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Jefferson Davis and the "Guerrilla Option": A Reexamination
- University of Nebraska Press
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William B. Feis Jefferson Davis and the “Guerrilla Option” A Reexamination Civil War historians have often reflected on the critical events and decisions of the war that, had they been different, might have resulted in a Confederate victory and ultimately Southern independence. Generations of Southerners have also reveled in this postwar counterfactual debate. As William Faulkner described so eloquently in his novel Intruder in the Dust, at some point in his life every Southern boy has daydreamed about that fateful July afternoon in 1863, just before Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett’s division crossed that deadly field at Gettysburg, and thought “This time. Maybe this time. . . .” Standing at the “absolute edge of no return,” wrote Faulkner, the Confederacy chose not to “turn back . . . and make home” but to “sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world’s roaring rim.”1 Aside from this famous episode during the Confederacy’s short and violent existence, scholars have identified other crucial crossroads at which the South could have chosen a different path and perhaps altered the war’s outcome. One of the more tantalizing of these was the Confederates’ refusal to resort to a large-scale guerrilla or partisan war as their armies crumbled in 1865.2 Instead of surrendering, what if Confederate leaders had dispersed the armies and instructed the officers and men to “take to the hills” and continue fighting as guerrillas? The so-called guerrilla option, the argument runs, was a plausible strategy by which to exhaust the Union armies, undermine Northern support for the war, and eventually realize the dream of Southern independence . Every field, farm, road, and village would become a battleground in a large-scale unconventional war designed to erode the North’s determination to subdue the recalcitrant Rebels. And with thousands of men still under arms across the entire Confederacy, the South possessed the capability to prolong 104 Jefferson Davis and the “Guerrilla Option” 105 the war indefinitely. As one scholar has observed, had the Confederacy opted for guerrilla warfare on a grand scale in April 1865, “the South could have been made virtually indigestible.” More to the point, the authors of one study concluded that the refusal to pursue the guerrilla option may have cost the South its independence.3 Several historians contend that Confederate president Jefferson Davis was the foremost advocate of this option and that he actually proposed its adoption shortly after the fall of Richmond, when he proclaimed on April 4 that the war had entered “a new phase.”4 Some have argued that Davis even issued a direct order to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston to disperse his men into partisan bands rather than surrender to Union forces.5 On the contrary, this essay will demonstrate that Jefferson Davis neither embraced nor advocated the guerrilla option as a means to revive the Confederacy near war’s end. The Confederate president seemingly adhered to the Clausewitzian dictum—that the “political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose”—when he concluded that extensive guerrilla warfare was not an appropriate military strategy with which to achieve the political goal of Southern independence.6 This essay will argue that instead of advocating the costly and prolonged guerrilla war that some historians believe he endorsed, Davis searched for a conventional solution to the South’s plight in that desperate spring of 1865. On the night of April 2, 1865, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia abandoned Richmond and Petersburg and marched into the dark Virginia countryside. Moving toward Danville, Virginia, Lee hoped to join Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee still facing William T. Sherman’s troops in North Carolina. The dogged pursuit of Ulysses S. Grant’s troops soon dashed that hope. As Lee’s army staggered toward Appomattox Court House, where he would surrender his army on April 9, Jefferson Davis and the remnants of the Confederate government arrived in Danville to coordinate the junction of the two armies. With these united forces, Davis hoped to defeat Sherman and then,usinginteriorlines,turnandsmashGrant.WhileinthenewConfederate capital at Danville, Davis also tried to check the deterioration of Southern morale as a result of Richmond’s fall with a dose of his own unquenchable determination.7 On April 4 the Confederate president issued a proclamation that exuded an unwavering faith in ultimate victory. In his address he urged all “patriots” to remain steadfast...