Sickly Vice President Alexander Stephens was another snake in the grass Davis had to deal with. Early in the war, Stephens had returned to his home in Crawfordville Ga., to conspire and orchestrate a campaign against the president. “What is wanting in Richmond is ‘brains,’ Howell Cobb, a Georgia general officer who had been president of the Confederate Provisional Congress and a likely candidate for Davis’ job, wrote to the vice president. “I did not find the temper and disposition of Congress as bad as I expected, but there is a lamentable want of brains and good sound common sense.”

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Lawrence Keitt wrote his wife that he had heard “Toombs is on the stump in Geo., and is arraigning Davis in a terrible manner.” He added: “I have always feared the divisions, which I saw would spring up among us. You cannot have liason—connexion [sic]—unity—among a planting community. Too many Revolutions have shipwrecked upon internal division. This Revolution proves that canonized imbecility is but a straw before the wrath of masses—it seems to be a law of humanity that generation after generation must rescue its liberties from the insidious grasp of a foe without or within. In our case, we have to seize them from both foes—we have a worthless government, and are reduced to the humiliation of acknowledging it, because we cannot, with safety, shake it.”

In early 1864, senators introduced a bill to use blacks in the military, opening up another avenue of internal debate. The bill was referred to committee, and by order of the Senate leadership the committee was discharged from considering the bill on February 5. Meanwhile, in the House, William Porcher Miles, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, reported that he believed the act to employ slaves and free blacks would increase the army by 40,000 men. John Baldwin of Virginia wanted to exempt any free blacks engaged in food production, particularly in the Shenandoah Valley.

Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi objected, saying that free blacks “are a blot upon our [cause], and pernicious to our slave population….[Baldwin] says to the free negro, you shall not bear the burdens of this war—while [the white citizen] must take his place in the army.” After further argument and slight massaging of the language, the bill was passed. A discussion about whether or not African Americans would in fact be armed and whether slaves would be emancipated in compensation, like so many other thorny policy and military decisions the South needed to make, was deferred.

By May 1864, with a Union army driving into the Wilderness, members of Congress were thrown into a near panic, and legislators introduced a flurry of contradictory resolutions, amendments and joint agreements. Some members resolved that a congressional company be formed to go out and join the fight. Others wanted to evacuate Richmond and move the government to a place of safety. In opposition to that, a number of congressmen argued that the public needed to be kept calm, and a formal declaration should be passed that stated there was absolutely no danger.

A clutch of harried congressmen pressed to exempt those over 50 from service, a proviso that would have included many Congressmen. Another contingent of lawmakers conversely argued that everyone available would be needed to defend Richmond.

Still others took the floor to suggest that no time existed to refer any response to the Military Affairs Committee, which would only delay any action, or that Congress should rely on the president to tell it what it should do. The Confederacy’s leaders were going round and round in debate while Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac pounded deeper into Virginia and William T. Sherman’s legions continued to drive on Atlanta.

To make matters worse for the Southern cause that hot summer, the loyalty of state governors to the cause seemed to be splintering. The greatest trouble was growing in Georgia, where the disenchanted Stephens had set up camp.

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