During this time the Western army suffered one disaster after another in such rapid succession that the warmest friends of the Confederacy began to despair of its future. Thoroughly alarmed. President Davis overcame his animosity sufficiently to send General Johnston to the rescue, but instead of giving him full authority over one or both of the armies he designated him as the commander of a geographical department with little more than the power usually invested in an inspector general.

Bragg, the most unfortunate of all the Southern generals, commanded in Tennessee, where he was out-generaled and defeated at Murfreesboro when he held all of the winning cards in his own hands. His blunders upon that field so enraged his officers that they were almost in revolt against him. However, in his fidelity to his old friend and comrade, Mr. Davis failed to discover what was evident to every intelligent lieutenant in the army, and Bragg was continued in command to perpetrate other blunders still more costly and unpardonable.

The Southern corps of the Western army was still worse handled. The Mississippi River, after the fall of New Orleans and Memphis, was of little or no use to the Confederacy, but Mr. Davis conceived the idea that it must be defended although that course, necessarily would weaken Bragg and render success impossible to either corps.

To the command of the Southern corps, Mr. Davis appointed General Pemberton, a theoretical soldier who it was alleged had never witnessed any considerable engagement. However this may be, his conduct fully sustained the allegation, for, from start to finish, he seems to have been mystified by the tactics of Grant and Sherman, and after a series of marches and countermarches in which he lost much and gained nothing he fell back on Vicksburg, perhaps the most indefensible city in America, and prepared to sustain a siege, the outcome of which could not be doubtful for a moment.

On the Field of Cold Harbor Today

Being safely driven into a position from which there was but one line of retreat, Pemberton appealed to the President for aid, and General Johnston was instructed to furnish it. His soldierly mind saw at a glance that the proper thing to do was to abandon Vicksburg, and he accordingly ordered Pemberton to do so. That officer protested and appealed to Mr. Davis, who sustained him and notified Johnston that under no circumstances must Vicksburg be abandoned. That decision sealed the fate of Pemberton’s army, and on the day General Grant invested it he telegraphed to Washington that its fall was only a question of time. How that prediction was verified by the surrender of Pemberton’s army of 30,000 men, thus leaving Grant and Sherman free to double back on Bragg, are too well known to need any discussion at this time. All thinking men realized that it sealed the doom of the Confederacy unless the Northern campaign of General Lee should prove successful.