May 8, 1865---One road to Hell and the other to Mexico

MAY 8, 1865:    

“If one road led to Hell and the other to Mexico I would be indifferent as to which one to take” --- General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A.

I

General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A. rides away from his campsite, off into the countryside, accompanied by a single aide. When they reach a crossroads, the aide asks, “Which way, General?” and Forrest replies, “It makes no difference to me. If one road led to Hell and the other to Mexico I would be indifferent as to which one to take.”

In truth, the question of where he was going had assumed a much greater importance to Forrest than the choice of a fork in a physical road. Forrest had ridden out alone (for all intents and purposes) to meditate on the idea of surrender.

Late that night, he came to a decision.

II

Jefferson Davis meets his wife Varina in the midst of the Georgia countryside. Although she is traveling with a number of wagons, slaves, children, family members, and a small military escort, Varina (who has adopted the transparent nom de guerre of “Mrs. Jones”) has been unharassed by passing Union patrols who are seeking her husband (taking her prisoner or following her would have been “ungentlemanly”, another remnant of the chivalric code).  Varina implores her husband to follow her to Florida, where they can find passage to Cuba or the British West Indies from whence they can travel to Texas. Davis mulishly insists he will follow the overland route. Despite the fact that Davis needs to travel faster than Varina’s slow wagons, he cannot bear to tear himself away from her and the children who he has not seen in over a month since the fall of Richmond.

  

Davis’ self-destructive stubbornness has been remarked upon by many historians and commentators as an element that caused the fall of the Confederacy. It certainly caused the fall of Jefferson Davis.

Davis had been born in Kentucky in 1808, six months before, and less than one hundred miles from, Abraham Lincoln. But where Lincoln’s family moved north to Indiana to escape the slaveocracy, Davis’ family moved south to Mississippi to embrace it. They became Planters, and Jefferson himself was sent to West Point for a military education. Shortly after graduating, he married the daughter of his commanding officer, General Zachary Taylor, the future President. His young wife died of a fever after only a few months. Davis never really ever recovered, either from her death, or the fever (which he had also suffered).

Davis was a slaveholder, and by all accounts (including his former slaves’) he was an extraordinary Master. He treated his slaves with consideration and care. Christmastime saw expensive, high-quality, sometimes indulgent gifts.  His overseer, James Pemberton (always “Mr. Pemberton” in public and “James,” never “Jim” in private) was one of his slaves. Pemberton was allowed to indulge in his Master’s cigars (and whiskey, on special occasions). Slave disputes and infractions were referred to a special “slave court” that Davis had created, allowing for the appointment of “attorneys” (other slaves) and juries (also other slaves) to represent the parties. Davis acted as a one-man Supreme Court, ameliorating harsh sentences. Whippings and other physical punishments were forbidden. Sexual exploitation of slaves was forbidden. The selling off of family members was forbidden. Davis did not believe that blacks were the equals of whites, but he did believe that with the proper exposure to white culture blacks could (eventually) become productive free members of the larger society. He acted accordingly. But he was temperamentally incapable of grasping that other Masters did not hold these views, and despite the evidence of his own lying eyes, refused to believe that Masters abused, beat, raped, or otherwise injured their slaves.  This inability or unwillingness to acknowledge what others considered obvious was a character flaw that would mark all his days.  

He fought in the Mexican War with distinction, becoming a sectional hero and a national figure. After the war, he used his family’s money and his Taylor connection to set himself up in politics. In the late 1840s, he was named a Senator for Mississippi (Senators were then chosen by State Legislatures, not popularly elected), eventually becoming the U.S. Secretary of War in 1853.  He is widely considered the best Secretary of War in United States history, and thoroughly modernized the American military, making it capable of fighting a 19^th Century war. After his term as Secretary of War, he returned to the Senate in 1857.

It was a stormy time. The Panic of 1857 had shattered the American economy, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had polarized the nation sectionally, and it was clear to those with eyes to see that the nation was fracturing. Davis was a thoroughgoing Southern States’ Rights advocate, but did not support secessionism (he was considered a “moderate,” illustrating just how divided the nation was).

It was in this Senate term that his personal flaws began to consume him. Davis was a diligent Senator. He carefully studied an issue before taking a position. However, his positions often owed as much to his personal beliefs as to study, and Davis never altered a position once he had adopted one, regardless of changes in conditions. Rather, he tried to manipulate conditions to suit his positions. He was usually not successful.

When the Civil War broke out, Davis was at first appointed Provisional President of the Confederacy, and then elected President. It was his first elected office. As Lincoln’s opposite number he utterly lacked the Union President’s bonhomie and instinct for horsetrading. As an appointee throughout his life, he knew nothing of compromise and negotiation. Worst of all, he lacked the ability to convince.

His inability to press the Confederate Congress to move in a more timely fashion on the issue of arming slaves --- though he was personally certain that this was the path to take in order to win the war --- may have been his grossest political defeat.

Assuming that others were acting from the same high moral principles as he, Davis was a ready mark for flatterers and self-aggrandizing manipulators. He appointed men (like Braxton Bragg) to offices (or dismissed them, like Joseph E. Johnston) on the basis of his personal relations with them, not their competence to carry out the tasks demanded of them. At a time when his new nation needed stability and unity, the Confederate White House became a vortex of instability, disunity, and factionalism. Although Davis tried to be above the fray, he couldn’t. Retreating from problems made him look cold and aloof. Immersing himself in problems made him look arbitrary and capricious. Davis was a splendid administrator and probably would have made a fine Chief of Staff. As an Executive, he was a dynamic failure.

In the late Winter of 1864 and the Early Spring of 1865, there was much that Davis could have done to spare the South greater destruction, but he lost himself in unreality, planning campaigns with nonexistent troops, a level of self-delusion that was almost Hitlerian and puts one in mind of the madness in the Fuhrerbunker in April 1945. Not that Davis was a mass killer. Still, by late April 1865, he could not see himself a beaten man, as though he had become the physical embodiment of the Confederacy. By mid-May, he was virtually the last Confederate standing, at least within a thousand mile radius.

There are many pictures of Lincoln among men. In them, the President of the United States looks a bit gawky, as if he is not fully comfortable with the deference being shown him. Empathy radiates from him. He is a leader, not a master of men.

There are surprisingly few photographs of Davis taken with others. In every photograph of Davis, his jaw is always set, and his eyes always piercing. Almost always alone, he has the look of a Commander-in-Chief. He is a master of men, not a leader of them.

Davis’ inability to adapt to changing conditions can most definitely be seen in his handling of the war’s end. He could have easily negotiated an end to the war at Hampton Roads, but he preferred not to, prizing “his” Confederacy more than conditions warranted. Likewise, though he knew full well that Richmond would have to be abandoned eventually, he balked when Robert E. Lee gave him the word in early April. As late as the second week in May, and despite the mass surrenders of his armies, Davis clung (some might say desperately) to the idea of carrying on the war from the Trans-Mississippi even when his “White House” had become an abandoned boxcar on a rainy night in Georgia, and his own soldiers were in mutiny.

But he did love his wife and children. He was kind to his slaves, and solicitous of his soldiers. He, like Lincoln, pardoned many men destined for the rope or the rifle. He was not inhuman, nor inhumane.

Did he have a hand in the death of Abraham Lincoln?  This is one of the great unknowns of the Civil War. To the end of his life, Davis was vehement that he did not order the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and there is little reason to believe he lied. However, there is no indication that Davis forbade any attempts on the Union President’s life.

Davis had reason to be angry --- if not at Lincoln, then at someone high in the Union Government. The mysterious Dahlgren Orders of March 1864 apparently specified that Jefferson Davis was to be captured or killed (if possible) during a raid on Richmond. The Raid itself had no chance of succeeding, and the designated perpetrator Ulric Dahlgren, was killed.  The Orders themselves seemingly disappeared after having been seen by the Confederate Cabinet (it is suspected by some that Edwin Stanton issued them, recovered them, and destroyed them at war’s end, all without President Lincoln’s knowledge).  It is also thought by some who speculate that Davis’ visceral hatred of Stanton may have arisen from this event. Davis never spoke of the Dahlgren Orders after the war, and he did not place blame. He may have realized that the Dahlgren Orders were not in keeping with Lincoln’s personality. But others, to whom Lincoln was demonized, may have assumed that Lincoln knew of the Orders and that his signature was absent --- and this assumes it was absent --- from the Orders by way of plausible deniability.    

On the other hand, rumors may have fed rage among lower-ranking Confederate operatives (like Thompson, Surratt, and maybe even Booth), causing them to plot acts that were broadly permissible under their brief, but which would have been quashed had Davis had first-hand knowledge of them.

There had been attempts on Lincoln’s life --- presumably --- since before Lincoln came to Washington. The rumored, thwarted, attempt at Baltimore on the way to the First Inauguration has every indication of having been real. There had been a fire in the White House stables near the President’s office (Tad’s pony had been killed). There had been Mary’s bizarre carriage accident (the bolts holding the President’s carriage seat were unaccountably loose and / or missing, and Mary had been thrown from the carriage). There had been the shooting of Lincoln’s hat near Soldiers’ Home. There had been the attempt to kill him at Fort Stevens. There had been Booth’s kidnap plot in March of 1865. There had been the bizarre plan to blow up the White House in early April. There were probably other failed attempts unremembered because they never coalesced. And of course, there was Ford’s Theatre.

There are strong indications that the assassination was a Confederate plot, though how high it rose in the hierarchy, and whether Davis knew and approved of it all, is unknown and may never be known. Documents have been destroyed, evidence eliminated, and chains of custody so knotted that their bitter ends are unfindable. 150 years after the event, unknown things scurry about in that darkness, barely heard and still unseen.