The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

Justice, proverbially slow, has been tardy indeed in its awards to Mr. Davis; but in this instance, as it must inevitably in others, it has come time enough for his historical vindication. The reader, uninformed as to the merits of this question, will be content with a limited statement from the mass of testimony, which has ultimately acquitted Mr. Davis of having prevented the pursuit of the Federal army after its overthrow upon the field of Manasses. In a publication, presenting an elaborate indictment against Mr. Davis, as the main instrument of the downfall of the Confederacy, written since the war, is found the following admission: “As is known, he (President Davis) was at Manasses the evening of the 21st July, 1861. Until a late hour that night he was engaged with Generals Johnston and Beauregard, at the quarters of the latter, in discussing the momentous achievements of the day, the extent of which was not as yet recognized at all by him or his generals. Much gratified with known results, his bearing was eminently proper. He certainly expressed no opposition to any forward movement; nor at the time displayed a disposition to interpose his opinion or authority touching operations and plans of campaign.”[39]

General Johnston, in a communication published since the war, assumes the responsibility of the failure to pursue, and, with the advantage of retrospect, defends that course with cogent reasoning and an interesting statement of facts. Says General Johnston: “‘The substantial fruit’ of this victory was the preservation of the Confederacy. No more could have been hoped for. The pursuit of the enemy was not continued because our cavalry (a very small force) was driven back by the ‘solid resistance’ of the United States infantry. Its rearguard was an entire division, which had not been engaged, and was twelve or fifteen times more numerous than our two little bodies of cavalry. The infantry was not required to continue the pursuit, because it would have been harassing it to no purpose. It is well known that infantry, unencumbered by baggage trains, can easily escape pursuing cavalry.”

That no farther results were to be hoped for than the arrest of the Federal advance toward Richmond, he endeavors to demonstrate as follows: “A movement upon Washington was out of the question. We could not have carried the intrenchments by assault, and had none of the means to besiege them. Our assault would have been repulsed, and the enemy, then become the victorious party, would have resumed their march to Richmond; but if we had captured the intrenchments, a river, a mile wide, lay between them and Washington, commanded by the guns of a Federal fleet. If we had taken Alexandria, which stands on low and level ground, those guns would have driven us out in a few hours, at the same time killing our friends, the inhabitants. We could not cross the Potomac, and therefore it was impracticable to conquer the hostile capital, or emancipate oppressed Maryland.”

But these statements, ample, as far as they go, in the vindication of Mr. Davis, only partially tell the story of Manassas. They do not fully describe his real relation to the question, though we are far from imputing to General Johnston an intentional omission. A statement of Mr. Davis’ views was not necessarily germane to General Johnston’s explanation of his own conduct. His purpose is to establish the reasons which induced him to decline pursuit of the enemy, or rather, which, in his judgment, made pursuit impracticable. Nor is it germane to our purpose to discuss these reasons; to attempt either a demonstration of their fallacy or an argument in their support. They have not been accepted as conclusive either by the public, or by unanimous military judgment.

The great name of Stonewall Jackson, himself an actor in the most thrilling scenes of that wonderful triumph of Southern valor, and dating from that day his record upon the “bead-roll of fame,” is authoritatively given in opposition to the policy which General Johnston approves. In this connection, we can not forbear to quote the biographer of that illustrious man, in passages showing that wondrous intuition of great soldiership, more distinctive, perhaps, of Jackson, than of any commander of the present century, excepting only Napoleon. Professor Dabney says: “Jackson, describing the manifest rout of the enemy, remarked to the physicians, that he believed ‘with ten thousand fresh men he could go into the city of Washington.’” Again, after a most graphic picture of the condition of the Federal army, its demoralization, panic, and utter incapacity to meet an attack by the victorious Confederates, and an able statement of the inducements to a vigorous pursuit, the biographer of General Jackson makes this impressive statement: “With these views of the campaign, General Jackson earnestly concurred. His sense of official propriety sealed his lips; and when the more impatient spirits inquired, day after day, why they were not led after the enemy, his only answer was to say: ‘That is the affair of the commanding generals.’ But to his confidential friends he afterward declared, when no longer under the orders of those officers, that their inaction was a deplorable blunder; and this opinion he was subsequently accustomed to assert with a warmth and emphasis unusual in his guarded manner.”[40]

Mr. Davis was far from approving the inaction which followed Manassas. He confidently expected a different use of the victory. When called away by the pressing nature of his official duties at Richmond, he left the army with a heart elastic with hope, at what he considered the certainty of even more glorious and valuable achievements. His speech at the depot in Richmond, which we have given elsewhere, is evidence of his exultant anticipations. The speech at the Spottswood, entering more into details, still better authenticates his hopes of an immediate and successful advance.[41] There could be no misinterpretation of the ardor with which, in glowing sentences, he predicted the immediate and consecutive triumphs of what he proudly termed the “gallant little army.”

Indeed, before leaving Manassas, President Davis favored the most vigorous pursuit practicable. On the evening of the battle, while the victory was assured, but by no means complete, he urged that the enemy, still on the field, (Heintzelman’s troops, as subsequently appeared,) be warmly pressed, as was successfully done. During the night following the engagement he made a disposition of a portion of the troops, with a view to an advance in the morning. These troops were removed, but not by himself, to meet an apprehended attack upon the head-quarters of the army. An advance on Monday, the 22d July, was out of the question, in consequence of the heavy rain.

It is not to be understood that President Davis fully appreciated, on Sunday night, the 21st, the overwhelming rout of the Federal army, nor that he advocated, as practicable, an immediate movement in pursuit, by the entire army. No one could have anticipated the utter disorganization attending the flight of the Federals. He had, too, positive evidence of the confusion prevailing among portions of the Southern troops. Summoned by a message from a youthful connection, who was mortally wounded, Mr. Davis rode over a large portion of the field, in a vain search for the regiment to which the young man was attached. Upon his return, he accidentally met an officer who directed him to the locality of the regiment, where he found the corpse of his relative. The evidences of disorganization, upon which General Johnston dwells with so much force and emphasis, were indeed palpable, but Mr. Davis confidently believed that an efficient pursuit might be made by such commands as were in comparatively good condition. Such were his impressions then, and that he contemplated immediate activity as the sequel of Manassas, is a matter of indisputable record.

That Mr. Davis did not insist upon the undeferred execution of his own views, is proof less of his approval of the course pursued, than of an absence of that pragmatic disposition with which he was afterwards so persistently charged. His subsequent hearty tributes to Beauregard and Johnston, and prompt recognition of their services, show how far he was elevated above that mean intolerance, which would have made him incapable of according merit to the opinions and actions of others, when averse to his own conclusions.

This determined spirit of misrepresentation of the motives and conduct of the President, beginning thus early—respecting the origin of which we shall have more to say hereafter—was to prove productive of the most serious embarrassments to the Confederate cause. The first great success in arms achieved by the South, was to originate questions tending to excite distrust in the capacity of the Executive, and subsequently distrust of his treatment of those who were under his authority. Misrepresentation was not to cease with the attempt already mentioned to impair public confidence in Mr. Davis. A pragmatic interference with the plans of his generals was persistently charged upon him. The almost uninterrupted inactivity of the main army in Virginia, following the battle of Manassas, by which the enemy was permitted, without molestation, to organize a new army—a subject of constant and exasperated censure by the public—was falsely attributed to Mr. Davis’ interference with Generals Johnston and Beauregard. It is a sad evidence of the license characteristic of a purely partisan criticism, that this falsely alleged interference has even been ascribed to the instigations of a mean envy of the popularity of those officers.