Four Years in Rebel Capitals / An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death

by T. C. De Leon

The best blood of the South went cheerfully into the ranks, as the post of honor; and the new regiments endeavored to be perfectly impartial in selecting the best men for their officers, irrespective of any other claim. That they failed signally in their object was the fault, not of their intention, but of human nature in many cases—of circumstance in all.

At this time the plan of filling up the regular army was abandoned. Officers coming from the United States service were, by law, entitled to at least as high rank in it as they had there held; but volunteers were asked for and accepted by companies, or regiments, with the privilege of choosing their own leaders; and these regulars were only given commands where vacancies, or the exigencies of the service, seemed to demand it imperatively.

Every hour of the day could be heard the tap of the drum, as the new troops from depot, or steamer, marched through the town to their camps in the suburbs; or as the better drilled volunteer companies passed through to Pensacola, where Brigadier-General Braxton Bragg already had a considerable force. And toward that point every eye was strained as the next great theater of action.

All day long the churches were open, and crowds of ladies, from town and country, assembled in them and sewed on the tough, ungainly pants and jackets; while their negro maids, collected on the porches, or under the trees, worked as steadily as their mistresses, many a ringing guffaw and not unmusical song rising above them.

Great numbers of the interested and the curious visited the camps, carrying substantial tokens of sympathy for the cause and its defenders in the shape of hams, loaves and sometimes bottles. Nor was such testimony often irrelevant; for as yet the quartermaster and commissary—those much-erring and more-cursed adjuncts to all armies—were not fully aware of what they were to do, or how to do it, even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake! And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order. Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed shape as clear and legible statutes. It was generally said that Mr. Davis had reduced Congress to a pliable texture that his iron fingers could twist at will into any form they pleased. Newspaper correspondents wrote strange stories of the length to which that dignified body allowed him to carry his prerogative. They declared that frequently, the framing of a bill not suiting him, it was simply returned by his private secretary, with verbal instructions as to emendations and corrections, which were obediently carried out.

Some even went to the length of asserting that, before any bill of importance was framed, a rough draft was sent down from the President's office and simply put into form and voted a law by the ductile legislators.

However much of this one may allow for exaggeration of "our correspondent," it is certain that Mr. Davis was the heart and brains of the government; and his popularity with the people was, at this time, unbounded. They were perfectly content to think that the government was in the hollow of his hand; and pronounced any of his measures good before they were tried. His energy, too, was untiring; and it was wonderful to look on the frail body and believe that it endured the terrible physical and mental strain he imposed upon it.

At this time the President and his family, having left their temporary quarters at the hotel, were living at a plain mansion provided for them, but a few steps from the Government House. In the latter building were the executive office and the Cabinet room, connected by an always open door; and in one or the other of these Mr. Davis spent some fifteen hours out of every twenty-four. Here he received the thousands of visitors whom curiosity, or business, brought; consulted with his secretaries, revised bills, or framed new projects for strengthening the defenses of the open and wide frontier. It was said that he managed the War Department, in all its various details, in addition to other manifold labors; finding time not only to give it a general supervision, but to go into all the minutiæ of the working of its bureaux, the choice of all its officers, or agents, and the very disbursement of its appropriations.

His habits were as simple as laborious. He rose early, worked at home until breakfast, then to a long and wearing day at the Government House. Often, long after midnight, the red glow from his office lamp, shining over the mock-orange hedge in front of his dwelling, told of unremitting strain. Thus early in the drama, Mr. Benjamin had become one of its leading actors; having more real weight and influence with Mr. Davis than any, or all, of his other advisers. The President did not believe there was "safety in a multitude of counsellors;" and he certainly chose the subtlest, if not the safest, head of the half-dozen to aid him. With Mr. Mallory, too, he seemed on very friendly and confidential terms. These two he met as friends and advisers; but beside them, the Cabinet—as such—had scarcely a practical existence. Mr. Davis very naturally considered that the War Department had become the government, and he managed it accordingly. The secretaries were, of course, useful to arrange matters formally in their respective branches; but they had scarcely higher duties left them than those of their clerks; while Congress remained a formal body to pass bills and ratify acts, the inspiration for which it derived from the clearest and coolest brain in the South.

The crisis had called in plain terms that it was time for the leading spirit of the revolution to take its management; and he had risen to the occasion and faced the responsibilities, before which the chosen of the new nation had hitherto cowered.