The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 80

"You must excuse me, my friend, I am staggering from a dreadful blow--I cannot think--"

Three days and nights the endless procession pa.s.sed the bier and paid their tribute of adoration and love. And when he was borne to his last resting place through the streets of the city, the sidewalks, the windows and the housetops were a throbbing ma.s.s of weeping women and men.

Jefferson Davis was perhaps the only man in the South in a position to realize the enormous loss which the Confederacy had sustained in the death of Lee's great lieutenant.

The Southern people who gloried in Jackson's deeds had as yet no real appreciation of the services he had rendered. They could not realize their loss until events should prove that no man could be found to take his place.

The brilliant victory of Chancellorsville, following so closely on Fredericksburg, had lifted the Confederacy to the heights.

In the West the army had held its own. The safety of Vicksburg was not seriously questioned. General Bragg confronted Rosecrans with an army so strong he dared not attack it and yet not strong enough to drive Rosecrans from Tennessee.

Two campaigns were discussed with Davis.

The members of his Cabinet, who regarded the possession of Vicksburg and the continued grip on the Mississippi River vital to the life of the Confederacy, were alarmed at Grant's purpose to fight his way to this stronghold and take it.

They urged that Lee's army be divided and half of it sent immediately to reenforce Bragg. With this force in the West Rosecrans could be crushed and Grant driven from his design of opening the Mississippi.

Lee, flushed with his victories, naturally objected to the weakening of his army by such a division. He proposed a more daring and effective way of relieving Vicksburg.

He would raise his army to eighty-five thousand men, clear Virginia of the enemy and sweep into Pennsylvania, carry the war into the North, forage on its rich fields, capture Harrisburg and march on Was.h.i.+ngton.

Davis did not wish to risk this invasion of Northern soil. But his situation was peculiar. His relations with Lee had been remarkable for their perfect accord. They had never differed on an essential point of political or military strategy. Davis' pride in Lee's genius was unbounded, his confidence in his judgment perfect.

Lee was absolutely sure that his army raised to eighty-five thousand effective men could go anywhere on the continent and do anything within human power. He had crushed McClellan's army of two hundred thousand with seventy-five thousand men, and driven him from his entrenchments at Richmond down the Peninsula. With sixty thousand he had crushed Pope and hurled his army into the entrenchments at Was.h.i.+ngton, a bleeding, disorganized mob. With sixty-two thousand he had cut to pieces Burnside's hundred and thirteen thousand. With fifty thousand he had rolled up Hooker's host of one hundred and thirty thousand in a scroll of flame and death and flung them across the Rappahannock.

His fame filled the world. His soldiers wors.h.i.+ped him. At his command they would charge the gates of h.e.l.l with their bare hands. His soldiers were seasoned veterans in whose prowess he had implicit faith. His faith was not a guess. It was founded on achievements so brilliant there was scarcely room for a doubt.

Lee succeeded in convincing Davis that he could invade the North, live on its rich fields and win a battle which would open the way, not only to save Vicksburg from capture, but secure the peace and independence of the South.

A single great victory on Northern soil with his army threatening Was.h.i.+ngton would make peace a certainty. Davis was quick to see the logic of Lee's plan. It was reasonable. It was a fair risk. And yet the dangers were so enormous he consented with reluctance.

Reagan, the Western member of his Cabinet, urged with all the eloquence of his loyal soul the importance of holding intact the communications with the territory beyond the Mississippi. He begged and pleaded for the plan to reenforce Bragg and play the safe game with Vicksburg. Davis listened to his advice with the utmost respect and weighed each point with solemn sense of his responsibility.

The one point he made last he tried to drive home in a sharp personal appeal.

"You cannot afford, Mr. President," he urged with vehemence, "to further expose your own people of Mississippi to the ravages of such men as now control the invading army. They have laid your own home waste. The people of Vicksburg are your neighbors. They know you personally. The people of this territory have sent their sons and brothers into Virginia by thousands. There are no soldiers left to defend them--"

The President lifted his thin hand in protest.

"I can't let the personal argument sway me, Reagan. Our own people must endure what is best for the cause. All I wish to know is what _is_ best--your plan or General Lee's."

Lee persuaded him against his personal judgment to consent to the daring scheme of Northern invasion.

So intent was Reagan on the plan of direct relief to Vicksburg that after Lee had begun his preparations for the advance, Davis called a Cabinet meeting and reconsidered the whole question. Reagan pleaded with tears at last for what he knew his Chief felt to be best. Davis weighed for the second time each point with care and again decided that Lee's plan promised the greater end--peace.

The moment his final decision was made Davis at once commissioned Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, who knew Lincoln personally, to go to Was.h.i.+ngton to make the proposition for an armistice and begin the negotiations for a permanent peace on the day Lee should make good his promise.

The letter with which Stephens started to Was.h.i.+ngton asked on its face that the President of the United States arrange for an exchange of prisoners which would be prompt and effective and prevent all suffering by Northern men in Southern climates and Southern men in Northern prisons. Davis had asked again and again that all prisoners be exchanged. The Federal War Department had obstructed this exchange until thousands of Northern soldiers crowded the prisons of the South and it was impossible for the Confederate authorities to properly care for them. Medicine had been made contraband of war by the North and the simplest remedies could not be had for the Confederate soldiers or their prisoners. Behind this humane purpose of Stephens' mission lay the bigger proposition, which was a verbal one, to propose peace on Lee's victory on Northern soil.

Lee's army lay on the plains of Culpeper during the beautiful month of May. The vast field was astir with the feverish breath of preparations for the grand march. Trains rushed to the front loaded with munitions of war. New batteries of artillery with the finest equipment ever known were added to his army. The ordnance trains were packed to their capacity. His troops were better equipped than ever before in the history of the war. Every department of the huge, pitiless machine was running like clockwork.

Fifteen thousand cavalry were reviewed at Brandy Station led by Stuart's waving plume--Stuart, the matchless leader who had twice ridden round a hostile army of a hundred thousand men. Crowds of cheering women watched this wonderful pageant and waved their handkerchiefs to the handsome young cavalier as he pa.s.sed on his magnificent horse draped with garlands of flowers.

It required an entire week to review the cavalry, infantry, and artillery.

On June the first, the advance began.

Ewell's corps, once commanded by Jackson, led the way. They swung rapidly through the Blue Ridge Mountains, into the Valley and suddenly pounced on General Milroy at Winchester. Milroy with a few of his officers escaped through the Confederate lines at night and succeeded in crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. Ewell captured three thousand prisoners, thirty pieces of artillery, a hundred wagons and great stores. Seven hundred more men were taken at Martinsburg.

On June twenty-seventh, the whole of Lee's army was encamped at Chambersburg in Pennsylvania in striking distance of the Capital of the State.

The execution of this march had been a remarkable piece of strategy. He had completely baffled the Northern Commanders, spread terror through the North and precipitated the wildest panic in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Within twenty-odd days the Southern General had brought his forces from Fredericksburg, Virginia, confronted by an army of one hundred thousand men, through the Blue Ridge, and the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania. He had done this in the face of one of the most powerful and best equipped armies the North had put into the field. He had swept the hostile garrisons at Winchester, Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry into his prisons and camped in Pennsylvania without his progress being once arrested or a serious battle forced upon him. He had cleared Virginia of the army which threatened Richmond and they were rus.h.i.+ng breathlessly after him in a desperate effort to save the Capital of Pennsylvania.

So far Lee had made good every prediction on which he had based his plan of campaign.

Davis felt so sure that he would make good his promised victory that he hurriedly dispatched Stephens to Fortress Monroe under a flag of truce and asked for a safe conduct for his Commissioner to Was.h.i.+ngton.

In alarm the Governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and West Virginia called out their militia. Lee was not deterred by their panic. He knew that those raw troops would cut no figure in the swift and terrible drama which was being staged among the ragged crags around Gettysburg. The veteran armies of the North and South would decide the issue. If he won, he would brush aside the militia as so many school boys and march into Was.h.i.+ngton.

Meade was rus.h.i.+ng his army after his antagonist with feverish haste. His advance guard struck Lee before the town of Gettysburg on July first, 1863. A desperate struggle ensued. Neither Meade nor Lee had yet reached the field.

Within a mile of the town the Confederates made a sudden and united charge and smashed the Federal line into atoms. General Reynolds, their Commander, was killed and his army driven headlong into the streets of Gettysburg. Ewell, charging through the town, swept all before him and took five thousand prisoners.

The crowded ma.s.ses of fugitives, fleeing for their lives, pa.s.sed out of the town and rushed up the slopes of the hills beyond.

At five o'clock Lee halted his men until the rest of his army should reach the field.

During the night General Meade rallied his disorganized men, poured his fresh troops among them and entrenched his army on the heights where his defeated advance guard had taken refuge.

Had Lee withdrawn the next morning when he scanned those hills which looked down on him through bristling brows of bra.s.s and iron the history of the Confederacy might have been longer. It could not have been more ill.u.s.trious.

His reasons for a.s.sault were sound. To his council of war he was explicit.

"I had not intended, gentlemen," he said, "to fight a general battle at such distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy. We find ourselves confronted by the Federal army. It is difficult to withdraw through the mountains with our large trains. The country is unfavorable for collecting supplies while in the presence of the main body of the enemy as he can restrain our foraging parties by occupying the mountain pa.s.ses. The battle is in a measure unavoidable. We have won a great victory to-day. We can defeat Meade's army in spite of these hills."

When Lee surveyed the heights of Gettysburg again on the morning of the second of July, he saw that the Northerners held a position of extraordinary power. Yet his men were flushed with victory after victory. They had swept their foe before them in the first encounter as chaff before a storm. They were equal to anything short of a miracle.

He ordered Longstreet to hurl his corps against Cemetery Ridge and drive the enemy from his key position before the entrenchments could be completed.

Longstreet was slow. Jackson would have struck with the rapidity of lightning. On this swift action Lee had counted. The blow should have been delivered before eight o'clock. It was two o'clock in the afternoon before Longstreet made the attack and Meade's position had been made stronger each hour.

From two o'clock until dark the long lines of gray rolled and dashed against the heights and broke in red pools of blood on their rocky slopes.

Three hundred pieces of artillery thundered their message in an Oratorio of Death. The earth shook. Hills and rocks danced and reeled before the excited vision of the onrus.h.i.+ng men. For two hours the guns roared and thundered without pause. The shriek of sh.e.l.l, the crash of falling trees, the showers of flying rocks ripped from cliffs by solid shot, the shouts of charging hosts, the splash of bursting shrapnel, the neighing of torn and mangled horses, transformed the green hills of Pennsylvania into a smoke-wreathed, flaming h.e.l.l. The living lay down that night to sleep with their heads pillowed on the dead.

On this second day Lee's men had gained a slight advantage. They had taken Round Top and held it for two hours. They had at least proven that it could be done. They had driven in the lines on the Federal left. The Southern Commander still believed his men could do the impossible.

Longstreet begged his Chief that night to withdraw and choose another field. Lee ordered the third day's fight. On his gray horse he watched Pickett lead his immortal charge and fall back down the hill.