CHAPTER XXXVI
THE FATAL DEED
The battle of Gettysburg and the disaster of the fall of Vicksburg once more gave to the Johnston junta in the Confederate Congress their opportunity to harass the President.
Their power for evil had been greatly diminished by the pressure of the swiftly moving tragedy of the war.
The appearance of this Congress was curiously plain and uninteresting. With the exception of J. L. M. Curry of Alabama and Barksdale of Mississippi there was not a man among them of constructive ability as a statesman. Foote of Tennessee was noted for his high-flown English, his endless harangues and his elaborate historical illustrations. Had his ability been equal to the intensity of his hatred for Davis he would have been a dangerous man to the administration. James Lyons of Virginia stood six feet three in his stockings, had fine, even, white teeth, and was considered the handsomest man in the assembly.
Yancey, the fierce, uncompromising agitator of secession, was too violent to command the influence to which his genius entitled him.
Senator Barton, fierce, impatient, bombastic, had long ago exhausted the vocabulary of invective and could only repeat himself in descending anti-climax.
Hill of Georgia was a young man of ability who gave promise of greater things under more favorable conditions.
The real business of this Congress was transacted in secret executive sessions. When the public was admitted, the people of Richmond generally looked on with contempt. They sneeringly referred to them as "the College Debating Society, on Capitol Hill."
The surroundings of their halls added to the impression of inefficiency--dingy, dirty and utterly lacking in the luxuries which the mind associates with the exercise of sovereign power.
The Senate was forced to find quarters in the third story of the "State House." There was no gallery and the spectators were separated from the members by an improvised railing. The only difference noticeable between the Senators and the spectators was that the members had seats and the listeners and loafers had standing room only behind the rail.
The House of Representatives had a better chamber. But its walls were bare of ornament or paintings, its chairs were uncushioned, its desks dingy and slashed with pocket knives. Its members sat with their heels in the air and their bodies sprawled in every conceivable attitude of ugly indifference.
The heart and brains of the South were on the field of battle--her noblest sons destined to sleep in unmarked graves.
The scenes of personal violence which disgraced the sittings of this nondescript body of law makers did much to relieve the President of the burden of their hostility.
Foote of Tennessee provoked an encounter with Judge Dargan of Alabama which came near a tragic ending. The Judge was an old man of eccentric dress, much given to talking to himself--particularly as he wandered about the streets of Richmond. The gallery of the House loved him from the first for his funny habit of scratching his arm when the itch of eloquence attacked him. And he always addressed the Speaker as "Mr. Cheerman." They loved him particularly for that. The eccentric Judge had a peculiarly fierce antipathy to Foote. Words of defiance had passed between them on more than one occasion. The House was in secret night session. The Judge was speaking.
Foote sitting near, glanced up at his enemy and muttered:
"Damned old scoundrel--"
The Judge's gray head suddenly lifted, he snatched a bowie knife from his pocket and dashed for the man who had insulted him.
From every direction rose the shouts and cries of the excited House.
"Stop him!"
"Hold him!"
"Great God!"
"Judge--Judge!"
The wildest uproar followed. Half a dozen members threw themselves on the old man, dragged him to the floor, pinned him down and wrested the knife from his grasp.
When the eloquent gentleman from Tennessee saw that his assailant was disarmed and safely guarded by six stalwart men he struck an attitude, expanded his chest, smote it with both hands and exclaimed with melodramatic gusto:
"I defy the steel of the assassin!"
The House burst into shouts of uncontrollable laughter, and adjourned for the night.
Another scene of more tragic violence occurred in the Senate--a hand to hand fight between William L. Yancey and Ben Hill. The Senator from Georgia threw his antagonist across a desk, held him there in a grip of steel and pounded his face until dragged away by friends. Yancey's spine was wrenched in the struggle, and it was rumored that this injury caused his death. It possibly hastened the end already sure from age, disease and careless living.
Committees from this assembly of law makers who attempted to instruct the conscientious, hard-working man of genius the Southern people had made their President found little comfort in their efforts.
Davis received them with punctilious ceremony. His manners were always those of a gentleman--but he never allowed them to return to their onerous work in the Debating Society without a clear idea of his views. They were never expressed with violence. But the ice sometimes formed on the window panes if he stood near while talking.
A Congressional Committee were demanding the restoration of Beauregard to command.
"General Beauregard asked me to relieve him, gentlemen--"
"Only on furlough for illness," interrupted the Chairman.
"And you have forced him into retirement!" added a member.
The President rose, walked to the window, gazed out on the crowded street for a moment and turned, suddenly confronting his tormentors. He spoke with quiet dignity, weighing each word with cold precision:
"If the whole world asked me to restore General Beauregard to the command which I have given to Braxton Bragg, I would refuse." He resumed his seat and the Committee retired to Senator Barton's house where they found a sympathetic ear.
Bragg was preparing to fight one of the greatest battles of the war. At Chickamauga, the "River of Death," he encountered Rosecrans. At the end of two days of carnage the Union army was totally routed, right, left, and center and hurled back from Georgia into Chattanooga. Polk's wing captured twenty-eight pieces of artillery and Longstreet's twenty-one. Eight thousand prisoners of war were taken, fifteen thousand stand of arms and forty regimental colors.
Rosecrans' army of eighty thousand men was literally cut to pieces by Bragg's fifty thousand Southerners. No more brilliant achievement of military genius illumines history. Chickamauga was in every way as desperate a battle as Arcola--and in all Napoleon's Italian campaigns nothing more daring and wonderful was accomplished by the Man of Destiny.
Bragg had justified the faith of Davis. Rosecrans was hemmed in in Chattanooga, his supplies cut off and his army facing starvation when he was relieved of his command, Thomas succeeding him. Grant was hurried to Chattanooga with two army corps to raise the siege.
With his reënforcements Grant raised the siege, surprised and defeated Bragg's army which had been weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's corps for a movement on Knoxville.
Bragg withdrew his army again into Georgia and resigned his command. The stern, irritable Confederate fighter was disgusted with the constant attacks on him by peanut politicians and refused to hear Davis' plea that he remain at the head of the Western army. The President called him to Richmond and made him his Chief of Staff.
The disaster to the Confederacy at Chattanooga which gave General Grant supreme command of the Union forces, brought to the Johnston junta at Richmond its opportunity to once more press their favorite to the front. Since his Vicksburg fiasco the President had isolated him. Davis resisted this appointment with deep foreboding of its possible disaster to the South.
In the midst of this bitter struggle over the selection of a Western Field Commander, the President of the Confederacy received the first and only recognition of his Government accorded by any European power.
His early education at the St. Thomas Monastery had given the Southern leader a lofty opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. Davis had always seen in the members of this faith in America friends who could not be alienated from the oppressed.
Failing to receive recognition from the great powers of Europe, he dispatched his diplomatic representative to Rome with a carefully worded letter to the Pope in which he expressed his gratitude to Pius IX for his efforts in behalf of peace. The Pope had urged his bishops in New Orleans and New York to strive to end the war.
The Vatican received the Confederate diplomat with every mark of courtesy and every expression of respect accorded the most powerful nations of the world. The Dominican friars had not forgotten the wistful, eager boy they had taught, and loved in Kentucky. The Pope replied to this communication in an official letter which virtually recognized the Confederacy--both in his capacity as a temporal sovereign and as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
The President read this letter with renewed hope of favorable action abroad.
"ILLUSTRIOUS AND HONORABLE PRESIDENT:
"Salutation:
"We have just received with all suitable welcome the persons sent by you to place in our hands your letter dated twenty-third of September last.
"Not slight was the pleasure we experienced when we learned from those persons and the letter, with what feelings of joy and gratitude you were animated, illustrious and honorable President, as soon as you were informed of our letters to our venerable brother John, Archbishop of New York, and John, Archbishop of New Orleans, dated the eighteenth of October of last year, and in which we have with all our strength excited and exhorted these venerable brothers, that in their episcopal piety and solicitude, they should endeavor, with the most ardent zeal, and in our name, to bring about the end of the fatal civil war which has broken out in those countries, in order that the American people may obtain peace and concord, and dwell charitably together.
"It is particularly agreeable to us to see that you, illustrious and honorable President, and your good people, are animated with the same desire of peace and tranquillity which we have in our letters inculcated upon our venerable brothers. May it please God at the same time to make the other people of America and their ruler, reflecting seriously how terrible is civil war, and what calamities it engenders, listen to the inspiration of a calm spirit, and adopt resolutely the part of peace.
"As for us, we shall not cease to offer up the most fervent prayers to God Almighty that He may pour out upon all the people of America the Spirit and peace and charity, and that He will stop the great evils which afflict them. We at the same time beseech the God of pity to shed abroad upon you the light of His countenance and attach you to us by a perfect friendship.
"Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, the third of December, 1863, of our Pontificate 18.
"(Signed) Pius IX."
The dark hour was swiftly approaching when the South and her leader would need the prayers of all God's saints.
Failing to persuade Bragg to reconsider his resignation, Davis appointed General Hardee as his successor to command the Western army. Hardee declared the responsibility was more than he could assume.
Under the urgent necessity of driving the Union army back from its position at Chattanooga and heartsick with eternal wrangling of the opposition, Davis reluctantly ordered Joseph E. Johnston personally to assume command of the Army of Tennessee--and the fatal deed was done.