The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February 2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the Territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery.

Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly into the gulf of the brothers’ war into which his measure has been made by the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows titanic mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in the highest class of great speeches.

Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs’s justification of secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can answer. Davis’s does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side. It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. Some years after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, “No. And God damn ’em, I haven’t pardoned them.” Of course the average man or woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis’s reply, and on reflection will censure the other.

Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section. When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him far superior to Lincoln—this was said by the general. Thus were his disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south.

His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough.

His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he often exclaimed, “If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from those people.”[131]

But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the facts which I will now tell.

He was on the field at First Manassas when that unprecedented panic seized the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me ejaculated, “We ought to press forward and go into Washington with ’em.” Davis with his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight, during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary supplies of all sorts—in short, the entire baggage of the enemy—that would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell’s pontoons, or captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would have happened if Davis had been a Cæsar and had Cæsar-like used the one great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted himself to be reasoned out of it.

There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, “You are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond Centerville without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington city!” And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun rose.

Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military chieftain of the Confederate States.[132] I would abridge what can be said here under these heads: