Free Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton Page B

resumed, because this blow at the roots of Federal power in the west had failed precisely as the earlier blow at Shiloh had failed. (There is a strange similarity between these two mismanaged battles, Shiloh and Stone's River.) Now there was shattering proof of Johnston's gloomy forecast that the essential help for Pemberton's army could not come from Tennessee; and as the cards lay if that help could not come from Tennessee it could not come from anywhere. The retreat of Bragg's army was clear announcement that those cavalry blows at Grant's communications had been mere episodes rather than a turning of the tide.
    This was perfectly clear to Abraham Lincoln, who understood the strategic score as well as anybody. Months later, when Rosecrans thought himself in disfavor at the White House, Mr. Lincoln sent measured words of reassurance:
    "I can never forget, whilst I remember anything, that about the end of last year, and beginning of this, you gave us a hard-earned victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over." 1 *

    5. Paralysis of Command
    RETURNING FROM his visit to the Mississippi Valley after the first of the year, Jefferson Davis faced two major problems. One was the situation created by the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln issued, as he had promised to do, on New Year's Day; the other was the matter of the war in the west, whose gravity was underlined by the victory General Bragg had first won and then lost at Stone's River. The first problem was largely political, and the other was purely military, but at bottom the two were ominously alike: each one required Mr. Davis to transcend the limitations that the war itself' imposed on him and find a solution which a President of the Confederacy could hardly hope to attain.
    As always, Mr. Davis presented a cheerful face to the public. On the night of January 5 there was a serenade in front of his house in Richmond, with Captain J. B. Smith's Silver Band on hand to make music. The crowd was small, because the affair had not been announced in advance, but Mr. Davis made a short speech with much spirit. He assured his listeners that their fight for independence was even nobler than the struggle of 1776, because that one was at least waged against a manly foe while the patriots of the 1860s "fight against the offscourings of the earth." He drew laughter by remarking that some of the Yankees whose latest "on to Richmond" drive had been broken up at Fredericksburg did actually get to Richmond—many hundreds of them, as closely guarded prisoners of war—and he treated Stone's River as a victory that might well cause the states of the northwest to break away from the old Union. War, to be sure, was "an evil in every form in which it can be presented," but it was a crucible in which Southern unity was being created: "With such noble women at home, and such heroic soldiers in the field, we are invincible!" 1
    Even an invincible people, however, could feel outrage. For the Confederate Congress a week later Mr. Davis had a prepared speech which was deeply charged with emotion. He spoke of the Emancipation Proclamation as "a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination," and he continued: "Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses." He proposed to turn over to state authorities any Federal officers captured in areas covered by the proclamation, "that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection," and he went on to explain what the evil effects of the proclamation must be. The proclamation, he said, created a situation which could have only three possible consequences—"the