Better Confederate presidents than Jefferson Davis

Which Southern politicians would have done a better job as Confederate president than Jefferson Davis, and why? How likely would these replacements be to take his role?
 
I often wondered if John Breckenridge would have been a good president, he was a good vice-president...
 

Skallagrim

Banned
The trouble is that he was from Kentucky, which never officially joined the Confederacy, so unless he moves to Tennessee or something...

He was the candidate the southern states had supported; if he'd moved to the fledgling CSA at once and applied for citizenship - with the clear intention of serving politically "in any way I can" (but obviously understood to mean "as president") - he'd have considerable support from the outset. Of course, Jefferson Davis was unanimously elected president by the provisional congress in Montgomery on February 9, 1861. By that point, none of the Upper South had seceded yet, and it was doubtful if those states would secede at all. So for Breckenridge to cast in his lot with what was at that time purely a Deep South affair... that would be quite a leap of faith for him.

Obviously, there can be little doubt that if he somehow did become president, he'd be far better than Davis.

Other leading candidates, incidentally, had their own failings. On the whole, I don't see men like Toombs or Stephens doing much better than Davis. In fact, the only Confederate cabinet members (other than Breckenridge) that I would consider highly capable men are the two who would never be elected president in a million years: Judah P. Benjamin and John Reagan. (Yes, Reagan, the Postmaster General. He was so administratively capable that in spite of the war, his department still ran a profit. "[T]he only post office department in American history to pay its own way," according to William C. Davis.)
 
To quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

***

In the absence of Davis, a Georgian would stand a good chance of being
elected. However, one problem is that there were three plausible Georgian
contenders--Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb. The second problem is that even if
you could get Georgia to unite behind one of them, all three had their
disadvantages: (1) I like the idea of Toombs, especially because of his
warning against firing on Fort Sumter--but he was known for excessive
imbibing. (2) Stephens had been anti-secessionist until the last minute--and
while the Confederates did not want a fire-eater as president (a moderate
would be better for encouraging the Upper South states to join the
Confederacy), Stephens seemed to be a bit *too* moderate. (3) Cobb, chairman
of the Montgomery convention, did not relish the responsibilities of the
presidency, and seems to have made this fact known.

Let's say that in the absence of Davis, Cobb overcomes his reluctance and is
chosen. How would his presidency differ from Davis's? In OTL, unlike
Stephens and Toombs, he remained loyal to Davis, but did oppose the latter's
last-minute attempt to enlist slaves as soldiers: "If slaves will make good
soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/r7o6BnyfwoY/lkXbXW2MpdIJ
 
This may be basic for most of you, but can someone fill me in on what Davis did that hurt the Confederacy. The criticisms I've read ('interfered with the generals') were too vague to really assess whether they were valid.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Davis was arguably a much better wartime president than Lincoln, amazing as it may seem. The key point here is "wartime president" - he managed to keep his focus on what the primary Confederate point of military effort was (to whit, the actions of the Army of Northern Virginia) and to support the commander he had chosen (to whit, Lee) for pretty much the whole of their partnership. This is in stark contrast with Lincoln (who went through several generals at breakneck speed).


A specific example is probably worth considering. Within a few weeks of one another, both the AoNV and the AotP had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth, which crippled the transport of the army and rendered them unable to move.

When it hit the AotP, Lincoln's response to McClellan's calls for help was to make his famous bon mot about borrowing the army for a short time; when it hit the AoNV, Davis opened the pocketbook and paid for new horses.
 

Grimbald

Monthly Donor
An ideal Confederate President would have grasped the fact that the south had lost as soon as Grant got to the James and began the investment of Richmond. Terms could have been had at that point that would have provided for compensated freedom for slaves and financial assistance in rebuilding from the destruction caused by the war.

Now who could have / would have pulled that off?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
An ideal Confederate President would have grasped the fact that the south had lost as soon as Grant got to the James and began the investment of Richmond. Terms could have been had at that point that would have provided for compensated freedom for slaves and financial assistance in rebuilding from the destruction caused by the war.
Um, by that logic the South had lost as soon as McClellan got to the James. He was then ordered off by Lincoln and Halleck (IIRC) - the South basically hoped that would happen again, and indeed Halleck thought it would be a good idea to withdraw a second time.
 
Davis was arguably a much better wartime president than Lincoln, amazing as it may seem. The key point here is "wartime president" - he managed to keep his focus on what the primary Confederate point of military effort was (to whit, the actions of the Army of Northern Virginia) and to support the commander he had chosen (to whit, Lee) for pretty much the whole of their partnership. This is in stark contrast with Lincoln (who went through several generals at breakneck speed).


A specific example is probably worth considering. Within a few weeks of one another, both the AoNV and the AotP had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth, which crippled the transport of the army and rendered them unable to move.

When it hit the AotP, Lincoln's response to McClellan's calls for help was to make his famous bon mot about borrowing the army for a short time; when it hit the AoNV, Davis opened the pocketbook and paid for new horses.

Lincoln said "if McClellan did not wish to use the Army, he would like to borrow it" on January 10, 1862. McClellan reported the hoof-and-mouth on October 25, 1862, as well as complaining the well horses were "absolutely broken down from fatigue and want of flesh". And Lincoln was sending horses to McClellan.

Davis came to the presidency with a much better military resume than Lincoln, but Davis did nowhere near as good a job. Davis seemed incapable of admitting he had made a mistake and thus incapable of learning from them. Davis valued personal loyalty over competence and had a talent for turning friends into enemies. Davis tried to fill his cabinet with yes-men, then used them as scapegoats for failed policies. He micromanaged the war, trying to turn his Secretary of War into a glorified clerk and actively fought the creation of the position of General-in-Chief, yet never came up with a plan to win the war. Davis divided the Confederacy into too many and too small military districts and slapped generals down if they tried to show initiative and cross those boundaries to aid each other or exploit Union weaknesses, because the generals hadn't shared the ideas with Davis first and gotten his permission. Davis sent diplomats to seek foreign recognition, yet gave them nothing to negotiate with. Davis proved a poor judge of military ability - he thought AS Johnston was a military genius, but Johnston was woefully unfit for the task. Davis' kept the grossly inept Leonidas Polk and Lucius Northrop on out of personal friendship, long after their incompetence was clear. Davis elevated John Bell Hood well above Hood's level of competence and kept him there till Hood had largely wrecked the Army of Tennessee. And there's the firing on Ft Sumter, which Robert Toombs correctly said put the Confederacy in the wrong and lost them every friend they had in the North.
 
I won't argue that a "better" CSA president than Davis might not have been found. The problem was that the Confederate government was pretty dysfunctional in its design, and the CSA had all sorts of problems with manpower and industry that a "better" president could not solve. No CSA president could get a "better" peace settlement. Earlier on, the CSA did not see itself as losing. After Antietam and then the Emancipation Proclamation surrender meant the end of slavery and that was simply not going to happen. Even towards the end when the CSA sent some negotiators north their position was simply unacceptable to the Union.

A better president for the CSA won't bring the UK and France fully in or even provide recognition, it won't make any change in the abysmal industrial situation of the CSA, it won't prevent the sort of state vs state and state vs central government that plagued the CSA, and while preventing some of the interventions of Davis may make a difference here and there it won't change the overall military actions and balance.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Lincoln said "if McClellan did not wish to use the Army, he would like to borrow it" on January 10, 1862.
While I'll admit to the mistake, that's also a ridiculously silly thing for Lincoln to say at that time - even worse than at the time I'd assumed he was saying it. Campaigning in winter is very difficult (in a normal year, let alone the unusually poor year weather-wise of early 1862), and it shows that Lincoln was already ill predisposed to McClellan before the man had done any of his supposed errors.


As for being broken-down, note that the horses they're discussing are (as McClellan notes) the same ones from the Peninsula where they'd been heavily worked.
 
I wonder if anyone could have stopped the forces in Charleston from firing on Fort Sumter? The reality was that if the north could reinforce Sumter, Pulaski, Pickens, and other coastal forts taking them could have become very problematic for the CSA. When things finally came to a head, the Anaconda could have begun strangling the CSA sooner and more effectively.
 

dcharleos

Donor
Davis proved a poor judge of military ability - he thought AS Johnston was a military genius, but Johnston was woefully unfit for the task.

My only quibble with your post--ASJ being unfit. We'll never really know, but he certainly knocked Grant on his ass during the first part of Shiloh. His plan, had it been carried out by Beauregard, was simple and most likely would have been more effective than what actually happened. Seems to me that he showed potential
 
Um, by that logic the South had lost as soon as McClellan got to the James. He was then ordered off by Lincoln and Halleck (IIRC) - the South basically hoped that would happen again, and indeed Halleck thought it would be a good idea to withdraw a second time.

McClellan was not ordered off until after he had been repulsed by Lee. There are several differences between 1862 and 1864 that you are ignoring. In 1864, Robert E Lee said ""We must destroy this Army of Grant's before he gets to the James River. If he gets there it will become a siege and then it will be a mere question of time."
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Robert Toombs was the man most likely to come out of the Montgomery Convention as President. In some ways, he would have been a better President than Davis. His tenure in the Senate revealed him to be an expert on fiscal policy, which would have been of vast benefit to the Confederacy (poor fiscal policy on the part of the Confederate government did more damage to them than any number of battlefield defeats). He also was generally a man of intelligence and would have shared with Davis the great advantage Davis brought to the office: unwavering devotion to the cause.

However, Toombs had three gigantic strikes against him. First, he was cantankerous and argumentative - not bad for a legislator but bad for an executive. Second, he had a passionate hatred of West Pointers, always being suspicious of a standing army and sharing the old Jeffersonian belief in a citizen militia. This would not have helped his relations with generals. Third, he was half drunk most of the time. Indeed, this is why he failed to gain the presidency in 1861; the night before the vote, he got utterly smashed in the bar room of the Exchange Hotel and made an absolute fool of himself in front of several delegates, who quickly spread the word about what had happened.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I often wondered if John Breckenridge would have been a good president, he was a good vice-president...

He certainly would have been the best choice. But he did not join the Confederate cause until October of 1861, half a year after the Montgomery Convention had chosen Davis.

He was by far the best Confederate Secretary of War. Too bad for the South that he didn't take office until February of 1865, long past the time when victory for the South was achievable. One wonders what would have happened had he been appointed in early 1862.
 
He certainly would have been the best choice. But he did not join the Confederate cause until October of 1861, half a year after the Montgomery Convention had chosen Davis.

He was by far the best Confederate Secretary of War. Too bad for the South that he didn't take office until February of 1865, long past the time when victory for the South was achievable. One wonders what would have happened had he been appointed in early 1862.
The Confederates had a presidential election in November 1861; OTL it was uncontested, but could Breckinridge have run theoretically?
 
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