Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[656] was put to the test, on the proposition to take the control and conduct of the armies from his hands, it was found that his party had dwindled down to an insignificant number, and that many who had previously supported him in much of evil report, now joined in recording the verdict of incompetency against him. When the vote came to be taken upon the proposition to put Lee in command of all the Confederate armies, Senator Henry of Kentucky, long the constant and intelligent friend of President Davis-indeed the leader of his party in the Confederate Senate-felt constrained to vote for this important change in the Administration of the Southern Confederacy. On the occasion of a social visit to the family of the President, he was called to task by Mrs. Davis, who bitterly inveighed against the purpose of Congress to diminish the power of her husband. She spoke with a spirit so extraordinary, that her words were well remembered. “If I were Mr. Davis,” she said, “I would die or be hung before I would submit to the humiliation.”

The man who was by general assent leader of the Congressional party against the President, was Senator Wigfall, of Texas. He had one of the largest brains in the Confederacy. He was a man of scarred face and fierce aspect, but with rare gifts of oratory; in argument he dealt blows like those of the sledge-hammer; he was bitter in his words, his delivery was careless and slovenly to affectation, but some of his sentences were models of classic force, and as clear-cut as the diamond. The terrible denunciations of this extraordinary man will be remembered by those who visited the halls of legislation in Richmond; but the newspapers were afraid to publish his speeches, beyond some softened and shallow sketches of the reporters. It is a pity that all of this splendid, fiery oratory, which might have matched whatever we know of historical invective, has been lost to the world. It is only now in the faint reflection of these censures of President Davis, we may study the character of the man who, while be did much to ornament the cause of the Confederacy, yet persisted to the last in a long course of practical errours, and was dead alike to censure and expostulation.

President Davis had a great reputation in the Confederacy for a certain sort of firmness. He was almost inaccessible to the advice and argument of those who might aspire to intellectual equality, and possibly dispute with him the credit of public measures. No man could receive a delegation of Congressmen, or any company of persons who had advice to give, or suggestions to make, with such a well-bred grace, with a politeness so studied as to be almost sarcastic, with a manner that so plainly gave the idea that his company talked to a post. But history furnishes numerous examples of men who, firm as flint in public estimation, and superiour to the common addresses of humanity, have yet been as wax in the hands of small and unworthy favourites. Severest tyrants have been governed by