The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

An interval of repose was permitted the Army of Northern Virginia, after its return from Maryland, in its encampments near Winchester, during which it was actively strengthened and recruited to the point of adequate preparation for expected demonstrations of the enemy.

The operations of the Western army, in many respects, were a brilliant counterpart to the campaign in Virginia, though lacking its brilliant fruits. We have mentioned the circumstance which placed General Braxton Bragg in command of the Western army, after its successful evacuation of Corinth. General Bragg was equally high in the confidence of the President and the Southern people. Greatly distinguished by his services in Mexico, his skillful handling, at Shiloh, of the magnificent corps of troops, which his discipline had made a model of efficiency, more than confirmed his Mexican fame.

Space does not permit us to follow, in detail, the execution of the able and comprehensive strategy, by which General Bragg relieved large sections of Tennessee and Alabama from the presence of the enemy, penetrated the heart of Kentucky, maintained an active offensive during the summer, and transferred the seat of war to the Federal frontier. A part of these operations was the hurried retreat of Buell’s immense army, from its posts in Alabama and Tennessee, for the defense of Louisville and Cincinnati; large captures of prisoners, horses, arms and military stores; and the brilliant progress and successive victories of Kirby Smith and Morgan. For weeks the situation in Kentucky seemed to promise the unqualified success of the entire Western campaign. There was, indeed, reasonable hope of a permanent occupation of the larger portion of Kentucky and Tennessee by the Confederate forces.

But the battle of Perryville—an engagement not unlike Antietam in its doubtful claim as a Federal victory—was followed by the retreat of General Bragg, which was executed with skill, and with results going far to relieve the disappointment of the popular hope of a permanent occupation of Kentucky. Buell, on his arrival at Louisville, whither he had retreated, received heavy reënforcements, which greatly increased his already superior numbers; and Perryville, a battle which General Bragg fought, rather to secure his retreat than with the expectation of a decisive victory, would have been an overwhelming Confederate success, had Bragg been sufficiently strong to follow up his advantage.

No Confederate commander, save Lee and Jackson, was ever able to present a claim of a successful campaign so well grounded as the Kentucky campaign of Bragg. With a force of forty thousand men, he killed, wounded, and captured more than twenty thousand of the enemy; took thirty pieces of artillery, thousands of small arms; a large supply of wagons, harness, and horses; and an immense amount of subsistence, ample not only for the support of his own army, but of other forces of the Confederacy. During the succeeding autumn and winter, Bragg’s army was conspicuous for its superior organization, admirable condition and tone; was abundantly supplied with food and clothing, and in larger numbers than when it started upon its campaign in August. Moreover, General Bragg redeemed North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, and recovered possession of Cumberland Gap, the doorway, through the mountains, to Knoxville and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad—the main avenue from Richmond to the heart of the Confederacy. Evincing his determination to hold the recovered territory, General Bragg, within a month from his return from Kentucky, was confronting the principal army of the enemy, in the West, before Nashville.

Incidental to the movement of Bragg into Kentucky, and constituting a part of the programme, attempted upon the large theatre of the Western campaign, were the repulse of the first attack of the enemy upon Vicksburg, the partial failure of General Breckinridge’s expedition to Baton Rouge, and the serious reverse sustained by Van Dorn at Corinth. In connection with the more important demonstration into Kentucky, these incidents of the Western campaign may be briefly aggregated as the recovery of the country between Nashville and Chattanooga, and the important advantage of a secure occupation of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, thus closing the Mississippi to the enemy for two hundred miles.

Subsequent operations in Virginia, at the close of 1862, were entirely favorable to the Confederacy. While the two armies were confronting each other, with the imminent prospect of active and important operations, General McClellan was relieved, and one of his corps commanders, General Burnside, assigned to the command of the Federal army of the Potomac. As is now universally acknowledged, General McClellan was sacrificed to the clamor of a political faction. By this act Mr. Lincoln became responsible for much of the ill-fortune which awaited the Federal arms in Virginia.

Perhaps among his countrymen, a Southern tribute to General McClellan may constitute but feeble praise. He was unquestionably the ablest and most accomplished soldier exhibited by the war on the Northern side. “Had there been no McClellan,” General Meade is reported to have said, “there would have been no Grant.” In retirement, if not exile, General McClellan saw the armies which his genius created, achieve undeserved distinction for men, his inferiors in all that constitutes true generalship. He saw the feeble and wasted remnant of an army, with which he had grappled in the day of its glory and strength, surrender to a multitudinous host, doubly as large as the army with which he had given Lee his first check at Antietam. A true soldier, McClellan was also a true gentleman, an enemy whose talents the South respects none the less, because he did not wantonly ravage its homes, nor make war upon the helpless, the aged, and infirm. President Davis, who, while Federal Secretary of War, conferred upon McClellan a special distinction, held his genius and attainments in high estimation. He received the intelligence of his removal with profound satisfaction.

The North was not required to wait long for a competent test of the new commander’s capacity. Foiled and deceived by Lee, in a series of maneuvres, the results of which made him only less ridiculous than the gasconading Pope among Federal commanders, Burnside finally assailed Lee, on the 13th December, at Fredericksburg. The result was a bloody slaughter, unequaled in previous annals of the war, an overwhelming repulse, and a demoralized retreat across the Rappahannock.

The Western campaign terminated with the battle of Murfreesboro’. The Federal commander, Rosecrans, the successor of Buell, advanced from Nashville to drive Bragg from his position. A brilliant and vigorous attack by Bragg, on the 31st December, routed an entire wing of the Federal army; on the second day the action was more favorable to Rosecrans, who had retreated, after his reverse on the first day, to stronger positions. Receiving information that the enemy was strongly reënforcing, General Bragg fell back to Tullahoma, a position more favorable for strategic and defensive purposes.