Pursuit:. Clint Johnson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in time to save the day.”

      In reality, Hardee’s little force of fewer than eight thousand men was still in North Carolina with General Johnston’s army, more than two hundred miles away. Davis would not have been discussing the displacement of his nation’s armed forces with Richmond’s matrons, but both hopeful and dire rumors were sweeping the city.

      Most Richmonders who heard the news about Petersburg’s fall were realists who had no illusions that Davis’s leaving the church service was anything other than what it was—the end of Confederate Richmond.

      Diarist Sallie Ann Brock Putnam wrote:

      The direful tidings spread with the swiftness of electricity. From lip to lip, from men, women, children and servants, the news was bandied, but many received it first as only a Sunday sensation rumor. Friend looked into the face of friend to meet only an expression of incredulity; but later in the day, as the truth, stark and appalling, confronted us, the answering look was that of stony, calm despair. Late in the afternoon the signs of evacuation became obvious to even the most incredulous.

      Richmond had reason to fear.

      In the spring of 1862, a Union force had burned Winton, North Carolina, to the ground, the first incident of what would become a common Union method of undermining Southern civilian morale. In the summer of 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi, had been shelled into submission with the civilian population being the primary targets. Charleston, South Carolina’s civilians had been shelled for two years. All of Atlanta, Georgia, including its residential sections, had been burned by General William T. Sherman’s troops during the summer of 1864. The citizens of Columbia, South Carolina, heard their fate just two months earlier in February 1865 when Sherman’s Fifteenth Corps crossed the Santee River chanting: “Hail, Columbia, happy land. If I don’t burn you, I’ll be dammed.”

      The residents of Richmond would not be surprised if the Confederate capital city was also slated to be wiped from the earth.

      No one unaware of the telegram who saw the erect Confederate president striding his way along the sidewalk toward his office would have suspected anything out of the ordinary. Davis had always been inscrutable. He had a face that belied any public emotion whatsoever, a manner that was cold, distant, and formal with everyone but his closest friends and family. He treated good news for the Confederacy and bad the same way—with casual indifference.

      But if Davis thought he was fooling people about the future of the city by keeping up his passive front, he was mistaken. It was now two months since his flaming speech at the African Church evoking patriotism for the cause. The reality of Richmond’s situation had become real again to citizens who had forgotten the rhetoric.

      Food was expensive and in short supply. According to Jones’s diary, barrels of flour were selling for $700, bacon for $20 a pound. Truthfully, there was food to be had if one was willing to eat it. At a nearby hospital, the nurses and doctors regularly enjoyed a meal of a particular kind of roasted meat. One guard invited to partake passed on the offer, preferring to get his nourishment from whatever bread he could find to sop up his gruel.

      “Having seen the rats in the morgue running over the bodies of dead soldiers, I had no relish for them,” said the guard.

      Mrs. William A. Simmons, a woman whose husband was stationed in the trenches east of Richmond, did not have much to eat, but she kept her sense of humor:

      Our Confederate money is getting so reduced in value that it is a common remark when one goes out to buy, “You can carry your money in your market basket, and bring home your provisions in your purse.” Even our bacon and greens lack the bacon. The one topic everywhere and on occasions is eating. Even the ministers in the pulpit consciously preach of it.

      Hope too was in short supply.

      The prescient Mrs. Simmons noted in her April 1 diary entry, the day before the breakthrough at Petersburg: “The air is full of strange rumors, events are thickening around us. It is plain that General Lee cannot hold out much longer. With a force smaller than is reported and almost destitute, it is impossible to hold our long lines stretching below Petersburg, along which for a mile or two, at some places, there is not a sentinel on guard.”

      By noon most of Davis’s cabinet had gathered in his office. Present were Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, Postmaster General John Reagan, and Secretary of the Treasury George Trenholm. Listening on the sidelines were Richmond’s Mayor Joseph Mayo, Virginia’s governor William Smith, and former governor John Letcher. Those men would have to deal with the federal authorities after the departure of the cabinet.

      Davis looked around the room at the men with whom he would share the Confederacy’s fate. After four years of mixing and matching men into positions to which previous officeholders were unsuited, Davis had finally assembled what he considered a capable cabinet. He did not dwell on the irony that the Confederacy was collapsing just as his cabinet was jelling.

      Breckinridge was described by female admirers as the “handsomest man in the Confederacy” thanks to his 6-foot-2-inch frame, deep blue eyes, and huge handlebar mustache that framed his angular cheeks. A former lawyer, congressman, and senator, Breckinridge had also served as vice president of the United States under James Buchanan. He had finished third in the 1860 presidential race running as a Southern Democrat. Though untrained in military affairs, Breckinridge proved to be a capable general on battlefields from Mississippi to Kentucky to Virginia. He had been appointed secretary of war in February 1865, so he had not made many worthwhile suggestions to the war effort even if Davis was inclined to give up any of his own power to direct war strategy.

      While Davis may have won the Confederate presidency in 1861, Breckinridge, whose name was never brought up as a prospective president, was the more experienced politician. Now after serving as a general, during which he had won some notable battles, the former U.S. vice president had more battlefield experience than the Confederate president, who had no one shooting at him for nearly twenty years.

      Mallory, former U.S. senator from Florida, no longer had much to do in his cabinet position. Most of the Confederate navy had been captured or sunk. In his earlier days, however, Mallory had proved innovative, always willing to try new ideas such as building the ironclad CSS Virginia, and financing the European construction of commerce raiders like the CSS Alabama. Mallory was fifty-two years old with a thick body and a beard that ran under his chin, but he grew no mustache. Mallory was the first Catholic to serve in any presidential cabinet, United States or Confederate. He was also a diarist and a keen observer of the personalities of the men with whom he would be keeping company on the escape from Richmond.

      Benjamin sat smoking a cigar and playing with his gold-headed cane, seemingly without a care in the world. The former U.S. senator from Louisiana, Benjamin had served Davis as attorney general and as secretary of war before his present position. Davis trusted Benjamin implicitly, one of the few people he did. Benjamin was the first person of Jewish heritage to serve the government in high capacity in either the United States or the Confederacy. He had always ignored any anti-Semitic remarks he heard about himself, just as Davis ignored any about his choice of a Jew for a cabinet member.

      The 53-year-old Benjamin was rotund, dark bearded, and dark skinned, and he always smiled even when he was worried about what was happening around him. Benjamin’s smile often irritated those who believed he was unwilling to tell Davis bad news. Mallory looked at Benjamin and noted that the secretary of state’s casual expression made him resemble “the last man outside of the ark, who assured Noah of his belief that it would not be such a hell of a shower, after all.”

      On the previous evening of April 1 when it was obvious even before the receipt of СКАЧАТЬ