The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 55

The swift and terrible blows which the navy had dealt the South, delivered so silently and yet with such deadly effect that the people had not yet realized their import, had convinced the President that the war would be one of the bloodiest in history.

The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson with the evacuation of Nashville had been a sword thrust into the heart of the lower South. The extent of these disasters had not been realized by the public. The South was yet a sleeping lioness. She could be roused and her powers wielded with certainty by one man. But his hand must be firm.

There was one man in the Cabinet of the Confederacy who clearly saw this from the first dawn of the new year--Judah P. Benjamin, the astute Secretary of War. His keen logical mind had brushed aside the fog of sentiment and saw _one_ thing--the need of success and the way in which to attain it.

The morning of February twenty-second was Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday, and for that reason fixed by the South as the day of the inauguration of their President. Nothing could have shown more clearly the tenacity with which the Southern people were clinging to their old forms. The day slowly dawned through lowering storm clouds.

The President went early to his office for a consultation with the members of his new Cabinet. Judah P. Benjamin, his chosen chief counselor as Secretary of State, was unusually reticent. The details of the inauguration were quickly agreed on and Davis hastened to return to his room at the White House to complete his preparations for the ceremony.

Benjamin followed his Chief thirty minutes later with the most important communication he had ever decided to make.

As the most trusted adviser of the President he had long had the freedom of the house.

The resolute Hebrew features of the Secretary were set with resolution.

He pushed his way to the door of Mr. Davis' room, rapped for admission and without waiting for an answer softly and swiftly entered. His mission was too important to admit of delay.

He paused at the threshold in surprise.

Jefferson Davis was on his knees in prayer so deep and earnest he had not heard.

He waited with head bowed in silent sympathy for five minutes and looked with increasing amazement at the white face of the man who prayed. This agony of soul before the G.o.d of his fathers was a revelation to the Minister of State.

His lips were moving now in audible words.

"Thou alone art my refuge, O Lord! Without Thee I shall fail. Have pity on Thy servant--with Thy wisdom guide!"

The time was swiftly pa.s.sing. The Minister could not wait.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. President," he began in low tones, "but I have most important communications to make to you--"

The voice of prayer softly died away and slowly the look of earth came back to the tired face. He turned his hollow cheeks to Benjamin with no attempt to mask the agony of his spirit, slowly rose and motioned him to a chair.

The Secretary lifted his hand.

"I'm restless. If you don't mind, I'll stand. I have marked three editorial attacks on you and your administration in three of the most powerful newspapers in the South--the Richmond _Examiner_, the Raleigh _Standard_ and the Charleston _Mercury_--read them please--and then I have something to say!"

The President seated himself and read each marked sentence with care.

"The same old thing, Benjamin--only a little more virulent this time--what of it?"

"This! The success of our cause demands the suppression of these reptile sheets and the imprisonment of their editors--"

"Would success be worth having if we must buy it at the cost of the liberties of our people?"

Benjamin stopped short in his tracks. He had been walking back and forth with swift panther-like tread.

"We are at war, Mr. President--fierce, savage, cruel, it's going to be.

You have realized this from the first. The world will demand of us just one thing--success in arms. With this we win all. Lose this and we lose all--our liberties and a great deal more. Our coast is pierced now at regular intervals to the mouth of the Mississippi River--at Fortress Monroe in Virginia--the entire inland waters of North Carolina, Port Royal, South Carolina, Florida's line has been broken. Grant's army is swarming into Tennessee. McClellan is drilling three hundred thousand men in Was.h.i.+ngton to descend on Richmond. It's no time to nurse such reptiles in our bosom--"

"I can't play the petty tyrant--"

"They'll sting you to death--I warn you--no administration on earth can live in times of war and endure such infamous abuse as these conspirators are now heaping on your head. And mark you--they have only begun. The junta of disgruntled generals which they have organized will strangle the cause of the South unless you grip the situation to-day with a hand of steel. They are laying their plans in the new Congress to paralyze your work and heap on your head the scorn of the world."

The President moved with a gesture of impatience.

"I've told you, Benjamin, that I will not suppress these papers nor sign your order for the arrest of the editors. I am leading the cause of a great people to preserve Const.i.tutional liberty. Freedom of speech is one of their rights--"

"In times of peace, yes--but not in the crisis of war when the tongue of a fool may betray the lives of millions. I am not here merely to ask you to suppress these three treacherous rags--I'm here to ask a bigger and far more important thing. I want you to stop this inaugural ceremony to-day--"

Davis rose with a quick excited movement.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. Stop in time. We inaugurated a Provisional Government at Montgomery to last one year. Why one year? Because we believed the war would be over before that year expired. It would have been madness to provide for the establishment of the elaborate and clumsy forms of a Const.i.tutional Government during the progress of war. Why set up a Const.i.tution until you have won by the sword the power to maintain it?"

"But," Davis interrupted, "if we delay the adoption of a Const.i.tution we confess to the world our want of confidence in the success of our cause.

Such a permanent Const.i.tution will be to our people the supreme sign of faith--"

"With these jackals and hyenas of the press yelping and snarling and snapping at your heels? These men will destroy the faith of our best men and women if you only allow them to repeat their lies often enough. They will believe them at last, themselves. You have the confidence to-day of the whole South. Your bitterest enemy could not name a candidate to oppose your election last November. Give these traitors time and they will change all--"

"Not with military success--"

"Granted. But if these jackals break down the confidence of the people in the administration, volunteering ceases and we have no army."

"We must use the Conscription. It is inevitable--"

"Exactly!" the Secretary cried triumphantly. "And Conscription is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of your dream of Const.i.tutional Law. Why set up a Const.i.tution at all to-day?"

"Congress must pa.s.s a Conscript law when necessity demands it."

"In their own way, yes--with ifs and ands and clauses which defeat its purpose."

"They must respond to the demands of our people when their patriotism is aroused."

"Our people have patriotism to spare if we can only guide it in the right direction. If it goes to seed in the personal quarrels of generals, if it exhausts itself in abuse of the Executive, while an overwhelming enemy marches on us--What then?"

The President lifted his head.

"And you recommend?"

"Stop this ceremony. Refuse the position of permanent President and use your powers as Provisional President in a Military Dictators.h.i.+p until the South wins--"

"Never!" was the quick reply. "I'll go down in eternal defeat sooner than win an empire by such betrayal of the trust imposed in me--"

"You're not betraying the trust imposed in you by a.s.suming these powers!" Benjamin exclaimed with pa.s.sion. "You're fulfilling that trust.

You're doing what the people have called you to do--establis.h.i.+ng the independence of the South! The Government at Was.h.i.+ngton has been compelled to exercise despotic powers from the first--"

"Exactly--and that's why we can't afford to do it. We are fighting the battle of the North and the South for Const.i.tutional liberty."