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SOME PAGES TKOM Ml SCRAP ‘BOOK
THE BALANCE WHEEL OF THE CON
FEDERACY.
Th© official records make very plain the fact
that one man towered above all others in the
Confederacy, and that man was Robert E. Lee.
Almost from the beginning of the war there
was bickering in high places in the Confed
eracy. President Davis was educated at West
Point and had taken part in the war with
Mexico. He was, it is said, reluctant to ac
cept the position of president of the Confed
eracy, preferring to serve in the army, confi
dent that his abilities would there be of the
greatest value to the South. The records are
full of evidence that he was disposed to con
stantly interfere with the duties of practically
all of the leading officers of the South, with
the single exception of General Lee.
When, on April 21, 1861, Robert E. Lee.
then lieutenant-colonel of the Second United
Stales cavalry, turned his back upon his beau
tiful home, Arlington, opposite Washington,
for the purpose of joining his fortunes with
the Southern cause, his wife remained for sev
eral weeks at the home which has become hers
by the will of her father, the grandson of the
wife of George Washington. Virginia was
still in the Union, though an ordinance of se
cession had been adopted in convention (with
fifty-five votes in opposition ( on April 17,
but it was not ratified by a vote of the people
until May 2 —more than a month after Lee
resigned his commission in the army of the
United States. A glimpse of the pathetic fea
ture of those early days of the great struggle
is given in a letter written by General Irwin
McDowell to Mrs. Lee May 30, 1861, his
headquarters being then at Arlington. She
had addressed a letter to the officer in com
mand of the military department which in
cluded her old home, and in reply General
McDowell wrote as follows:
“Mrs. R. E. Lee —Madam: Having been
ordered by the government to relieve Major-
General Sandford in command of this depart
ment, I had the honor to receive this morn
ing your letter of today addressed to him at
this place. With respect to the occupation
of Arlington by the United States troops I
beg to say that it has been done by my pre
decessor with every regard for the preserva
tion of the place. I am here temporarily in
camp on the grounds, preferring this to sleep
ing in the house, under circumstances which
the painful state of the country places me
with respect to its proprietors. I assure you
it has been, and will be, my earnest endeavor
to have all things so ordered that on your re
turn you will find things as little disturbed
as possible. In this I have the hearty con
currence of the courteous, kind-hearted gentle
man in the immediate command of the troops
quartered here, and who lives in the lower
part of the house to insure its being respected.
“Everything has been done as you desired
in respect to your servants, and your wishes,
as far as they can be known, or could be an
ticipated, have been complied with. When
you desire to return every facility will be giv
en you for so doing. I trust, madam, you
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
will not consider it an intrusion if I say I
have the most sincere sympathy for you in
your distress and that, as far as is compatible
with my duties, I shall always be ready to
do whatever may alleviate it.”
Within less than sixty days after the date
of that letter the writer of it had led the
Union forces in the first battle of the civil
war, at Manassas. Mrs. Lee never again saw
the home of her childhood and that of her
children. The property was occupied by the
government for military purposes and upon
a portion of it was established a national
cemetery. After the death of Mrs. Lee her
heirs were successful iii a suit brought to re
cover possession of the estate and received
from the United States a large sum of
money to quiet the title to the property.
Just before the battle of Chickamauga was
fought, September 19 and 20, 1863, the Con
federate army being commanded by General
Bragg, General James Longstreet was sent
with his corps from Lee’s army to reinforce
Bragg. A few’ days after the battle he wrote
the Confederate secretary of war, criticising
Bragg severely and saying that his army had
“neither organization nor mobility,” and ex
pressing a doubt as to whether those qualities
could be given it by General Bragg. In cas
ing, he urged the sending of General Lee to
the west to take command of Bragg’s army.
President Davis visited Bragg’s army about
this time on a tour of inspection, so genera!
were the demands for a change in that depart
ment, and decided to retain General Bragg in
command. But after the crushing defeat the
latter sustained in November at the battle of
Chattanooga, the proposition for Lee to suc
ceed Bragg was again brought forward, Mr.
Davis himself joining in the effort to induce
General Lee to go out to Georgia. A refusal
was not made to this request, but General Lee
said that he was too old to assume the labor
involved in the change, and that he doubted his
ability to successfully command the western
army or that he would receive the co-opera
tion necessary to succeed. If the proposed
change of commanders of the Confederate ar
my in Georgia had been made, it is interesting
to speculate upon what the result would have
been. General Grant had just been sent to
Chattanooga, and it is reasonable to suppose
that the two great captains would have con
fronted each other in Georgia in 1864 instead
of fighting their desperate battles on the soil
of Virginia.
General Lee, the records show, was a sort
of balance wheel for the military forces of
the Confederacy. He smoothed differences,
he gave advice to President Davis and his cab
inet, he inspired the drooping spirits of his
subordinates and —one of the most important
services of all that he rendered the south —he
succeeded in keeping in that army that great
soldier, “Stonewall” Jackson, after the latter
had sent his resignation to Governor Letcher
of Virginia in January, 1862. This resigna
tion had actually been accepted, and it was
only the earnest solicitation of General Lee
that induced Jackson to reconsider
the matter. Jackson had taken offense at the
interference of the secretary of war, Judah P.
Benjamin, a lawyer, who had been placed in
the war office by President Davis, with no mili
tary training -whatever, and who managed to
make almost as many personal enemies among
army officers as did Mr. Davis himself. “Un
der ordinary circumstances,” General Lee
wrote to Jackson, “a due sense of one’s own
dignity, as w’ell as care for professional
rights, would demand such a course as yours,
but the character of this war, the great ener
gy exhibited by the government of the Uni
ted States, the danger in which our very ex
istence as an independent people lies, re
quires sacrifices from us all w'ho have been
educated as soldiers.”
Supposing that Jackson had carried out his
purpose to leave the army, would General
Pope have won the second Manassas? Would
Lee have been overwhelmed at Antietam?
Would Burnside’s assault at Fredericksburg
have been a success instead of a crushing de
feat? Would Hooker have been a victor at
Chancellorsville ? Or, in short, would there
have been any battle of second Manassas, or
Antietam, or Fredericksburg, or Chaneellore
ville?
In 1864 a book entitled, “Life, Services
and Campaigns of Stonewall Jackson, From
Official Papers, Contemporary Narratives and
Acquaintance, by a Virginia,” was published
ed, and its attempted circulation in Kentucky
called forth from General Burbridge, com
manding that district, an order prohibiting
within the district the circulation of that
book and of “all other books of a similar
character.” “The object of such books,”
said General Burbridge, “is not to afford the
people correct information regarding the his
tory of the Rebellion and its leaders, but they
are put forth for the purpose of stirring up
discontent and sedition, and encouraging trea
sonable practices and treasonable conversa
tions by representing the crime of treason in
false and alluring colors.”
In the latter part of 1864 General Lee urged
President Davis to organize negro regiments
for the Confederate army as a necessary war
measure, and it is probable that his influence
had much to do with the opposition of Mr.
Davis to that measure being overcome, for the
President was one of the last of the leaders
of the Confederacy to consent to the enlist
ment of black men in the Southern army. On
March 4, 1865, a joint resolution was adopted
by the Virginia legislature placing negroes in
that state at the service of the Confederate
government. Nine days later the Confederate
congress passed a bill providing for negro en
listments, and it was approved by President
Davis the same day. The closing article in
the 130 volumes of War Records is an order
of the Confederate authorities empowering
each of ten persons therein named to proceed
at once to raise a company of negroes to be
mustered into the Confederate army. But it
was then too late, for it was dated April
28—nineteen days after Lee’s surrender.—
John T. Bell, in Sacramento Union,
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