PROSPECTS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1862—EXTREME CONFIDENCE OF THE SOUTH—EXTRAVAGANT EXPECTATIONS—THE RICHMOND EXAMINER ON CONFEDERATE PROSPECTS—WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES PREDICTED—THE BLOCKADE TO BE RAISED—THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY DECREED BY HEAVEN—RESULT OF THE BOASTFUL TONE OF THE SOUTHERN PRESS—THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISASTERS OF 1862—PRESIDENT DAVIS URGES PREPARATION FOR A LONG WAR—HIS WISE OPPOSITION TO SHORT ENLISTMENTS OF TROOPS—PREMONITIONS OF MISFORTUNES IN THE WEST—THE CONFEDERATE FORCES IN KENTUCKY—GENERAL ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON—HIS CAREER BEFORE THE WAR—CHARACTER—APPEARANCE—THE FRIEND OF JEFFERSON DAVIS—MUTUAL ESTEEM—SIDNEY JOHNSTON IN KENTUCKY—HIS PLANS—HIS DIFFICULTIES—THE FORCES OF GRANT AND BUELL—CRUEL DILEMMA OF GENERAL SIDNEY JOHNSTON—A REVERSE—GRANT CAPTURES FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON—LOSS OF KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE—FEDERAL DESIGNS IN THE EAST—BURNSIDE CAPTURES ROANOKE ISLAND—SERIOUS NATURE OF THESE REVERSES—POPULAR DISAPPOINTMENT—ORGANIZED OPPOSITION TO THE CONFEDERATE ADMINISTRATION—CHARACTER AND MOTIVES OF THIS OPPOSITION—AN EFFORT TO REVOLUTIONIZE PRESIDENT DAVIS’ CABINET—ASSAULTS UPON SECRETARIES BENJAMIN AND MALLORY—CORRECT EXPLANATION OF THE CONFEDERATE REVERSES—CONGRESSIONAL CENSURE OF MR. BENJAMIN—SECRETARY MALLORY—CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN MIND—THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT—SECOND INAUGURATION OF MR. DAVIS—SEVERITY OF THE SEASON—THE CEREMONIES—APPEARANCE OF PRESIDENT DAVIS—HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS—ITS EFFECT—POPULAR RE-ASSURANCE—MESSAGE TO CONGRESS—COMMENTS OF RICHMOND PRESS.

When President Davis held his first New-Year’s reception, as the chief magistrate of the infant Confederacy, there were not wanting signs of the approaching shadows, which were to throw in temporary eclipse the brilliant foreground of the first year of the war. Richmond was then in its exultant spirit, its gayety, festivity, and show, the type of that fatal confidence in Southern invincibility, which, in a few weeks of disaster, was brought to grief and humiliation.

In that numerous and brilliant assemblage, representing the various branches of the new government, civil, naval, and military, members of Congress and of State Legislatures, and admiring citizens, eager to make formal tender of their esteem to the first President of the South, there were few who discerned the omens of the coming storm, which was to shake its foundation, the power of which that occasion was an imposing symbol. Perhaps there were as few who could penetrate his assuring exterior of grace, gentleness, and dignity, and share the anxiety with which, even in the midst of popular adulation, he contemplated the approach of that stern trial for which the country was so deficient in preparation.

With singular accord of opinion, writers, who had an inside view of the Southern conduct of the war, have commented upon the disasters consequent upon the period of fancied security and relaxed exertions which followed the battle of Manassas. We can not share, however, the shallow and unphilosophical conclusion which pronounces the glorious triumph of Manassas a calamity to the South. The temporary salvation of the Confederacy, guaranteed by that victory, was not its only fruit. Manassas gave a stamp of prestige to Southern valor and soldiership, which not even a deluge of subsequent disasters could efface. It gave an imperishable record and an undying incentive to resolution.

Yet it is not to be questioned that the public apathy, engendered by an exaggerated estimate of the value of the numerous and consecutive triumphs of the preceding summer and autumn, was measurably productive of evil consequences. Encouraged by the press, in many instances, the Southern people saw, in the comparatively easy triumphs of their superior valor over undisciplined Northern mobs—for which Manassas, Belmont, Leesburg, and similar engagements constituted the mere apprenticeship of war—the auguries significant of a speedy attainment of their independence. Inflated orators and boastful editorials proclaimed the absolute certainty of early interference of foreign powers, in behalf of the South, as the source of the indispensable staples of cotton and tobacco. In the face of the enormous preparations of the enemy, his monster armies, numbering, in December, 1861, more than six hundred thousand men; his numerous fleets for sea-board operations, and iron-clad floating batteries for the interior streams, comparatively insignificant successes were pointed to as sufficient proofs of the inability of the enemy to make any serious impression upon Southern territory.

The Richmond Examiner, which had early evinced a disposition hostile to President Davis and his administration, the ablest and most influential journal of the South, destined to furnish both the brains and inspiration in support of future opposition, was conspicuous in its contempt for the fighting qualities of the North, and vehement in its prophesies of good fortune for the Confederacy. Late in December, the Examiner, commenting upon recent intelligence from the North, said: “All other topics become trifles beside the tidings of England which occupies this journal, and all commentary that diverts public attention from that single point is impertinence. The effect of the outrage of the Trent on the public sentiment of Great Britain more than fulfills the prophesy that we made when the arrest of the Confederate ministers was a fresh event. All legal quibbling and selfish calculation has been consumed like straw in the burning sense of incredible insult. The Palmerston cabinet has been forced to immediate and decisive measures; and a peremptory order to Lord Lyons comes with the steamer that brings the news to the American shore. He is directed to demand the unconditional surrender of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, to place them in the position they were found beneath the British flag, and a complete disavowal of their seizure as an authorized act. Now, the Northern Government has placed itself in such a position that it can do none of these things. The Abolitionist element of the Northern States would go straight to revolution at the least movement toward a surrender of the captives; the arrest was made by the deliberately written orders of the Government, already avowed and published beyond the hope of apology or possibility of retraction.

“The United States can do absolutely nothing but refuse the demands of Great Britain, and abide the consequences of that refusal. What they will be can be clearly foretold: first, there will be the diplomatic rupture; Lord Lyons will demand his passports, and Mr. Adams will be sent away from London; then will follow an immediate recognition of the Southern Confederacy, with encouragement and aid in fitting out its vessels, and supplying their wants in the British ports and islands. Lastly, a war will be evolved from these two events.”

Continuing its comments upon what it terms the “raving madness” of the North, the Examiner says: “Then came the proclamation of Lincoln. Nothing but insanity could have dictated it; and without it the secession of Virginia was impossible. Then their crazy attempt to subdue a country not less difficult to conquer than Russia itself, with an armed mob of loafers.”In the contemplation of the pleasing sketch which its imagination had executed, the Examiner asks: “Spectators of these events, who can doubt that the Almighty fiat has gone forth against the American Union, or that the Southern Confederacy is decreed by the Divine Wisdom?” It declares that the “dullest worldling, the coolest Atheist, the most hardened cynic, might be struck with awe by the startling and continued interposition of a power beyond the control or cognizance of men in these affairs;” and triumphantly asks: “Who thought, when the Trent was announced to sail, that on its deck, and in the trough of the weltering Atlantic, the key of the blockade would be lost?”

The natural and inevitable result of the assurances tendered to the people, was to lull the patriotic ardor which marked the first great uprising for defense, when two hundred thousand men sprung to arms. There can be no justice in holding the Confederate Government responsible for the popular apathy, which it had no agency in producing, or for the weakness of the armies, which, next to the naval weakness of the South, was the immediate cause of the disasters of the early months of 1862.

Since the commencement of hostilities, the Government had been indefatigable in its efforts to promote enlistments of volunteers for the war, instead of the twelve-months’ system, which could be adequate for the demands of a temporary exigency only, and not for such a terrific struggle as must result from the temper and resources of the two contestants. Volunteering was as yet the only method of raising troops sanctioned by law, or likely to meet popular approval. The country was not yet prepared for an enforced levy of troops; and it is only necessary to remember the opposition, in certain quarters, to the execution of the subsequent conscription law, adopted under the pressure of disasters which made its necessity plain and inevitable, to conjecture the temper in which such a measure would have been met, in the over-confident and foolishly exultant tone of the press and public in the winter of 1861.

Mr. Davis especially sought to disabuse the public mind of its fallacious hope of a short contest, by his efforts to place the military resources of the South upon a footing capable of indefinite resistance to an attempt at conquest, which was to end only with the success or exhaustion of the North. Conscious of the perpetual disorganization and decimation of the armies which must result from the system of short enlistments, he had, early in the war, attracted unfriendly criticism by his refusal of any more six or twelve-months’ volunteers than were necessary to meet the shock of the enemy’s first advance. It was clear to his mind that, under the wretched system of short enlistments, which he characterized as a “frightful cause of disaster,” the country must, at some period of the war, be virtually without an army. Such was the case in January and February, 1862, when the enemy eagerly pressed his immense advantage while the process of furloughs and reËnlistments was in progress, and the army almost completely disorganized.

Such a crisis was inevitable, and had it not occurred then, it would merely have been deferred, to be encountered at a period when the capacity of the Confederacy was even less adequate for its perils. The lesson was not without its value, since it drove the country and the press to a recognition of the fact that independence was not to be won by shifts and dalliance, by temporary expedients, and by spasmodic popular uprisings for temporary exigencies.The efforts of the Government were unceasing to prepare for the tremendous onset of the enemy in almost every quarter of the Confederacy, which it must have been blind, indeed, not to anticipate. The responses to the calls of the Government were neither in numbers nor enthusiasm encouraging. The people were blind in their confidence, and deaf to appeals admonishing them of perils which, in their fancied security, they believed impossible of realization. But this soothing sense of security was soon to have a terrible awakening. The Confederate Government had recognized the peculiar perils menacing the western section of its territory. There for weeks rested the anxious gaze of President Davis, and thence were to come the first notes of alarm—the immediate premonitions of disaster.

Immediately, upon the occupation of Kentucky by the Confederate forces, had begun the development of a plan of defense by the Southern generals. The command of General Polk, constituting the Confederate left, was at Columbus. On the upper waters of the Cumberland River, in South-eastern Kentucky, was a small force constituting the Confederate right, commanded first by General Zollicoffer, and afterward by General Crittenden. At Bowling Green, with Green River in front, and communicating by railway with Nashville and the South, was the main Confederate force in Kentucky, commanded by General Buckner until the arrival of General Albert Sidney Johnston, whom President Davis had commissioned a full general in the Confederate service, and assigned to the command of the Western Department.

Apart from the historical interest which belongs to the name of Albert Sidney Johnston, and from the dramatic incident of his death at the very climax of a splendid victory, which immediately paled into disaster upon his fall, as the long and valued friend of Jefferson Davis, he is entitled to special mention in the biography of the latter.

Albert Sidney Johnston was born in Mason County, Kentucky, in 1803. He graduated at West Point in 1826; was commissioned as Lieutenant of infantry; served in the Black Hawk war with distinction; resigned and settled in Texas in 1836. He volunteered as a private in her armies soon after the battle of San Jacinto. His merit soon raised him from the ranks, and he was appointed senior Brigadier-General, and succeeded General Houston in the command of the Texan army. In 1838 he was appointed Texan Secretary of War, and in 1839 organized an expedition against the hostile Cherokees, in which he routed them completely in a battle on the river Neches. He warmly advocated the annexation of Texas to the United States, and after this union was effected, he took part in the Mexican war. His services at the siege of Monterey drew upon him the public favor and the thanks of General Butler. He continued in the army, and in 1857, was sent by President Buchanan as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army to subdue the Mormons. His successful advance in the Great Salt Lake City, and the skill and address with which he conducted a difficult enterprise, largely increased his fame. When the war commenced between the North and South, he was in California, but when he learned the progress of the revolution, he resigned his commission and set out from San Francisco, to penetrate by land to Richmond, a distance of two thousand three hundred miles.

The safe arrival of General Albert Sidney Johnston, within the lines of the Confederacy, was greeted with a degree of public acclamation hardly less enthusiastic than would have signalized the intelligence of a great victory. It was known that the Federal authorities, anxious to prevent so distinguished and valuable an accession to the generalship of the South, were intent upon his capture. For weeks popular expectation had been strained, in eager gaze, for tidings of the distinguished commander, who, beset by innumerable perils and obstacles, was making his way across the continent, not less eager to join his countrymen, than were they to feel the weight of his noble blade in the unequal combat.

Few of the eminent soldiers, who had sought service under the banners of the Confederacy, had a more brilliant record of actual service; and to the advantages of reputation, General Johnston added those graces and distinctions of person with which the imagination invests the ideal commander. He was considerably past middle age; his height exceeded six feet, his frame was large and sinewy; his every movement and posture indicated vigorous and athletic manhood. The general expression of his striking face was grave and composed, but inviting rather than austere.

The arrival of General Johnston in Richmond, early in September, was a source of peculiar congratulation to President Davis. Between these illustrious men had existed, for many years, an endearment, born of close association, common trials and triumphs, and mutual confidence, which rendered most auspicious their coÖperation in the cause of Southern independence.

“Albert Sidney Johnston,” says Professor Bledsoe, in a recent publication, “who, take him all in all, was the simplest, bravest, grandest man we have ever known, once said to the present writer: ‘There is no measuring such a man as Davis;’ and this high tribute had a fitting counterpart in that which Davis paid Johnston, when discussing, in the Federal Senate, the Utah expedition. Said he ... ‘I hold that the country is indebted to the administration for having selected the man who is at the head of the expedition; who, as a soldier, has not a superior in the army or out of it; and whose judgment, whose art, whose knowledge is equal to this or any other emergency; a man of such decision, such resolution that his country’s honor can never be tarnished in his hands; a man of such calmness, such kindness, that a deluded people can never suffer by harshness from him.’”

President Davis immediately tendered to General Johnston the command of one of the two grand military divisions of the Confederacy, and he as promptly repaired to the scene of his duties.

The general features of General Johnston’s policy contemplated a line of defense running from the Mississippi through the region immediately covering Nashville to Cumberland Gap—the key to the defense of East Tennessee and South-western Virginia, and thus to the most vital line of communication in the South. It is easy to conceive the large force requisite for so important and difficult a task, against the immense armies of Grant and Buell, numbering, in the aggregate, more than one hundred thousand men. Despite the earnest appeals of General Johnston, and notwithstanding that upon the successful maintenance of his position depended the successful defense of the entire southern and south-western sections of the Confederacy, his force, at the last of January, 1862, did not exceed twenty-six thousand men. Informed of his perilous situation, the Confederate Government could do no more than second the appeals and remonstrances of General Johnston. Slight accessions were made to his force from the States which were menaced, but, as results speedily demonstrated, he was unable to meet the enemy with an adequate force at any one of the vital points of his defensive line.

In the immediate front of General Johnston’s position was the army of Buell, estimated at forty thousand men, which, during the entire winter, was in training for its meditated advance along the line of the railroad in the direction of Nashville. Under Grant, at Cairo, was an army of more than fifty thousand men, which, in coÖperation with a formidable naval force, was designed to operate against Nashville, and, by securing possession of the line of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, to hold Kentucky and West Tennessee. General Johnston’s position was indeed a cruel dilemma, and was sufficiently explained in a letter to President Davis, representing the inadequacy of his force, for either front of attack, upon a line whose every point demanded ample defense. Only a self-denying patriotism could have induced General Johnston to occupy his false position before the public, which accredited to him an army ample even for aggressive warfare. With an almost certain prospect of disaster, he nevertheless resolved to make the supreme effort which alone could avert it.

His plan was to meet Grant’s attack upon Nashville with sixteen thousand men, hoping, in the meanwhile, by boldly confronting Buell with the residue of his forces, to hold in check the enemy in his immediate front. During the winter, by a skillful disposition of his forces and adroit maneuvers, he deceived the enemy as to his real strength, and thus deferred the threatened advance until the month of February.

The month of January, 1862, was to witness the first check to the arms of the Confederacy, after seven months of uninterrupted victory. The scene of the disaster was near Somerset, Kentucky. The forces engaged were inconsiderable as compared with the conflicts of a few weeks later, but the result was disheartening to the impatient temper of the South, not yet chastened by the severe trials of adversity. General Crittenden was badly defeated, though, as is probable, through no erroneous calculation or defective generalship on his part. A melancholy feature of the disaster was the death of General Zollicoffer. With the repulse and retreat of the Confederate forces after the battle of Fishing Creek, as the action was called, followed the virtual possession of South-eastern Kentucky by the Federal army. The Confederate line of defense in Kentucky was thus broken, and the value of other positions materially impaired.

Early in February the infantry columns of Grant and the gunboats of Commodore Foote commenced the ascent of the Tennessee River. The immediate object of assault was Fort Henry, an imperfectly constructed fortification, on the east bank of the river, near the dividing line of Kentucky and Tennessee. After a signal display of gallantry by its commander, General Tilghman, the fort was surrendered, the main body of the forces defending it having been previously sent to Fort Donelson, the principal defense of the Cumberland River. The capture of Fort Henry opened the Tennessee River, penetrating the States of Tennessee and Alabama, and navigable for steamers for more than two hundred miles, to the unchecked advance of the enemy.

General Grant promptly advanced to attack Fort Donelson. After a series of bloody engagements and a siege of several days, Fort Donelson was surrendered, with the garrison of more than nine thousand men. This result was indeed a heavy blow to the Confederacy, and produced a most alarming crisis in the military affairs of the Western Department. General Johnston was near Nashville, with the force which had lately held Bowling Green, the latter place having been evacuated during the progress of the fight at Fort Donelson. Nashville was immediately evacuated, and the remnant of General Johnston’s army retreated southward, first to Murfreesboro’, Tennessee, and afterwards crossed the Tennessee, at Decatur, Alabama.

In January, General Beauregard had been transferred from Virginia to Kentucky, and, at the time of the surrender of Nashville, was in command of the forces in the neighborhood of Columbus, Kentucky, which protected the passage of the Mississippi. The entire Confederate line of defense in Kentucky and Tennessee having been lost with the surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson, its various posts became untenable. In a subsequent portion of this narrative, we shall trace the results of the Confederate endeavor to establish a new line of defense in the West by a judicious and masterly combination of forces.

Meanwhile, the preparations of the enemy in the East were even more formidable and threatening than in the West. It was in Virginia that the “elastic spirit” of the North, as the Richmond Examiner termed the alacrity of the consecutive popular uprisings in favor of the war at the North, was chiefly ambitious and hopeful of decisive results in favor of the Union. Here was to be sought retrieval of the national honor lost at Manassas; here was the capital of the Confederacy, which, once taken, the “rebellion would collapse.” The energy and administrative ability of General McClellan had accomplished great results in the creation of a fine army and the security of the capital. But, with the opening of the season favorable to military operations, he was expected to accomplish far more decisive results—nothing less than the capture of Richmond, the expulsion of the Confederate authority from Virginia, and the destruction of the Confederate army at Manassas.

Until the opening of spring, military operations in Virginia were attended by no events of importance. But the East was not to be without its contribution to the unvarying tide of Confederate disaster. In the month of February, Roanoke Island, upon the sea-line of North Carolina, defended by General Wise, with a single brigade, was assaulted by a powerful combined naval and military expedition, under General Burnside, and surrendered, with its garrison. This success opened to the enemy the sounds and inlets of that region, with their tributary streams, and gave him easy access to a productive country and important communications.

It was not difficult to estimate correctly the serious nature of these successive reverses covering nearly every field of important operations. They were of a character alarming, indeed, in immediate consequences, and, necessarily, largely affecting the destiny of the war in its future stages. Retreat, evacuation, and surrender seemed the irremediable tendency of affairs every-where. Thousands of prisoners were in the hands of the enemy, the capital of the most important State in the West occupied, the Confederate centre was broken, the great water-avenues of the south-west open to the enemy, the campaign transferred from the heart of Kentucky to the northern borders of the Gulf States, and hardly an available line was left for the recovery of the lost territory.

Within a few weeks the extravagant hopes of the South were brought to the verge of extreme apprehension. The public mind was not to be soothed by the affected indifference of the press to calamities, the magnitude of which was too palpable, in the presence of actual invasion of nearly one half the Southern territory, and of imminent perils threatening the speedy culmination of adverse fortune to the Confederacy. Richmond, which, during the war, was at all times the reflex of the hopes and aspirations of the South, was the scene of gloom and despondency, in painful contrast with the ardent and gratulatory tone so lately prevalent.

Popular disappointment rarely fails in its search for scapegoats upon which to visit responsibility for misfortunes. A noticeable result of the Confederate reverses in the beginning of 1862 was the speedy evolution of an organized hostility to the administration of President Davis. The season was eminently propitious for outward demonstrations of feeling, heretofore suppressed, in consequence of the brilliant success, until recently, attending the movement for Southern independence. The universal and characteristic disposition of the masses to receive, with favor, censure of their rulers, and to charge public calamities to official failure and maladministration, was an inviting inducement, in this period of public gloom, to the indulgence of partisan aspirations and personal spleen.

To one familiar with the political history of the South during the decade previous to secession, there could be no difficulty in penetrating the various motives, instigating to union, for a common purpose, the heterogeneous elements of this opposition. Prominent among its leaders were men, the life-long opponents of the President, notorious for their want of adhesion to any principle or object for its own sake, and especially lukewarm, at all times, upon issues vitally affecting the safety of the South. These men could not forget, even when their allegiance had been avowed to the sacred cause of country and liberty, the rancor engendered in the old contests of party. Some, in addition to disappointed political ambition, arising from the failure of the President to tender them the foremost places in the Government, had personal resentments to gratify. Much the larger portion of the opposition, which continued, until the last moments of the Confederacy, to assail the Government, had its origin in these influences, and they speedily attracted all restless and impracticable characters—born Jacobins, malcontents by the decree of nature, and others of the class who are “never at home save in the attitude of contradiction.”

At first feeble in influence, this faction, by pertinacious and unscrupulous efforts, eventually became a source of embarrassment, and promoted the wide-spread division and distrust which, in the latter days of the Confederacy, were so ominous of the approaching catastrophe. Its earliest shafts were ostensibly not aimed at the President, since there was no evidence that the popular affection for Mr. Davis would brook assaults upon him, but assumed the shape of accusations against his constitutional advisers. A deliberate movement, cloaked in the disguise of respectful remonstrance and petition, sustained by demagogical speeches—which, though artfully designed, in many instances revealed the secret venom—was arranged, upon the assembling of the First Congress under the permanent Government, to revolutionize the cabinet of President Davis.

Mr. Benjamin, the Secretary of War, and Mr. Mallory, Secretary of the Navy, were the objects of especial and most envenomed assault. They were assailed in Congress, and by a portion of the Richmond press, as directly chargeable with the late reverses. Yet it should have been plain that the most serious of these disasters were attributable chiefly to the overwhelming naval preponderance of the enemy—an advantage not to have been obviated entirely by any degree of foresight on the part of the Confederate naval secretary—and by a deficiency of soldiers, for which the country itself, and not Mr. Benjamin, was to be censured.

The indisputable facts in the case were ample in the vindication of Mr. Mallory, as to the insufficient defenses of the Western rivers, now in Federal possession. The obvious dangers of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, as an avenue of access to the heart of the South, were not overlooked by the Government. The channels of these rivers are navigable during a large portion of the year, and the two streams gradually approach each other, as they pass from Tennessee into Kentucky, on their course to the Ohio, coming at one point within less than three miles of each other, and emptying their waters only ten miles apart. The facilities afforded by their proximity for combined military and naval operations, were necessarily apparent. The Government contemplated the defense of these streams by floating defenses the only means by which they could be debarred to the enemy. The Provisional Congress, however, by a most singular and fatal oversight of the recommendation of the Government, made no appropriation for floating defenses on the Tennessee and Cumberland, until the opportunity to prepare them had passed.

It authorized the President to cause to be constructed thirteen steam gunboats for sea-coast defense, and such floating defenses for the Mississippi River as he might deem best adapted to the purpose; but no provision was made for armed steamers on the large Western interior rivers until the month of January, 1862, when an act was approved appropriating one million of dollars, to be expended for this purpose, at the discretion of the President, by the Secretary of War, or of the Navy, as he might direct. This was less than four weeks before the actual advance of the Federal gunboats, and was, of course, too late for the needed armaments. The appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars, for equipment and repairs of vessels of the Confederate navy, hardly sufficed to enable the Secretary of that department to maintain a few frail steamers on the Tennessee, hastily prepared from commercial or passenger boats, and very imperfectly armed.

A congressional investigating committee censured Mr. Benjamin and General Huger as responsible for the capture of Roanoke Island and its garrison. The latter affair was indeed a disaster not to be lightly palliated, and was one of those inexplicable mishaps, which, upon retrospection, we see should have been avoided, though it is at least doubtful who is justly censurable. It is, however, only just to state that no view of the Roanoke Island disaster has ever been presented to the writer, which did not acquit General Wise of all blame. His exculpation was complete before every tribunal of opinion.

Whatever may have been the real merit of these issues made against Secretaries Mallory and Benjamin, it is very certain that those two gentlemen continued to be the objects of marked disfavor from those members of Congress, and that portion of the Richmond press known to be hostile to the administration of Mr. Davis. Popular prejudice is proverbially unreasoning, and it was indeed singular to note how promptly the public echoed the assaults of the hostile press against these officials, upon subsequent occasions, when they were held accountable for disasters with which they had no possible connection.[43]

This period of Confederate misfortunes gave the first verification of a fact which afterward had frequent illustration, that the resolution of the South, so indomitable in actual contest, staggered under the weight of reverses. The history of the war was a record of the variations of the Southern mind between extreme elation and immoderate depression. Extravagant exultation over success, and immoderate despondency over disaster, usually followed each other in prompt succession. Overestimating, in many instances, the importance of its own victories, the South quite as frequently exaggerated the value of those won by the enemy. There was thus a constant departure from the middle ground of dispassionate judgment, which would have accurately measured the real situation; making available its opportunities, by a vigorous prosecution of advantage, and overcoming difficulties by energetic preparation.

But this despondency happily gave place to renewed determination, as the success of the enemy brought him nearer the homes of the South, and made more imminent the evils of subjugation. A grand and noble popular reanimation was the response to the renewed vigor and resolution of the Government.

When the Confederate Government was organized at Montgomery, the operation of the provisional constitution was limited to the period of one year, to be superseded by the permanent government. No material alteration of the political organism was found necessary, nor was there any change in the personnel of the administration—Mr. Davis having been unanimously chosen President at the election in November, and retaining his administration as it existed at the close of the functions of the provisional constitution. Though the change was thus merely nominal, the occasion was replete with historic interest to the people whose liberties were involved in the fate of the government, now declared “permanent.” It was, indeed, an assumption of a new character—a declaration, with renewed emphasis, of the high and peerless enterprise of independent national existence; an introduction to a future, promising a speedy fulfillment of inestimable blessings or “woes unnumbered.”

On the 18th of February, 1862, the first Congress, under the permanent constitution of the Confederate States, assembled in the capitol at Richmond. On the 22d occurred the ceremony of the inauguration of President Davis.

To the citizens of Richmond and others who were spectators, the scene in Capitol Square, on that memorable morning, was marked by gloomy surroundings, the recollection of which recalls, with sad interest, suggestive omens, which then seemed to betoken the adverse fate of the Confederacy. The season was one of unusual rigor, and the preceding month of public calamity and distress had been fitly commemorated by a protracted series of dark and cheerless days. Never, within the recollection of the writer, had there been a day in Richmond so severe, uncomfortable, and gloomy, as the day appointed for the ceremony of inauguration. For days previous heavy clouds had foreshadowed the rain, which fell continuously during the preceding night, and which seemed to increase in volume on the morning of the ceremony. The occasion was in singular contrast with that which, a year previous, had witnessed the installment of the provisional government—upon a day whose genial sunshine seemed prophetic of a bright future for the infant power then launched upon its voyage.

But however wanting in composure may have been the public mind, and whatever the perils of the situation, the voice of their twice-chosen chief quickly infused into the heart of the people, that unabated zeal and unconquerable resolution, with which he proclaimed himself devoted anew to the deliverance of his country. The inaugural address was a noble and inspiring appeal to the patriotism of the land. Its eloquent, candid, and patriotic tone won all hearts; and even the unfriendly press and politicians accorded commendation to the dignity and candor with which the President avowed his official responsibility; the manly frankness with which he defended departments of the government unjustly assailed; and the assuring, defiant courage, with which he invited all classes of his countrymen to join him in the supreme sacrifice, should it become necessary.

The inaugural ceremonies were as simple and appropriate as those witnessed at Montgomery a year previous. The members of the Confederate Senate and House of Representatives, with the members of the Virginia Legislature, awaited in the hall of the House of Delegates the arrival of the President. In consequence of the limited capacity of the hall, comparatively few spectators—a majority of them ladies—witnessed the proceedings there. Immediately fronting the chair of the speaker were the ladies of Mr. Davis’ household, attended by relatives and friends. In close proximity were members of the cabinet.

A contemporary account thus mentions this scene: “It was a grave and great assemblage. Time-honored men were there, who had witnessed ceremony after ceremony of inauguration in the palmiest days of the old confederation; those who had been at the inauguration of the iron-willed Jackson; men who, in their fiery Southern ardor, had thrown down the gauntlet of defiance in the halls of Federal legislation, and in the face of the enemy avowed their determination to be free; and finally witnessed the enthroning of a republican despot in their country’s chair of state. All were there; and silent tears were seen coursing down the cheeks of gray-haired men, while the determined will stood out in every feature.”

The appearance of the President was singularly imposing, though there were visible traces of his profound emotion, and a pallor, painful to look upon, reminded the spectator of his recent severe indisposition. His dress was a plain citizen’s suit of black. Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, temporary President of the Confederate Senate, occupied the right of the platform; Mr. Bocock, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the left. When President Davis, accompanied by Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, on the part of the Senate, reached the hall and passed to the chair of the Speaker, subdued applause, becoming the place and the occasion, greeted him. A short time sufficed to carry into effect the previously arranged programme, and the distinguished procession moved to the Washington monument, where a stand was prepared for the occasion.

Hon. James Lyons, of Virginia, Chairman of the House Committee of Arrangements, called the assemblage to order, and an eloquent and appropriate prayer was offered by Bishop Johns, of the Diocese of Virginia. The President, having received a most enthusiastic welcome from the assemblage, with a clear and measured accent, delivered his inaugural address:

Fellow-citizens: On this, the birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled, to usher into existence the permanent government of the Confederate States. Through this instrumentality, under the favor of Divine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles of our revolutionary fathers. The day, the memory, and the purpose seem fitly associated.

It is with mingled feelings of humility and pride that I appear to take, in the presence of the people, and before high Heaven, the oath prescribed as a qualification for the exalted station to which the unanimous voice of the people has called me. Deeply sensible of all that is implied by this manifestation of the people’s confidence, I am yet more profoundly impressed by the vast responsibility of the office, and humbly feel my own unworthiness.

In return for their kindness, I can only offer assurances of the gratitude with which it is received, and can but pledge a zealous devotion of every faculty to the service of those who have chosen me as their Chief Magistrate.

When a long course of class legislation, directed not to the general welfare, but to the aggrandizement of the Northern section of the Union, culminated in a warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States; when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States, withdrawing from the Union, confederated together to exercise the right and perform the duty of instituting a government which would better secure the liberties for the preservation of which that Union was established.

Whatever of hope some may have entertained that a returning sense of justice would remove the danger with which our rights were threatened, and render it possible to preserve the Union of the Constitution, must have been dispelled by the malignity and barbarity of the Northern States in the prosecution of the existing war. The confidence of the most hopeful among us must have been destroyed by the disregard they have recently exhibited for all the time-honored bulwarks of civil and religious liberty. Bastiles filled with prisoners, arrested without civil process, or indictment duly found; the writ of habeas corpus suspended by executive mandate; a State Legislature controlled by the imprisonment of members whose avowed principles suggested to the Federal executive that there might be another added to the list of seceded States; elections held under threats of a military power; civil officers, peaceful citizens, and gentle women incarcerated for opinion’s sake, proclaimed the incapacity of our late associates to administer a government as free, liberal, and humane as that established for our common use.

For proof of the sincerity of our purpose to maintain our ancient institutions, we may point to the Constitution of the Confederacy and the laws enacted under it, as well as to the fact that, through all the necessities of an unequal struggle, there has been no act, on our part, to impair personal liberty or the freedom of speech, of thought, or of the press. The courts have been open, the judicial functions fully executed, and every right of the peaceful citizen maintained as securely as if a war of invasion had not disturbed the land.

The people of the States now confederated became convinced that the Government of the United States had fallen into the hands of a sectional majority, who would pervert the most sacred of all trusts to the destruction of the rights which it was pledged to protect. They believed that to remain longer in the Union would subject them to a continuance of a disparaging discrimination, submission to which would be inconsistent to their welfare and intolerable to a proud people. They, therefore, determined to sever its bonds, and establish a new confederacy for themselves.

The experiment, instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary union of sovereign States, for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been prevented by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will. The Government had ceased to answer the ends for which it had been ordained and established. To save ourselves from a revolution which, in its silent but rapid progress, was about to place us under the despotism of numbers, and to preserve, in spirit as well as in form, a system of government we believed to be peculiarly fitted to our condition and full of promise for mankind, we determined to make a new association, composed of States homogeneous in interest, in policy, and in feeling.

True to our traditions of peace and love of justice, we sent commissioners to the United States to propose a fair and amicable settlement of all questions of public debt or property which might be in dispute. But the Government at Washington, denying our right to self-government, refused even to listen to any proposals for a peaceful separation. Nothing was then left to us but to prepare for war.

The first year in our history has been the most eventful in the annals of this continent. A new government has been established, and its machinery put in operation, over an area exceeding seven hundred thousand square miles. The great principles upon which we have been willing to hazard every thing that is dear to man have made conquests for us which could never have been achieved by the sword. Our Confederacy has grown from six to thirteen States; and Maryland, already united to us by hallowed memories and material interests, will, I believe, when able to speak with unstifled voice, connect her destiny with the South. Our people have rallied, with unexampled unanimity, to the support of the great principles of constitutional government, with firm resolve to perpetuate by arms the rights which they could not peacefully secure. A million of men, it is estimated, are now standing in hostile array, and waging war along a frontier of thousands of miles; battles have been fought, sieges have been conducted, and, although the contest is not ended, and the tide for the moment is against us, the final result in our favor is not doubtful.

The period is near at hand when our foes must sink under the immense load of debt which they have incurred—a debt which, in their efforts to subjugate us, has already attained such fearful dimensions as will subject them to burdens which must continue to oppress them for generations to come.

We, too, have had our trials and difficulties. That we are to escape them in the future is not to be hoped. It was to be expected, when we entered upon this war, that it would expose our people to sacrifices, and cost them much both of money and blood. But we knew the value of the object for which we struggled, and understood the nature of the war in which we were engaged. Nothing could be so bad as failure, and any sacrifice would be cheap as the price of success in such a contest.

But the picture has its lights as well as its shadows. This great strife has awakened in the people the highest emotions and qualities of the human soul. It is cultivating feelings of patriotism, virtue, and courage. Instances of self-sacrifice and of generous devotion to the noble cause for which we are contending are rife throughout the land. Never has a people evinced a more determined spirit than that now animating men, women, and children in every part of our country. Upon the first call, the men fly to arms; and wives and mothers send their husbands and sons to battle without a murmur of regret.

It was, perhaps, in the ordination of Providence that we were to be taught the value of our liberties by the price which we pay for them.

The recollections of this great contest, with all its common traditions of glory, of sacrifices, and of blood, will be the bond of harmony and enduring affection amongst the people, producing unity in policy, fraternity in sentiment, and joint effort in war.

Nor have the material sacrifices of the past year been made without some corresponding benefits. If the acquiescence of foreign nations in a pretended blockade has deprived us of our commerce with them, it is fast making us a self-supporting and an independent people. The blockade, if effectual and permanent, could only serve to divert our industry from the production of articles for export, and employ it in supplying commodities for domestic use.

It is a satisfaction that we have maintained the war by our unaided exertions. We have neither asked nor received assistance from any quarter. Yet the interest involved is not wholly our own. The world at large is concerned in opening our markets to its commerce. When the independence of the Confederate States is recognized by the nations of the earth, and we are free to follow our interests and inclinations by cultivating foreign trade, the Southern States will offer to manufacturing nations the most favorable markets which ever invited their commerce. Cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, provisions, timber, and naval stores will furnish attractive exchanges. Nor would the constancy of these supplies be likely to be disturbed by war. Our confederate strength will be too great to attempt aggression; and never was there a people whose interests and principles committed them so fully to a peaceful policy as those of the Confederate States. By the character of their productions, they are too deeply interested in foreign commerce wantonly to disturb it. War of conquest they can not wage, because the Constitution of their Confederacy admits of no coerced association. Civil war there can not be between States held together by their volition only. This rule of voluntary association, which can not fail to be conservative, by securing just and impartial government at home, does not diminish the security of the obligations by which the Confederate States may be bound to foreign nations. In proof of this, it is to be remembered that, at the first moment of asserting their right of secession, these States proposed a settlement on the basis of a common liability for the obligations of the General Government.

Fellow-citizens, after the struggles of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to constitutional representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned their efforts, and they provided for their posterity a peaceful remedy against future aggression.

The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism, has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty. At the darkest hour of our struggle, the provisional gives place to the permanent government. After a series of successes and victories, which covered our arms with glory, we have recently met with serious disasters. But, in the heart of a people resolved to be free, these disasters tend but to stimulate to increased resistance.

To show ourselves worthy of the inheritance bequeathed to us by the patriots of the Revolution, we must emulate that heroic devotion which made reverse to them but the crucible in which their patriotism was refined.

With confidence in the wisdom and virtue of those who will share with me the responsibility, and aid me in the conduct of public affairs; securely relying on the patriotism and courage of the people, of which the present war has furnished so many examples, I deeply feel the weight of the responsibilities I now, with unaffected diffidence, am about to assume; and, fully realizing the inadequacy of human power to guide and to sustain, my hope is reverently fixed on Him, whose favor is ever vouchsafed to the cause which is just. With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging the Providence which has so visibly protected the Confederacy during its brief but eventful career, to Thee, O God! I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its cause.