Dixie Betrayed (38 page)

One of the duties of Sherman’s invading army would be to liberate Union prisoners wherever they were found. The prisoners
at Andersonville had been moved prior to Sherman’s approach, but Yankees were released at Millen, Georgia, and other facilities.
As Sherman contemplated turning northward, a major attack by the Federal army and navy was planned for Wilmington. Maj. Gen.
Benjamin F. Butler had commanded an unsuccessful movement against Fort Fisher, which protected the city’s entrance, in December.
Now, Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry was ordered to take the position. Terry’s eight thousand men would be assisted by Rear Adm.
David D. Porter’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which amounted to sixty ships armed with a total of 627 guns.

The flotilla arrived in the waters off North Carolina’s coast on January 12. The Confederate district commander, Maj. Gen.
William H. C. Whiting, reinforced the garrison at Fort Fisher so that it consisted of nearly two thousand troops and forty-seven
guns. Just after midnight on January 13, the Federal ships opened fire on the fort, and during the following day, troops landed
to assault the position. Augustus Buell, a soldier in the Fourth U.S. Artillery, described the heavy bombardment during the
thirteenth. “There would be two puffs of blue smoke about the size of a thunder cloud in June,” he wrote, “and then I could
see the big shell make a black streak through the air with a tail of white smoke behind it—and then would come over the water,
not the quick bark of a field gun, but a slow, quivering, overpowering roar like an earthquake, and then, away among the Rebel
traverses, there would be another huge ball of mingled smoke and flame as big as a meeting house.”
⁵

On January 15 a heavy naval bombardment commenced at close range, softening the position where the Federal attack would concentrate.
Early in the afternoon a small party rushed forward and dug in close to the fort. Late in the afternoon Federal soldiers stormed
the fort in force, breaking into the parapets with axes and firing wildly at the fort’s defenders. Before nightfall the Yankees
succeeded in capturing the position, nearly two thousand soldiers, all the guns, and the mortally wounded Whiting. The last
great Confederate port was closed.

The most progress from Congress during the final weeks of war came from the exact area where Davis wanted it least—peace proposals.
As early as January 12, the House passed a resolution to send a peace commission to Washington. The next day Davis reported
to the House that his old nemesis, Henry Foote, had been arrested on his way to Washington. Foote had been detained at Occoquan,
Virginia, while trying to cross the lines on a private peace mission to the Yankee capital. As Foote was already known as
the principal antagonist of Davis’s in the House, a special committee was appointed to investigate.
⁶

On January 16, members of the House considered all sorts of punishments for Foote. John Clark, leader of the committee of
five appointed to investigate, recommended that the whole matter should be referred to the president.
⁷
Nevertheless, eight days later, Clark and his committee appeared on the House floor and addressed Congress regarding Foote.
“Whatever may have been his motive,” Clark said, when Foote left the Confederate States, he became “guilty of conduct incompatible
with his duty and station as a member of the Congress of the Confederate States, and he is hereby expelled from this House.”
⁸

On January 30 the House spent much of the day debating peace proposals. It was rumored that a secret peace commission had
already met with Lincoln in Washington. (The
Richmond Sentinel
had reported the rumor as fact and claimed those involved were traitors.) The majority of Southerners believed, according
to Congress, that there was no intention on the part of the North to acknowledge their independence and that peace and independence
could be achieved only by force of arms. Reflecting this position Senator Williamson Oldham offered resolutions from Texas
regarding any peace commissioners. Oldham advised against “going back into the old Union,” as it could be done only if “we
went as a whipped and conquered people.”
⁹
But other leaders, seeing the writing on the wall, remained more flexible.

A
LTHOUGH
Lee had prevented Grant’s forces from taking Petersburg (or destroying the Army of Northern Virginia), time was running out
for the Southern hero. “[Grant’s] present force is so superior to ours, that if he is reinforced to any extent, I do not see
how in our present position he can be prevented from enveloping Richmond,” Lee wrote Davis on January 29.
¹⁰
At about this time, on January 23, the Confederate Congress reacted to the poor morale and lack of faith in Davis by assigning
a general-in-chief of all Confederate armies, naming (after rancorous debate and amendment) Robert E. Lee to the post. Finally,
after several years of war, the Confederate government had put the right man in the spot. But in the meantime, the die had
been cast. Lee’s fears over Grant were about to come true.

On February 2 the emancipation debate spilled over into the Senate. Never one to shy from the spotlight, Wigfall took the
floor. “The time has come to settle whether this is to be a free negro free country, or a free white man’s free country,”
he said. “In some of the States the slave population is greater than the white. What is to become of the whites if the negroes
should be emancipated?”
¹¹
The following day, however, some senators began to toy with the idea and how it might be established. On February 3 the House
resolved to place 100,000 black soldiers into the service. The government should purchase these men from their masters, one
by one, and then give one man to each white soldier in the service. The resolution, however, was tabled.

Congress’s reluctant proposals to arm black troops rang out like gunshots across the Southern landscape. “The proposition
is having a ruinous effect here,” Edmund Rhett, an officer, relayed to Porcher Miles from Charleston, South Carolina.

It is breaking down peoples’ spirits. Men ask, what are we fighting for? You tell them, “for independence.” But what is independence?
Independence is the right and the power to make our own laws and to govern our own institutions. But if you take away this
power, and destroy those institutions, what independence is left? For God’s sake stop it if you can. Our troops are fighting
here in the worst way. They do not stand at all before Sherman’s men. The demoralization amongst them is very disheartening.
¹²

Meanwhile, a peace conference held at Hampton Roads, near Norfolk, Virginia, on February 3 had led nowhere. Initiated by the
aged Union politician Francis P. Blair Sr.—a member of Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet”—the conference brought Confederate
Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, and Senator Robert M. T. Hunter together
on board the USS
River Queen.
Meeting them was none other than President Lincoln, who told the agents that the Confederacy had virtually no room for bargaining
in terms of surrender.

On February 6 President Davis informed Congress about the failed peace conference held at Hampton Roads. “Having recently
received a written notification, which satisfied me that the President of the United States was disposed to confer informally
with unofficial agents which might be sent by me with a view to the restoration of peace,” Davis explained, “I requested the
Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, the Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, and the Hon. John A. Campbell to proceed through our lines, and to hold
conference with Mr. Lincoln, or any one he might depute to represent him.”
¹³

“The Commissioners have returned,” the president wrote Senator Benjamin H. Hill. “They met Lincoln and Seward at Fortress
Monroe, were informed that neither the Confederate States nor an individual State, could be recognized as having power to
enter into any agreement prescribing conditions of peace. Nothing less would be accepted than unconditional submission to
the government and laws of the United States, and that Congress had adopted a Constitutional amendment for the emancipation
of slaves, which disposed of that question.”
¹⁴

On March 1 Representative James Leach of North Carolina proposed that Robert E. Lee ought to be invested with powers to seek
peace with the North. But nothing seemed to hold even a glint of promise. “Congress will remember [in the recent Peace Conference]
that our commissioners were informed that the government of the United States would not enter into any agreement or treaty
whatever with the Confederate States,” Davis sternly warned on March 13, “that the only possible mode of obtaining peace was
by laying down our arms, disbanding our forces, and yielding unconditional obedience to the laws of the United States, including
those passed for the confiscation of our property and the constitutional amendment for the abolition of slavery. . . . There
remains, then, for us no choice but to continue the contest to a final issue.”
¹⁵

Despite the desperation many Confederates in positions of power failed to see the coming ruin. “Doubtless Lee could protract
the war, and, by concentrating farther South, embarrass the enemy by compelling him to maintain a longer line of communication
by land and by sea,” wrote the war clerk John B. Jones on February 12. “Lee could have an army of 100,000 effective men for
years.”
¹⁶
Such optimism was nothing short of delusional.

If there was to be no peace, war would have to continue, and Lee planned a major attack at Petersburg. His hope was to stun
Grant’s army, hold Petersburg and Richmond with reduced numbers of men, and head south to unite with Gen. Joe Johnston in
the Carolinas, thereby gaining the opportunity to ruin Sherman’s army. It was an unlikely plan that would never gain the opportunity
for testing except for the initial stage and never assume a form more tangible than rumor. “Something is about to happen,”
wrote Luther Rice Mills, a North Carolina Confederate, on March 2. “I know not what. Nearly every one who will express an
opinion says Gen’l Lee is about to evacuate Petersburg. . . . I would regret very much to give up the old place. The soiled
and tattered Colors borne by our skeleton Regiments is sacred and dear to the hearts of every man.” On the same day Josiah
Gorgas wrote: “People are almost in a state of desperation. Lee is about all we have & what public confidence is left rallies
around him, and he it seems to me fights without much heart in the cause.”
¹⁷

While the military was crumbling along the Southern lines, politicians were discovering disheartening circumstances in previously
ignored corners. On February 7 in the House, information from secret sessions revealed an “enormous blunder” that would require
a great increase in taxation. Instead of $114 million, the Confederate government’s war debt was recalculated to be in excess
of $400 million. Ever greater financial panic struck the Confederacy.
¹⁸

On March 5 Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell wrote John Breckinridge, declaring that “a full and exact examination
be made of the resources of the Confederate government available for the approaching campaign. It is not a part of statesmanship
to close our eyes upon them.” Campbell described the current year’s debt of the government at a staggering $1.3 billion and
said it was “needless to comment” on that. Moreover, he cited “over 100,000 deserters scattered over the Confederacy,” and
went on to state, “I do not regard the slave population as a source from which” additional troops could be raised. “Their
employment since 1862 has been difficult and latterly almost impracticable.” Supplies for the army were woefully inadequate,
and “the present Commissary General requires the fulfillment of conditions, though, not unreasonable, nearly impossible.”
The chief of ordnance reported a store of twenty-five thousand arms remaining. “The South may succumb,” Campbell wrote, “but
it is not necessary that she be destroyed.”
¹⁹

As financial woes mounted the Senate also turned toward their lack of confidence in Judah P. Benjamin as secretary of state.
Wigfall introduced a resolution of no confidence “because the country and the Congress does not really back him.” The measure
was voted down fifteen to six, however. On February 15 in the House, it was

resolved that the views of J. P. Benjamin, Secy. of State, as reported in a speech by him on the tenth instant in the city
of Richmond, is derogatory to his position as a high public functionary of the Confederate government, a reflection on his
motives of Congress as a deliberative body, and an insult to public opinion. Resolved, our army is
not
composed of mob-materials; that our soldiers are law-abiding men, that in common with their representatives and friends at
home they deprecate croakers, official insolence, or mob law, as being repugnant to justice, incompatible with the rights
of free men, and revolting to the feelings of patriots and Christians.
²⁰

Joe Johnston, meanwhile, was busy fighting old battles. Johnston wrote to his friend Wigfall complaining that the secretary
of war’s report on Johnston’s earlier operations in northern Georgia contained lies and inaccuracies. On the receipt of a
letter from Aleck Stephens, seventeen senators, including Wigfall and Orr, recommended Johnston be restored to command of
the Army of Tennessee. Lee replied: “I entertain a high opinion of Genl. Johnston’s capacity, but think a combined change
of commanders is very injurious to any troops & tends greatly to thin disorganization.”
²¹
Congress responded by ignoring Lee’s opinion and passed a resolution in favor of Johnston’s instatement. Still, no movement
would be made by the president toward Johnston. “The Joint Resolution of Congress and other recent manifestations of a desire
that General Joseph E. Johnston should be restored to the command of the Army of Tennessee have been anxiously considered
by me,” Davis wrote, “and it is with sincere regret that I find myself unable to gratify what I must believe to have become
quite a general desire of my countrymen.”
²²