THE FATAL BLUNDER
On February 22, 1862, Jefferson Davis committed the one irretrievable mistake of his administration. He consented to his inauguration as permanent President of the Confederacy under the strict forms of Constitutional law.
The South was entering the shadows of the darkest hour of her new life. A military dictator clothed with autocratic power could have subdued the discordant elements and marshaled the resources of the country to meet the crisis. A constitutional President would bind himself hand and foot with legal forms. A military dictator might ride to victory and carry his country with him.
His two Commanding Generals had allowed the victorious army of Manassas to drift into a rabble while they wrangled for position, precedence and power.
The swift and terrible blows which the navy had dealt the South, delivered so silently and yet with such deadly effect that the people had not yet realized their import, had convinced the President that the war would be one of the bloodiest in history.
The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson with the evacuation of Nashville had been a sword thrust into the heart of the lower South. The extent of these disasters had not been realized by the public. The South was yet a sleeping lioness. She could be roused and her powers wielded with certainty by one man. But his hand must be firm.
There was one man in the Cabinet of the Confederacy who clearly saw this from the first dawn of the new year—Judah P. Benjamin, the astute Secretary of War. His keen logical mind had brushed aside the fog of sentiment and saw one thing—the need of success and the way in which to attain it.
The morning of February twenty-second was Washington's birthday, and for that reason fixed by the South as the day of the inauguration of their President. Nothing could have shown more clearly the tenacity with which the Southern people were clinging to their old forms. The day slowly dawned through lowering storm clouds.
The President went early to his office for a consultation with the members of his new Cabinet. Judah P. Benjamin, his chosen chief counselor as Secretary of State, was unusually reticent. The details of the inauguration were quickly agreed on and Davis hastened to return to his room at the White House to complete his preparations for the ceremony.