Burton N. Harrison to John C. Breckinridge, February 7, 1865

General J. C. BRECKINRIDGE, Richmond, Va.: GENERAL: Lieutenant Gordon, of the Army of Virginia, and a brother of Major-General Gordon, will hand you this letter. He will show you the authority he received from the late Secretary of War to raise a cavalry company in Georgia and explain his wishes in reference to the change which he proposes. Whilst I cannot recommend the application as made, and am firm in the conviction that all such irregular authorities only gender confusion, yet I think the services of Lieutenant Gordon might prove valuable in North Alabama, and that if ordered to report to me there would be no great difficulty in raising at least a company for him with which to operate in that now infected section of the State. Although this communication is not intended as official, I hope you will excuse me for requesting your attention to the condition of the reserve forces and of the conscript service in this State as reported to the late Secretary of War in communications of the 15th and 17th of December last. To render the reserve forces efficient the change in officering them is indispensable. To correct abuses, if not actual corruption, in the conscript service, and to infuse energy and efficiency into the system, there must be a change in what I consider its present organization. If the general of the reserves in each State is held responsible for the conscript service in his State, he should certainly have full authority to change and remove officers from positions for which he found they were incapacitated, or in which he believed they were acting improperly, if not corruptly. The tone of public feeling in this State is most lamentablydespondent. The old Unionists and reconstructionists (mostly of the Douglas faction) have seized on late reverses and been most active in charging them all on the President as their author, in having removed General Johnston. The straggling, scattered, undisciplined, disorganized condition and consequent lawless conduct of the Army of Tennessee in passing through the State has unfortunately added much to the success of disloyal efforts to increase despondency, spread discontent, and organize opposition to the Government and to the continuance of the war. Deserters and stragglers by the hundreds are now scattered broadcast throughout this State, and such is the state of public sentiment that in half the counties in the State they can remain with impunity. It is my opinion that life and efficiency infused into the reserve forces by giving to them capable officers, and energy, impartiality, and strict integrity imparted to and exacted of every one engaged in the conscript service, will go far toward correcting the evils now existing. I do not know what authority, if any, I have in the removal and changing of officers engaged in conscripting. Ihave sought information on the subject, but none has been given. Had I the power I should deem it my duty to exercise it promptly in severalcases. Under existing circumstances I should deem it advisable to change even the commandant of conscripts for the State, Lieutenant-Colonel Lockhart, and replace him with some Alabama officer of known experience and established integrity, who would have a home influence to sustain him. Col. Charles Forsyth, of the Third Alabama Regiment, now of the Army of Virginia, has the qualifications for the position, and would, besides, be sustained by a political influence once of controlling power over those who are now busy in disseminating disloyal sentiments. There is something wrong in the working of the conscript system in this county and in the majority of the counties of the State is that there is neither the proper energy nor fair dealing. I have endeavored to sift the matter time and again, and although entirely unsuccessful in developing corruption, yet the surroundings would render full confidence impossible. This suggested to me the propriety of regular and frequent changes. New brooms are said to sweep clean, and I know new enrolling officers manifest most energy. Please excuse my writing so much, and when your leisure permits, write me as to the authority I am expected to exercise in the matters referred to, and whether, without detriment to the service, Col. C. Forsyth can be ordered to report to me for assignment to duty as suggested. I am, general, very truly, yours, FEBRUARY 22, 1865. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR: Please note remarks of General W[ithers] in regard to changing officers, &c., and inform me of the rule under existing laws and orders. SMC Bs Secretary of War. [Second indorsement. ] Under the existing laws the commander of reserves has no power to make any changes in officers—none whatever. (The act of Congress of 17th of February, 1864.) The companies and regiments composed of reserves are to be organized under regulations to be made by the President, and have the right to elect their own officers. Officers in the conscription service are appointed by the President. The officers provided for by the law are commandants of conscripts and drillmasters. All other officers are assigned for duty to the regiments, and are generally disabled as supernumerary officers. When such officers are assigned generally to commander of reserves he can assign them to duty. The commanders of conscripts are appointed by the Department upon the recommendation of the Bureau. [J. A. CAMPBELL, Assistant Secretary of War. [Third indorsement. } FEBRUARY 28, 1865. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR: Under present regulations and orders I am not informed whether the commandant of reserves has the power to make chanves in the officers of the conscription service in his State. Please consider this point also. ork, Gry! ee Secretary of War. [Fourth indorsement.] SECRETARY OF WAR: Colonel Lockhart has the character, and no doubt properly, of being an efficient and capable officer. Colonel Forsyth has a command in the Army, and it would not be consistent with the usage to transfer him to conscription service. My own opinion is, and it is corroborated by that of others, that he has not ability to discharge the duties of commander of conscripts. He is quite a young man, of no large experience in the management of business, and has not that knowledge of law and of the orders and regulations of the conscription business that is required. J. A. CAMPBELL, Assistant Secretary of War. GENERAL ees: ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL’S OFFICE, No. 4. Richmond, February 8, 1865. I. Commanders of armies, departments, or districts will enforce the following act of Congress in all sections in which the enemy may be advancing. They will hold subordinate officers charged with the duty of carrying out its provisions responsible for its proper execution: AN ACT to regulate the destruction of property under military necessity, ; and to provide for the indemnity thereof. SECTION 1. The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That the military authorities of the Confederate Army are hereby authorized and directed to destroy cotton, tobacco, military and naval stores, or other property of any kind whatever, which may aid the enemy in the prosecution of the war, when necessary to prevent the same, or any part thereof, from falling into the hands of the enemy. * * * eo * * * Approved March 17, 1862. II. Officers will be calm and considerate in the performance of the duty enjoined by these orders. They will not be justified in the destruction of property unless the necessity therefor be reasonably established. III. As far as practicable notice of the approach of danger should be given owners of property, and every precaution for its removal that circumstances will permit should be taken. By order: S. COOPER, Adjutant and Inspector General. GLEN ALLEN, HENRICO, February 8, 1865. [President DAvis:] My DEAR SIR: Impelled by the perils of our country and the thousand conflicting theories as to the cause and cure to continually have these things before me, I have been amazed to see that no one thus far has conceived, or if conceived had the boldness to present, in my judgment, the only solution of all these perils and difficulties. ILaddress you because you have already taken a long stride in the right direction, and because I believe your mind has already reached the true solution, but owing to peculiar circumstances has hesitated to enunciate it. The history of this war demonstrates the wonderful fact that the Confederate States mainly subsists both of the immense armies engaged in the conflict, and actually, after furnishing all the soldiers to one army, contributes about one-half of those making the army of its enemies, and should the war continue for another year the South will probably furnish two-thirds of the army of her foes. These facts, which cannot be controverted, show certainly anything but weakness or inferiority on the part of the South; but it does show that a change of policy in relation to the conduct of the war, and that a radical one, must be adopted or we shall be destroyed. Let us look at a few facts: The Yankees have now in their service 200,000 of our ex-slaves, and under their next draft will probably have half as many more. We have not one soldier from that source in our ranks. It is held by us that slaves will not make soldiers, therefore we refuse to put them in the service, and I think are correct in so doing; but while we thus think and thus act our enemies are creating, in addition to their white force (which we have found to our cost in the last year to be quite as large as we could manage), an auxiliary army of our own _escaped slaves of 300,000 or 400,000 men. Now, however we may decry the negro as a soldier, every one knows that if the white troops of the Yankees are numerous enough to hold all ours in check, then this negro army can at will ravage and destroy our whole country, and we will be absolutely conquered by our own slaves. We allege that slaves will not fight in our armies. Escaped slaves fight and fight bravely for our enemies; therefore a freed slave will fight. If at the beginning of this war all our negroes had been free does any one believe the Yankees would have been able to recruit an army amongst them? Does any one know of a solitary free negro escaping to them and joining their Army? If our slaves were now to be freed would the Yankees be able to raise another recruitamongst them? If freedom and amnesty were declared in favor of those already in the Yankee lines would they not almost to a man desert to their old homes? Would not our freed negroes make us as good soldiers as they make for our enemies? Again, suppose we free a portion of our slaves and put them in the Army, we leave all the rest as a recruiting field for the enemy, from which we cannot get a single soldier, and thus we see one-half of our entire population of no avail to us, but on the contrary ready at every opportunity to join the ranks of our enemies. Now, sir, Southern soldiers are the best that ever drew a blade in the cause of liberty, but there are some things which they cannot do; they cannot fight our battles against overwhelming numbers, and raise the necessary supplies for the Army and the women and children at home; and yet, sir, this is what they will be called upon to do if this war is protracted for two years longer. I ask, sir, then, in view of these facts, if the prompt abolition of slavery will not prove a remedy sufficient to arrest this tide of disaster? The Yankee Army will be diminished by it, our own Army can be increased by it, and our labor retained byit. Without it, if the war continues, we shall in the end be subjugated, our negroes emancipated, our lands parceled out amongst them, and if any of it be left to us, only an equal portion with our own negroes, and ourselves given only equal (if any) social and political rights and privileges. If we emancipate, our independence is secured, the white man only will have any and all political rights, retain all his real and personal property, exclusive of his property in his slave; make the laws to control the freed negro, who, having no land, must labor for the landowner, and being an adequate supply of labor must work for the landowner on terms about as economical as though owned by him. We cannot consent to reconstruction even if they repeal all their laws and withdraw all their proclamations in regard to us, our lands, and our negroes, because they now have, or at any session of their Congress can make, the necessary number of States to alter the Constitution in a constitutional manner, and thus abolish slavery and interfere in any other way they think proper. Butevenif the present Administration should pledge anything we may ask, it binds no one but themselves during their own term of service, which you of course understand better than I do; and suppose they should even promise, and stand by their promise, to pay us for our negroes, lost or to be emancipated, how will they pay us? They cannot by direct taxation, but only in levying an export duty on our products—cotton, tobacco, and naval stores; and this war has shown them and the world, if not us, how much they will bear, cotton commanding $1 per pound, tobacco $3, tar $200 per barrel, &c. To pay their war debt and free our negroes would make a debt of $6,000,000,000 or probably $8,000,000,000, the interest of which at 5 per cent. would take $400,000,000 of revenue to pay, and to raise something additional to extinguish the principal would require an additional $100,000,000, Thus you see an export duty to this extent would be levied and could easily be raised upon our own products; cents the world would pay, because they must have it and have bought it for much more, would bring an annual income of about $400,000,000 without counting the duty on tobacco and naval stores; but even with this most favorable view of the case, we should lose the whole of our own war debt, which is or will be, say, $2,000,000,000. Of course this would be repudiated, and justly, by our enemies if we consent to reconstruction; whereas if we emancipate we save the $2,000,000,000, and we can pay for the negroes $4,000,000,000 more, and the export duty on cotton alone (which we should have levied if we go back into the Union) will pay the interest upon this at 5 per cent., and leave $100,000,000 as a sinking fund to extinguish the principal in some thirty or forty years, and the slave-owner have all his labor on his farm that he had before (for, having no home and no property to buy one with, he must live with and work for his old owner for such wages as said owner may choose to give, to be regulated by law hereafter as may suit the change of relation). And this $6,000,000,000 is not a debt we tax ourselves to pay, but the world pays it. The speculator who buys the cotton and pays the duty makes the manufacturer pay him his 10 or 15 per cent. net profit on his gross outlay; the manufacturer makes the merchant pay him his 10 or 15 per cent. on his gross outlay; the merchant charges the retail dealer his 10 or 15 per cent. on his gross outlay, and so on till the shirt is made, and he who wears it out pays.the duty and all the different percentages upon it. Thus we will pay to the extent of our consumption of the exported article when manufactured and returned to us—a mere nothing when compared to the immense gratuity, $6,000,000,000, which the world makes to us, and which they so justly should be made to hand over to us for the cold-blooded, heartless indifference with which they have contemplated the bloody, inhuman, barbarous, and apparently hopeless contest in which we have been engaged, and which they at any moment could have arrested by a word. By emancipation I think we would not only render our triumph secure, as I have attempted to prove, in and of itself, but in all future time the negro, in place of being useless in time of war as a soldier, and really dangerous, as we have seen to our cost, continues to be an element of strength; and IJ think we may reasonably hope that the nations of the earth would no longer be unwilling to recognize us, for surely no people ever before struggled so long and under so many difficulties and endured so many privations so uncomplainingly as we have without finding some friendly hand outstretched to encourage or to help; and there can be no other reason than that we are exclusively and peculiarly a nation of slave-holders. I think that even amongst our enemies numbers would be added to those who are already willing to let us go in peace, for we should thus give the lie at once and forever to the charge that we are waging a war only for negro slavery, and the heart of every honest lover of human liberty throughout the world would sympathize with the men who for their cherished rights of freemen would wage such an unequal contest as we have waged, and besides sacrificing all their earnest convictions as to the humanity and righteousness of slavery, were willing to sacrifice their property interest of $4,000,000,000 to secure their independence, which might all be saved, so far as the promises of our enemies are concerned, by reconstruction. In my judgment the only question for us to decide is whether we shall gain our independence by freeing the negro, we retaining all the power to regulate them by law when so freed, or permit our enemies through our own slaves to compel us to submit to emancipation with equal or superior political rights for our negroes, and partial or complete confiscation of our property for the use and benefit of the negro. And, sir, if the war continues as it is now waged, and we are forced, by the overwhelming odds of the Yankees and our own slaves in arms against us, into submission, it would be but an act of simple justice for the Yankee Government to see to it that their negro allies are at least as well provided for in the way of homes as those who have been arrayed in arms against them. I have always believed, and still believe, that slavery is an institution sanctioned, if not established, by the Almighty, and the most humane and beneficial relation that can exist between labor and capital; still I think that this contest has proven that in a military sense it is an element of weakness, and the teachings of Providence as exhibited in this war dictate conclusively and imperatively that to secure and perpetuate our independence we must emancipate the negro. P. S.—We should then get rid of the only impediment in the way of an exchange of prisoners, thus getting 30,000 or 40,000 more men in the field. I have given you what I conceive to be the only solution to our difficulties. How to effect this is a serious difficulty. Men are reluctant— in fact it might be imprudent to discuss this thing publicly, but we know that in great crises men think and act rapidly, or at least should do so. If Congress could be convinced of the correctness of this course they could, in convention with the Governors of the States, devise some method by which conventions of the States could be held and the necessary measures adopted; first by law of Congress, if necessary, provide for paying the owners for them. I have not found a single slave-holder with whom I have conversed but is willing to submit to the measure if deemed necessary by the proper authorities. Indeed, I have no doubt of the power of Congress as a military necessity to impress all of the able-bodied male negroes and pay for them, giving them their freedom, and providing for paying for the rest upon the condition of manumission, but the other course would be least objectionable. We burn an individual’s cotton, corn, or meat to keep it from the enemy, so we can take his negro man and set him free to keep him from recruiting the enemy’s Army. I have written you this much hoping it may aid you in some way. I have shown what I have written to no one, nor communicated my intentions to any one. If you think what I have written worth anything, make what use of it you choose. If not, just stick it between the bars of your grate. What I have written is with an honest endeavor to aid you in guiding our ship through the perils and darkness which surround her, and from no feeling of dissatisfaction or distrust as to yourself, for you have all my sympathies and all of my trust and confidence. With diffidence and the warmest admiration and respect, I remain your friend, P. $.—Written very hurriedly and with no effort at arrangement, but only as ”food for thought.” ies EG I opened the envelope to say that my communication was written before I heard of the return of our commissioners, and that I am more than sustained by their report and the action of the Yankee Congress on the slavery question, and now we have only to decide on or between emancipation for our independence or subjugation and emancipation, coupled with negro equality or superiority, as our enemies may elect. A iGo & haere [Indorsement.] Respectfully referred, by direction of the President, to the Honorable Secretary of War.

BURTON N. HARRISON,