Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: February 22, 1862

Such a day! The heavens weep incessantly. Capitol Square is black with umbrellas; and a shelter has been erected for the President to stand under.

I walked up to the monument and heard the Inaugural read by the President. He read it well, and seemed self-poised in the midst of disasters, which he acknowledged had befallen us. And he admitted that there had been errors in our war policy. We had attempted operations on too extensive a scale, thus diffusing our powers which should have been concentrated. I like these candid confessions. They augur a different policy hereafter, and we may hope for better results in the future. We must all stand up for our country.

Mr. Hunter hajs resigned, and taken his place in the Senate.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 111

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: February 6, 1862

The President is preparing his Inaugural Message for the 22d, when he is to begin his new administration of six years. He is to read it from the Washington Monument in Capitol Square.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 109

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 25, 1862

They have taken at Nashville¹ more men than we had at Manassas; there was bad handling of troops, we poor women think, or this would not be. Mr. Venable added bitterly, “Giving up our soldiers to the enemy means giving up the cause. We can not replace them.” The up-country men were Union men generally, and the low-country seceders. The former growl; they never liked those aristocratic boroughs and parishes, they had themselves a good and prosperous country, a good constitution, and were satisfied. But they had to go — to leave all and fight for the others who brought on all the trouble, and who do not show too much disposition to fight for themselves.

That is the extreme up-country view. The extreme low-country says Jeff Davis is not enough out of the Union yet. His inaugural address reads as one of his speeches did four years ago in the United States Senate.

A letter in a morning paper accused Mr. Chesnut of staying too long in Charleston. The editor was asked for the writer's name. He gave it as Little Moses, the Governor's secretary. When Little Moses was spoken to, in a great trepidation he said that Mrs. Pickens wrote it, and got him to publish it; so it was dropped, for Little Moses is such an arrant liar no one can believe him. Besides, if that sort of thing amuses Mrs. Pickens, let her amuse herself.

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¹ Nashville was evacuated by the Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston, in February, 1862.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 134

Diary of Judith W. McGuire: Richmond, Virginia, Saturday, February 22, 1862

To-day I had hoped to see our President inaugurated, but the rain falls in torrents, and I cannot go. So many persons are disappointed, but we are comforted by knowing that the inauguration will take place, and that the reins of our government will continue to be in strong hands. His term of six years must be eventful, and to him, and all others, so full of anxiety! What may we not experience during those six years?  Oh, that all hearts may this day be raised to Almighty God for his guidance! Has there been a day since the Fourth of July, 1776, so full of interest, so fraught with danger, so encompassed by anxiety, so sorrowful, and yet so hopeful, as this 22d of February, 1862?  Our wrongs then were great, and our enemy powerful, but neither can the one nor the other compare with all that we have endured from the oppression, and must meet in the gigantic efforts of the Federal Government. Our people are depressed by our recent disasters, but our soldiers are encouraged by the bravery and endurance of the troops at Donelson. It fell, but not until human nature yielded from exhaustion. The Greeks were overcome at Thermopylae, but were the Persians encouraged by their success? Did they still cherish contempt for their weak foe? And will the conquerors of Donelson meet our little army again with the same self-confidence? Has not our Spartan band inspired them with great respect for their valour, to say nothing of awe?

Our neighbour in the next room had two sons in that dreadful fight. Do they survive? Poor old lady!  She can hear nothing from them; the telegraphic wires in Tennessee are cut, and mail communication very uncertain. It is so sad to see the mother and sister quietly pursuing their avocations, not knowing, the former says, whether she is not the second time widowed; for on those sons depend not only her comfort, but her means of subsistence, and that fair young girl, always accustomed to perfect ease, is now, with her old mother, boarding — confined to one room, using her taste and ingenuity, making and altering bonnets for her many acquaintances, that her mother may be supplied with the little luxuries to which she has always been accustomed, and which, her child says, “mother must have.”  “Our property,” she says, “is not available, and, of course, ‘the boys’ had to give up their business to go into the army.”

SOURCE: McGuire, Judith W., Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 94-5

Social Felicity South

In the well-known conversations of Mr. Samuel Slick, that Philosopher describes a picture, the work of a Western artist, which represented an angel emigrating from Heaven to the State of Arkansas, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, while over the whole were blazoned the letters “A. P.,” which Mr. Slick interpreted to signify “Airthly Paradise.”  This charming morsel of artistic fancy has, in the opinion of Mr. Jefferson Davis, indurated to a solid piece of political reality; for in his dismally cheerful “Inaugural,” which may after all, be compelled to do service as a “Valedictory,” he informs us that the Confederacy, since it went into business, has inundated society with blessings. “Through all the necessities of an unequal struggle,” says he, “there has been no act to impair personal liberty, or the freedom of speech, of thought, or of the press.”  “The Courts,” he continues, “have been open, the judicial functions fully executed, and every right of the peaceful citizen maintained as securely as if a war of invasion had not disturbed the land.”  Quite an Arcadia, to be sure!  There has been no terrorism, no coercion, no conscription, no lynching of Yankee school-mistresses, no swindling of Northern mechanics!  “The Courts have been open.”  Whose Courts?  “The judicial functions have been fully executed.”  O yes! [corasa] LYNCH, J., who finds his Blackstone in a tar pot, and his pleas of the Crown in a bag of feathers!

One thing is certain.  If Davis, the Lachrymose-Jubilant, is right, the “freedom (from truth) of the (Southern) press” infringes slightly upon licentiousness.  Not long ago, in one of the capital cities of the Confederacy – for it has a number, in case of emergencies – the Richmond papers were complaining of rather more street assassinations than was found agreeable, especially to the assassinated; and some of them went so far as to intimate that Jefferson Davis was a kind of Old Man of the Mountain, and responsible for the multitudinous stickings and shootings.  Thus, too, we find the Wilmington (N. C.) Journal lamenting, and not unreasonable, we think, that “seven gentlemen have been assaulted in the streets at night within a short time, one of whom was severely stabbed.”  Seven assaulted gentlemen, assaulted, too, in the night time, would have done very well for any Italian city during the Middle Ages, and the fact leads us to suspect that the worshipful fraternity of Thugs have sent over a diplomatic deputation to congratulate the Confederacy, and to receive a few worthy spirits into the brotherhood.  If Mr. J. Davis be an alert and faithful custodian,  not merely of his people’s liberties, but of their brains, stomachs, and other organs liable to injuries by lead and steel empirically administered, he will make a few of the numerous Courts of Justice perambulatory.  A deputation of his Judges, in their robes of office, or even in their shirt sleeves, as they have been seen by travelers in the South-West, would have a fine effect in Wilmington, provided they did not introduce there the Ordeal of Battle, and begin by illustrating its striking beauties among themselves.

The great English poet has said that “suspicion ever haunts the guilty mind,” and from the amounts of “suspicion” which we find in the Southern papers, we argue that “guilty minds” are far from scarce in the regions in which they are printed.  Thus the Richmond Examiner bemoans “the disaffection of a large portion of the foreign population in Richmond,” and assures its trembling readers that “vigilance is to be the price of their safety from enemies in their midst.”  The trouble, we imagine, is, that many of their “foreign population” having sworn upon the Evangelists to support the Constitution of the United States, shrink just a little from that Confederate virtue which was once a vice, by which we mean perjury.  But really, they are too squeamish.  A man is out of fashion in Richmond unless he be forsworn.  When all the great men of the city have set an example of abjuration, why should the mob be delicate?  ‘Tis a most untimely squeamishness, and calls for ropes!  But we refer to it principally, because we are bothered by a great, gaping discrepancy between “President” Davis and the (aforesaid) Examiner.  That paper says: “We assure the public that vigilance is to be the price of safety from enemies in our midst,” and J. D. says: “Our people have rallied with unexampled unanimity to the support of the Government.”  The Examiner asserts that there are a great many snakes, of venomous varieties, in the Earthy Paradise, J. D. declares that there are no more snakes there than in Ireland. – Which is right?  We don’t pretend to say.  The answer to that question is of more importance to those who are liable to be bitten than it is to us.

An earthy Paradise ravaged by war, shrinking from starvation, convulsed by anarchy, bullied by drill-sergeants, full of the fumes of tar, infested by assassins, threatened by conspirators, periled by disaffection, and with Jefferson Davis for its President, and such angels as Floyd, Benjamin & Co., for its Guardian Spirits, isn’t the sort of Eden in which the Tree of Temptation will long remain unstripped of the no longer fatal burden; for if sensible men can get out of it by bolting a bushel of apples, they will risk all consequences, and fall upon the fruit at once. – {Tribune.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Jeff. Davis’ Inauguration – The Scene

When at the Restoration, Louis XVIII returned to Paris, as was received with demonstrations of welcome by the populace, the official Moniteur of the following day put in his mouth some pithy observations most apt for the occasion.  “But I never said anything of the kind,” said the King to one of his Court when he read it.  “Sire,” replied the official, “it is necessary that your Majesty should have said so.”

Somewhat so with Jeff. Davis’ inaugural, tho’ it was, no doubt, pronounced by him as printed.  In reading it we must bear in mind that he was under a necessity of saying what befitted the occasion, with little reference to facts, or exactness of statement.  His position required him to present the most hopeful and encouraging aspects of the struggle into which he may be said  himself to have plunged the people of the Confederate States.

He would have played his role very badly indeed in the drama that was being enacted, if he had ventured upon a candid and sincere exposition of the real state of affairs.  Necessity as manager, had written down his part for him, and he could not deviate without spoiling the play, and being, as the theatrical phrase has it, “damned” by boxes, pit and gallery.  The select audience would not permit even a star performer to lay aside the lion and announce himself as “Nick Bottom, the Weaver.”  He must roar in character.

The august ceremonial of inauguration, in the accounts given of it in the Richmond papers, serious as they are, seems more like a burlesque than the solemn inauguration of a “permanent government” by men in their right wits.  Yet we doubt not the crowd of adventurers, F. F. coxcombs, swaggerers, lavish of “the last drop of blood” but careful of the first, behaved with all the solemnity befitting such an occasion.

The ceremonies, it appears by the programme, took place upon a platform erected for the purpose, against the east front of the Washington monument.  To this Jeff. refers to his exordium: “On this, the birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American Independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled, &c.  The stage is described as “extending from the pedestal in front of the statue of Mason to that in front of Jefferson.”

That Monument in Capitol Square, Richmond, is one of the noblest works of art in America. – Those who have seen and studied it, united in pronouncing it alike worthy of the great subject and of the distinguished artist Crawford, who designed and partially executed the work.  The main figure is a colossal equestrian statue of Washington.  Around it, upon subordinate pedestals, are statures of life size, of Jefferson, Henry, Mason and others – Virginia’s sons in the period when she produced heroes and statesmen of honest renown in all time.

These figures are in bronze, cast at the royal foundry, Munich.  The monument itself is designed to commemorate to posterity genuine heroism and patriotic devotion.  The very shadow – even the very steps of that noble monumental structure, are chosen as the place of inaugurating a government founded upon the overthrow of  that which those great men organized, and having as it’s “corner stone,” that slavery which they one and all abhorred.  The utterance to-day by either of the four Virginians named, of the sentiments they promulgated, in their lifetimes, would cause him or them to be driven from “the sacred soil” of Virginia, as “Abolitionists” and traitors to the Davis Confederacy.  It was the presence of these magnificent effigies of these founders of the National Government that the arch conspirators chose for displaying before the world their formal organization for its overthrow.  With impious lips, the Chief pretended to invoke such an example in justification of his crime.  How applicable the following words of Washington to this scene enacted near his statue:

“The Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.  The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes THE DUTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL TO OBEY THE ESTABLISHED GOVERNMENT.”

Again:

“However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which CUNNING, AMBITIOUS AND UNPRINCIPLED MEN will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and TO USURP FOR THEMSELVES THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT.”

The assemblages there that day, we may well suppose, was made up in no small part, of an empty and pretentious class of Virginians, foplings proud of ancestry whose virtues are grown obsolete.  But Virginia surely is not without some men in whom “the ancient spirit is not dead.  Let us imagine such as one present on that occasion.  As he regards first that magnificent monument, and the silent figures of Virginia’s heroic men, and then turns and listens to the specious harangue of the living trickster, demagogue and traitor, must he not be reminded of the degenerates of another age and country, who “built the tombs of the prophets and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous,” but were ready to stone him who should follow such just example?

Was it not Washington who said “it is my most ardent wish to see some plan of emancipation adopted in Virginia?”

Did not Jefferson say in reference to slavery: “I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just, and that justice cannot sleep forever.  The almighty has no attribute that could take sides with us in such a contest.”

And Mason – quite another from him of that name who figures now – declared in the most forcible language, the dangerous and corrupting tendencies of slavery in its effects upon the white race.

Patrick Henry (whom the sculptor has represented in the attitude of high wrought passion, in which he might be imagined when he exclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death!”) bore his testimony no less emphatic against that system by which Virginia makes men and women one of her two staple crops for the market.

Regarding that the whole scene together, and thinking of the desecration of that presence by such a pageant of treason, one might almost have expected the spirits of the mighty dead to utter audible rebuke through the bronze lips of the statues erected to their memory. – St. Louis Democrat.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2

Funeral Ceremonies of the Rebels

The inaugural of Jeff. Davis, like all of his documents is a concoction of falsehoods for foreign effect.  He talks of personal liberty and of freedom of speech, in a reign of terror, and where no freedom of speech has existed for half a century; of rights of peaceable citizens in the midst of a forced conscription; of the protection of property, in the midst of confiscation and general devastation; of free elections, in States carried into rebellion by pretended elections held under the supervision of rebel troops; and of peace and justice in a rebellion which has assumed all the villainies and barbarisms of the world.

With a lie in his mouth he appeals to GOD. – He should have done that before he violated his oath to plunge the country into civil war.  There is too much blood on his soul now.

Like every Secession attempt, this pronunciamento [sic], while it attempts to give a cause for the rebellion, utterly fails to specify a thing that is not absurdly false.  The only pretense alleged is the “clan legislation for the aggrandizement of the Northern section, culminating in warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States,” and he will not deny, and his Vice President has admitted since Secession, that the South always controlled the legislation; and the Administration which he says was to make war on Slavery had not even come into office when he rebelled. – {Cincinnati Gazette.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

Slavery

There are just three propositions that we wish to submit to our pro-slavery friends – to those gentlemen who are advocating the return of the rebel States to the Union, possessed of all the rights they enjoyed before they rebelled against the parent Government; and until they are refuted we must consider these persons as sympathizers with the South and actuated more by partisan zeal than love of country.  They are these: 1. Slavery caused this war.  2. Had it not been for slavery the war would not have occurred.  3. Remove slavery and there will be no cause for war.  Admit the truth of these propositions and the man cannot be regarded as the true friend of his country who advocates the retention of slavery among us.

That slavery caused this war, is acknowledged even by Jeff. Davis in his melancholy inaugural address of the 22d of February, and admitted by every well informed man in the North, of which we have any knowledge, who has expressed any opinion upon the subject.  Had slavery not existed in our country, the unhappy differences between the North and the South, which have at length culminated in war, would have had no foundation.  The tendency of slavery is to produce a state of society antagonistic to a republican form of government, by depressing one class of community and elevating another.  While it reduces the poor to the most abject condition of any creatures on the face of the earth, (vide Bayard Taylor’s comparative statement of the wretched condition of the poor whites of the South,) it makes an aristocracy of the rich, haughty, overbearing and exacting, who regard the law of force as paramount to the plain republican rule of their country.  Remove slavery, and society would settle down on a firm basis, and the distinction of wealth, which fosters aristocracy, would soon disappear.

Wealth is the distinctive feature of aristocracies, talent that of republican forms of government.  A fool can obtain a seat in the British parliament, if he have the rank and the money to command the influence of his dependents.  In a republic “rank is but the guinea’s stamp,” money is no recommendation to station, talent alone commands respect, and through its powerful influence a man may rise from the lowly paths of a day-laborer, from that of a rail-splitter, to the proudest position in the gift of the people.  Everything, then, that has a tendency to encourage a marked distinction in society should be banished from a republican form of government.  This is one of the least of the many evils that slavery entails upon our country.  Remove it at once and a “nation would be born in a day,” that would rival the history of the world to exhibit its equal for all the elements of greatness, happiness and perpetuity.

Yet for mere partisan purposes, with a knowledge of these facts before them, men are so degraded intellectually as to wish to retain slavery among us.  Men too, who live in that portion of our country that has never reaped one iota of benefit from it – if it possess any benefit – and that, too, at a time when the first fair opening in the history of our country is presented, that slavery can be legally, constitutionally, and rightfully removed.  We have known partisan zeal to carry men to great lengths, but never to a point so remote as this from all that tends to aggrandize us as a nation.  It seems sometimes in view of their course as if indeed ‘judgment had flown to beasts and men had lost their reason.’  But let us live in hope, hope that the dark cloud which seems to be settling down upon our country will yet emit flashes of light that will enable the helmsmen of our nation to steer the goodly bark through the rocks and shoals that menace it.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, March 7, 1862, p. 2