The vice president had a friendship, not surprisingly, with a cranky anti-administration newspaper editor, Henry Cleveland, who ran the Augusta Constitutionalist. The two struck up a long, detailed correspondence in which they openly discussed what they perceived as the president’s incompetence and what ought to be done about it.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Civil War Times magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The two men also discussed the idea of a peace conference. They believed such an event could wrest responsibility for conduct of the war from the hands of Davis and restore tranquility to the beleaguered South.

On June 8, Cleveland wrote Stephens: “Since my second letter to you, I have received your last, and confess that I did suppose you had hope of terms from Lincoln. For my self (from reasons I will some day give you) I am satisfied that the States can to day get terms and good terms, but Mr. Davis never can.” Continued Cleveland, “No human power can change Mr. Davis, and consequently, no human power can save the Confederacy from war and speeches. I am satisfied that the immediate secession of Georgia from the Confederate States would be the best thing we could do, and am equally satisfied that nine-tenths of the people of Georgia will follow the lead of the Administration, until our cause is beyond the hand of resurrection….The Stars and Stripes will float over the Government works in Augusta before a year expires, and Mr. Davis be dead or in exile….To win this fight, under this Administration, would be a result without a reason—an effect without a cause. Is this treason? I am afraid you will think so, but it is difficult to look back at all we have suffered, and see blood and life and desperate valor thrown away, and still think calmly.”

Local politics and business intervened to muzzle Cleveland’s public discontent. “A letter from Henry Cleveland informs me that the majority of the stock of the Constitutionalist is now owned by Administration men,” wrote Georgia Governor Joe Brown, a fellow conspirator, “and that he will be obliged to change his course, keep silent, or be ousted. Could not enough of the stock be purchased to control and keep the paper on the right lines?”

Despite the shift, more and more Southerners picked up on an increasing and tangled web of conspiracy in Georgia. “Our Vice President is a dangerous man,” Brig. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman wrote his friend Louis Wigfall, a powerful anti-Davis senator, “the more so because of his stealthy policy and his bogus reputation for fairness and honesty. I consider him the head of a faction that is ready to betray the Confederacy and sell the blood of the Army. ‘Crushing him out’ is doing God’s service.”

In Richmond, meanwhile, the second session of the Second Congress of the Confederate States of America began on November 7, 1864. On that day Davis sent a long message to Congress covering many urgent points that needed to be faced. In many ways it was a last attempt for turnaround and cooperation on a variety of issues that the president felt were sinking the Confederacy if left unresolved. But Congress failed to act decisively on nearly every one of them.

The Confederacy was on its last legs as 1865 began. Siege operations around Petersburg ground on, sapping the remaining resources and supplies that could be brought to bear against the Union army. General John Bell Hood’s disastrous campaign in Tennessee had effectively eliminated the Army of Tennessee from further meaningful service in the war. A combined Federal Army and Navy operation was closing in on Wilmington, N.C., the last open Confederate port, and the Lincoln administration had decisively won the election.

The Confederate Congress finally decided to act, doing something of which Davis disapproved—developing peace proposals. As early as January 12, the House passed a resolution to send a peace commission to Washington. The next day Davis reported to the House that an old nemesis, Congressman Henry Foote of Tennessee, with whom Davis had nearly once dueled, had been arrested on his way to Washington. Foote had been detained at Occoquan, Va., while trying to cross the lines on a private peace mission to the Yankee capital. A special committee was appointed to investigate Foote, and it expelled him from the house.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to