Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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[263] struggling to be freed from their bonds, would their masters have dared to leave them, as was done, and would they have remained as they did, continuing their usual duties, or could the proclamation of emancipation have been put on the plea of a military necessity, if the fact had been that the negroes were forced to serve, and desired only an opportunity to rise against their masters? It will be remembered that when the proclamation was issued it was confessed by President Lincoln to be a nullity beyond the limit within which it could be enforced by the federal troops.

To direct the production, preservation, collection, and distribution of food for the army required a man of rare capacity and character at the head of the subsistence department. It was our good fortune to have such a one in Colonel L. B. Northrop, who was appointed commissary general at the organization of the bureaus of the executive department of the Confederate government. He had been an officer of the United States army, had served in various parts of the South, had been for some time on duty in the commissariat, and to the special and general knowledge thus acquired added strong practical sense and incorruptible integrity. Of him and the operations of the subsistence department I shall have more to say hereafter, when treating of the bureaus of the Confederacy.

Assured of an army as large as the population of the Confederate States could furnish, and a sufficient supply of subsistence for such an army, at least until the chances of war should interfere with production and transportation, the immediate object of attention was the organization, instruction, and equipment of the army.

As heretofore stated, there was a prevailing belief that there would be no war, or if any, that it would be of very short duration. Therefore the first bill which passed the provisional Congress provided for receiving troops for short periods—as my memory serves, for sixty days. The chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, the heroic Colonel Bartow, who sealed his devotion to the cause with his life's blood on the field of Manassas, in deference to my earnest remonstrance against such a policy, returned with the bill to the House (the Congress then consisted of but one house), and procured a modification by which the term of service was extended to twelve months unless sooner discharged.

I had urged upon him, in our conference, the adoption of a much longer period, but he assured me that one year was as much as the Congress would agree to. On this, as on other occasions, that Congress showed a generous desire to yield their preconceived opinions to my objections as far as they consistently could, and, there being but one