Dixie Betrayed by David J. Eicher Page A

state’s pro-Southern governor, Claiborne F. Jackson,
     called a special session of the legislature, and the state teetered on secession for several months. Secession was brewing
     in Kentucky, too, and a pro-Southern contingency began meeting in the southern part of the state to start a Confederate government.
     Arizona Territory considered itself pro-Confederate, and rumblings of secession were heard there. Native Americans scattered
     across the Plains and American Southwest felt a strong attraction to the Confederacy. Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Creeks,
     and Cherokees held meetings, declared themselves free nations, and appointed commissioners to meet with the Confederacy. On
     May 3 Lincoln had called for more volunteers, building the Yankee army to nearly 160,000 strong. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee,
     and North Carolina seceded, making eleven Confederate states. The potential for others to join the Confederate cause seemed
     real.
    On the battlefields, events were moving slowly. Soldiers like John Worsham of the Twenty-first Virginia were drilled to within
     an inch of their lives but wondered if they would see real action. In the late spring of 1861, Worsham’s men, equipped with
     the best uniforms and guns they could obtain, moved slowly into the Shenandoah Valley under the guidance of Brig. Gen. Thomas
     J. Jackson, an eccentric ex-professor from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. The overall commander of this force
     of several thousand, consisting of Virginia state troops, was Maj. Gen. Robert E. Lee. Near month’s end, on May 29, Worsham
     had his first taste of battle. Near Aquia Creek, Virginia, a Federal gunboat stopped and fired a few shots before voyaging
     away. It was rather a letdown. But a week later three Yankee gunboats approached the position of the Twenty-first Virginia
     and, in Worsham’s words, “commenced to bombard the earthworks near the wharf.”
    Worsham reported that “the enemy threw six-, eight-, and ten-inch shots at Captain Walker, who put some of his small three-inch
     rifled cannon into the works and replied. The firing lasted several hours.” During the action, nearly all the Yankee cannonballs
     whizzed over the heads of Worsham and his comrades. “The family living inside the earthworks had a chicken coop knocked to
     pieces,” Worsham wrote. “The old cock confined in it came out of the ruins, mounted the debris, flapped his wings, and crowed.
     That was the only casualty on our side.” 13
    Action began to sprout elsewhere across the American landscape. Yankee Brig. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, without authority, moved
     forces into Baltimore and occupied the city, which had well-known Southern sympathies. Riots erupted in St. Louis, in the
     center of another area of divided loyalties. Near the end of May, Yankee troops advanced into Virginia, occupying Alexandria
     and pushing out three small Confederate brigades.
    Late in the month the Confederacy pulled up stakes and moved to Richmond.

Chapter 5
A Curious Cabinet
    T HE first weeks of summer 1861 produced a terrific swell of war across the South, particularly after Lincoln had called for troops
     to bring the Confederates back into the Union. As young men rode horses, fitted uniforms, tested weapons, and organized companies
     all across the South, Davis organized his cabinet. The secretary of state would be Robert Toombs. Christopher G. Memminger
     of South Carolina would be the secretary of the treasury. The secretary of war was Leroy P. Walker. Floridian Stephen R. Mallory
     was secretary of the navy. John H. Reagan of Texas was the postmaster general. The office of attorney general was filled by
     Judah P. Benjamin, an intellectual who many would call the “brains of the Confederacy.” (In the U.S. government, the attorney
     general was not a cabinet-level post; the Confederacy tried to correct this by making it so.)
    At the government’s formation in Montgomery, no foreign policy for the