JEFFERSON DAVIS
For some time after the brothers' war it was very generally believed that
Davis had been one of the Mississippi repudiators; that through all his
ante-bellum public career he had been an unconditional secessionist--what
we in the south mean by a fire-eater; that cherishing an accursed ambition
for the presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a secret
conspiracy which consummated secession; that as the chief executive of the
Confederate States he aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman
cruelties upon federal prisoners of war; that he was accessory to the
murder of President Lincoln; and that when captured he was disguised as a
woman. I suppose that these accusations--all of which are utterly
untrue--are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have attained
some currency abroad. I note that the leading German encyclopedia--that of
Brockhaus--repeats those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But "The Real
Jefferson Davis," as Landon Knight has of late presented
him,[121]--without hostile bias and with something like an approach to
completeness--is at least beginning to be recognized outside of the south.
It is about as certain as anything in the future can be that all
detraction from the moral character and patriotism of Davis will after
some while wear itself out. I believe far greater favor than mere
vindication from false accusation will at last be awarded him in every
part of his own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I shall try
to bring out fully the praise and appreciation which world history will,
as seems probable to me, shower upon his career. Here I can take time to
mention only the beginning of that great fame which we of this day have
looked upon. We saw him fall from one of the highest and proudest places
in which for four years he had been the talk and envy of the earth. We saw
him in sheer helplessness, accused of murder and treason, his feeble
health and personal comfort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped
upon him--we saw him endure all the most refined tortures of imprisonment.
Then we saw him set free--his innocence confessed by the acts of his
accusers. Then for over twenty years he lived with the people who under
his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we saw them always eager to
pay him demonstrations of the warmest love; we saw them bury him with
inconsolable grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by
reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate States, giving him
there a conspicuous monument, and making the anniversary of his birth a
legal holiday in different States. This--which we impressively mark now as
only a beginning of glory--must develop into something far larger.
Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course, you first think of that
with which his name is most closely connected--his elevation and his great
fall. Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from this point,
which is, that he was the head of a subverted revolutionary government. He
is one of a few who, like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were
suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates a rival more than
sovereignty--which, be it remembered, is the representative of a distinct
nationality. Note how inevitably a young queen bee is killed by her own
mother when found in the hive by the latter. Humanity has not in this
particular evolved as yet very far above bee nature; and the fate of
Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of a
defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a surprise that the
life of Davis was spared when American frenzy was at its height. Think of
some of the things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz were hanged;
the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were made rulers of the southern whites;
it was provided _ex post facto_ that the high moral duty of paying for the
emancipated slaves should never be done. While good men and women both of
the north and the south will always censure with extreme severity the
treatment which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note it as a
most significant sign of American progress that he was at last allowed to
go forth and live without molestation the rest of his life among his old
followers.
Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let us bring out more
vividly the novelty of his example by contrasting him with the failing
leaders of revolutions mentioned above. Richard Cromwell could be
tolerated as a private man by the restored royal government, because his
protectorate had been, so far as he himself is considered, a mere
accident. It was the mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and
beheaded Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These, when he died,
came to his son, who in ability and ambition was a cipher. They who set
him aside would have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him.
His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled himself. Richard Cromwell,
having been cast out of the protectorate, living forgotten in England, is
no parallel to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored by the
entire south with mounting demonstration to his death. Had Napoleon lived
in France and Kruger in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they
would be parallels. As it is, the subsequent life of Davis is without any
parallel.
Having thus shown you what it is that Davis especially examples, let us
now give you briefly such a biography as suits the purpose of this book.
The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and heart, of form, mien,
and face, of speech and manners. He was not of the very first rank, as
Webster, Toombs, and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian Zeus,
nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares. When President Pierce and
the members of his cabinet were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens
and students called them out during the stop of the train at the Basin. As
we went away it seemed to me that no speech but that of Davis was
remembered. Compliments were rained upon him. At last a student from New
York State cried, "He's an Apollo!" and all the hearers assented with
enthusiasm. This placed him right,--at the head of the Olympians in the
third circle.
Though he became a very prominent political leader, the choice of a
profession made by him was that of a soldier. And that profession was
always his first love. His early education, though very deficient and
limited, was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be content
until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a boy something which supplies
educational defects--a taste for study and a fondness of and access to
books. When at the age of thirty-five he made his debut in politics he had
become really a well-schooled and highly cultured man. He completed his
West Point course, graduating in July, 1828. His wife says: "He did not
pass very high in his class; but he attached no significance to class
standing, and considered the favorable verdict of his classmates of much
more importance."[122]
He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he resigned. I will cull
from the entertaining narrative of Mrs. Davis certain occurrences of his
army life which are characteristic.
Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Illinois, in 1831, with his scouts, he
found the boat stopped by ice, and the mail coach with certain wagons
going to the lead mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put themselves
at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks from the ice for a bridge.
Water was poured upon each block as soon as it was laid, and this
freezing, the block was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would
fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and round before the
fire until he was dry and ready to resume work. The bridge was soon
finished, and the entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that
there was something in Davis's appearance that invited full trust, and
that he was unwontedly quick and ingenious in expedient.
How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious temper and great size
by an unexpected blow, and then beat him into complete submission; and how
he captivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would not notice
the affair officially, illustrates his talent for command.
Men desperate and well armed had taken possession of the lead mines, and
they were to be removed. He tried to induce their consent by making them a
speech. Some weeks later he sought another conference. Finding a number
of them in a drinking booth, he was begged by his orderly not to go in.
"They will be certain to kill you," the orderly said; "I heard one of them
say they would."
"Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and, as they expressed it,
'gave them the time of day' [that is, he said "Good-morning" or what the
hour demanded]. He immediately added, after saluting them, 'My friends, I
am sure you have thought over my proposition and are going to drink to my
success. So I shall treat you all.' They gave him a cheer."[123]
How much more heroic is such Caesar-like courage and tact in quelling the
mob than to butcher misguided men with musketry.
I have reserved for emphasis here, as illustrating Davis's presence of
mind and readiness in emergency, two incidents which are earlier in time
than what I have just been telling. The first is this. One of the
professors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while he was a
cadet at West Point. Lecturing on presence of mind, this professor fixed
his eye on Davis "and said he doubted not there were many who, in an
emergency, would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice, but from
the mediocre nature of their minds. The insult was intended, and the
recipient of it was powerless to resent it. A few days afterwards, while
the building was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process
of making fireballs, when one took fire. The room was a magazine of
explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and calmly asked of the doughty
instructor, 'What shall I do, sir? This fireball is ignited.' The
professor said, 'Run for your lives!' and ran for his. Cadet Davis threw
it out of the window, and saved the building and a large number of lives
thereby."[124]
In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from confusion and an
alertness that is very rare. But the second thing which I have to tell is
still more remarkable.
While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set out in a boat with
some men to cut timber, accompanied by two _voyageurs_.
"At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who demanded a
trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to have no hostile
intentions, the little party rowed to the bank and began to parley.
However, the voyageurs ... soon saw that their peaceful tones were
only a cloak. They warned Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he
ordered his men to push out into the stream and make the best time
they could up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into
their canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the
white men to escape such experienced rowers.... If taken ... death by
torture was inevitable. They would have been captured had not
Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail with one of their
blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their favor, but it was very
boisterous. As it was a choice between certain death by the hands of
the Indians, or possible death by drowning, they availed themselves of
the slender chance left and escaped."[125]
These things which we have selected to tell of him prove that he had in
large measure some of the endowments which are indispensable to the
excellent soldier. They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in
Mexico. I must say here that I do not mean to claim first-rate ability for
him; but I do believe that he was equal or almost equal to the best in
that great department of the military requiring the powers of the gifted
officer and not those of the few born generals of the world.
It is a most amiable touch that he left the army to marry a woman the
choice of his heart, and give her a happy home. He cordially sacrificed
for her an occupation which he loved only less than herself. He had had as
brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in garrison duty and
service against the Indians. It must be remembered he had been promoted to
first lieutenant for gallantry.
It is proper to mention here one other fact of his army life. He had
resolved that if the regiment to which he belonged should be sent to help
execute the force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though he never
was a nullifier, his conscience could not permit him to abet in any way
the coercion of a sovereign State, as he always believed each one of the
United States to be.
His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a fell blow. Her husband
mourned her for nearly ten years. Then he made a most happy marriage with
the lady who survives him.
In 1836--the next year after the death of his first wife--he settled on a
plantation. Mr. Knight is especially happy in telling how, with his elder
brother Joseph, who had been a successful lawyer, but was now a rich
planter, as instructor and guide, he studied diligently for some while. To
quote:
"During the period of their residence together, the time not required
by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political
economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the
United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and
Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the
Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the
Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the
last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost
without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost
every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of
the United States."
Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became
deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must
note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a
considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was
of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in
the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by
feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must
early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest,
and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare
Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers
of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions
of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its
abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that
supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which
is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two
great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his
military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our
political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and
precisian than can be found in any other one of these.
In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his
brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it
seems to me.
He had now but one acquisition to make--to think on his legs and tell his
thoughts at the same time. Extempore speakers are generally made. But
Davis was a born one. He did not have that experience at the bar and in
the State legislature which has been the beginning of so many famous
American orators. The democrats of his county nominated him for the
legislature in 1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in a
stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubtable S. S. Prentiss,
Davis then being thirty-five years old. The debate consumed most of the
day. The disputants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result of the
campaign was in favor of Prentiss. As Davis, a democrat, was merely
leading a forlorn hope in a county overwhelmingly whig, that was to be
expected. But the pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this,
his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest speaker of the
State, astounded the auditors, and it seemed even to the whigs that the
raw debater while nominally losing had really triumphed.
The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr. Knight: "Mr. Davis took
a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as
one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known
beyond his own county, but at its conclusion his popularity had become so
great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he
should become a candidate for congress in the following year."
He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker. In 1845 Calhoun was
coming to Natchez. Davis was selected to welcome him with a speech. He
made careful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately married, took
down at his dictation. But when Calhoun had come, after a moment or two of
slowness in the exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory, and
delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated speech of taking
appropriateness.[126]
What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just and in such good
taste, that I quote it:
"From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery. Dates
and names were jotted down on two or three inches of paper, and these
sufficed. Mr. Davis's speeches never read as they were delivered; he
spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each other closely; a certain
magnetism of manner and the exceeding beauty and charm of his voice
moved the multitude, and there were apparently no inattentive or
indifferent listeners. He had one power that I have never seen
excelled; while speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd,
and seeing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces, he
answered ... with arguments addressed to the case in their minds. He
was never tiresome, because, as he said, he gave close attention to
the necessity of stopping when he was done.
Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indifferently
reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He was a
parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written oration, but it
did not, when uttered, impair the quality of his speeches, but rather
added a charm when accentuated by his voice and commended by his
gracious manner. At first his style was ornate, and poetry and fiction
were pressed from his crowded memory into service; but it was soon
changed into a plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be,
and doubtless was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses
are models of grace and ready command of language."[127]
He took his seat in the United States house of representatives in
December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was two years younger, beginning their
congressional careers together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the
Oregon question early in February, 1846. He was a modest member, but he
did all the duties of his place with praiseworthy diligence.
Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat and Webster a
pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be induced to join in the effort to
make political capital for his own party by blackening the name of
Webster. The minority report of the committee which investigated the
conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really made by Davis, who
was one of the committee. The stand taken by the latter, and the true
presentation which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt his
report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased with it.
Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis,
supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made
reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He
emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high value of military
education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the
latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good
work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of
the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee, a tailor. Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next
day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to
Davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering,
bastard, scrub aristocracy." To this the latter, justly indignant,
rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the
two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding
him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000
reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been
captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson--hoping
his words would be reported to Johnson--that there was one man in the
United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had
signed the proclamation; "for," said Davis, "he at least knew that I
preferred Lincoln to himself."
Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular
leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of
this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in
him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the
highest and proudest.
It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the
eye of the nation. Without canvassing for the place--he never did canvass
for a place--he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers,
and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." The president, authorized by a new
law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: "My husband
expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said
that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by
men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the
volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the
State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first
sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him."[128]
General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field
use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished
with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old
smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from
pillaging.
As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in
confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among
the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had
contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild
cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and
musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break.
Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed
himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge.
With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of
bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the
ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works
with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the
Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they
sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel]
burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its
surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its
capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the
following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans, and
Davis's Mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and
captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the
city."[129]
Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to
take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone
forth conspicuously in this affair.
He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista
against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball
drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making
a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened.
Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his
horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him
as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his
regiment and Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge of a
host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow
square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So
necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which
poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry
column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage
that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of
Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like
punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis
the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry.
The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis, as the colonel of a
raw regiment in these important engagements, is, so far as I know, without
any parallel. It was but natural that he should always afterwards believe
himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had become famous
throughout the whole country.
There was a vacancy in one of the United States senatorships from
Mississippi, and Davis was appointed to fill it. I need not go into much
detail at this point. He was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper
house. He maintained himself with growing ability. While he was
independent and self-reliant enough now and then to differ with Calhoun,
in the main he followed the latter as his leader. There was a dignity and
poise in his nature that suited the senate better than the house of
representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he asserted later that he
preferred the senate to any other place. As I contemplate his record at
this part of his life he impresses me as that one of all the more
prominent southern public men who was most fixed in the opinion that the
very surest preservative of the union was for the south to be always
unflinching and utterly uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of
every constitutional protection of slavery. He loved the union most
fondly. It was only the south that he loved more. Conscientious
doctrinaire as he was, he believed that the rights of the south were so
plain and palpable that if they were but stated they would be conceded by
the great mass of the northern people. He thought it was to encourage
disunion to surrender even a jot of our claim to equality in the
Territories and that the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His
anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-slavery men the more
we would be asked to yield, until at last we would be driven into the
ditch, when we could save the south only by secession. So he counselled
with all his might that the south should resolve to surrender nothing
whatever--to go out of the union rather than so to do. Let the north
understand this and the abolition party will disappear. That is the only
way to save the union. This explains why he refused to support the
compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for governor of Mississippi on
that issue. He was classed with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly
untrue. Remember that in 1860 he actually contemplated being the
democratic presidential candidate, and that Massachusetts sent a
delegation to the Charleston convention instructed for him.
A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He was as up to date in
adopting every new thing of merit as he had been in insisting upon
percussion-lock rifles for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence
and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his official duties were
truly exemplary. I wish especially to have my reader reflect upon two
things belonging here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest
to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their politics. When
remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not giving democrats the
preference in competition for appointments, he declared positively that he
should always make fitness and qualification the only conditions of such
selection. And his actions as long as he held the important office spoke
even louder than his words. Surely here is an example for these times to
profit by. The second thing really belongs to the same class as the first.
It is that when civil war actually prevailed in Kansas between the
anti-slavery men on one side and the pro-slavery men on the other, and the
commander of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be
absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme of pro-slavery he
gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an outspoken abolitionist, "whose honor,
ability, and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult
duty."[130]
The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the regular-army grooves in
which Davis's thoughts and tastes had long been moving.
He became United States senator again in 1857, which position he held
until the secession of his State. I need touch upon nothing but the
prominent part he took. Without knowing it he became the guide that
conducted the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing in
around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated. All that he did of
importance but led up to or supported his famous resolutions of February
2, 1860. Their gist was that if the judiciary and executive could not and
the Territorial legislature would not protect slave property in any of the
Territories, congress was bound to pass efficiently protecting laws, to
remain of force until the Territory was admitted as a State, with a
constitution that authorized or prohibited slavery.
Compare the speech he made for these resolutions with that made for them
by Toombs, and the wide difference of the two men comes out plainly. The
former is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism, expressed
with manly strength and eloquence, while the speaker does not see clearly
into the gulf of the brothers' war into which his measure has been made by
the fates the lever to plunge America. That of Toombs shows titanic
mastery of law and statesmanship, and almost full discernment of the
national catastrophe at the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in
the highest class of great speeches.
Compare the last speeches of each in the senate. Toombs's justification of
secession is with argument and appeal to conscience that the greatest men
cannot, and only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution, can
answer. Davis's does satisfy the conscience of the typical southerner, and
in the tone preserved from beginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The
pathos of his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other side.
It was especially in his freedom from offensive words and the gentlemanly
self-restraint of his manner that Davis showed as decidedly superior to
the other. In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some harsh and
heated words that I would blot into complete oblivion if I could. There is
not a single line in the other that I can find fault with. I will here
parallel them in another place that is strikingly illustrative. Some years
after the war the people of Mississippi wanted to send Davis back to the
United States senate. To this end the legislature memorialized him to
apply for the removal of his disability. He replied that repentance ought
always to precede asking for pardon, and that he had not yet repented. One
day about the same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if the
yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his darkest, and thundered, "No.
And God damn 'em, I haven't pardoned them." Of course the average man or
woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis's reply, and on
reflection will censure the other.
Davis was completely representative of the real chivalry of the south; and
from the Mexican war on, this was more and more recognized in the section.
When he was made president of the confederacy the great majority of the
people approved. He is such a gentleman; so conscientious; so attentive to
his public duties; and then his military education and experience make him
far superior to Lincoln--this was said by the general. Thus were his
disqualifications for the place concealed from the people of the south.
His chief defect was that not being a successful business man, he was not
a practical statesman. On this point we have already said enough.
His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to command the armies of
the confederacy. To the very last he believed he had the extreme of
military ability. During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he
often exclaimed, "If I could take one wing and Lee the other, I think we
could between us wrest a victory from those people."[131]
But he did not have extraordinary military capacity, as appears from the
facts which I will now tell.
He was on the field at First Manassas when that unprecedented panic seized
the federal army. It was instantaneously understood by the latest recruit
looking on from our side. The men and line officers around me ejaculated,
"We ought to press forward and go into Washington with 'em." Davis with
his training should have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and
recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the flight and raise
that panic to its top. There were remaining several hours of daylight,
during which five of his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten
thousand to flight, and when night came the excited imagination of the
fliers would re-enforce the confederates with a vast host of destroying
monsters behind and before. The federals losing all organization, were
racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which was a little more
than twenty miles away. They were choking the roads with abandoned
vehicles and artillery. As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had
there been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is more than
probable we should have got the bridge unharmed. We should have added
thousands to our prisoners. But far more important than this, would have
been the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and commissary
supplies of all sorts--in short, the entire baggage of the enemy--that
would have been ours for the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the
bridge before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's pontoons, or
captured material out of which to make a bridge of our own. We should have
crossed somehow, and at the place which circumstances and the insight of
genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really without a blow;
and what an immense addition to our booty would have been here. And the
prestige! In a day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore, the
consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of most true and valiant
fighters, would have been won for the Confederate States, and its northern
line instead of the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this would
have happened if Davis had been a Caesar and had Caesar-like used the one
great opportunity of the war. It must be set down to his credit that he
did far more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit. But he does
not seem to have thought of it until night; and at last he permitted
himself to be reasoned out of it.
There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful supineness of our
army after this victory. We were without transportation means, and a
retreating army always outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight
says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies, and of course men
without anything to eat had to wait until they could be fed. Beauregard
says we ought to have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable. All
such reasons come from those who ignore the situation. A real general
would have said to his soldiers, in the first moment of the panic, "You
are weary; it will rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him
because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry; there are full
haversacks and commissary wagons of your enemy just beyond Centerville
without defenders. Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington
city!" And such a general with just what infantry he could find to hand,
all the while being re-enforced by eager men catching up, pressing forward
as persistently as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French
flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of Washington when the sun
rose.
Mr. Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of Davis as the military
chieftain of the Confederate States.[132] I would abridge what can be said
here under these heads:
1. Each particular army ought to have operated as a part of the whole
force of the confederacy, and that whole force ought to have been wielded
as one machine. Instead of trying to effect this end, the president
decided that all exposed points must be defended. The result was that
these were taken one after another by superior armies. A military man will
understand me when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True strategy
dictated the abandonment of many places in order to assemble by using our
shorter interior lines a resistless power on a really decisive occasion.
McClellan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to have been
captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were.
2. He selected his generals and important officers according to his likes
and dislikes, and not according to their true qualifications.
3. He was without practical administrative talent in any high degree. Such
a man as Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, would have shown far superior to
him.
It will doubtless be the decision of future history that he was neither
statesman nor military man of sufficient ability for the presidency. He
did not want it. Compare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who
was the man of all to be president. The latter scenting battle in the air,
was really eager for the inevitable fighting to begin; Davis was cast down
and dejected. He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to him
to part with it. And then he was sure that there would be a long and
bloody brothers' war. What he wanted was to fight for the south so dear to
him. The news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest
surprise of his life. Says Mrs. Davis: "When reading the telegram he
looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a
few minutes' painful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a
sentence of death."[133]
Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says to his wife: "The
audience was large and brilliant. Upon my weary heart were showered
smiles, plaudits, and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and thorns
innumerable."[134]
And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent
government:
"Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his
room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest
prayer 'for the divine support I need so sorely' [as he said].... 'The
inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [The anterior proceedings
having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on
thus:]
"The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was
characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace,
especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to
heaven he said, 'With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging
the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during
its brief but eventful career, to Thee, O God, I trustingly commit
myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its
cause.'"
Then she adds:
"Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and
emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy,
evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me
a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected
me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went
home."[135]
So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with
superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to
be the target of their wrath against his people.
He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond
his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely
sighed more and more often:
"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."
His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But
in every one of these he did the right--to use Lincoln's grand word--as
God gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future
turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the
admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his
vanquisher.[136]
At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and
all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of
patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. Casabianca would
not go with those who were leaving the burning ship until his dead father
bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its
command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it.
He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the
war from a new base, when he was taken.
His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue
cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late
confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after
grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we
have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the
world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are
subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our
homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed,
and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hardship and
misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems
to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it
gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of
agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five
years--particularly the last three of them--are the one ugly dream of my
life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he
kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked
himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn
of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was
something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery,
contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I
kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a comforting
day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if I had fallen in
the front of my men on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my
utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog
staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. Had
that happened to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our
decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down
arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have
been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with
tears on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note. This would
sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts.
Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south
instituted Memorial Day. Each year when it comes they do rites of
remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie
in every graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio Grande. When the
day comes these women in their unforgetting love assemble the people, have
praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then
they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. It is an annual
holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. It is the
fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given--love from
those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no
return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the
co-operative demonstration of a whole people of "true lovers."[137]
I cannot say where and when the observance of Memorial Day began. Perhaps
Miss Davidson correctly asserts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in
1866.[138] It had reached its height at Charleston, South Carolina, in the
spring of 1867, when as prelude to decorating the graves in Magnolia
cemetery, Timrod's hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung:
"Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.
"Small tributes! but your shades shall smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.
"Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned."
The "true lovers" could no more forget their living leader in prison than
they could forget their soldiers in the grave. "Out of sight, out of mind"
could not be said of Davis during his two years' confinement. The concern
of his people mounted steadily. They made all his sufferings their own,
lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. When he was about to be
released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy than did the
unexpected victory of First Manassas. He was brought in custody to
Richmond by a James river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was
received:
"A great concourse of people had assembled. From the wharf to the
Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads--room had to be made by the
mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even
on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies
were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel,
where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved
prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a
mile up and down Main street. As he passed, one and another put out a
hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice
said: 'Hats off, Virginians,' and again every head was bared. This
noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of
bitter anguish.
When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and
drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other
gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. Our people
poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many
embraced him."
Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this
show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came.
They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood,
property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were
too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but
disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into
the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking
excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated
of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the
truest of lovers.
No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and
through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and
the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably
mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as
specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it
is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any
other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as
disloyal and treasonable.
For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president
of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their
love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept
the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and
without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United
States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the
State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he
sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of
poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that
cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our
hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and
with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under
difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in
every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and
more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger
justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We
thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a
good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the
slanders now current.
Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed
that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as
it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the
railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare
sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see
the train pass without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his
car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of
the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for
description.
When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting,
we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for
all our people.
Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere
as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts
of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpassed in profundity of feeling
and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of
the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and
the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and
men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his
gray hairs as they came in sight; "God bless him" displayed on every
corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I
will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He passed by a long
line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and
decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But
what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section
of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be
somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The
occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. Is it to be explained by
Mr. Davis's character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical
masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his
children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south
with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which
may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such
approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable?
When he was going through Mrs. Hill's yard to enter her house, little
girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one
begging, "Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers." The feeble man tried to
gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught
up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes.
I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently
raised Mr. Davis's hands to his lips, saying, "Let me kiss the hands that
were manacled for me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood.
What we have just described occurred in Georgia--a State in which of all
during the brothers' war the most formidable opposition to his
administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by
Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown--the most influential of all the
Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this
wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that
glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and
treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in
Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words
evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted
for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I
think I was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time.
While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley's
integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with
our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his
sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal
holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis's birth.
Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr.
Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy.
And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were
other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south
sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the
memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead
husband--far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia
gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells:
"Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan
asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to
deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed weeping by the
bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded
by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his
honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by
thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine
states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations
came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect
for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the
catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him
who had given them his life's service. The noble army of the West and
that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the
Washington Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to
his bier. The eloquent Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the
clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to
weeping thousands, and the strains of 'Rock of Ages,' once more bore
up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took
it again to himself."
These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief.
Nobody can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that
when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children
gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and
Dixon's line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over
his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black.
In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead
Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive,
and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing.
And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park.
On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a
monument itself, will long outlast the stone one.
Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the
Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the
proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who "can above himself
erect himself" estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him
more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else
shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere
love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing,
tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers--how dear are any of
these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife,
child. For almost a generation all these tokens were given the
ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they
were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his
burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give,
them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we
love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering
of regard from that brotherhood--to be made to feel that throughout the
whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love--the true man would
prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been
given only by happy ones to their victors--to such as Washington, Lincoln,
Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her
subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped
upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the
conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his
countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the
conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis's
historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown.
The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited
nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by
the brothers' war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought
and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that
Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of
fame. There he will be the world's contemplation, showing something like
Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt
turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was
unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and
glory.