confederate home front and jefferson davis lsn 13

Confederate Home Front and Jefferson Davis

Lsn 13

Jefferson Davis: Qualifications

• “If modern computer-calculators had been available in 1861, they would have surely forecast that Jefferson Davis would be a great war director and Abraham Lincoln an indifferent one.” – T. Harry Williams

• Davis had an excellent military background– West Point Class of 1828 – Regimental commander in the Mexican War– Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce

Jefferson Davis: Mexico

• “Davis’s breadth of background probably better qualified him for high army command than any man in the United States….Yet some of Davis’s background would also be a handicap.” – Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, 9

• Part of this handicap can be traced to Davis’s experience in the Mexican War.


• After graduating from West Point, Davis served seven years on the northwest frontier, resigning in 1835 as a first lieutenant.

• He settled down to a life as a Mississippi planter until 1845 when he was elected to Congress.

• When the Mexican War broke out, Davis left Congress in order to enlist.


• Commanded the Mississippi Rifles, a volunteer regiment

• Fell under the command of Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, the father of Davis’s first wife Sarah Knox who had died just three months after their marriage– Unlike Scott who made maximum use of

his staff, Taylor’s forte was individual command rather than collective effort

– From Davis would learn a very self-reliant command style

Zachary Taylor


• At Buena Vista, Taylor ordered Davis’s Mississippi Rifles to hold the faltering east flank– The Mississippians and other

reinforcements were able to halt the Mexican advance

• Santa Anna then launched another attack against the extreme American east flank

• Taylor detected this move and immediately sent Davis’s Mississippi Rifles and the 3rd Indiana to intercept it

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/amh/Map08-20.jpg


• Davis positioned the two regiments in an unorthodox but highly effective inverted V formation on top of a ridge overlooking the Mexican approach

• He waited until the enemy reached a point just 70 yards away and opened fire all at once, destroying the Mexican attack “Mississippi Rifles at Buena Vista”

The National Guard Heritage Series

Jefferson Davis

• Buena Vista won Davis much fame

• In 1847, he was offered but declined an appointment as brigadier general in the United States Army

• Instead he returned to his political career

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/President-Jefferson-Davis.jpg


• But Buena Vista made Davis very confident in his own abilities

• “... Buena Vista was a relatively minor battle, so that the young colonel should not have assumed, as he did, that he was expert as a tactician and strategist. This assumption led to overconfidence when Davis was called upon to direct the military effort of the Confederacy”– Cass Canfield

• Near the close of the Civil War, the Richmond Examiner lamented, “If we are to perish, the verdict of posterity will be, Died of a V”

Jefferson Davis: President

• Took his title as Commander in Chief of the Confederate Army quite literally– “considered himself a

military leader first and a politician second”

• Chris Fonvielle – Had six secretaries of

war in four years, but for all practical purposes, served as his own secretary of war and chief of staff.

Confederate Secretaries of War

Leroy Pope Walker 1861Judah Benjamin 1861-1862George Randolph 1862Gustavus Smith 1862 (acting)James Seddon 1862-1865John Breckinridge 1865

Jefferson Davis: President

• “as everything about the military fascinated him and he believed only he was capable of running things, the President performed tasks that belonged properly to clerks in the War Office, and even in the Adjutant General’s office. Conversely, as he squandered his time and energies in the field of his interests, Davis neglected affairs which properly belonged in the President’s office”

• Clifford DowdeyThe White House of the Confederacy

The Confederate Home Front

• Challenges• Resources• Politics• Social life• Wartime life

The Confederate Home Front: Challenges

• Starting a nation virtually from scratch

• Limited resources

• Natural resistance to centralization

• Varying degrees of loyalty to secession

• Slave revolt would always be a threat

The Confederate Home Front: Resources

• 9 million people (5.5 million whites)

• 18,000 manufacturing establishments

• 8,500 miles of railroad

• Wealth lay in land and slaves (non-liquid)

• No existing military


• Two days after the inauguration of President Lincoln, the Congress of the Confederate States of America voted that 100,000 volunteers be enlisted for one year

• Soon the Confederates began enlisting soldiers for the duration of the war as well as offering the one-year enlistees various inducements to reenlist for two additional years

• Nonetheless, in early 1862, it became apparent that such measures would not meet the Confederacy’s manpower needs and the South turned to the drastic measure of conscription

• Men could receive exemptions on many counts


• Josiah Gorgas became the Chief of Confederate Ordnance in 1861 and did an admirable job with the difficult task of converting the Confederate industrial base for wartime purposes

• The South’s key arsenal was Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works– Produced about half the

Confederacy’s artillery pieces


• The antebellum rail transportation system had been designed to drain goods to such ports as New Orleans, Richmond, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington rather than to ship them across the South– Few east-west lines connected the

southern system, and only one line traversed the mountain barrier connecting Richmond with Chattanooga and the Mississippi River at Memphis

– Additionally, southern railroad systems featured different gauges which necessitated the unloading and reloading of cargo en route

• More efficient Federal railroads often nullified Confederate interior lines


• “Without the firing of a gun, without drawing a sword, should they [Northerners] make war upon us [Southerners], we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? . . England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King.”– Senator James Hammond of South

Carolina, 1858• Led to the idea that “cotton

diplomacy” would force Europe to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf


• Because so much of the Southern acreage was devoted to cotton and other staple crops, much of the South had received significant foodstuffs such as beef, pork, corn, flour, fruits, butter, and cheese from Northern states

Thomas Nast cartoon depicting “King Cotton”


• Some such as Mississippi planter James Alcorn got rich during the war selling cotton to both Federal and Confederate sources purely for economic gain– “I wish to fill my pockets. I can in five years

make a larger fortune than ever. I know how to do it and will do it.”

• Alcorn went on to become Mississippi’s first Republican governor in 1870 and the state’s most prominent scalawag– Governed from a practical economic

perspective and sought to manipulate the new black vote to keep aristocratic businessmen like himself in power

• During his administration Alcorn University was founded as the first land-grant college for blacks in the United States.


• Secretary of Treasury Christopher Memminger expected a short war and did not take the necessary measures to raise the funds the Confederacy would need

• Raised money through minor war taxes, imported duties, and bond sales– All proved inadequate and

the South soon suffered from serious inflation

• Began income and property taxes in 1863


• Slaves were both an advantage and disadvantage to the Confederacy as the war progressed– They provided needed

manpower to support the war but required guarding and were an unreliable resource

– Some remained loyal to their masters, some ran away, some joined the Federal Army

– Many masters scared their slaves into being loyal by terrifying stories of the Federal soldiers

– Federal armies often became overwhelmed with slaves who had left their masters


• As things became increasingly desperate, the Confederate Congress passed a bill on March 13, 1865 that called for mustering 300,000 black soldiers into service

• The war ended before any of these new soldiers ever fought for the Confederacy

Patrick Cleburne was one of the first Confederate generals to suggest slaves be emancipated in exchange for military service

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Patrick_Cleburne.jpg


• The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederate states but even before that emancipation was occurring in isolated places

• After the Battle of Port Royal Sound, Confederate plantation owners fled St. Helena Island leaving behind their homes and 10,000 slaves

• Philanthropic Northern volunteers developed an education program for the blacks stressing literacy, economic independence, and civil rights– Became known as the “Port Royal

Experiment” The Penn Center was the first school for blacks established

as part of the Port Royal Experiment

The Confederate Home Front:Politics

• David Donald assesses that the Confederacy “Died of Democracy” because of the Southern people’s steadfast insistence to retain their democratic liberties in wartime.

• The Confederacy owed its very existence to the notion of state’s rights, and President Davis would meet strong opposition to any efforts at nationalization. – Davis faced with the dilemma that even seemingly

rational responses to the emergencies of war would destroy the political philosophy upon which his nation existed


• Davis was continually challenged by locally-minded governors such as Joseph Brown of Georgia who condemned Davis as attempting “fearful strides towards a centralized government with unlimited powers.”

• Even Davis’s vice-president Alexander Stephens undercut Davis’s authority


• Governor Brown argued the “unconstitutionality” of the draft and promptly exempted most of Georgia’s civil and military officials

• He unilaterally cut taxes for soldiers’ families

• He ordered his militia to confiscate vital raw materials previously impressed by the Army

The Confederate Home Front: Politics

• Only about one-fourth of whites in the Confederacy owned slaves and 50% of that group owned five or less

• Still the slave system was key to the sense of cultural identity in the white South

• An entire generation of Southern young men who had come of age with this sense of Southern cultural identity, commitment to slaveholding, and a willingness to defend these values against a Northern culture

The Confederate Home Front: Social Life

• Women assumed new roles, especially in managing farms– Also became government clerks,

factory workers, school teachers, and nurses

• Many such as Sarah Morgan, Mary Chesnut, and Judith McGuire wrote detailed journals

• Many women took great pride in their Confederate womanhood and wore it as a badge of honor in defending their homes, for example against Sherman’s march through the Carolinas

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pis&GRid=8574&PIgrid=8574&PIpi=262308&

The Confederate Home Front: Wartime Life

• Life across the South, especially in those areas of frequent fighting, became difficult– Shortages– Inflation– Displacement– Casualties– Violence from deserters

and fugitives– Loneliness– War weariness– Hopelessness

Richmond Bread RiotApril 2, 1862

The Confederate Home Front: Wartime Life

• “In the South, the soldiers knew it was wartime, but not the politicians.” (David Donald)– Very hesitant to

suspend habeas corpus, censor newspapers, or interfere with due process The White House of the Confederacy

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