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Meanwhile the Conspirators at Richmond made the most frantic efforts to avert their impending doom.
They heard with dismay of the gigantic preparations making by the Government against them.
They keenly realized the fact that in the wide world they had no sympathizing friend among the rulers, to speak a word of substantial comfort, excepting the Pope of Rome.1 whose power to help was less than nothing.
They knew that the sentiment of the civilized world, unbiassed by self-interest, was against their cause.
They saw England, from which they had hoped most, virtually laughing at their calamity, and its people offering no other aid than such as the greed of traffic might supply for a full equivalent of profit;2 and they beheld with the greatest concern the despondency of their own dupes and victims within the bounds of the Confederacy.
It was vitally important to speak to the latter words of encouragement.
Truth could furnish none.
So Jefferson Davis, equal to the occasion, as usual, issued an address to the troops in the field early in February, and the members of “Congress” at Richmond put forth a long epistle “to the People of the Confederate States,” both of which, undeniable facts warrant us in saying were deceptive and untruthful in the highest degree.
They were filled with the most artful misrepresentations of events in the past and current history of the war.
Davis assured his poor conscripts that they were patriotic volunteers, and that “the pulse of the people beat in unison with theirs ;” and he compared their “spontaneous and unanimous offer of their lives for the defense of their country3 with the halting and reluctant service of the mercenaries,” who were “purchased by the enemy at the price of higher bounties than have hitherto been known in war.”
He assured them that “debt, taxation, repetition of heavy drafts, dissensions occasioned by the strife for power, by the pursuit of the spoils of office, by the thirst for the plunder of the public treasury, and, above all, the consciousness of a bad cause, must tell with fearful force upon the overstrained energies of the enemy.
His campaign of 1864,” he said, “must, from the exhaustion of his resources of men and ”
1 See page 47.
2 On the 1st of April, 1864, Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, forwarded to Jefferson Davis, by permission of our Government, a letter from Earl Russell, the British Foreign Secretary, in which, in the name of “her Majesty's Government,” he protested ,against the further procuring of pirate vessels within the British dominions by the Confederates. After courteously reciting facts connected with the matter, Russell said: “Under these circumstances, her Majesty's Government protests and remonstrates against any further efforts being made on the part of the so-called Confederate States, or the authorities or agents thereof, to build, or cause to be built, or to purchase, or cause to be purchased, any such vessels as those styled ‘ rams,’ or any other vessels to be used for war purposes against the United States, or against any country with which the United Kingdom is at peace and on terms of amity; and her Majesty's Government further protest and remonstrate against all acts in violation of the neutrality laws of the realm.”
These words, from one who personally and as the representative of the British Government, had given the insurgents all the “aid and comfort” a wise business prudence would allow, kindled the hottest indignation of the Conspirators, and Jefferson Davis instructed one of his assistants (Burton N. Harrison) to reply that it “would be Inconsistent with the dignity of the position he [J. Davis] fills as Chief Magistrate of a nation comprising a population of more than twelve millions, occupying a territory many times larger than the United Kingdom, and possessing resources unsurpassed by those of any other country on the face of the globe, to allow the attempt of Earl Russell to ignore the actual existence of the Confederate States, and to contemptuously style them” so-called, “to pass without a protest and a remonstrance. The President, therefore, does protest and remonstrate against this studied insult; and he instructs me to say that in future any document in which it may be repeated will be returned unanswered and unnoticed.” The scribe of the irate “President” added: “Were, indeed, her Majesty's Government sincere in a desire and a determination to maintain neutrality, the President would not but feel that they would neither be just nor gallant to allow the subjugation of a nation like the Confederate States, by such a barbarous, despotic race as are now attempting it.”3 Compare this with the fact mentioned on page 97, that by a late act of the Confederate Congress, every able-bodied white man, of prescribed age, in the Confederacy, was to be considered “in the military service,” and liable to be punished as a deserter if not found there.
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