Henry Stuart Foote: Confederate Congressman and Exile

HSNBY STUART FOOTE: CONFEDÉRATE CONGRESSMAN AND EXILE John E. Gonzales Clement Eaton, in A History of the Southern Confederacy, devotes two sentences to Henry Stuart Foote, calling attention to his "bitter tirades against Davis" and branding bin) a "traitor to the Confederacy ."1 E. Merton Coulter gives more space to Foote in his The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865, but comes to the same conclusion, describing Foote as "incorrigible, eccentric, irascible, voluble, and restless."2 Although both historians are essentially correct , Foote's career was one of many parts, and not devoted solely to opposing the administration of Jefferson Davis. Before 1861 Foote was an ardent Unionist. During the debates over the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay described him as "unsurpassed in firm devotion to the Union."3 Indeed, he was one of the chief architects and supporters of this, the last great sectional compromise prior to the war, and was the one Mississippian most responsible for that state's acceptance of it.4 It is not necessarily inconsistent to thus portray the same man as an outstanding Union advocate and a secessionist, although Foote himself puzzled over diis in later years. Reflecting on his career after die war, Foote admitted that his decision to join die secessionist ranks and to serve in the Confederate Congress was die "most absurd blunder of his political life," a decision he was not able to explain "in a manner entirely satisfactory even to his own judgment and sensibilities."5 It was only one of many erratic turns taken in die course of his life. !Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York, 1954), p. 64. 2E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge, 1950), p. 135. 3 Natchez Mississippi Free Trader, Oct. 2, 1850. ?John Edmond Gonzales, "Henry Stuart Foote: A Forgotten Unionist oi the Fifties," The Southern Quarterly, I (1963), 129-139; Holman Hamilton, Prohgue to Conflict (Lexington, 1964). 5 Gonzales, "Henry Stuart Foote: Forgotten Unionist," 138-139. 384 Born in Virginia in 1804, he migrated as a young man to Alabama and dien to Mississippi. In die years following he resided at one time or anodier in Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, California, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C, as well as in England and Canada. After his wife's deadi in California in die HUd-ISSO1S, he returned to die East, remarried, and became a resident of Nashville, die home of his new bride. He changed his political loyalties almost as frequently as his place of residence. One Mississippi editor, bemused by Foote's political maneuvering, wrote: "Planters who do not go to town more than twice a week invariably inquire, 'well, which side is Gen. Foote on now!' " He held membership in the Whig, Democratic, and Know Nothing parties prior to 1860 and supported Stephen A. Douglas in die presidential election of that year. As a Democrat and Unionist he was United States senator from Mississippi from 1847 to 1852 and governor of diat state for the following two years. After his term as Confederate congressman and subsequent exile to Canada, he returned to the Democratic party only to be lured to die Republican ranks, largely by die prospects of political office. On the eve of the Civil War he was a man of no small reputation. As a stump speaker he excelled; in fact, many Mississippians considered him one of the outstanding public speakers in the country. As a writer he had gained recognition for his newspaper work and for his two-volume history entitled Texas and the Texans. In addition, he had achieved some measure of fame as a criminal lawyer. Yet, after thirty years of public life, the quick-tempered little man had few friends and many enemies. First among die latter was Jefferson Davis. As Foote recalled, "serious incompatibilities, both of taste and temper, as well as exceedingly conflicting views of men and measures," developed between diem as diey began dieir terms in die United States Senate. For some reason, now unknown, the two men came to blows at Mrs. Owners in Washington on Christmas morning, 1847. The break never healed. Indeed, subsequent events, particularly Foote's defeat of...