Never Call Retreat (64 page)

The Confederate commissioners missed something. Mr. Lincoln was ready to make concessions; some time later he told Justice Campbell that "it seems useless for me to be more specific with those who will not say that they are ready for the indispensable terms even on conditions to be named by themselves"—a fair indication that he meant what he told General Grant.

Insisting on emancipation, for instance, he nevertheless thought that the Federal government should ease the economic shock by appropriating at least $400,000,000 to pay for the loss of property in slaves. He wanted civil government in the occupied Southern states restored as quickly as possible and he was willing under certain conditions to see the former Confederate legislatures used in this connection. Agreeing that Congress could accept or reject any Senators or Congressmen the Southern states might select, he insisted that the recognition of state governments was strictly a matter for the executive and that Congress properly had no control over it. Secretary Welles paraphrased the President's general attitude in these sentences: "We must extinguish our resentments if we expected harmony and union. There was too much of a desire on the part of some of our very good friends to interfere and dictate to those states—too little respect for their rights. He did not sympathize with that feeling." Mr. Lincoln hoped, in short, that when the new Congress convened in the autumn it could be presented with a fully restored Union, with courts and local governments functioning, and if he was inflexible in the demand for reunion and emancipation he was ready to be highly flexible on the details by which these would be made effective.
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All of this, to be sure, would have involved Mr. Lincoln in a hard struggle with his cabinet and with the Republican leadership. Two days after the Hampton Roads conference he drafted a bill providing $400,000,000 compensation foi the loss of slaves, only to drop it when he found the entire cabinet opposed to the idea, and it is generally assumed that he would have been beaten all along the line if he had ever embodied his ideas in a formal action program. But if he had been able to return to Washington with a concrete proposal —The war will end at once, with immediate dissolution o: the Confederacy and full acceptance of reunion and emancipation, provided that we do this and this and this—he might have been able to carry the day. The Confederate commissioners had given him nothing to bargain with. As Secretary Seward remarked, they did not quite realize the South's true condition.

Or perhaps, recognizing it full well, they were simply caught up in the desperate emotional current of the war. I Mr. Lincoln seemed unyielding, Mr. Davis was granite itself He could do anything but accept defeat. His government still lived, and it clung to life with all his own doggedness. Even the Confederate Congress, which nourished a good deal o hostility toward the President, accepted his view that simple survival was all that mattered now. By a supreme irony, this winter the Congress was wrestling with the last problem the Confederacy cared to attack—the matter of emancipation.

This grapple had been reached by indirection, but it was going on. A year earlier, General Pat Cleburne, dismayed by the increasing shortage of manpower, presented a paper to the general officers of the Army of Tennessee arguing that the nation ought to free some of its slaves and turn them into soldiers. A few of the generals had agreed with him, but most of them had been shocked and the whole matter had been hushed up lest it scandalize the faithful. Now Cleburn was in his grave, but his idea had a certain vitality and it came back to life in this final session of Congress.

For some time there had been a law empowering the Confederate government to requisition a limited number of slaves to do non-military work for the army—to dig trenches, built roads and bridges, drive wagons and in other ways release soldiers for combat duty. Many slaves had been used i this way but the government had never been able to get enough of them because the men who owned slaves were most reluctant to have them used in this way; so in November the administration brought in a stiff new bill by which the army could get at least 40,000 Negro laborers. This, inevitably, made people think of what Cleburne had thought about, and when he sent the measure to Congress Mr. Davis touched on the subject: "Until our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can afford to keep in the field, to employ as a soldier the Negro . . . would scarcely be deemed wise or advantageous. . . . But should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation or the employment of the slave as a soldier, there seems no reason to doubt what would then be our decision."
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The alternative now was being presented with overpowering force, and Congress found itself discussing a bill whereby a number of slaves would be taken out of bondage, put into uniform, and sent to the front to fight for the South.

The bill proposed that "in order to provide additional forces to repel invasion, maintain the rightful possession of the Confederate states, secure their independence and preserve their institutions, the President be, and he is hereby, authorized to ask for and accept from the owners of slaves the services of such number of able-bodied Negro men as he may deem expedient, for and during the war, to perform military service in whatever capacity he may direct." There were qualifying clauses, carefully drawn. The consent of both the slave and his owner must be obtained, nothing in the act could "be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners, except by the consent of the owners and of the states in which they may reside," and officers were instructed to treat these new soldiers kindly and with proper humanity. It was as mild as anything could be . . . except that it did propose to turn slaves into soldiers, it implied that they would not go back to slavery after the war was over, and it opened a mile-wide fissure in the monolithic slave nation that had been created four years earlier.
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It was strong medicine, and it got a convulsive response. Senator Louis Trezevant Wigfall of Texas, the burly duelist who used to lounge about the Senate chamber in the capital building at Washington, taunting the impotent anti-slavery Republicans, arose to say that it was time to determine "whether this was to be a free Negro free country, or a free white man's free country." To make the Negro a soldier was just the first step toward emancipation, and when emancipation came what would become of the white man? It was being said that half of the army was absent from its duty, bu the missing men would come back if the armies were led by men who inspired confidence; the evil of the times was in competence in command, and to make soldiers out of slaves was not the remedy. Senator Wigfall would never consent to have the Southland turned into Santo Domingo.

Senator Hunter, late of the peace commission, took up the refrain. The Virginia legislature had instructed him to vote for this bill, and he believed a state legislature had the right to tell its Senators what to do, but he thought this project was utterly wrong and before he voted for it he was going to speak against it. He had supposed that secession had got rid of the slavery question forever, but here the question was back again, full-blown, more troublesome that ever before; if the government could arm the slaves it could also free them, and it would have to do this because "when they come out scarred from this conflict they must be free.' He urged one and all to consider the error they were about to make: "If we are right in passing this measure we went wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate slaves."
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From Georgia, Howell Cobb sent his protest: "Use all the Negroes you can get, for the purposes for which you need them"—that is, as hewers of wood and drawers of water— "but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.' Secretary of War Seddon, to be sure, favored the bill. He felt that although it would be better to "leave the subordinate labors of society to the Negro, and to impose the highest, as now existing, on the superior class," no Southerner should hesitate to use the Negro as a soldier because the Negro was even more vitally concerned than the Southern white man in repelling the Yankees. The friendship of people "so selfish, cruel and remorseless as our foes" would be fatal to the poor colored man; Negroes would be faithful to the Southern cause because they had "the homes they value, the families they love and the masters they respect and depend on, to defend and protect against the savagery and devastation of the enemy."
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There was in short much writhing on a cruel hook, along with a belief in never-never land—the land in which better generals would revive the old volunteering spirit and in which the devoted slave would happily die to defend the plantation cabin and the master who had put him in it. But although Howell Cobb might be right in crying that this proposal went against fundamental Confederate theory, Mr. Davis refused to be doctrinaire. He spent much time trying to convert members of Congress, now and then growing heated. To one man, who seems to have followed Cobb's line, he burst out: "If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, 'Died of a theory.'" He was not at his best in these attempts to persuade individuals. Secretary Mallory, who said that no man was more pleasant, genial, or engaging than Mr. Davis when he was relaxed among friends, felt that the President's approach on these occasions was unfortunate. It was not in the man to "sacrifice a smile, an inflexion of the voice or a demonstration of attention to flatter the self-love of those who did not stand well in his esteem"—the problem here being that by the winter of 1864 few Congressmen did stand well in his esteem. When he tried to persuade recalcitrant lawmakers "he rarely satisfied or convinced them, simply because in his manner and language there was just an indescribable something which offended their self esteem and left their judgments room to find fault with him." Knowing as well as any man could know how desperate the Confederacy's situation was, Mr. Davis had no patience with men who were unwilling to adopt a desperate remedy.
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In the end, reluctantly and with profound misgivings, Congress did pass the bill; largely, when all is said and done, because the measure was wholeheartedly supported by Robert E. Lee, the one man whom patriotic Southerners were willing to follow blindfolded.

General Lee did not have to reverse himself when he subscribed to this bill. He had never been fighting for slavery; he had fought for the South, most especially for Virginia, and he had all of the born fighter's distaste for quitting a fight when he still was on his feet with a weapon in his hand. The most he ever said in favor of slavery was that the relation between master and slave, "controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment," was probably the best that could be devise considering the present situation of the two races, and confessed that he "would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both." It seemed to him now that it was most decidedly necessary, and in a letter designed for Congressional consumption he stated his position:

"We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves at the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our social institutions. My own opinion is that we should employ them without delay. I believe that with proper regulations they can be made efficient soldiers."

They could be made into good soldiers, he continue if they were convinced that they themselves had an interest in Confederate victory, and he went on to talk about this aspect of it: "Such an interest we can give our Negroes by giving immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully (whether they survive or not), together with the privilege of residing at the South. To this might be added a bounty for faithful service." This to be sure involved fundamental, far-reaching change, but General Lee was prepared to face it: "The reasons that induce me recommend the employment of Negro troops at all renders the effect of the measures I have suggested upon slavery material, and in my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of this auxiliary force would be accompany the measure with a well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation. As that will be the result of the continuance of the war, and will certainly occur if the enemy succeed, it seems to me most advisable to adopt it at once and thereby obtain all the benefits that will accrue to our cause."

Above all, the matter was urgent: "I can only say conclusion that whatever measures are to be adopted should be adopted at once. Every day's delay increases the difficulty. Much time will be required to organize and discipline the men, and action may be deferred until it is too late."
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In a way, this quietly stated argument by General Lee was the most revolutionary of all of the proposals anyone put forward regarding the future of the Negro. Lee was not

merely suggesting that the Negro be freed: he was saying in addition that once freed the Negro ought to be treated as a Southerner.

... It was too late; or perhaps, considering the final implications of General Lee's remark, it was several generations too early. Congress finally passed the act in March, when the Confederate government had a scant month to live, and a War Department official who considered the bill "a colossal blunder, a dislocation of the foundations of society," correctly predicted that it would bring no practical benefits.
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 The machinery to enroll, uniform, and drill Negro recruits vas set up, Lee saw to it that trusted General Richard Ewell was put in charge of the operation, a company or two of Negro recruits appeared briefly on the streets of Richmond —and then the darkness came, and nobody ever found out what would happen if Negroes tried to fight for their freedom in Confederate gray.