Abraham Lincoln: The People's Leader in the Struggle for National ExistencePutnam, George Haven
History
Abraham Lincoln: The People's Leader in the Struggle for National Existence
Putnam, George Haven
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
conditions in these and in the other prisons of the Confederacy. Davis
could not have been unaware of the stupidity and the brutality of
keeping prisoners in Richmond during the last winter of the War when the
lines of road still open were absolutely inadequate to supply the troops
in the trenches or the people of the town. Reports were brought to Davis
more than once from Andersonville showing that a large portion of the
deaths that were there occurring were due to the vile and rotten
condition of the hollow in which for years prisoners had been huddled
together; but the appeal made to Richmond for permission to move the
stockade to a clean and dry slope was put to one side as a matter of no
importance. The entire authority in the matter was in the hands of Davis
and a word from him would have remedied some of the worst conditions. He
must share with General Winder, the immediate superintendent of the
prisons, the responsibility for the heedless and brutal
mismanagement,--a mismanagement which brought death to thousands and
which left thousands of others cripples for life.
As a result of the informal word given by Lincoln, it was generally
understood, by all the officers, at least, in charge of posts and picket
lines along the eastern slope, that Davis was not to be captured.
Unfortunately it had not proved possible to get this informal
expression of a very important piece of policy conveyed throughout the
lines farther west. An enterprising and over-zealous captain of cavalry,
riding across from the Mississippi to the coast, heard of Davis's party
in Florida and, "butting in," captured, on May 10th, "the white
elephant."
The last commands of the Confederate army were surrendered with General
Taylor in Louisiana on the 4th of May and with Kirby Smith in Texas on
the 26th of May. As Lincoln had foreshadowed, not a few complications
resulted from this unfortunate capture of Davis, complications that were
needlessly added to by the lack of clear-headedness or of definite
policy on the part of a confused and vacillating President. During the
months in which Davis was a prisoner at Fortress Monroe, and while the
question of his trial for treason was being fiercely debated in
Washington, the sentiment of the Confederacy naturally concentrated upon
its late President. He was, as the single prisoner, the surviving emblem
of the contest. His vanities, irritability, and blunders were forgotten.
It was natural that, under the circumstances, his people, the people of
the South, should hold in memory only the fact that he had been their
leader and that he had through four strenuous years borne the burdens
of leadership with unflagging zeal, with persistent courage, and with an
almost foolhardy hopefulness. He had given to the Confederacy the best
of his life, and he was entitled to the adoration that the survivors of
the Confederacy gave to him as representing the ideal of the lost cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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