第23章 The Critical Year(3)

The measure of political unrest in North Carolina was indicated in the autumn when a new delegation to Congress was chosen. Of the ten who composed it, eight were new men. Though they did not stand for a clearly defined program, they represented on the whole anti-Davis tendencies. The Confederate Administration had failed to carry the day in the North Carolina elections; and in Georgia there were even more sweeping evidences of unrest. Of the ten representatives chosen for the Second Congress nine had not sat in the First, and Georgia now was in the main frankly anti-Davis. There had been set up at Richmond a new organ of the Government called the Sentinel, which was more entirely under the presidential shadow than even the Enquirer and the Courier.

Speaking of the elections, the Sentinel deplored the "upheaval of political elements" revealed by the defeat of so many tried representatives whose constituents had not returned them to the Second Congress.

What was Davis doing while the ground was thus being cut from under his feet? For one thing he gave his endorsement to the formation of "Confederate Societies" whose members bound themselves to take Confederate money as legal tender. He wrote a letter to one such society in Mississippi, praising it for attempting "by common consent to bring down the prices of all articles to the standard of the soldiers' wages" and adding that the passion of speculation had "seduced citizens of all classes from a determined prosecution of the war to an effort to amass money." The Sentinel advocated the establishment of a law fixing maximum prices. The discussion of this proposal seems to make plain the raison d'etre for the existence of the Sentinel. Even such stanch government organs as the Enquirer and the Courier shied at the idea, but the Mercury denounced it vigorously, giving long extracts from Thiers, and discussed the mistakes, of the French Revolution with its "law of maximum."

Davis, however, did not take an active part in the political campaign, nor did the other members of the Government. It was not because of any notion that the President should not leave the capital that Davis did not visit the disaffected regions of North Carolina when the startled populace winced under its first experience with taxation. Three times during his Administration Davis left Richmond on extended journeys: late in 1862, when Vicksburg had become a chief concern of the Government, he went as far afield as Mississippi in order to get entirely in touch with the military situation in those parts; in the month of October, 1863, when there was another moment of intense military anxiety, Davis again visited the front; and of a third journey which he undertook in 1864, we shall hear in time. It is to be noted that each of these journeys was prompted by a military motive; and here, possibly, we get an explanation of his inadequacy as a statesman. He could not lay aside his interest in military affairs for the supremely important concerns of civil office; and he failed to understand how to ingratiate his Administration by personal appeals to popular imagination.

In October, 1863,--the very month in which his old rival Rhett suffered his final defeat,--Davis undertook a journey because Bragg, after his great victory at Chickamauga, appeared to be letting slip a golden opportunity, and because there were reports of dissension among Bragg's officers and of general confusion in his army. After he had, as he thought, restored harmony in the camp, Davis turned southward on a tour of appeal and inspiration.

He went as far as Mobile, and returning bent his course through Charleston, where, at the beginning of November, less than two weeks after Rhett's defeat, Davis was received with all due formalities. Members of the Rhett family were among those who formally received the President at the railway station. There was a parade of welcome, an official reception, a speech by the President from the steps of the city hall, and much applause by friends of the Administration. But certain ominous signs were not lacking. The Mercury, for example, tucked away in an obscure column its account of the event, while its rival, the Courier, made the President's visit the feature of the day.

Davis returned to Richmond, early in November, to throw himself again with his whole soul into problems that were chiefly military. He did not realize that the crisis had come and gone and that he had failed to grasp the significance of the internal political situation. The Government had failed to carry the elections and to secure a working majority in Congress. Never again was it to have behind it a firm and confident support, The unity of the secession movement had passed away. Thereafter the Government was always to be regarded with suspicion by the extreme believers in state sovereignty and by those who were sullenly convinced that the burdens of the war were unfairly distributed. And there were not wanting men who were ready to construe each emergency measure as a step toward a coup d'etat.