Part 83 (2/2)
Committees from this a.s.sembly of law makers who attempted to instruct the conscientious, hard-working man of genius the Southern people had made their President found little comfort in their efforts.
Davis received them with punctilious ceremony. His manners were always those of a gentleman--but he never allowed them to return to their onerous work in the Debating Society without a clear idea of his views.
They were never expressed with violence. But the ice sometimes formed on the window panes if he stood near while talking.
A Congressional Committee were demanding the restoration of Beauregard to command.
”General Beauregard asked me to relieve him, gentlemen--”
”Only on furlough for illness,” interrupted the Chairman.
”And you have forced him into retirement!” added a member.
The President rose, walked to the window, gazed out on the crowded street for a moment and turned, suddenly confronting his tormentors. He spoke with quiet dignity, weighing each word with cold precision:
”If the whole world asked me to restore General Beauregard to the command which I have given to Braxton Bragg, I would refuse.” He resumed his seat and the Committee retired to Senator Barton's house where they found a sympathetic ear.
Bragg was preparing to fight one of the greatest battles of the war. At Chickamauga, the ”River of Death,” he encountered Rosecrans. At the end of two days of carnage the Union army was totally routed, right, left, and center and hurled back from Georgia into Chattanooga. Polk's wing captured twenty-eight pieces of artillery and Longstreet's twenty-one.
Eight thousand prisoners of war were taken, fifteen thousand stand of arms and forty regimental colors.
Rosecrans' army of eighty thousand men was literally cut to pieces by Bragg's fifty thousand Southerners. No more brilliant achievement of military genius illumines history. Chickamauga was in every way as desperate a battle as Arcola--and in all Napoleon's Italian campaigns nothing more daring and wonderful was accomplished by the Man of Destiny.
Bragg had justified the faith of Davis. Rosecrans was hemmed in in Chattanooga, his supplies cut off and his army facing starvation when he was relieved of his command, Thomas succeeding him. Grant was hurried to Chattanooga with two army corps to raise the siege.
With his reenforcements Grant raised the siege, surprised and defeated Bragg's army which had been weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's corps for a movement on Knoxville.
Bragg withdrew his army again into Georgia and resigned his command. The stern, irritable Confederate fighter was disgusted with the constant attacks on him by peanut politicians and refused to hear Davis' plea that he remain at the head of the Western army. The President called him to Richmond and made him his Chief of Staff.
The disaster to the Confederacy at Chattanooga which gave General Grant supreme command of the Union forces, brought to the Johnston junta at Richmond its opportunity to once more press their favorite to the front.
Since his Vicksburg fiasco the President had isolated him. Davis resisted this appointment with deep foreboding of its possible disaster to the South.
In the midst of this bitter struggle over the selection of a Western Field Commander, the President of the Confederacy received the first and only recognition of his Government accorded by any European power.
His early education at the St. Thomas Monastery had given the Southern leader a lofty opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. Davis had always seen in the members of this faith in America friends who could not be alienated from the oppressed.
Failing to receive recognition from the great powers of Europe, he dispatched his diplomatic representative to Rome with a carefully worded letter to the Pope in which he expressed his grat.i.tude to Pius IX for his efforts in behalf of peace. The Pope had urged his bishops in New Orleans and New York to strive to end the war.
The Vatican received the Confederate diplomat with every mark of courtesy and every expression of respect accorded the most powerful nations of the world. The Dominican friars had not forgotten the wistful, eager boy they had taught, and loved in Kentucky.
The Pope replied to this communication in an official letter which virtually recognized the Confederacy--both in his capacity as a temporal sovereign and as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
The President read this letter with renewed hope of favorable action abroad.
”ILl.u.s.tRIOUS AND HONORABLE PRESIDENT:
”Salutation:
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