Jefferson Davis Archives - Larry Auerbach

Today In Western History: Jefferson Davis Sees The End Coming

Posted on April 23, 2016March 13, 2016 by larry

April 23, 1865

Confederate President Jefferson Davis writes to his wife, Varina, of the desperate situating facing the Confederates, today in 1865. Things

were falling apart very fast for the Confederacy in the last three weeks. “Panic has seized the country,” he wrote to his wife in Georgia. Davis was in Charlotte, North Carolina, on his flight away from Yankee troops. It was three weeks since Davis had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, as Union troops were overrunning the trenches nearby. Davis and his government headed west to Danville, Virginia, in hopes of reestablishing offices there. When Confederate General Robert E. Lee was forced to surrender his army at Appomattox Court House,

Robert E. Lee, General CSA, Hero of the Confederacy

Virginia, on April 9, Davis and his officials had traveled south in hopes of connecting with the last major Confederate army, the force of General Joseph Johnston. Johnston, then in North Carolina, was himself in dire straits, as General William T. Sherman’s massive force was

US General, William Tecumseh Sherman, scourge of Georgia, and hero of the Union

bearing down on him. Davis continued to write in his letter to his wife, “The issue is one which it is very painful for me to meet. On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the ‘Union’; on the other, the suffering of the women and children, and carnage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader.”

The Davis’ were reunited a few days later as the president continued to flee and continue the fight for Southern independence, but it was just not to be. Two weeks later, Union troops finally captured the Confederate president in northern Georgia. Davis was charged with treason, and put in prison in a casemate at Fortress Monroe, on the coast of Virginia, on May 19, 1865. He was placed in irons for three days. Davis was indicted for treason a year later. but he was never tried. After two years of imprisonment, Davis was released on bail of $100,000 (which would be $1,563,464.44 in 2015), which was posted by prominent citizens of both Northern and Southern states, including Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerrit Smith. he died at age 81 in 1889.

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Today In Western History: WAR!!

Posted on April 12, 2016March 4, 2016 by larry

April 12, 1860

The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay.

Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Because of his strong secessionist views and the widely held belief that he fired the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Edmund Ruffin is credited as “firing the first shot of the Civil War.”

Edmund Ruffin, a firebarnd, long redited with firing the first cannon onto Ft. Sumter and starting the Civil War.

During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort.

Major Robert Anderson, Commander of Ft. Sumter, he lowered the flag as he left, and raised it again when the war was over.

Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.

In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first… and as it turns out, the ONLY, president of the Confederate States of America.

When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

Today In Western History” Braxton Bragg Is Born

Posted on March 22, 2016March 4, 2016 by larry

March 22 —

On this day in 1817, Confederate General Braxton Bragg is born in Warrenton, North Carolina. Bragg

CSA General Braxton Bragg, President Davis's favorite and everyone else's headache. — CSA General Braxton Bragg, President Davis’s favorite and everyone else’s headache.

commanded the Army of Tennessee for 17 months, leading them to several defeats and losing most of the state of Tennessee to the Yankees.

Bragg graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1837, and went on to fight in the Seminole War of the 1830s and the Mexican War in 1846 and 1847. In Mexico, he earned three pro-motions but also managed to survived two assassination attempts by by his own soldiers. Bragg was temperamental and acerbic, a capable soldier but a difficult personality. These character flaws would later badly damage the Confederate war effort, as despite being a favorite of Jefferson Davis, Bragg fought with every other officer in the Confederate Army.

When the Civil War began, Bragg was appointed commander of the Gulf Coast defenses but he was quickly promoted to major general and then sent to join General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of

Tennessee. Bragg fought bravely at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862, leading attacks while having two horses shot out from under him. When Johnston was killed during the battle, Bragg became second in command to Pierre G. T. Beauregard. After Beauregard was forced to relinquish his command for

health reasons, Confederate President Jefferson Davis turned to Bragg.

Bragg’s record as army commander was absolutely dismal. He marched northward in the fall of 1862 to regain Kentucky, but was turned back at the Battle of Perryville in October. On New Year’s Eve, Bragg clashed with the army of Union General William Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River, Tennessee

US General William "Old Rosey" Rosecrans — US General William “Old Rosey” Rosecrans

where they fought to a standstill, but Bragg was forced to retreat and leave the Union in control of central Tennessee. Then, in the summer of 1863, Rosecrans totally outmaneuvered Bragg, backing the Confederates entirely out of the state. Only at Chickamauga, Georgia, in September did Bragg finally win a battle, but the victory came in spite of Bragg’s leadership rather than as a result of his leader-ship. Bragg followed up his single victory by pinning the Yankees in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Union forces, now led by General Ulysses S. Grant, broke the siege in November and nearly destroyed Bragg’s

army. Bragg was finished, having now alienated most of his generals and lost the confidence of his soldiers. He resigned his command and went to Richmond, Virginia, to be a military advisor to President Davis. Bragg fled southward with Davis at the end of the war but both men were captured in Georgia. Bragg was soon released, and worked as an engineer and a railroad executive before his death in 1876.

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

Today In Western History: The Confederacy Approves The Use of Black Troops

Posted on March 13, 2016March 7, 2016 by larry

March 13

On this day in 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against much larger Union armies, in an act of desperation, the Confederacy reluctantly approves the use of black troops. The situation was quite bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. Although they had no way of knowing it, their beloved Confederacy had just less than a month to live. The hated Yankees had captured large swaths of Southern territory and General William T. Sherman’s Union army was tearing unimpeded throughthe Carolinas. At the same time,

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was struggling futilely to defend and protect the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he was

trying to do this with a steadily shrinking army, the victim of both severe malnutrition and desertions. His Union opponent, General Ulysses S. Grant, was applying a relentless pressure with an army that was better fed, better supplied, and with unlimited resources. Lee and

Confederate President Jefferson Davis had only two options left to them. One option was for Lee to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s

army in the Carolinas and use the combined force to take on Sherman and Grant one at a time, but this would leave Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, both unprotected and vulnerable to capture. The other option was to arm the slaves, the last source of fresh manpower in the Confederacy. This choice rendered the whole reason for the war as pointless. It was a no-win situation for the leaders of the Confederacy.

The idea of enlisting blacks had been debated for some time. Arming slaves was essentially a way of setting them free, since they could not realistically be sent back to plantations after they had fought. General Patrick Cleburne had suggested enlisting slaves a year before, but very few in the Confederate

leadership considered the proposal, since slavery was the foundation of Southern society. One politic-ian asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another suggested, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Lee weighed in on this thorny issue and he asked the Confederate government for help. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” Lee asked that the slaves be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks who fought for the Union. It was a case of “too little, too late”.

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

WESTERN HISTORY TODAY: Jefferson Davis Becomes President

Posted on February 10, 2016February 9, 2016 by larry

On this day in 1861, sJefferson DavisJefferson Davi, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who served as U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s, receives word he has been selected president of the new Confederate States of America. Delegates at the Confederacy’s constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, chose him for the job.

Davis was at his plantation, Brierfield, pruning rose bushes with his wife Varina when a messenger arrived from nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. The presidency was not a position Davis wanted, but he accepted it out of a sense of duty to his new country. Varina later wrote of her husband’s reaction to the news: “Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death.”

Davis said of the job: “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement. I think I could perform the function of a general.” He could see the difficulties involved in launching the new nation. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles innumerable. We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task before me.”

Davis was prescient in his concerns, and often drew sharp criticism during the Civil War, caused by his difficult personality. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said Davis was “weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate.”

Davis remained president of the Confederacy until its government was dissolved on May 5, 1865. Less than a week later, he was captured by the Union and jailed for two years. He died at age 81 in New Orleans in 1889.

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

Western History Today: The Confederacy Is Open For Business

Posted on February 4, 2016February 5, 2016 by larry

February 4 —

On this day in 1861, the Confederacy is open for business when the Provisional Confederate Congress convenes in Montgomery, Alabama.

The official record read: “Be it remembered that on the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South States of North America…”

The first order of business was drafting a constitution. The congress used the U.S. Constitution as a model, taking most of it verbatim. In just four days, a tentative document to govern the new nation was hammered out. The president was limited to one six-year term. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the word “slave” was used and the institution protected in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was prohibited, as this would alienate European nations and would detract from the profitable “internal slave trade” in the South. Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the power of the states–governmental money for internal improvements was banned and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills.

The congress then turned its attention to selecting a president, with delegates settling on Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. senator from Mississippi who served as the U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s.

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

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Tag: Jefferson Davis

Today In Western History: Jefferson Davis Sees The End Coming

Today In Western History: WAR!!

Today In Western History” Braxton Bragg Is Born

Today In Western History: The Confederacy Approves The Use of Black Troops

WESTERN HISTORY TODAY: Jefferson Davis Becomes President

Western History Today: The Confederacy Is Open For Business