[JANUARY 2, 1864.]
COMMANDING GENERAL, THE
CORPS, DIVISION, BRIGADE, AND REGIMENTAL COMMANDERS OF THE ARMY OF TENNESSEE:
GENERAL: Moved by the exigency in which our country is now
placed, we take the liberty of laying before you, unofficially, our views on the
present state of affairs. The subject is so grave, and our views so new, we
feel it a duty both to you and the cause that before going further we should
submit them for your judgment and receive your suggestions in regard to them.
We therefore respectfully ask you to give us an expression of your views in the
premises. We have now been fighting for nearly three years, have spilled much
of our best blood, and lost, consumed, or thrown to the flames an amount of
property equal in value to the specie currency of the world. Through some lack
in our system the fruits of our struggles and sacrifices have invariably
slipped away from us and left us nothing but long lists of dead and mangled.
Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our territory or harassing
those of the enemy, we are hemmed in today into less than two-thirds of it, and
still the enemy menacingly confronts us at every point with superior forces.
Our soldiers can see no end to this state of affairs except in our own
exhaustion; hence, instead of rising to the occasion, they are sinking into a
fatal apathy, growing weary of hardships and slaughters which promise no
results. In this state of things it is easy to understand why there is a
growing belief that some black catastrophe is not far ahead of us, and that
unless some extraordinary change is soon made in our condition we must overtake
it. The consequences of this condition are showing themselves more plainly
every day; restlessness of morals spreading everywhere, manifesting itself in
the army in a growing disregard for private rights; desertion spreading to a
class of soldiers it never dared to tamper with before; military commissions
sinking in the estimation of the soldier; our supplies failing; our firesides
in ruins. If this state continues much longer we must be subjugated. Every man
should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late.
We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold
most sacred—slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty,
justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means that the history of this heroic
struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by
Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version
of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to
regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for
derision. It means the crushing of Southern manhood, the hatred of our former
slaves, who will, on a spy system, be our secret police. The conqueror's policy
is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them, and
in training an army of negroes the North no doubt holds this thought in
perspective. We can see three great causes operating to destroy us: First, the
inferiority of our armies to those of the enemy in point of numbers; second,
the poverty of our single source of supply in comparison with his several
sources; third, the fact that slavery, from being one of our chief sources of
strength at the commencement of the war, has now become, in a military point of
view, one of our chief sources of weakness.
The enemy already opposes us at every point with superior
numbers, and is endeavoring to make the preponderance irresistible. President
Davis, in his recent message, says the enemy “has recently ordered a large
conscription and made a subsequent call for volunteers, to be followed, if
ineffectual, by a still further draft.” In addition, the President of the
United States announces that “he has already in training an army of 100,000
negroes as good as any troops,” and every fresh raid he makes and new slice of
territory he wrests from us will add to this force. Every soldier in our army
already knows and feels our numerical inferiority to the enemy. Want of men in
the field has prevented him from reaping the fruits of his victories, and has
prevented him from having the furlough he expected after the last
reorganization, and when he turns from the wasting armies in the field to look
at the source of supply, he finds nothing in the prospect to encourage him. Our
single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not
now in the ranks. The enemy has three sources of supply: First, his own motley population;
secondly, our slaves; and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a
crusade against us by fictitious pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who
meet no hindrance from their Governments in such enterprise, because these
Governments are equally antagonistic to the institution. In touching the third
cause, the fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse
prejudice and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to
look at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom.
Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery has
given to the North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy in a
purely military point of view, by supplying him with an army from our
granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment, and
in some respects an insidious weakness. Wherever slavery is once seriously
disturbed, whether by the actual presence or the approach of the enemy, or even
by a cavalry raid, the whites can no longer with safety to their property
openly sympathize with our cause. The fear of their slaves is continually
haunting them, and from silence and apprehension many of these soon learn to
wish the war stopped on any terms. The next stage is to take the oath to save
property, and they become dead to us, if not open enemies. To prevent raids we
are forced to scatter our forces, and are not free to move and strike like the
enemy; his vulnerable points are carefully selected and fortified depots. Ours
are found in every point where there is a slave to set free. All along the
lines slavery is comparatively valueless to us for labor, but of great and
increasing worth to the enemy for information. It is an omnipresent spy system,
pointing out our valuable men to the enemy, revealing our positions, purposes,
and resources, and yet acting so safely and secretly that there is no means to
guard against it. Even in the heart of our country, where our hold upon this
secret espionage is firmest, it waits but the opening fire of the enemy's
battle line to wake it, like a torpid serpent, into venomous activity.
In view of the state of affairs what does our country
propose to do? In the words of President Davis “no effort must be spared to add
largely to our effective force as promptly as possible. The sources of supply
are to be found in restoring to the army all who are improperly absent, putting
an end to substitution, modifying the exemption law, restricting details, and
placing in the ranks such of the able-bodied men now employed as wagoners,
nurses, cooks, and other employés, as are doing service for which the negroes
may be found competent.” Most of the men improperly absent, together with many
of the exempts and men having substitutes, are now without the Confederate
lines and cannot be calculated on. If all the exempts capable of bearing arms
were enrolled, it will give us the boys below eighteen, the men above
forty-five, and those persons who are left at home to meet the wants of the country
and the army, but this modification of the exemption law will remove from the
fields and manufactories most of the skill that directed agricultural and
mechanical labor, and, as stated by the President, “details will have to be
made to meet the wants of the country,” thus sending many of the men to be
derived from this source back to their homes again. Independently of this,
experience proves that striplings and men above conscript age break down and
swell the sick lists more than they do the ranks. The portion now in our lines
of the class who have substitutes is not on the whole a hopeful element, for
the motives that created it must have been stronger than patriotism, and these
motives added to what many of them will call breach of faith, will cause some
to be not forthcoming, and others to be unwilling and discontented soldiers.
The remaining sources mentioned by the President have been so closely pruned in
the Army of Tennessee that they will be found not to yield largely. The supply
from all these sources, together with what we now have in the field, will
exhaust the white race, and though it should greatly exceed expectations and
put us on an equality with the enemy, or even give us temporary advantages,
still we have no reserve to meet unexpected disaster or to supply a protracted
struggle. Like past years, 1864 will diminish our ranks by the casualties of
war, and what source of repair is there left us? We therefore see in the
recommendations of the President only a temporary expedient, which at the best
will leave us twelve months hence in the same predicament we are in now. The
President attempts to meet only one of the depressing causes mentioned; for the
other two he has proposed no remedy. They remain to generate lack of confidence
in our final success, and to keep us moving down hill as heretofore. Adequately
to meet the causes which are now threatening ruin to our country, we propose,
in addition to a modification of the President's plans, that we retain in
service for the war all troops now in service, and that we immediately commence
training a large reserve of the most courageous of our slaves, and further that
we guarantee freedom within a reasonable time to every slave in the South who
shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war. As between the loss of
independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely
give up the latter—give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself. If
we are correct in this assumption it only remains to show how this great
national sacrifice is, in all human probabilities, to change the current of
success and sweep the invader from our country.
Our country has already some friends in England and France,
and there are strong motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist
us, but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would be
in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century. England has
paid hundreds of millions to emancipate her West India slaves and break up the
slave trade. Could she now consistently spend her treasure to reinstate slavery
in this country? But this barrier once removed, the sympathy and the interests
of these and other nations will accord with our own, and we may expect from
them both moral support and material aid. One thing is certain, as soon as the
great sacrifice to independence is made and known in foreign countries there
will be a complete change of front in our favor of the sympathies of the world.
This measure will deprive the North of the moral and material aid which it now
derives from the bitter prejudices with which foreigners view the institution,
and its war, if continued, will henceforth be so despicable in their eyes that
the source of recruiting will be dried up. It will leave the enemy's negro army
no motive to fight for, and will exhaust the source from which it has been
recruited. The idea that it is their special mission to war against slavery has
held growing sway over the Northern people for many years, and has at length
ripened into an armed and bloody crusade against it. This baleful superstition
has so far supplied them with a courage and constancy not their own. It is the
most powerful and honestly entertained plank in their war platform. Knock this
away and what is left? A bloody ambition for more territory, a pretended
veneration for the Union, which one of their own most distinguished orators
(Doctor Beecher in his Liverpool speech) openly avowed was only used as a
stimulus to stir up the anti-slavery crusade, and lastly the poisonous and
selfish interests which are the fungus growth of the war itself. Mankind may
fancy it a great duty to destroy slavery, but what interest can mankind have in
upholding this remainder of the Northern war platform? Their interests and
feelings will be diametrically opposed to it. The measure we propose will
strike dead all John Brown fanaticism, and will compel the enemy to draw off
altogether or in the eyes of the world to swallow the Declaration of
Independence without the sauce and disguise of philanthropy. This delusion of
fanaticism at an end, thousands of Northern people will have leisure to look at
home and to see the gulf of despotism into which they themselves are rushing.
The measure will at one blow strip the enemy of foreign sympathy
and assistance, and transfer them to the South; it will dry up two of his three
sources of recruiting; it will take from his negro army the only motive it
could have to fight against the South, and will probably cause much of it to
desert over to us; it will deprive his cause of the powerful stimulus of
fanaticism, and will enable him to see the rock on which his so called friends
are now piloting him. The immediate effect of the emancipation and enrollment
of negroes on the military strength of the South would be: To enable us to have
armies numerically superior to those of the North, and a reserve of any size we
might think necessary; to enable us to take the offensive, move forward, and
forage on the enemy. It would open to us in prospective another and almost
untouched source of supply, and furnish us with the means of preventing
temporary disaster, and carrying on a protracted struggle. It would instantly
remove all the vulnerability, embarrassment, and inherent weakness which result
from slavery. The approach of the enemy would no longer find every household
surrounded by spies; the fear that sealed the master's lips and the avarice
that has, in so many cases, tempted him practically to desert us would alike be
removed. There would be no recruits awaiting the enemy with open arms, no
complete history of every neighborhood with ready guides, no fear of
insurrection in the rear, or anxieties for the fate of loved ones when our
armies moved forward. The chronic irritation of hope deferred would be joyfully
ended with the negro, and the sympathies of his whole race would be due to his
native South. It would restore confidence in an early termination of the war
with all its inspiring consequences, and even if contrary to all expectations
the enemy should succeed in overrunning the South, instead of finding a cheap,
ready-made means of holding it down, he would find a common hatred and thirst
for vengeance, which would break into acts at every favorable opportunity,
would prevent him from settling on our lands, and render the South a very
unprofitable conquest. It would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause
and place independence above every question of property. The very magnitude of
the sacrifice itself, such as no nation has ever voluntarily made before, would
appal our enemies, destroy his spirit and his finances, and fill our hearts
with a pride and singleness of purpose which would clothe us with new strength
in battle. Apart from all other aspects of the question, the necessity for more
fighting men is upon us. We can only get a sufficiency by making the negro
share the danger and hardships of the war. If we arm and train him and make him
fight for the country in her hour of dire distress, every consideration of
principle and policy demand that we should set him and his whole race who side
with us free. It is a first principle with mankind that he who offers his life
in defense of the State should receive from her in return his freedom and his
happiness, and we believe in acknowledgment of this principle. The Constitution
of the Southern States has reserved to their respective governments the power
to free slaves for meritorious services to the State. It is politic besides.
For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced,
the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has
surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the
paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not
exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field. The hope of freedom is perhaps
the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his present condition.
It would be preposterous then to expect him to fight against it with any degree
of enthusiasm, therefore we must bind him to our cause by no doubtful bonds; we
must leave no possible loophole for treachery to creep in. The slaves are
dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a
thousand fold more dangerous: therefore when we make soldiers of them we must
make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies
also. We can do this more effectually than the North can now do, for we can
give the negro not only his own freedom, but that of his wife and child, and
can secure it to him in his old home. To do this, we must immediately make his
marriage and parental relations sacred in the eyes of the law and forbid their
sale. The past legislation of the South concedes that large free middle class
of negro blood, between the master and slave, must sooner or later destroy the
institution. If, then, we touch the institution at all, we would do best to
make the most of it, and by emancipating the whole race upon reasonable terms,
and within such reasonable time as will prepare both races for the change,
secure to ourselves all the advantages, and to our enemies all the
disadvantages that can arise, both at home and abroad, from such a sacrifice.
Satisfy the negro that if he faithfully adheres to our standard during the war
he shall receive his freedom and that of his race. Give him as an earnest of
our intentions such immediate immunities as will impress him with our sincerity
and be in keeping with his new condition, enroll a portion of his class as
soldiers of the Confederacy, and we change the race from a dreaded weakness to
a position of strength.
Will the slaves fight? The helots of Sparta stood their
masters good stead in battle. In the great sea fight of Lepanto where the
Christians checked forever the spread of Mohammedanism over Europe, the galley
slaves of portions of the fleet were promised freedom, and called on to fight
at a critical moment of the battle. They fought well, and civilization owes
much to those brave galley slaves. The negro slaves of Saint Domingo, fighting
for freedom, defeated their white masters and the French troops sent against
them. The negro slaves of Jamaica revolted, and under the name of Maroons held
the mountains against their masters for 150 years; and the experience of this
war has been so far that half-trained negroes have fought as bravely as many
other half-trained Yankees. If, contrary to the training of a lifetime, they
can be made to face and fight bravely against their former masters, how much
more probable is it that with the allurement of a higher reward, and led by
those masters, they would submit to discipline and face dangers.
We will briefly notice a few arguments against this course.
It is said Republicanism cannot exist without the institution. Even were this
true, we prefer any form of government of which the Southern people may have
the molding, to one forced upon us by a conqueror. It is said the white man
cannot perform agricultural labor in the South. The experience of this army
during the heat of summer from Bowling Green, Ky., to Tupelo, Miss., is that
the white man is healthier when doing reasonable work in the open field than at
any other time. It is said an army of negroes cannot be spared from the fields.
A sufficient number of slaves is now administering to luxury alone to supply
the place of all we need, and we believe it would be better to take half the
able bodied men off a plantation than to take the one master mind that
economically regulated its operations. Leave some of the skill at home and take
some of the muscle to fight with. It is said slaves will not work after they
are freed. We think necessity and a wise legislation will compel them to labor
for a living. It is said it will cause terrible excitement and some
disaffection from our cause. Excitement is far preferable to the apathy which
now exists, and disaffection will not be among the fighting men. It is said
slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even
if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting
for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more
centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.
We have now briefly proposed a plan which we believe will save our country. It
may be imperfect, but in all human probability it would give us our
independence. No objection ought to outweigh it which is not weightier than
independence. If it is worthy of being put in practice it ought to be mooted
quickly before the people, and urged earnestly by every man who believes in its
efficacy. Negroes will require much training; training will require time, and
there is danger that this concession to common sense may come too late.
P. R. Cleburne,
major-general, commanding division; D. C. Govan, brigadier-general; John E.
Murray, colonel Fifth Arkansas; G. F. Baucum, colonel Eighth Arkansas; Peter
Snyder, lieutenant-colonel, commanding Sixth and Seventh Arkansas; E. Warfield,
lieutenant-colonel, Second Arkansas; M. P. Lowrey, brigadier-general; A. B.
Hardcastle, colonel Thirty-second and Forty-fifth Mississippi; F. A. Ashford,
major Sixteenth Alabama; John W. Colquitt, colonel First Arkansas; Rich. J.
Person, major Third and Fifth Confederate; G. S. Deakins, major Thirty-fifth
and Eighth Tennessee; J. H. Collett, captain, commanding Seventh Texas; J. H.
Kelly, brigadier-general, commanding Cavalry Division.
[32.]
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 52
(Serial No. 110), p. 586-92
