baggage of the enemy - that would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's pontoons, or captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow; and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would have happened if Davis had been a Cæsar and had Cæsar-like used the one great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted himself to be reasoned out of it.

There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "You are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full haversacks and commissary wagons of

your enemy just beyond Centerville without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington city!" And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand, all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun rose.

Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military chieftain of the Confederate States.1 I would abridge what can be said here under these heads:

1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion. McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were.

2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications.

3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to him.

It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He did not want it. Com

1 In his fourth chapter.

pare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air, was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and bloody brothers' war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: "When reading the telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a sentence of death." 1

Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: "The audience was large and brilliant, Upon my weary heart were showered smiles, plaudits. and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns innumerable." 2

And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent government:

"Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest prayer for the divine support I need so sorely' [as he said]. . . . The inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [The anterior proceedings having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on thus:]

"The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to heaven he said, 'With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during its brief but eventful career, 2 Id. 32, 33.

1 Memoir, vol. ii. 18.

to Thee, O God, I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its cause."

Then she adds:

"Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went home." 1

So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to be the target of their wrath against his people.

He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely sighed more and more often:

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."

His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But in every one of these he did the right - to use Lincoln's grand word - as God gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his vanquisher.2

At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on.

1 Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183.

Casabianca would

2 Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence, courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his presidency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying disasters of the last two years.

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not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it. He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the war from a new base, when he was taken.

His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five years particularly the last three of them - are the one ugly dream of my life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery, contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a