Chapter XI (2)

"Dear Sir: Yours of the 1st instant received prompt attention,
and I am led to the conclusion that some imposition has been
practiced upon you. The Secretary of War informs me that he has
not granted leaves of absence or furloughs to soldiers of your
command for a month past, and then only to divert the current
which threatened by legislation to destroy your army by a
wholesale system of furloughs. Those which you inform me are
daily received must be spurious. The authority to reënlist and
change from infantry to artillery, the Secretary informs me, has
been given but in four cases--three on the recommendation of
General Beauregard, and specially explained to you some time
since; the remaining case was that of a company from Wheeling,
which was regarded as an exceptional one. I wish, therefore,
that you would send to the Adjutant-General the cases of recent
date in which the discipline of your troops has been interfered
with in the two methods stated, so that an inquiry may be made
into the origin of the papers presented. The law in relation to
reënlistment provides for reorganization, and was under the
policy of electing the officers.

"The concession to army opinions was limited to the promotion by
seniority after the organization of the companies and regiments
had been completed. The reorganization was not to occur before
the expiration of the present term. A subsequent law provides
for filling up the twelve months' companies by recruits for the
war, but the organization ceases with the term of the twelve
months' men. Be assured of readiness to protect your proper
authority, and I do but justice to the Secretary of War in
saying that he can not desire to interfere with the discipline
and organization of your troops. He has complained that his
orders are not executed, and I regret that he was able to
present to me so many instances to justify that complaint, which
were in no wise the invasion of your prerogative as a commander
in the field.

"You can command my attention at all times to any matter
connected with your duties, and I hope that full co-intelligence
will secure full satisfaction. Very truly yours,

"Jefferson Davis."

A fortnight after this letter, I received from General Johnston notice that his position was considered unsafe. Many of his letters to me have been lost, and I have thus far not been able to find the one giving the notice referred to, but the reply which is annexed clearly indicates the substance of the letter which was answered.

"Richmond, Virginia, _February_ 28, 1862.

"General J. E. Johnston: ... Your opinion that your position may
be turned whenever the enemy chooses to advance, and that he
will be ready to take the field before yourself, clearly
indicates prompt effort to disencumber yourself of everything
which would interfere with your rapid movement when necessary,
and such thorough examination of the country in your rear as
would give you exact knowledge of its roads and general
topography, and enable you to select a line of greater natural
advantages than that now occupied by your forces.

"The heavy guns at Manassas and Evansport, needed elsewhere, and
reported to be useless in their present position, would
necessarily be abandoned in any hasty retreat. I regret that you
find it impossible to move them.

"The subsistence stores should, when removed, be placed in
positions to answer your future wants. Those can not be
determined until you have furnished definite information as to
your plans, especially the line to which you would remove in the
contingency of retiring. The Commissary-General had previously
stopped further shipments to your army, and given satisfactory
reasons for the establishment at Thoroughfare.[191] ...

"I need not urge on your consideration the value to our country
of arms and munitions of war: you know the difficulty with which
we have obtained our small supply; that, to furnish heavy
artillery to the advanced posts, we have exhausted the supplies
here which were designed for the armament of the city defenses.
Whatever can be, should be done to avoid the loss of these
guns....

"As has been my custom, I have only sought to present general
purposes and views. I rely upon your special knowledge and high
ability to effect whatever is practicable in this our hour of
need. Recent disasters have depressed the weak, and are
depriving us of the aid of the wavering. Traitors show the
tendencies heretofore concealed, and the selfish grow clamorous
for local and personal interests. At such an hour, the wisdom of
the trained and the steadiness of the brave possess a double
value. The military paradox that impossibilities must be
rendered possible, had never better occasion for its
application.

"The engineers for whom you asked have been ordered to report to
you, and further additions will be made to your list of
brigadier-generals. Let me hear from you often and fully.

"Very truly and respectfully yours,

"Jefferson Davis."

"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 6, 1862.

"General J. E. Johnston:... Notwithstanding the threatening
position of the enemy, I infer from your account of the roads
and streams that his active operations must be for some time
delayed, and thus I am permitted to hope that you will be able
to mobilize your army by the removal of your heavy ordnance and
such stores as are not required for active operations, so that,
whenever you are required to move, it may be without public loss
and without impediment to celerity. I was fully impressed with
the difficulties which you presented when discussing the subject
of a change of position. To preserve the efficiency of your
army, you will, of course, avoid all needless exposure; and,
when your army has been relieved of all useless encumbrance, you
can have no occasion to move it while the roads and the weather
are such as would involve serious suffering, because the same
reasons must restrain the operations of the enemy....

"Very respectfully yours,

"Jefferson Davis."

At the conference at Fairfax Court-House, heretofore referred to, I was sadly disappointed to find that the strength of that army had been little increased, notwithstanding the reënforcements sent to it since the 21st of July, and that to make an advance the generals required an additional force, which it was utterly impracticable for me to supply. Soon thereafter the army withdrew to Centreville, a better position for defense but not for attack, and thereby suggestive of the abandonment of an intention to advance. The subsequent correspondence with General Johnston during the winter expressed an expectation that the enemy would resume the offensive, and that the position then held was geographically unfavorable. There was a general apprehension at Richmond that the northern frontier of Virginia would be abandoned, and a corresponding earnestness was exhibited to raise the requisite force to enable our army to take the offensive. On the 10th of March I telegraphed to General Johnston: "Further assurance given to me this day that you shall be promptly and adequately reënforced, so as to enable you to maintain your position, and resume first policy when the roads will permit." The first policy was to carry the war beyond our own border.

Five days thereafter, I received notice that our army was in retreat, and replied as follows:

"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 15, 1862.

"General J. E. Johnston, _Headquarters Army of the Potomac_.

"General: I have received your letter of the 13th instant,
giving the first official account I have received of the
retrograde movement of your army.

"Your letter would lead me to infer that others had been sent to
apprise me of your plans and movements. If so, they have not
reached me; and, before the receipt of yours of the 13th, I was
as much in the dark as to your purposes, condition, and
necessities as at the time of our conversation on the subject
about a month since.

"It is true I have had many and alarming reports of great
destruction of ammunition, camp-equipage, and provisions,
indicating precipitate retreat; but, having heard of no cause
for such a sudden movement, I was at a loss to believe it.

"I have not the requisite topographical knowledge for the
selection of your new position. I had intended that you should
determine that question; and for this purpose a corps of
engineers was furnished to make a careful examination of the
country to aid you in your decision.

"The question of throwing troops into Richmond is contingent
upon reverses in the West and Southeast. The immediate necessity
for such a movement is not anticipated.

"Very respectfully yours,

"Jefferson Davis."

On the same day I sent the following telegram:

"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 15, 1862.

"General J. E. Johnston, _Culpepper Court-House, Virginia_.

"Your letter of the 13th received this day, being the first
information of your retrograde movement. I have no report of
your reconnaissance, and can suggest nothing as to the position
you should take except it should be as far in advance as
consistent with your safety.

"Jefferson Davis."

To further inquiry from General Johnston as to where he should take position, I replied that I would go to his headquarters in the field, and found him on the south bank of the river, to which he had retired, in a position possessing great natural advantages. An elevated bank commanded the north side of the river, overlooking the bridge, and an open field beyond it, across which the enemy must pass to reach the bridge, which, if left standing, was an invitation to seek that crossing. Upon inquiring whether the south bank of the river continued to command the other side down to Fredericksburg, General Johnston answered that he did not know; that he had not been at Fredericksburg since he passed there in a stage on his way to West Point, when he was first appointed a cadet. I then proposed that we should go to Fredericksburg, to inform ourselves upon that point. On arriving at Fredericksburg, a reconnaissance soon manifested that the hills on the opposite side commanded the town and adjacent river-bank, and therefore Fredericksburg could only be defended by an army occupying the opposite hills, for which our force was inadequate. In returning to the house of Mr. Barton, where I was a guest, I found a number of ladies had assembled there to welcome me, and who, with anxiety, inquired as to the result of our reconnaissance. Upon learning that the town was not considered defensible against an enemy occupying the heights on the other side, and that our force was not sufficient to hold those heights against such an attack as might be anticipated, the general answer was, with a self-sacrificing patriotism too much admired to be forgotten, "If the good of our cause requires the defense of the town to be abandoned, let it be done." The purposes of the enemy were then unknown to us. If General Johnston's expectation of a hostile advance in great force should be realized, our course must depend partly upon receiving the reënforcement we had reason to expect from promises previously given and renewed, as was announced to General Johnston in my telegram of 10th of March, 1862, in these words:

"Further assurance given to me this day that you shall be
promptly and adequately reënforced, so as to enable you to
maintain your position, and resume first policy when the roads
will permit."

No immediate decision could therefore be made, and I returned to Richmond, to wait the further development of the enemy's plans, and to prepare as best we might to counteract them.

The feeling heretofore noticed as arousing in Virginia a determination to resist the abandonment of her northern frontier, and which caused the assurance of reënforcements, bore fruit in the addition of about thirty thousand men, by a draft made by the Governor of the State. These, it is true, were not the disciplined, seasoned troops which were asked for by the generals in the conference at Fairfax Court-House, but they were of such men as often during the war won battles for the Confederacy. The development of the enemy's plans, for which we had to wait, proved that, instead of advancing in force against our position at Centreville, he had, before the retreat of our army commenced, decided to move down the Potomac for a campaign against Richmond, from the Peninsula as a base. The conflagration at Centreville gave notice of its evacuation, and an advance was made as far as Manassas, but, as appears by General McClellan's report, with no more important design than to attack our rear guard, if it should be encountered. In the report on the conduct of the war by a committee of the United States Congress, evidence is found of much vacillation before the conclusion was finally reached of abandoning the idea of a direct advance upon Richmond for that of concentrating their army at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Whatever doubt or apprehension continued to exist about uncovering the city of Washington by removing their main army from before it, was of course dispelled by the retreat of our army, and the burning of bridges behind it. In this last-mentioned fact, General McClellan says he found the strongest reason to believe that there was no immediate danger of our army returning.

There was an apparent advantage to the enemy in the new base for his operations which was sufficiently illustrated by the events of the last year of the war. Had we possessed an army as large as the enemy supposed, it would have been possible for us at the same time to check his advance from the East and to march against his capital, with fair prospect of capturing it, before the army he had sent against Yorktown could have been brought back for the defense of Washington. On this as on other occasions he greatly magnified the force we possessed, and on this as on other occasions it required the concentration of our troops successfully to resist a detachment of his. Accepting as a necessity the withdrawal of the main portion of our army from northern Virginia to meet the invasion from the seaboard, it was regretted that earlier and more effective means were not employed for the mobilization of the army, a desirable measure in either contingency of advance or retreat, or at the least that the withdrawal was not so deliberate as to secure the removal of our ordnance, subsistence, and quartermasters' stores, which had been collected on the line occupied in 1861 and the early part of 1862.

A distinguished officer of our army, who has since the war made valuable contributions to the history of its operations--especially valuable as well for their accuracy as for their freedom from personal or partisan bias--writes thus of the retreat from Centreville:

"A very large amount of stores and provisions had been abandoned
for want of transportation, and among the stores was a very
large quantity of clothing, blankets etc., which had been
provided by the States south of Virginia for their own troops.
The pile of trunks along the railroad was appalling to behold.
All these stores, clothing, trunks, etc., were consigned to the
flames by a portion of our cavalry left to carry out the work of
their destruction. The loss of stores at this point and at White
Plains on the Manassas Gap Railroad, where a large amount of
meat had been salted and stored, was a very serious one to us,
and embarrassed us for the remainder of the war, as it put us at
once on a running stock."

The same officer--and the value of his opinion will be recognized by all who know him, wherefore I give his name, General J. A. Early--in a communication subsequent to that from which I have just quoted, writes, in regard to the loss of supplies:

"I believe that all might have been carried off from Manassas if
the railroads had been energetically operated. The rolling-stock
of the Orange and Alexandria, Manassas Gap, and Virginia Central
Railroads ought to have been sufficient for the purpose of
removing everything in the two weeks allowed, if properly used."

The enemy's plans, the development of which, as has been already stated, was necessary for the determination of our own movements, were soon thereafter found to be the invasion of Virginia from the seaboard, and the principal portion of our army was consequently ordered to the Peninsula, between the York River and the James. Thus the northern frontier of Virginia, which, in the first year of the war, had been the main field of skirmishes, combats, and battles, of advance and retreat, and the occupation and evacuation of fortified positions, ceased for a time to tremble beneath the tread of contending armies.

To the foregoing narration of events immediately connected with the efforts of the Confederate Government to maintain its existence at home, may here be properly added an incident bearing on its foreign relations in the first year of the war.

Our efforts for the recognition of the Confederate States by the European powers, in 1861, served to make us better known abroad, to awaken a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States which Great Britain had recognized, and her people knew to be our birthright.

On the 8th of November, 1861, an outrage was perpetrated by an armed vessel of the United States, in the forcible detention, on the high-seas, of a British mail steamer, making one of her regular trips from one British port to another, and the seizure, on that unarmed vessel, of our Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who with their secretaries were bound for Europe on diplomatic service. The seizure was made by an armed force against the protest of the Captain of the vessel, and of Commander Williams, R.N., the latter speaking as the representative of her Majesty's Government. The Commissioners only yielded when force, which they could not resist, was used to remove them from the mail-steamer, and convey them to the United States vessel of war.

This outrage was the more marked because the United States had been foremost in resisting the right of "visit and search," and had made it the cause of the War of 1812 with Great Britain.

When intelligence of the event was received in England, it excited the greatest indignation among the people; and her Majesty's Government, by naval and other preparations, unmistakably exhibited the purpose to redress the wrong.

The Commissioners and their secretaries had been transported to the harbor of Boston, and imprisoned in its main fortress.

Diplomatic correspondence resulted from this event. The British Government demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the Commissioners, "in order that they may again be placed under British protection, and a suitable apology for the aggression which has been committed."

In the mean time, Captain Wilkes, commander of the vessel which had made the visit and search of the Trent, returned to the United States and was received with general plaudit, both by the people and the Government. The House of Representatives passed a vote of thanks, an honor not heretofore bestowed except for some deed deserving well of the country. In the midst of all this exultation at the seizure of our Commissioners on board of a British merchant-ship, came the indignant and stern demand for the restoration of those Commissioners to the British protection from which they had been taken, and an apology for the aggression. It was little to be expected, after such explicit commendation of the act, that the United States Government would accede to the demand; and therefore the War and Navy Departments of the British Government made active and extensive provision to enforce it. The haughty temper displayed toward four gentlemen arrested on an unarmed ship subsided in view of a demand to be enforced by the army and navy of Great Britain, and the United States Secretary of State, after a wordy and ingenious reply to the Minister of Great Britain at Washington City, wrote: "The four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort Warren, in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully liberated. Your lordship will please indicate a time and place for receiving them."

There was a time when the Government and the people of the United States would not have sanctioned such aggression on the right of friendly ships to pass unquestioned on the high way of nations, and the right of a neutral flag to protect everything not contraband of war; but that was a time when arrogance and duplicity had not led them into false positions, and when the roar of the British lion could not make Americans retract what they had deliberately avowed.

[Footnote 191: Thoroughfare Gap was the point at which the Commissary-General had placed a meat-packing establishment]