Volume II Part 57 (1/2)

”JEFFERSON DAVIS.

”Official: F. R. LUBBOCK, _Colonel and A. D. C._”

From the above it will be seen that, while I exercised authority to a.s.sign officers to their posts or places of duty, I a.s.sumed no control over the public Treasury; but in that connection referred the subordinate to his chief, the Secretary of the Treasury, by whom alone could warrants be drawn against the public funds. How very improbable, then, it is, that I wrote to have the money in the hands of a treasurer sent to me personally! Yet this is what General Johnston claims to have resisted, when without any lawful authority he distributed the money himself. The second statement is:

”As there was reason to suppose that the Confederate Executive had a large sum in specie in its possession, I urged it earnestly, in writing, to apply a part of it to the payment of the army. This letter was intrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Mason, who was instructed to wait for an answer. Its receipt was acknowledged by telegraph, and an answer promised. After waiting several days to no purpose. Colonel Mason returned without one.”

Not recollecting to have met Colonel Mason at Charlotte, I wrote to him, calling his attention to the statement, and asking what was the fact. Not receiving a reply, I renewed the inquiry, but, though considerable time has elapsed, he has not answered. It is quite possible that I might have met the gentleman without recollecting it, but not at all probable that I should have received such a letter and have forgotten it. Such intrusion of advice as to what should be done with the money in the Treasury, and the speculative opinion as to the amount there, I must suppose would have been very promptly rejected if it had been presented to me. For years there had been irregularity and delay in the payment of the troops, and surely no one regretted it more than myself, or had for years tried more sedulously to correct it; but, expecting the army to continue in the field, it was indispensable to have the means of obtaining the necessary supplies for it.

The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Trenholm, was ill before we reached Charlotte, and quite so during our stay there, but he knew there was not a large sum of specie in the Treasury, and with patriotic desire had been using it to supply the troops after Confederate money became unavailable for purchases. He did not contemplate the abandonment of our cause, and it would not have taken him a minute to answer that more than all the money he had would be needed in future military operations.

On the 26th, the day on which the armistice terminated, General Johnston again met General Sherman, who offered the same terms which had been made with General Lee, and he says, ”General Johnston, without hesitation, agreed to, and we executed the following,” which was the surrender of General Johnston's troops, with the condition of their being paroled and the officers being permitted to retain their side-arms, private horses, and baggage.

It is true that these were the terms accepted by Lee, but the condition of the two armies was very different. Lee's supplies had been cut off, his men were exhausted by fatigue and hunger; he had no reenforcements in view; notwithstanding the immense superiority in numbers and equipments of the enemy pursuing, he had from point to point fought them in rear and on both flanks, and had, the day before his line of retreat was closed, rejected the demand for surrender, and only yielded to it after his starving little army had been surrounded by ma.s.ses through which he tried to, but could not, cut his way.

Johnston's line of retreat was open, and supplies had been placed upon it. His cavalry was superior to that of the enemy, as had been proved in every conflict between them. Maury and Forrest and Taylor still had armies in the field--not large, but strong enough to have collected around them the men who had left Johnston's army and gone to their homes to escape a surrender, as well as those who under similar circ.u.mstances had left Lee. The show of continued resistance, I then believed, as I still do, would have overcome the depression which was spreading like a starless night over the country, and that the exhibition of a determination not to leave our political future at the mercy of an enemy which had for four years been striving to subjugate the States would have led the United States authorities to do, as Mr. Lincoln had indicated--give any terms which might be found necessary speedily to terminate the existing war.

Those who look back upon the period when the States were treated as subject provinces, and the Congress left to legislate at its will-- when a war professedly waged to bring the seceding States back to the Union, with all the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Const.i.tution, was followed by the utter disregard of those rights, and the miscalled peace was a state of vindictive hostility--will probably think continued war was not the greatest of evils.

I quote again from the ”Memoirs” of Sherman, vol. ii, p. 349.

Referring to the first interview, he writes:

”I then told Johnston that he must be convinced that he could not oppose my army, and that, since Lee had surrendered, he could do the same with honor and propriety. He plainly and repeatedly admitted this, and added that any further fighting would be '_murder_'; but he thought that, instead of surrendering piecemeal, we might arrange terms that would embrace _all_ the Confederate armies.”

Sherman further writes that he told Johnston that the terms given to General Lee's army were most generous and liberal, which he states Johnston ”admitted, but always recurred to the idea of a universal surrender, embracing his own army, that of d.i.c.k Taylor, in Louisiana and Texas, and of Maury, Forrest, and others, in Alabama and Georgia.” Considering the character of the authority cited, and the extraordinary proposition to provide for a universal surrender by a district commander, it may be well supposed to require confirmation.

I therefore quote from General Richard Taylor, ”Destruction and Reconstruction,” page 224:

”Intelligence of the Johnston-Sherman convention reached us, and Canby and I were requested by the officers making it to conform to its terms until the civil authorities acted.”

The advice may have been well enough, but, as there was an established channel of communication, and an order of responsibility necessary for effective cooperation in the public service, something more than courtesy required that the Executive should have been advised if not consulted. I had left Charlotte with no other sure reliance against any cavalry movement of the enemy than the force which was with me; that, however, I believed to be sufficient for any probable exigency, if the reenforcements hoped for should not join us on the way. We proceeded at easy stages; some of the command thought we went too slow. After making two halts of about half a day each, we reached the Savannah River. I crossed early in the morning of the 4th of May, with a company, which had been detailed as my escort, and rode some miles to a farmhouse, where I halted to get breakfast and have our horses fed. Here I learned that a regiment of the enemy were moving upon Was.h.i.+ngton, Georgia, which was one of our depots of supplies, and I sent back a courier with a pencil-note addressed to General Vaughn, or the officer commanding the advance, requesting him to come on and join me immediately. After waiting a considerable time, I determined to move on with my escort, trusting that the others would overtake us, and that, if not, we should arrive in Was.h.i.+ngton in time to rally the citizens to its defense. When I reached there, scouts were sent out on the different roads, and my conclusion was that we had had a false alarm. The Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin, being unaccustomed to traveling on horseback, parted from me, at the house where we stopped to breakfast, to take another mode of conveyance and a different route from that which I was pursuing, with intent to rejoin me in the trans-Mississippi Department. At Was.h.i.+ngton, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, left me temporarily to attend to the needs of his family. The Secretary of War, Mr. Breckinridge, had remained with the cavalry at the crossing of the Savannah River. During the night after my arrival in Was.h.i.+ngton, he sent in an application for authority to draw from the treasure, under the protection of the troops, enough to make to them a partial payment. I authorized the acting Secretary of the Treasury to meet the requisition by the use of the silver coin in the train. When the next day pa.s.sed without the troops coming forward, I sent a note to the Secretary of War, showing the impolicy of my longer delay, having there heard that General Upton had pa.s.sed within a few miles of the town on his way to Augusta to receive the surrender of the garrison and military material at that place, in conformity with orders issued by General Johnston. This was my first positive information of his surrender. Not receiving an immediate reply to the note addressed to the Secretary of War, General Breckinridge, I spoke to Captain Campbell, of Kentucky, commanding my escort, explained to him the condition of affairs, and telling him that his company was not strong enough to fight, and too large to pa.s.s without observation, asked him to inquire if there were ten men who would volunteer to go with me without question wherever I should choose. He brought back for answer that the whole company volunteered on the terms proposed. Gratifying as this manifestation was, I felt it would expose them to unnecessary hazard to accept the offer, and told him, in any manner he might think best, to form a party of ten men. With these. Captain Campbell, Lieutenant Barnwell, of South Carolina, Colonels F. E. Lubbock, John Taylor Wood, and William Preston Johnston, of my personal staff, I left Was.h.i.+ngton. Secretary Reagan remained for a short time to transfer the treasure in his hands, except a few thousand dollars, and then rejoined me on the road. This transfer of the treasure was made to Mr. Semple, a bonded officer of the navy, and his a.s.sistant, Mr. Tidball, with instructions, as soon as it could be safely done, to transport it abroad and deliver it to the commercial house which had acted as the financial agent of the Confederate Government, and was reported to have incurred liabilities on its account.

Mr. Reagan overtook me in a few hours, but I saw no more of General Breckinridge, and learned subsequently that he was following our route, with a view to overtake me, when he heard of my capture, and, turning to the east, reached the Florida coast unmolested. On the way he met J. Taylor Wood, and, in an open boat, they crossed the straits to the West Indies. No report reached me at that time, or until long afterward, in regard to the cavalry command left at the Savannah River; then it was to the effect that paroled men from Johnston's army brought news of its surrender, and that the condition of returning home and remaining unmolested embraced all the men of the department who would give their parole, and that this had exercised a great influence over the troops, inclining them to accept those terms. Had General Johnston obeyed the order sent to him from Charlotte, and moved on the route selected by himself, with all his cavalry, so much of the infantry as could be mounted, and the light artillery, he could not have been successfully pursued by General Sherman. His force, united to that I had a.s.sembled at Charlotte, would, it was believed, have been sufficient to vanquish any troops which the enemy had between us and the Mississippi River.

Had the cavalry with which I left Charlotte been a.s.sociated with a force large enough to inspire hope for the future, instead of being discouraged by the surrender in their rear, it would probably have gone on, and, when united with the forces of Maury, Forrest, and Taylor, in Alabama and Mississippi, have const.i.tuted an army large enough to attract stragglers, and revive the drooping spirits of the country. In the worst view of the case it should have been able to cross the trans-Mississippi Department, and there uniting with the armies of E. K. Smith and Magruder to form an army, which in the portion of that country abounding in supplies, and deficient in rivers and railroads, could have continued the war until our enemy, foiled in the purpose of subjugation, should, in accordance with his repeated declaration, have agreed, on the basis of a return to the Union, to acknowledge the Const.i.tutional rights of the States, and by a convention, or _quasi_-treaty, to guarantee security of person and property. To this hope I persistently clung, and, if our independence could not be achieved, so much, at least, I trusted might be gained.

Those who have endured the horrors of ”reconstruction,” who have, under ”carpet-bag rule,” borne insult, robbery, and imprisonment without legal warrant, can appreciate the value which would have attached to such limited measure of success.

When I left Was.h.i.+ngton, Georgia, with the small party which has been enumerated, my object was to go to the south far enough to pa.s.s below the points reported to be occupied by Federal troops, and then turn to the west, cross the Chattahoochee, and then go on to meet the forces still supposed to be in the field in Alabama. If, as now seemed probable, there should be no prospect of a successful resistance east of the Mississippi, I intended then to cross to the trans-Mississippi Department, where I believed Generals E. K. Smith and Magruder would continue to uphold our cause. That I was not mistaken in the character of these men, I extract from the order issued by General E. K. Smith to the soldiers of the trans-Mississippi Army on the 21st of April, 1865:

”Great disasters have overtaken us. The Army of Northern Virginia and our General-in-Chief are prisoners of war. With you rest the hopes of our nation, and upon you depends the fate of our people... . Prove to the world that your hearts have not failed in the hour of disaster... . Stand by your colors--maintain your discipline. The great resources of this department, its vast extent, the numbers, the discipline, and the efficiency of the army, will secure to our country terms that a proud people can with honor accept.”

General Magruder, with like heroic determination, invoked the troops and people of Texas not to despond, and pointed out their ability in the interior of that vast State to carry on the war indefinitely.

General D. H. Maury, after his memorable defense of Mobile, withdrew his forces on the 12th of April, at the last moment, and moved toward Meridian. Commodore Farrand, commanding our navy at Mobile Bay, withdrew his armed vessels and steamers up the Tombigbee River, and planted torpedoes in the Alabama below. Forrest and Maury had about eight thousand men, but these were veterans, tried in many hard engagements, and trained to the highest state of efficiency. Before Maury withdrew from Mobile, news had been received of Lee's surrender. Taylor says the news was soon disseminated through his army, but that the men remained steadfast, and manifested a determination to maintain the honor of our aims to the last. On pages 224 and 225 of his book, he gives an account of the intelligence received of the Johnston-Sherman convention of the 18th of April, and of the meeting between Canby and himself to arrange terms for his army, and an agreement that there should be an armistice; but he says, two days after that meeting, news was received of Johnston's surrender, and the capture of President Davis. The latter was untrue, and he does not say who communicated it, but that he was at the same time notified that the Johnston-Sherman convention had been disavowed by the United States Government, and notice given for the termination of the armistice. Under these circ.u.mstances he asked General Canby to meet him again, and on the 8th of May, two days before I was actually captured, but which he supposed had already occurred, he agreed with Canby on terms for the surrender of the land and naval forces in Mississippi and Alabama. These terms were similar to those made between Johnston and Sherman; the mounted men were to retain their horses, being their private property.

On the 26th of May, the chief of staff of General E. Kirby Smith, and the chief of staff of General Canby, at Baton Rouge, arranged similar terms for the surrender of the troops in the trans-Mississippi Department. On May 11th, after the last army east of the Mississippi had surrendered, but before Kirby Smith had entered into terms, the enemy sent an expedition from the Brazos Santiago against a little Confederate encampment some fifteen miles above. The camp was captured and burned, but, in the zeal to secure the fruits of victory, they remained so long collecting the plunder, that General J. E. Slaughter heard of the expedition, moved against it, and drove it back with considerable loss, sustaining very little injury to his command. This was, I believe, the last armed conflict of the war, and, though very small in comparison to its great battles, it deserves notice as having closed the long struggle--as it opened-- with a Confederate victory.