The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

Whatever crudities may appear in the general plans of warfare, adopted by the American belligerents in 1861, when tested by the maxims which have obtained in other wars, waged upon different theatres of action, and for different purposes, at least there was not wanting a palpable and definitive shape. With remarkable rapidity and precision, the military situation was adjusted to the attainment of certain general objects, which continued, during the successive stages of the war, to be pursued, with varying fortune, by the respective contestants.

The incipient campaign of the war was peculiarly regulated and determined by the paramount aims which had impelled the respective parties to arms. Of necessity, the campaign, on the part of the North, must be offensive, while the South, in a defensive attitude, must prepare to parry the blows of her assailant. The pretext of the North was to assert the “national authority” over what it was pleased to term “rebellious” territory. The animus of the South was to repel an invasion which menaced her liberties and firesides. Whatever advantages may have belonged to the position of the South were not overlooked by those who were charged with her defense; and it may safely be claimed, in view of the immediate and overwhelming result in her favor, that whatever compensation, for obvious disadvantages, she had anticipated from the resources of skillful leadership, was fairly rendered.

The two Governments, at Washington and at Richmond, were then more directly chargeable with the actual results in the field than at subsequent periods. The army had then become less independent of the Government. Its organic structure was undeveloped, and it had not yet become identified with those commanders whose history was hereafter to be so interwoven with its own. In a general sense, it may be remarked, that the connection of President Davis with all the campaigns of the Confederate army, was that which the country designed it should be, when, in consequence of his military aptitude and experience, it placed him in charge of the public administration. Moreover, it was consistent with that inevitable responsibility which attached to the office of chief executive. Ignorant and intemperate partisans have labored to prove his responsibility for those casualties of war, which are utterly beyond human calculations, and to trace to his influence disasters of the battle-field, with which he could by no possibility have been connected. As is usual in such cases, these criticisms are made with a total forgetfulness of the unintentional tribute, which is accorded to Mr. Davis, in ascribing to him the chief responsibility for a military administration, which the world declares to have had few parallels in its history.

When President Davis reached Richmond, from Montgomery, the military situation had already assumed a well-defined shape. The plans of defense, adopted by the Virginian authorities, mainly under the direction of General Lee, and carried into partial execution before the alliance with the Confederacy had been formally consummated, were adhered to by the Confederate Government. President Davis, as we have seen, fully impressed with the demands of the exigency, immediately upon his arrival, addressed himself, with characteristic vigor and promptitude, to such measures as would secure a successful campaign. In the meantime, the preparations of the Federal Government were equally vigorous, and by no means indefinite in their aims.

Whatever may be the comparative merits, when placed in antithetical juxtaposition, of the plans of campaign adopted by the two Governments in 1861, or whatever may be alleged of the blunders and mishaps of the Federal scheme of warfare, there could be no question of the full comprehension of the necessities of the situation by the veteran commander of the Federal armies. We are not called upon here to give an opinion of General Scott in his personal or political relations, but that combination of sagacious military minds, upon which devolved the defense of Southern liberties, was not likely to commit the error of a disparaging estimate of his abilities.

General Scott, far in advance of the prevailing opinion at the North, dreamed of no holiday enterprise. He well knew that Southern valor, directed by leaders whose names were identified with the proudest prestige of America, and enlisted in the defense of principles which were the dearest convictions and traditions of the Southern heart, was not to be crushed in a “three-months’” wrestle of arms. Accordingly, his preparations were for war in its broadest and most terrible sense; a war between powerful nationalities; a war in which, though sustained by inexhaustible resources and popular enthusiasm, he had yet to contend with a race essentially military in its instincts, earnest in conviction, led by men whose capacities he had amply tested, and aided by defensive position, vast extent of territory, and by those numerous obstacles in the way of conquest, which must have been apparent to the eye of an experienced soldier.

The attitude of the Confederate Government was necessarily defensive. History would be searched in vain for examples justifying an invasion by a people entirely agricultural in habits and resources, weak in numbers, and with a government not yet organized three months, of a powerful manufacturing and commercial nation, of dense population, and great wealth and resources. Without supplies, equipment and transportation, and without the time or opportunity to obtain them, successful invasion of the North, however attractive to the popular imagination, was clearly impossible. Viewed from the more educated stand-point, furnished by the later developments of the war, the crude ideas, from which arose the popular aspiration of at once “carrying the war into Africa,” are ludicrous in the extreme. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the defensive, subjected to such modifications as the casualties of war render proper and necessary in all plans, whether offensive or defensive, was at all times the true policy of the South. Certain it is, that, upon two occasions, essaying the offensive under the most favorable circumstances, and under their greatest commander, the Confederates were overtaken by disaster. There can be no just criterion, furnished by European wars, by which to test the Confederate military policy in the main. Parallels between the American civil war and those waged by Frederick the Great and Napoleon are inadmissable. Not only were circumstances entirely dissimilar, but able military critics have indicated physical peculiarities, forbidding the unexceptional application to American warfare, of maxims which, elsewhere, are undisputed.

Nevertheless, war as a science must be worse than useless, unless its underlying principles have universal application. Nor is it maintained that there were no circumstances which would have justified a departure from the usually defensive policy of the Confederates. Upon two occasions the main army of the South, having successfully encountered upon its own soil the most prodigious efforts of the enemy’s strength, sought to follow him in the moment of his recoil. The Confederate invasion of 1862, culminating at Antietam, and that of 1863, culminating at Gettysburg, were undertaken with the purpose of destroying, upon his own soil, an enemy already defeated. Each of these endeavors was based upon sound principles; and there is no little palliation for the disaster, in either case, in reflecting how great would have been the results of success. Much of the philosophy of the war in Virginia is to be explained by the fact of the thoroughly aggressive character, as soldiers, of President Davis and General Lee. These two directing minds, by whose combined genius and will, the fortunes of the Confederacy were so long upheld, in full and cordial coöperation during the entire war, were in nothing more harmonious, than in the desire for an aggressive campaign, whenever it could be undertaken with a reasonable promise of success. Hence, the history of the army of Northern Virginia develops, throughout, that military policy which is known as the “defensive with offensive returns.”

After the conclusion of the alliance between Virginia and the Confederate States, which placed all “military operations, offensive and defensive, in Virginia,” under the control of the Confederate President, troops from the other Southern States had been thrown northward with astonishing rapidity. As rapidly as they arrived, regiments were sent to the various localities where it had been thought expedient to establish a defensive force. These posts were distributed with a view to their strategic bearing upon particular sections of territory, which it was deemed necessary to defend, and also with reference to their strategic connection with each other, and with the chain of combinations making the general plan of defense.

In the early summer, the distribution of the Southern forces in Virginia was as follows: At Manassas Junction, thirty-five miles south-west from Washington, and the point of intersection of the lines of railroad running southward to Richmond, and to the Shenandoah Valley, was a force, to the command of which General Beauregard was transferred from the charge of the defenses of Charleston. Manassas Junction was obviously a strategic point of the first importance, as the centre of the railroad system of Northern Virginia, and as a base of operations threatening Washington, and immediately across the path of any overland expedition against Richmond. The favorable estimate of General Beauregard’s abilities entertained by the President, added to the popularity which followed his services at Charleston, occasioned his assignment to what was obviously to be the most important theatre of operations.