On February 22, 1862, Jefferson Davis committed the one irretrievable
mistake of his administration. He consented to his inauguration as
permanent President of the Confederacy under the strict forms of
Constitutional law.

The South was entering the shadows of the darkest hour of her new life.
A military dictator clothed with autocratic power could have subdued the
discordant elements and marshaled the resources of the country to meet
the crisis. A constitutional President would bind himself hand and foot
with legal forms. A military dictator might ride to victory and carry
his country with him.

His two Commanding Generals had allowed the victorious army of Manassas
to drift into a rabble while they wrangled for position, precedence and
power.

The swift and terrible blows which the navy had dealt the South,
delivered so silently and yet with such deadly effect that the people
had not yet realized their import, had convinced the President that the
war would be one of the bloodiest in history.

The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson with the evacuation of
Nashville had been a sword thrust into the heart of the lower South. The
extent of these disasters had not been realized by the public. The South
was yet a sleeping lioness. She could be roused and her powers wielded
with certainty by one man. But his hand must be firm.

There was one man in the Cabinet of the Confederacy who clearly saw this
from the first dawn of the new year--Judah P. Benjamin, the astute
Secretary of War. His keen logical mind had brushed aside the fog of
sentiment and saw _one_ thing--the need of success and the way in which
to attain it.

The morning of February twenty-second was Washington's birthday, and for
that reason fixed by the South as the day of the inauguration of their
President. Nothing could have shown more clearly the tenacity with which
the Southern people were clinging to their old forms. The day slowly
dawned through lowering storm clouds.

The President went early to his office for a consultation with the
members of his new Cabinet. Judah P. Benjamin, his chosen chief
counselor as Secretary of State, was unusually reticent. The details of
the inauguration were quickly agreed on and Davis hastened to return to
his room at the White House to complete his preparations for the
ceremony.

Benjamin followed his Chief thirty minutes later with the most important
communication he had ever decided to make.

As the most tr