While they were waiting he turned to Mr. Davis anxiously:
"I think it extremely unwise, sir, for you to take this risk."
The thin lips smiled:
"I'll take the responsibility, General."
The President and his staff mounted and galloped toward the front.
The stragglers came now in droves. They were generous in their warnings.
"Say, men, do ye want to die?"
"You're ridin' straight inter the jaws er death."
"Don't do it, I tell ye!"
The President began to rally the men. As they neared the front he was recognized and the wounded began to cheer.
A big strapping soldier was carrying a slender wounded boy to the rear.
The boy put his trembling hand on the man's shoulder, snatched off his cap and shouted:
"Three cheers for the President! Look, boys, he's here—we'll lick 'em yet!"
The President lifted his hat to the stripling, crying:
"To a hero of the South!"
The storm of battle was now rolling swiftly to the west—its roar growing fainter with each cannon's throb.
The President, sitting his horse with erect tense figure, dashed up the hill to General Johnston:
"How goes the battle, General?"
"We have won, sir," was the sharp curt answer.
"'We have won, sir!' was the short, curt answer.""'We have won, sir!' was the short, curt answer."
The President wheeled his horse and rode rapidly into the front lines until stopped by the captain of a command of cavalry.
"You are too near the front, sir, without an escort—"
The President rode beside the captain and watched him form his men for their last charge on the enemy. He inspected the field with growing amazement. For miles the earth was strewn with the wreck of the Northern army—guns, knapsacks, blankets, canteens—and Brooklyn-made handcuffs!
Their defeat had been so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming, it was impossible at first to grasp its meaning.
He passed the rugged figure of Jackson who had won his immortal title of "Stonewall." An aide was binding a cloth about his wounded arm.
The grim General pushed aside his surgeon, raised his battered cap and shouted:
"Hurrah for the President! Ten thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington to-night!"
The President lifted his hat and congratulated him.
The victory of the South was complete and overwhelming. Jefferson Davis breathed a sigh of relief for deliverance. Within two hours he knew that this victory had not been won by superior generalship of his commanding officers. They had been outwitted at every turn and overwhelmed by the plan of battle their wily foe had forced upon them. It had not been won by the superior courage of his men in the battle which raged from sunrise until four o'clock. The broken and disorganized lines of the South and the panic-stricken mob he had met on the way were eloquent witnesses of Northern valor.
His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout.
Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled.
The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse—the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy.
The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation.
Socola dismissed his hope of a speedy end of the war and devoted himself with new enthusiasm to his work. His eyes were sleepless—his ear to the ground. The information on conditions and public sentiment in Richmond and the South which he had dispatched to Washington were of incalculable service to his government. One of the immediate effects of the battle was the return of Jennie Barton to the Capital. Her mother was improving and Jimmie had been wounded. Her coming was most fortunate. It was of the utmost importance that he secure a position in the Civil Service of the Confederacy. It could be done through her father's influence.
Socola watched the first division of Northern prisoners march through the streets amid the shouts and laughter of a crowd of urchins black and white. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables would be shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without a scruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on the chessboard of Life and Death over which he bent.
Jefferson Davis watched the effects of the battle on the North with breathless interest and increasing dismay.
His worst fears were confirmed.
He had hoped that a decisive victory would place his Government in a position to make overtures for a peaceful adjustment of the conflict.
The victory had been too decisive. The disgraceful rout of the Northern army had stung twenty-three million people to the quick. Defeat so overwhelming and surprising had roused the last drop of fighting blood in their veins.
Boasting and loud talk suddenly ceased. There was no lying about the results. In all their bald hideous reality the Northern mind faced them and began with steady purpose their vast preparations to wipe that disgrace out in blood.
Abraham Lincoln suddenly found himself relieved of all embarrassment in the conduct of the war. His critics had threatened to wreck his administration unless he forced their "Grand Army" to march on Richmond and take it without a day's delay.
In obedience to this idiotic clamor he was forced to order the army to march. They came home by a shorter route than they marched and they came quicker.
They returned without baggage.
Incompetent men and hungry demagogues had clamored for high positions in the army. Their influence had been so great he had been forced to find berths for many incompetent officers.
He had suddenly become the actual Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and his word was law. Fools and incompetents were relegated to the rear. Men who knew how to fight and how to organize armies marched to the front.
His administration had been embarrassed for funds. It was found next to impossible to float a loan of a paltry seven million dollars for war purposes. He borrowed one hundred and fifty million dollars next day at a fraction above the legal rate of interest in New York. He asked Congress for 400,000 more men and $400,000,000 to support them. Congress voted a half million men and five hundred millions of dollars—a hundred millionmore than he had asked.
While Washington's streets were thronged with the mud-smeared, panic-stricken rabble that was once an army, the Federal Congress eagerly began the task of repairing the disaster. When they had done all and much more than their President had asked, they calmly and unanimously passed this resolution:
"Resolved, That the maintenance of the Constitution, the preservation of the Union, and the enforcement of the laws, are sacred trusts which must be executed; that no disaster shall discourage us from the most ample performance of this high duty; and that we pledge to the Country and the world the employment of every resource, national and individual, for the suppression, overthrow and punishment of rebels in arms."
"Resolved, That the maintenance of the Constitution, the preservation of the Union, and the enforcement of the laws, are sacred trusts which must be executed; that no disaster shall discourage us from the most ample performance of this high duty; and that we pledge to the Country and the world the employment of every resource, national and individual, for the suppression, overthrow and punishment of rebels in arms."
To the dismay of the far-seeing Southern leader in Richmond the press and people of the South received this resolution with shouts of derision. In vain did he warn his own Congress that the North was multiplying its armies, and building two navies with furious energy.
The people of the South went mad over their amazing victory. Davis saw their deliverance suddenly develop into the most appalling disaster.
The decisive battle of the war was fought and won. The European powers must immediately recognize the new Nation. In this hope their President could reasonably share. Their other delusions he knew to be madness.
The Southern press without a dissenting voice proclaimed that the question of manhood between the North and South was settled and settled forever. From the hustings the demagogue shouted:
"One Southerner is the equal anywhere of five Yankees."
Manassas, with its insignificant record of killed and wounded, was compared with the decisive battles of the world. The war was over. There might still be fought a few insignificant skirmishes before peace was proclaimed but that auspicious event could not be long delayed.
The fatal victory was followed by a period of fancied security and deadly inactivity. Exertions ceased. Volunteers were few. The volatile, sanguine people laughed at the fears of their croaking President.
So firmly had they established the new Nation that politicians began to plot and scheme for control of the Confederate Government on the expiration of the Davis term of office.
R. M. T. Hunter, the foremost statesman of Virginia, resigned his position in the Cabinet to be unembarrassed in his fight for the presidency.
Beauregard had been promoted to the full rank of general and his tent was now a bower of roses. Around the figure of the little fiery, impulsive, boastful South Carolinian gathered a group of ambitious schemers who determined to make him President. They filled the newspapers with such fulsome praise that the popular nominee for an honor six years in the distance, and shrouded in the smoke of battle, sought to add fuel to the flame by waving the Crown aside! In a weak bombastic letter which deceived no one, dated,
"Within Hearing of the Enemies' Guns," he emphatically declared:
"I am not a candidate, nor do I desire to be a candidate, for any civil office in the gift of the people or Executive!"
Controversies began between different Southern States, as to the location of the permanent Capital of the Confederacy. The contest developed so rapidly and went so far, that the Municipal Council of the City of Nashville, Tennessee, voted an appropriation of $750,000 for a residence for the President as an inducement to remove the Capital.
A furious controversy broke out in the yellow journals of the South as to why the Southern army had not pursued the panic-stricken mob into the City of Washington, captured Lincoln and his Congress and ended the war next day in a blaze of glory.
It was inconceivable that it was the fault of the two heroes of the battle, Joseph E. Johnston and Peter G. T. Beauregard. The President had rushed to the battlefield for some purpose. The champions of the heroes insinuated that his purpose was not to prevent their quarreling, but to take command of the field and rob them of their glory.
They made haste to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders to lay the failure to pursue. They seized on Jefferson Davis as the man. They declared in the most positive terms that Johnston and Beauregard, flushed with victory, were marshaling their hosts to sweep into Washington when they were stopped by the Confederate Chief and had no choice but to bivouac for the night.
Three men alone knew the truth: Davis, Beauregard and Johnston. The two victorious generals remained silent while their friends made this remarkable accusation against the President.
The President remained silent to save his generals from the wrath of a fickle public which might end their usefulness to the country.
As a matter of fact, Davis' trained eye had seen the enormous advantage of quick merciless pursuit the moment he was convinced that McDowell's army had fled in panic.
He had finally written a positive order commanding pursuit but was persuaded by the continued pleas of both commanders not to press it.
The reptile press of the South began on the President a bitter, malignant and unceasing vilification for this, his first fatal and inexcusable blunder!
Defeat had freed Abraham Lincoln of fools and incompetents and armed him with dictatorial powers. Victory had saddled on the Confederacy two heroes destined to cripple its efficiency with interminable controversy, sulking bitterness and personal ambitions. The halo of supreme military genius which encircled the brows of Johnston and Beauregard with the lifting of the smoke from the field of Bull Run grew quickly into two storm clouds which threatened the life of the new Republic.
Johnston's contempt for Beauregard had from the beginning been outspoken to his intimate friends. The battle had raised this little upstart to his equal in rank! He claimed that the President had robbed him of his true position in the Southern army through favoritism in the appointment of Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee to positions of seniority to which they were not entitled.
Johnston began a series of bitter insulting letters to the Confederate President, complaining of his injustice and demanding his rights. Not content with his letters to the Executive, Johnston poured his complaints into the ears of his friends and admirers in the Confederate Congress and began a systematic and determined personal campaign to discredit and ruin the administration.
Among his first recruits in his campaign against Jefferson Davis was the fiery, original Secessionist, Roger Barton. Barton had never liked Davis. Their temperaments were incompatible. He resigned his position on the staff of the President, allied himself openly with Johnston and became one of the bitterest and most uncompromising enemies of the government. His position in the Confederate Senate would be a powerful weapon with which to strike.
The substance of Johnston's claim on which was founded this malignant clique in Richmond was the merest quibble about the date of his commission to the rank of full general. Because its date was later than that of Robert E. Lee he felt himself insulted and degraded.
When the President mildly and good naturedly informed him that his position of Quartermaster General in the old army did not entitle him to a field command and that Lee's rank as field commander was higher, he replied in a letter which became the text of his champions. Its high-flown language and bombastic claims showed only too plainly that a consuming ambition had destroyed all sense of proportion in his mind.
With uncontrolled passion he wrote to the President:
"Human power cannot efface the past. Congress may vacate my commission and reduce me to the ranks. It cannot make it true that I was not a general before July 4, 1861.
"The effect of the course pursued is this:
"It transforms me from the position first in rank to that of fourth. The relative rank of the others among themselves (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) is unaltered. It is plain that this is a blow aimed at me only. It reduces my rank in the grade I hold. This has never been done heretofore in the regular service in America but by the sentence of a court-martial as a punishment and as a disgrace for some military offense.
"It seeks to tarnish my fair name as a soldier and as a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service. I have but this—the scars of many wounds all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father's revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerable hand without stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war not for rank or fame (sic!),but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children, aye, and the men of my mother, Virginia—my native South. It may hereafter be the sword of a general leading armies, or of a private volunteer. But while I live and have an arm to wield it, it shall never be sheathed until the freedom, independence, and full rights of the South are achieved. When that is done, it then will be a matter of small concern to the Government, to Congress, or to the Country, what my rank or lot may be.
"What has the aspect of a studied indignity is offered me. My noble associate with me in the battle has his preferment connected with the victory won by our common trials and dangers. His commission bears the date of July 21, 1861, but care seems to be taken to exclude the idea that I had any part in winning that triumph.
"My commission is made to bear such a date that my once inferiors in the service of the United States and of the Confederate States (Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee) shall be above me. But it must not be dated as of July 21, nor be suggestive of the victory of Manassas!
"If the action against which I have protested is legal, it is not for me to question the expediency of degrading one who has served laboriously from the commencement of the war on this frontier, and borne a prominent part in the only great event of that war, for the benefit of persons, neither of whom has yet struck a blow for this Confederacy.
"These views and the freedom with which they are presented may be unusual, so likewise is the occasion which calls them forth.
"I have the honor to be, most respectfully,Your obedient servant,J. E. Johnston,General."
With a curve of his thin lips and a look of mortal weariness on his haggard face, the man on whose shoulders rested the burden of the lives of millions of his people seized his pen and wrote this brief note:
"Richmond, Va., September 14, 1861."General J. E. Johnston:"Sir:
"I have just received and read your letter of the 12 instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and statements utterly one-sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming.
"I am, etc.,Jefferson Davis."
While the Commander of the victorious Confederacy was sulking in his tent on the field of Manassas, playing this pitiful farce about the date of a commission, and allowing his army to go to pieces, George B. McClellan with tireless energy and matchless genius as an organizer was whipping into shape Lincoln's new levy of five hundred thousand determined Northern men.
To further add to his embarrassment and cripple his work the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, developed early into a chronic opponent of the administration. Much of this opposition was due to dyspepsia but it was none the less effective in undermining the influence of the Executive. Mr. Stephens' theories were the outgrowth of the most radical application of the dogma of States' Rights.
Before secession he had bitterly opposed the withdrawal of Georgia from the Union. His extreme advocacy of the Sovereignty of the States now threatened the unity and integrity of the Confederacy as a Republic.
He proclaimed the remarkable doctrine that as the war was one in which the people had led the politicians into a struggle for their rights, therefore the people could be absolutely relied on by the administrators of the Government to properly conduct the war. The people could always be depended on when a battle was to be fought. When no fighting was to be done they should be at home attending to their families and their business. The people were intelligent. They were patriotic. And they were as good judges of the necessity of their presence with the colors as the commanders of the armies. The generals were professional soldiers. They fought for rank and pay and most of them had no property in the South!
In the face of such doctrines proclaimed from so high a source it was not to be wondered at if thousands of men obtained furloughs on long leaves of absence. In the judgment of the intelligent and patriotic people of the South the war was practically over. Why should they swell the ranks of great armies to augment the power of military lords?
While these comfortable doctrines were being proclaimed in the South, the North was drilling five hundred thousand soldiers who had enlisted for three years.
The soreheads, theorists, and chronic kickers now had their supreme opportunity to harass the President. They rallied behind the sulking General and his friends and established a vigilant and malignant opposition to Jefferson Davis in the Confederate Congress.
They centered their criticism naturally on the weakest spot in the new Government—the weakest spot in all new nations—its financial policy.
They demanded the immediate purchase of all the cotton in the South and its exportation to England as a basis of credit. They blithely ignored two facts—that the Government had no money with which to purchase this enormous quantity of the property of its people and the still more important fact that the ports of the South had been blockaded, that this blockade was becoming more and more effective and that blockade-runners could not be found with sufficient tonnage to move one-tenth of the crop if they were willing to risk capture and confiscation.
If the President could have met the members of his Congress in daily social intercourse much of the opposition could have been cleared by his close reasoning and the magnetism of his powerful personality. But under the strain of his official life his health forbade the attempt at social amenities.
He ceased to entertain except at formal receptions, gave himself body and soul to his duties as President and allowed his critics full swing with their tongues.
The RichmondExaminerearly developed into the leader of the reptile press of the South which sought by all means fair or foul to break down and destroy the President. This sheet was made the organ of all the bickering, backbiting, complaining and sulking in the army and the civil life of the new Republic.
Because the President could not spare the time for social entertainments, he was soundly abused for the stinginess of his administration. Because the young people of Richmond could not be received at the White House of the Confederacy on every evening in the weekThe Examinersneered at the assumption of "superior dignity by the satraps."
This scurrilous newspaper at last made the infamous charge that Davis was getting rich on his savings from a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars in Confederate money! Every politician who had been overlooked rushed into these friendly columns and aired his grievances. The old secession leaders who had been thrust aside for the presidency by the people who had forced the office on Jefferson Davis now pressed forward to put their knives into the sensitive soul of the man they envied. Wm. L. Yancey, Barnwell Rhett and Robert Toombs joined his foes in a chorus of criticism and abuse. Every man who had been slighted in high positions bestowed on rivals rushed now to the attack.
Davis was never a man who could hedge and trim and lie and be all things to all men. He was totally lacking in the patience that can flatter a fool. He was too sincere, too downright in his honesty for such demagoguery.
He was abused for a thousand things for which he was in no sense responsible and made no effort to defend himself. He merely took refuge in dignified silence. And when his enemies could not provoke him into angry outbursts they accused him of contempt for public opinion.
In this hour of his sore trial he lacked the sense of broad humor which saved Abraham Lincoln. His rival in Washington was abused with far more savage cruelty—but it always reminded him of a funny story. He told the story, roared with laughter himself, and turned again to his work.
Not so with Jefferson Davis. He was keenly and painfully sensitive to the approval or condemnation of the people about him. The thoughtless word of a child could cut him to the quick. To have explained many of the difficulties on which he was attacked would have been to endanger the usefulness of one of his generals or expose the army to danger.
He steadfastly remained silent and accepted as inevitable the accusation that his manner was cold and repellent.
But once did his soul completely break down under the strain.
An officer whom he loved had been censured by one of his commanding generals who demanded his removal. This censure was conveyed to the President in a letter marked "Private."
The officer was removed. Hard as the duty was, he felt that as the servant of his country he had no other choice.
Flushed and indignant, his old friend called.
"You know me, Mr. President," he cried passionately. "How can I ever hold my head up again under censure from you—one of my oldest and best friends?"
The muscles of the drawn face twitched with nervous agony. He could not with his high sense of honor as President tell this man that he loved him and found no fault with him. To make his acceptance of the situation easier, his only course was to roust his friend's anger.
He turned and said curtly:
"You have, I believe, received your orders. I can suggest nothing but obedience."
Too angry to ask an explanation, he strode from the room without a word.
The President closed his desk, climbed the steep hill of the Capitol Square, walked home in brooding silence, and locked himself in his room without eating his dinner.
Alarmed at his absence, Mrs. Davis at last gently rapped on his door. With tender tact she drew from his reluctant lips the story.
Turning his dimmed eyes on hers, he burst out in tones of quivering anguish:
"Oh, my Winnie dear, how could any man with a soul write a letter like that, mark it private and force me to plunge a knife into the heart of my best friend and leave it there without a word—"
"You should have told your friend the whole truth!"
"No—he could have made trouble in the army. His commander knew that I could bear it best."
"You must try to mingle more with those men, dear," his wife pleaded. "Use your brains and personality to win them. You can do it."
"At the cost of precious hours I can give to better service for my country. No. I've given my life to the South. I'll eat my heart out in silence if I must—"
He paused and looked at her tenderly.
"Only your friendly eyes shall see, my dear. After all, what does it matter what men think of me now? If we succeed, we shall hear no more of malcontents. If we do not succeed, I shall be held accountable by both friend and foe. It's written so in the book of life. I must accept it. I'll just do my best and God will give me strength to bear what comes."
And so while the South was gayly celebrating the end of the war and every crow was busy pecking at the sensitive heart of their leader, the ominous shadow of five hundred thousand Northern soldiers, armed with the best weapons and drilled by the masters of military science, was slowly but surely drawing near.
Socola found his conquest of Jennie beset with unforeseen difficulties. His vanity received a shock. His success with girls at home had slightly turned his head.
His mother was largely responsible for his conceit. She honestly believed that he was the handsomest man in America. For more than six years—in fact, since his eighteenth birthday—his mother's favorite pet name was "Handsome." He had heard this repeated so often he had finally accepted it philosophically as one of the fixed phenomena of nature.
From the moment he made up his mind to win Jennie he considered the work done—until he had set seriously about it.
The first difficulty he encountered was the discovery that a large number of Southern boys apparently considered the chief business of life going to see the girls—this girl in particular.
The first day he called he found five young men who had lingered beyond their appointed hours and were encroaching on his time without the slightest desire to apologize. He could see that she was trying to get rid of them but they hung on with a dogged, quiet persistence that was annoying beyond measure.
War seemed to have precipitated an epidemic of furious love-making. He watched Jennie twist these enterprising young Southerners around her slender fingers with an ease that was alarming. They were fine-looking, wholesome fellows, too—a little given to boyish boasting of military prowess, but for all that genuine, serious, big-hearted boys.
The matter-of-fact way in which she ruled them, as if she were a queen born to the royal purple and they were so many lackeys, was something new under the sun.
For a moment the thought was cheering. Perhaps it was her way of serving notice on his rivals that her real interests lay in another direction. But the disconcerting thing about it was that it seemed to be a habit of mind.
For the life of him he couldn't make out her real attitude. The one encouraging feature was that she certainly treated him with more seriousness than these home boys. It might be, of course, because she thought him a foreigner. And yet he didn't believe it. She had a way of looking frankly and inquiringly into his eyes with a deep, serious expression. Such a look could not mean idle curiosity.
And yet the problem he could not solve was how far he dared as yet to presume on that interest. A single false step might imperil his enterprise. His plan was of double importance since the break between her impulsive father and the President of the Confederacy. Barton was now the spokesman for the Opposition. His tongue was one that knew no restraint. An engagement with his daughter might mean the possession of invaluable secrets of the Richmond Government. Barton's championship of the quarrelsome commanders, who, in the first flood tide of their popularity as the heroes of Manassas, gave them the position of military dictators, would also place in his hands information of the army which would be priceless. The Confederate Congress sat behind closed doors. On the right footing in the Barton household he could put himself in possession of every scheme of the Southern law-makers from the moment of its conception.
The trait of the girl's character which astounded him was the sudden merging of every thought in the cause of the South. Even the time she spent laughing and flirting with those soldier boys was a sort of holy service she was rendering to her country. The devotion of these Southern women to the Confederacy was remarkable.
It had already become an obsession.
From the moment blood had begun to flow, the soul and body of every Southern woman was laid a living offering on the altar of her country. He watched this development with awe and admiration. It was an ominous sign. It meant a reserve power in the South on which statesmen had not counted. It might set at nought the weight of armies.
The moment he began to carefully approach the inner citadel of the girl's heart he found the figure of a gray soldier clad in steel on guard. What he said didn't interest her. He was a foreigner. She listened politely and attentively but her real thoughts were not there. He had not believed it possible that patriotism could so obsess the soul of a beautiful girl of nineteen. The devotion of the Southern women, young and old, to the cause of the South was fast developing into a mania.
They were displaying a wisdom, too, which Southern men apparently did not possess. While the hot-headed, fiery masters of men were busy quarreling with one another, criticising and crippling the administration of their Government, the women were supporting the President with a unanimity and enthusiasm that was amazing.
Jennie Barton refused to listen to her father's abuse.
Socola found them in the middle of a family quarrel on the subject so intense he could not help hearing the conversation from the adjoining room before Jennie entered.
"The President hates Johnston, I tell you," stormed the Senator. "He doesn't like Beauregard either. He's jealous of him!"
"Father dear, how can you be so absurd!" the girl protested. "A few months ago Beauregard was a captain of artillery. The President has made him a general of equal rank with Lee and Johnston—"
"He's doing all he can now to spite him!"
"So General Beauregard says—the conceit of it! This little general but yesterday a captain to dare to say that the President who had honored him with such high command would sacrifice the country and injure himself just to spite the man he has promoted!"
"That will do, Jennie," the Senator commanded. "Women don't understand politics!"
"Thank God I don't understand that kind. I just know enough to be loyal to my Chief, when our life and his may depend on it—"
With a stamp of his heavy foot the Senator ended the discussion by leaving the room.
Jennie smiled sweetly as she extended her hand to Socola.
"I hope you were not alarmed, Signor. We never fight—"
"The President of the Confederacy is a very fortunate leader, Miss Jennie—"
"Why?"
"He has invincible champions—"
The girl blushed.
"I'm afraid we don't know much. We just feel things."
"I think sometimes we onlyknowthat way—"
He paused and looked at her hat with a gesture of dismay.
"You're not going out?"
"I must," she said apologetically. "I've bought a whole carriage load of peaches and grapes. I went to the Alabama hospital yesterday with a little basket full and made some poor fellows glad. They gave out too quickly. Those who got none looked so wistfully at me as I passed out. I couldn't sleep last night. For hours and hours their deep-sunken eyes followed and haunted me with their pleading. And so I've got a whole load to take to-day. You'll go with me—won't you?"
He had come to declare his love and make this beautiful girl his conquest. She was ending the day by making him her lackey and errand boy.
It couldn't be helped. There was no mistaking the tones of her voice. She would certainly go. The only way to be with her was to dance attendance on wounded Confederate soldiers.
It was all in the day's work. Many a scout engulfed in the ranks of his enemy must charge his own men to save his life. He would not only make the best of it, he would take advantage of it to press his way a step closer to her heart.
"Are all of the girls of the South like you, Miss Jennie?" he asked with a quizzical smile.
"You mean insulting to their fathers?" she laughed.
"If you care to put it so—I mean, is their loyalty to the Confederacy a mania?"
"Is mine a mania?"
"Perhaps I should say a divine passion—are all your Southern women thus inspired?"
"Yes."
"In the far South and the West?"
"Everywhere!"
"It's wonderful."
"Perhaps because we can't fight we try to make up for it."
He watched her keenly.
"It's something bigger than that. Somehow it's a prophecy to me of a new future—a new world. Maybe after all political wisdom shall not begin and end with man."
Jennie blushed again under the admiring gaze with which Socola held her.
The carriage stopped at the door of the Alabama hospital. Socola leaped to the ground and extended his hand for Jennie's. He allowed himself the slightest pressure of the slender fingers as he lifted her out. It was his right in just that moment to press her hand. He put the slightest bit more than was needed to firmly grasp it, and the blood flamed hotly in her cheeks.
He hastened to carry her baskets and boxes of peaches and grapes inside.
For an hour he followed her with faithful dog step in her ministry of love. His orderly Northern mind shuddered at the sight of the confusion incident to the sudden organization of this hospital work. He had heard it was equally bad in the North. Two armed mobs had rushed into battle with scarcely a thought of what might be done with the mangled men who would be borne from the field.
Jennie bent low over the cot of a dying boy from her home county. He clung to her hand piteously. The waters were too swift and deep for speech. Before she could slip her hand from his and pass on the man on the next cot died in convulsions.
Socola watched his agonized face with a strange sense of exaltation. It was the law of progress—this way of death and suffering. The voice within kept repeating the one big faith of his life:
"Not one drop of human blood shed in defense of truth and right is ever spilled in vain!"
Through all the scenes of death and suffering beautiful Southern women moved with soft tread and eager hands.
A pretty girl of sixteen, with wistful blue eyes, approached a rough, wounded soldier. She carried a towel and tin basin of water.
"Can't I do something for you?" she asked the man in gray.
He smiled through his black beard into her sweet young face:
"No'm, I reckon not—"
"Can't I wash your face?" the girl pleaded.
The wounded man softly laughed.
"Waal, hit's been washed fourteen times to-day, but I'll stand it again, if you say so!"
The girl laughed and blushed and passed quickly on.
When all the grapes and peaches had been distributed save in one basket Socola looked at these enquiringly.
"And these, Miss Jennie—they're the finest of the lot?"
The girl smiled tenderly.
"They're for revenge—"
"Revenge?"
"Yes. The next ward is full of Yankees. I'm going to heap coals of fire on their heads—come—"
The last luscious peach and bunch of grapes had been distributed and the last soldier in blue had murmured:
"God bless you, Miss!"
Jennie paused at the door and waved her hand in friendly adieu to the hungry, homesick eyes that still followed her.
She brushed a tear from her cheek and whispered:
"That's for my Big Brother. I'll tell him about it some day. He's still in the Union—but he's mine!"
She drew her lace handkerchief from her belt, dried her tears and looked up with a laugh.
"I'm not so loyal after all—am I?"
"No. But I've seen something bigger than loyalty," he breathed softly, "something divine—"
"Come," said the girl lightly. "I wish you to meet the most wonderful woman in Richmond. She's in charge of this hospital—"
Socola laughed skeptically.
"I've already seen the most wonderful woman in Richmond, Miss Jennie—"
"But sheis—really—the most wonderful woman in all the South—I think in the world—Mrs. Arthur Hopkins—"
"Really?"
"She has done what no man ever has anyhow—sold all her property for two hundred thousand dollars and given it to the Confederacy. And not satisfied with giving all she had—she gave herself."
Socola followed the girl in silence into the little office of the hospital and found himself gasping with astonishment at the sight of the delicate woman who extended her hand in friendly greeting.
She was so perfect an image of his own mother it was uncanny—the same straight, firm mouth, the strong, intellectual forehead with the heavy, straight-lined eyebrows, the waving rich brown hair, with a strand of silver here and there—the somber dress of black, the white lace collar and the dainty white lace cap on the back of her beautiful hair—it took his breath.
The more he saw of these Southern people, men and women, the more absurd became the stuff he had read so often about the Puritan of New England and the Cavalier of the South. He was more and more overwhelmed with the conviction that the Americans wereonepeople racially and temperamentally. The only difference on earth between them was that some settled in the bleakhills and rock-bound coast of the North and others in the sunlit fields and along the shining shores of the South.
He returned with Jennie Barton to her home with the deepening conviction that he was making no progress. He must use this girl's passionate devotion to her country as the lever by which to break into her heart or he would fail.
He paused on the doorstep and spoke with quick decision:
"Miss Jennie, your Southern women have fired my imagination. I'm going to resign my commission with the Sardinian Ministry and enter the service of the South—"
"You mean it?"
"I was never in more deadly earnest."
He looked straight into her brown eyes until she lowered them.
"I need not tell you that you have been my inspiration. You understand that without my saying it."
Before Jennie could answer he had turned and gone with quick, firm step.
She watched his slender, graceful figure with a new sense of exhilaration and tenderness.
While General Joseph E. Johnston was devoting his energies to a campaign to change the date of his commission and his friends organizing their opposition to the President at Richmond, Gideon Welles, the quiet, unassuming Secretary of the Navy at Washington, was slowly but surely drawing the mighty coil, the United States Navy, about the throat of the South. He made little noise but the work he did was destined to become the determining factor of the war.
The first blow was struck at North Carolina.
On August 26, 1861, at one o'clock the fleet quietly put to sea from Fortress Monroe. On Tuesday they arrived at Hatteras Inlet, opened fire on the two forts guarding its entrance and on the twenty-ninth a white flag was raised. Seven hundred and fifteen prisoners were surrendered, one thousand stand of arms, and thirty pieces of cannon. At a single blow the whole vast inland water coast of North Carolina on her Sounds was opened to the enemy with communications from Norfolk, Virginia, to Beaufort. A garrison of a thousand men could hold those forts for all time with the navy in command of the sea.
Burnside followed with his expedition into the Sounds, captured Roanoke Island and the fall of Newbern was inevitable. Every river-mouth and inlet of the entire coast of North Carolina was now in the hands of the Federal Government save the single port of Wilmington.
The moral effect of this blow by the navy was tremendous in the North. It was the first token of renewed power since the defeat at Bull Run. The navy had not only turned the tide of defeat in the imagination of the people, the achievement was one of vast importance to the North and the most sinister import to the South.
The Federal Government had gained the first important base on the Southern coast for her blockading squadron and given a foothold for the military invasion of North Carolina.
The President at Richmond was compelled to watch this tragedy in helpless sorrow. The South had no navy with which to dispute the command of the sea and yet she had three thousand miles of coast line!
With swift, remorseless sweep the navy struck Port Royal, South Carolina, and established the second secure base for the blockading squadrons.
The Beaufort district of South Carolina captured by this expedition was one of the richest and most thickly settled of the State, containing fifteen hundred square miles. It produced annually fifty million pounds of rice and fourteen thousand bales of cotton. And in its population were thirty thousand slaves suddenly brought under the power of the Federal Government.
The coast of Florida was next pierced. The blockade of the enormous coast line of the South was declared at first an impossibility. Within less than a year the United States Navy had established bases within striking distance of every port. New ships were being launched, purchased or chartered daily and the giant Anaconda was slowly winding its terrible coil about the commerce of the Confederacy.
Jefferson Davis was not the man to accept this ominous situation without a desperate struggle. The man who had substituted iron gun carriages for wood in the army consulted his Secretary of the Navy on the possibility of revolutionizing the naval-warfare of the world by the construction of an iron-clad ship of first-class power. In his report to the Confederate Naval Committee, Secretary Mallory had developed this possibility two months before the subject had been broached in the report of Gideon Welles in Washington.
"I regard the possession of an iron-armored ship," Mallory urged, "as a matter of the first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traverse the entire coast of the United States, prevent all blockade, and encounter with a fine prospect of success their entire navy. Inequality of numbers may be overcome by invulnerability, and thus not only does economy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood, without regard to first cost."
The President of the Confederacy gave his hearty endorsement to this plan—and summoned the genius of the South to the task. At the bottom of the harbor of Norfolk lay the half-burned hull of the steam frigateMerrimacwhich the Government had set on fire and sunk on destroying the Navy Yard.
TheMerrimacwas raised. A board was appointed to draw plans and estimate the cost of the conversion of the vessel into a powerful, floating, iron-clad battery. In the crippled condition of the Norfolk Navy Yard the task was tremendous and the expense would be great.
The President ordered the work prosecuted with the utmost vigor. Day and night the ring of hammers on heavy iron echoed over the quiet harbor of Norfolk. Blacksmiths were forging the most terrible ship of war that ever sailed the seas. If the hopes of her builders should be realized, the navy of the North would be swept from the ocean and the proudest ships of the world be reduced to junk in a day.
Disaster followed disaster for the South now in swift succession. The United States Navy, not content with the supremacy of the high seas, set to work with determination to build a war fleet on the great rivers of the West which could pierce the heart of the lower South.
Before the South could possibly secure arms and ammunition with which to equip the army of Albert Sidney Johnston, these gunboats were steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi bearing thousands of troops armed, drilled and led by stark, game-fighting generals from the West.
By the end of November the Federal troops threatening Tennessee numbered fifty thousand and they were rapidly reënforced until they aggregated a hundred thousand.
General Albert Sidney Johnston sent the most urgent appeals for arms to the Governors of Georgia and Alabama, to General Bragg at Pensacola and to the Government at Richmond. He asked for thirty thousand muskets and got but one thousand. The guns were not in the South. They could not be manufactured. Fully one-half his men had no arms at all. Whole brigades remained without weapons for months. The entire force at his command never numbered more than twenty-two thousand during this perilous fall. And yet, by the masterly handling of his little army, its frequent and rapid expeditions, he kept his powerful opponents in constantexpectations of an attack and produced the impression that he commanded an enormous force.
In the meantime the sensational newspapers were loud in their demands.
The Richmond yellow Journal shouted:
"Let Johnston muster his forces, advance into Kentucky, capture Louisville, push across the Ohio and carry the war into Africa."
Swift and terrible the blow fell.
And always the navy's smoke on the horizon. From the Ohio, the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers could be navigated for hundreds of miles into Tennessee and Alabama. But two forts guarded the rivers and protected these States.
Early in February, 1862, the gunboats under Admiral Foote slowly steamed up the Tennessee and attacked Fort Henry. The array they covered was commanded by General Grant. The Federal fleet and army hurled twenty thousand men and fifty-four cannon against the little fort of eleven guns. With but forty men General Tilghman fought this host and held them at bay for two hours and ten minutes, until the main body of his garrison of twenty-five hundred troops had marched out and were safely on their way to Fort Donelson, twelve miles across the country on the banks of the Cumberland. Fort Henry was of small importance. Fort Donelson commanded the approach to Nashville.
There was not a moment's delay. Grant telegraphed Halleck that he would capture Fort Donelson two days later. Admiral Foote sent three light gunboats up the Tennessee to clear the river into Alabama, swept down stream with his heavier craft to the Ohio and turned into the Cumberland. Grant pressed directly across the strip of twelve miles with his army bearing on Fort Donelson.
The commander at Fort Donelson had at first but six thousand men including the garrison from Fort Henry which had just arrived. Had Grant been able to strike on the eighth of February, the day he had wired to Halleck he would capture the fort, its fall would have been sure. But high water delayed him, and Albert Sidney Johnston hastened to pour in reënforcements. Every available soldier at his command was rushed to the rescue. He determined to fight for Nashville at Donelson. General Buckner's command of Kentuckians, General Pillow's Tennesseeans and General Floyd's brigade of Virginia troops were all poured into the fort before the thirteenth. This force, approximating twenty thousand men, properly commanded should hold Donelson indefinitely.
The fortification was magnificently placed on a bluff commanding the river for two miles. Its batteries consisted of eight thirty-two-pounders, three thirty-two-pound carronades, one ten-inch Columbiad and one thirty-two-pounder rifle. A line of entrenchments stretched for two miles around the fort enclosing it.
Into these trenches the newly arrived troops were thrown.
Dick Welford, with Floyd's Virginians, gripped his musket with eager enthusiasm for his first real battle. His separation from Jennie had been a bitter trial. In his eagerness to get to the front he had the misfortune to serve in the ill fated campaign in West Virginia, which preceded Bull Run. Beauregard and J. E. Johnston were in easy touch with Richmond. His unlucky brigade had been transferred to Albert Sidney Johnston's command.
The men had been in the trenches through the long miserable night expecting an attack at any moment.
Half waking, half dreaming, he lay on the cold ground wondering what Jennie was doing—and always with the nightmare of that foreign snake winding his way into her favor. Well, his chance would come in this battle. He would lead his men in a charge. He was a corporal now. He would come out of it with straps on his shoulders, he could see Jennie's eyes flash with tears of pride as she read the story of his heroism and his promotion.
"I'll show that reptile what a man can do!" he muttered.
The tired body relaxed and his big blond head sank on his arms.
A sudden crash of thunder and he sprang to his feet, his hand tight on his gun. There they were in the gray light of the chill February morning—the fleet of Federal gunboats under Foote, their big black funnels pouring clouds of smoke into the sky, darkening the dull red glow of the rising sun. He counted six of them—Carondalet,Pittsburgh,Louisville,St. Louis,TylerandConestoga.
A white breath of smoke flashed from theCarondalet'sbow, and Dick watched the shell rise with a shriek and fall short of the fort.
The fleet moved closer and another shell screamed through the sky and again fell short. They moved again, found the range, and for four hours the earth trembled beneath the steady roar of their forty-six guns.
At eleven o'clock Dick saw the long lines of men in blue deploy for an assault on the entrenchments. They moved with quick sure step, these men under Grant. He was sorry for them. They were marching to certain death.
On the blue waves rolled, pouring volley after volley into the heaps of earth behind which the Southerners lay.
They were close enough now and the quick command rang along the trenches.
"Fire!"
A storm of death swept the ranks in the open fields. They stood their ground stubbornly, those dogged western fighters. Dazed and cut to pieces, they rallied and pressed forward again only to be mowed down in heaps.
They gave it up at last and sullenly withdrew, leaving the dead piled high and the wounded slowly freezing to death where they lay.
The artillery kept the earth quivering with the steady roar of their guns and the Federal sharpshooters harassed the trenches without a moment's respite. It was impossible to move for food or water until nightfall.
At dawn next day Dick once more gripped his gun and peered over the embankment. The morning passed without attack. What could it mean? They saw at last—another fleet. Clouds of black smoke on the river told the story. Reënforcements had arrived.
At half-past two o'clock the fleet formed in line of battle—threw their big flags to the breeze and dashed squarely on the fort.
They swept now within point blank range of three hundred yards, pouring in a storm of shot.
But the Confederate batteries were too heavy and too well manned. Fifty-seven shells struck the flagship and more than a hundred took effect on the five boats leading the assault. The fleet was crushed and put out of commission. Every boat was disabled except one and that withdrew beyond the range of the batteries.
Dick watched the magnificent spectacle with thrilling pride. He could have enjoyed the show but for the bitter cold. It was twenty degrees below the freezing point, and while the battle raged between the fleet and fort it beganto sleet and snow. When the crippled boats at last drifted down the yellow tide and out of range, he found to his amazement that a thick coat of ice had formed on the hand in which he held his musket. His clothes were frozen stiff on his body.
He leaped to his feet and beat his arms fiercely, and glanced over the embankment toward those ominous-looking piles of blue. The sleet was sheathing their bodies in crystal shrouds now. No flag of truce was allowed and the wounded lay freezing and dying where they fell. He could hear the stronger ones still crying for help. Their long piteous moans rang above the howl of the wind through the breaking boughs of the trees.
It was hideous. Why didn't they rescue those men? Why didn't they proclaim a truce to bury the dead and save the wounded? Grant must be a fiend! Far off on the river another black smudge was seen in the sky. More reënforcements were coming.
The three Confederate generals suddenly waked with a shock to realize that their foe had landed a second army, cutting their communications with Nashville.
A council of war was hastily called on the night of the fourteenth. It was a discordant aggregation. Floyd, the former Secretary of War in Buchanan's administration, was the senior officer in command. He was regarded more as a politician than a soldier and his exploits in West Virginia had not added to his fame. The men around him had little respect for his capacity as a commander. Besides quarreling had become the fashion in the armies of the victorious South since the affair at Bull Run. The example of Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard was contagious.
There was but one thing to do. The wrangling generals were unanimous on that point. They must make a desperate assault next morning on Grant's right wing and reëstablishtheir communications with Nashville at all hazards.
Under cover of the darkness on the morning of the fifteenth, the men were marched from their trenches and massed on the Federal right. But a handful were left to guard the entrenchments on the Confederate right.
At the first streak of dawn, the concentrated lines of the Confederates were hurled on the division of McClernand. Before two o'clock Grant's right wing had been crushed into a shapeless mass with the loss of his artillery. The way was open to Nashville and the discordant commanding generals of the Confederacy paused.
Buckner ordered up his artillery and reserves to pursue the enemy or hold his newly-won position. Pillow flatly refused to allow a single gun to be withdrawn from the entrenchments and sent peremptory orders to his victorious subordinate to return to the trenches on the right.
As Buckner was reluctantly returning to the old lines he encountered Floyd.
"Where are you going?" the Commander-in-Chief demanded.
"I am ordered back to the entrenchments—"
"You think it wise to walk back into the trap we've just escaped from?"
"I do not!" was the short answer. "We are outnumbered three to one. We can not hold our connections open in the face of such an army backed by gunboats and transports which can bring reënforcements daily. The road is open, we should save our army by an immediate juncture with Albert Sidney Johnston before Nashville."
"I agree with you," Floyd replied. "Hold your troops until I consult with Pillow."
While Floyd and Pillow wrangled, Grant dashed on the scene. He had not been present during the battle. The wounded Commodore had begged him for a consultation on board his flagship five miles below.
When Grant reached the field he met a sight that should have dismayed him and sent his shattered army to the shelter of the gunboats and a hasty retreat down the Cumberland to a place of safety.
McClernand had been crushed and his disorganized troops thrown back in confusion in front of the entrenchments of the Confederate right. His troops had been on the field for five days and five nights drenched in snow, sleet, mud, ice and water. The field was strewn with the dead and wounded. Great red splotches of frozen blood marked the ground in all directions. Beneath the sheltering pines where the white, smooth snow lay unbroken by the tramp of heavy feet and the crush of artillery, crimson streams could be seen everywhere. For two miles the ground was covered with the mangled dead, dying, and freezing. Smashed artillery and dead horses lay in heaps. In the retreat the heavy wheels of the artillery had rolled over the bodies of the dead and wounded, crushing and mangling many beyond recognition.
No general ever gazed upon a more ghastly scene than that which greeted the eye of U. S. Grant in this moment of his life's supreme crisis. The suffering of his wounded who had fought with the desperation of madness to save themselves from the cold, had left its mark on their stark, white faces. The ice had pressed a death mask on the convulsed features and held them in the moment of agony. They looked up into his face now, the shining eyes, gaping mouths, clenched fists, and crooked twisted limbs.
McClernand's raw troops retreating over this field of horrors were largely beyond control. Grant knew the enemy had been reënforced. He could reasonably assume from the evidence before him of the terrific slaughter in the open field that his own army was in peril. The transports were in sight ready to move his army to a place of safety where he might reform his broken ranks.
His decision was instantaneous and thoroughly characteristic. He turned to C. F. Smith in command of his left wing whose division had been but slightly engaged.
"General Smith, the enemy does not follow up their advantage. They are probably in a worse condition than I am. Mass your men and charge their entrenchments on the right—never let up for a minute—drive—drive—drive them!"
The charging hosts swept the thin lines of the half abandoned trenches with the fury of a cyclone. The Confederate right was broken and rolled back in confusion, fresh troops were rushed from the Federal reserves and a new cordon of death thrown round the fort.
On the night of this fatal fifteenth of February Dick Welford was detailed for guard duty at the door of General Floyd's tent. He heard their council of war with sinking heart.
General Pillow favored a second desperate assault on the enemies' right to re-open the way to Nashville.
Buckner faced him with rage:
"It was possible to-day, sir, and we did it. Now the enemy has been reënforced for the third time. If you had sent my guns as I ordered the way would still be open—"
"We can yet cut our way out," Pillow growled.
"Yes, with the sacrifice of three fourths of our brave men to save one fourth. I'll not be a party to such butchery. We're caught now in a death trap. The only rationalthing to do is to surrender."
Floyd rose nervously.
"I'm not going to surrender, gentlemen. The North has accused me of treachery in Buchanan's Cabinet. I couldn't expect decent treatment from them. A steamer with recruits has just arrived from Nashville. I shall make my escape on it with as many men as can be carried."
"And I'll accompany you," Pillow declared.
"Go if you like, gentlemen," Buckner replied. "I'll stand by my men and share their fate."
Floyd and Pillow hastily began their preparations to go.
Buckner quietly asked:
"Am I to consider the command turned over to me?"
"Certainly," Floyd answered. "I turn over the command."
"I pass it, too," Pillow quickly added.
General Buckner called for pen, ink and paper and dispatched a courier immediately to General Grant. The reply was in two words:
"Unconditional surrender."
Pillow crossed the river under cover of the night and made his way into the country.
Floyd offered to take Dick Welford on board the little steamer.
"No, thank you," the young Virginian answered curtly.
"You prefer to surrender?"
"I'm not going to surrender. I'm going to join Col. Forrest's cavalry and fight my way out."
With a wave of his arm Floyd hurried on board the steamer and fled to Nashville.
Dick had seen Forrest lead one of his matchless charges of cavalry in their fight that day. With a handful of men he had cut his way through a solid mass of struggling infantry and thrown them into confusion.