richmond and Petersburg. The situation near the Confederate capital was encouraging, and indicated an almost indefinite resistance. But nearly every other quarter of the Confederacy was darkened by the shadow of disaster.

The campaign of Hood in Tennessee had its counterpart in the Valley campaign of General Early. This campaign, the original design of which was the expulsion of Hunter, was doubly important afterwards in the design to secure the harvests of the Shenandoah Valley, and to continue the diversion of a large Federal force from the front of Richmond. The earlier movements of General Early were attended with success, and the Confederacy had the promise of a campaign, which should renew the glories of Stonewall Jackson, in a district which his exploits had made forever famous. In its conclusion was revealed, perhaps more strikingly than upon any other theatre of the war, the overwhelming odds and obstacles, with which the Confederacy contended in this desperate stage of its history. The activity of General Early in the summer months, and his well-earned reputation as an officer of skill and daring, induced the enemy to concentrate a heavy force to protect the Potomac frontier, and, if possible, to overwhelm the Confederate army in the Valley. In the months of September and October, several engagements occurred, in which General Early was badly defeated, and his army at the close of autumn exhibited so many evidences of demoralization, as to occasion apprehension for its future efficiency.

The censure of General Early by the public and the newspapers was unsparing. Most unworthy allegations, totally unsupported, were circulated in explanation of his disasters. That such a man as Early, whose every promotion had been won by a heroism and efficiency inferior to those of none of Lee’s subordinates, should have been recklessly condemned for reverses, which were clearly the results of no errors or misconduct of his own, is now a striking commentary upon that sullen despondency into which the Southern mind was fast settling. A victory, in any quarter, was now almost the last expectation of the public, and still Early was recklessly abused for not winning victories, with a demoralized army, against forces having four times his own strength. Neither President Davis nor General Lee ever doubted General Early’s efficiency; and the letter of the commanding general to Early, written in the last hours of the Confederacy, constitutes a tribute to patriotic and distinguished services, which the old hero may well cherish in his exile, as a worthy title to the esteem of posterity.

The defeat of Early at Cedar Creek, late in October, was the decisive event of the last campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. In December nearly all Early’s forces were transferred to General Lee’s lines, and the bulk of the Federal army in the Valley returned to General Grant. General Early remained in the Valley with a fragmentary command, which Sheridan easily overran on his march from Winchester to the front of Petersburg.

Events in the Valley had a marked influence upon the situation near Richmond. The Confederate authorities had hoped for such a successful issue in the Valley as should relieve Richmond of much of Grant’s pressure. The disappointment of this hope left the Federal frontier secure, and gave Grant a large accession of strength, for which Lee had no compensation, except the débris of a defeated and dispirited army.

The aggregate of military disasters with which the year 1864 terminated, established the inevitable failure of the Confederacy, unless more vigorous measures than the Government had ever yet attempted should be adopted, and unless the people were prepared for sacrifices which had not yet been exacted. The reserves of men, which the various acts of conscription were designed to place in the field, were exhausted, or beyond the reach of the Government, and the supplies of the army became more and more precarious each day. There was, indeed, nothing fatal as affecting the ultimate decision of the contest, in the military events of the past year, if unattended by a decay of public spirit. It was not until the winter of 1864-1865 that any considerable body of the Southern people were brought to the conviction that their struggle was a hopeless one. The waste of war is in nothing more continuous than in its test of the moral energy of communities. In the last winter of the war the distrust of the popular mind was painfully apparent. The South began to read its fate when it saw that the North had converted warfare into universal destruction and desolation, and when it exchanged the code of civilized war for the grim butchery of Grant, and the savage measures of Sherman and Sheridan. It was plain that while the losses of the Federal army were shocking, and were sufficient to have unnerved the army and the people of the North, the “attrition” of General Grant had caused a fearful diminution of the Confederate armies.

The facility of the Federal Government in repairing its losses of men, baffled all previous calculation in the Confederacy, and it had long since become evident that the resources of the North, in all other respects, were equal to an indefinite endurance. Indeed, it has been justly said that the material resources of the North were not seriously tested, but merely developed by the war. Peculiarly disheartening to the South was the triumph of the Republican party in the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln—an event plainly portending a protraction of the war upon a scale, which should adequately employ the inexhaustible means at the command of the Federal Government.

It would be needless to speculate now as to the material capacity of the South to have met the demands of another campaign. The military capacity of the Confederacy in the last months of the war, is not to be measured by the number of men that still might have been brought to the field, or by the material means which yet survived the consumption and waste of war. These considerations are admissible only in connection with that moral condition of the public, which fitted or disqualified it for longer endurance of the privations and sacrifices of the war. Long before the close of winter, popular feeling assumed a phase of sullen indifference which, while yet averse to unconditional submission to the North, manifestly despaired of ultimate success, viewed additional sacrifices as hopeless, and anticipated the worst.