Fidelity to principle.
The dominant characteristic of
Mr. Davis was his fidelity to principle.
It was well said of him, ‘He bent to none but God.’
He came among us as a Roman born out of time.
It was impossible for him to ask pardon, so long as he felt he had done his duty conscientiously as he saw it, and he was never forgiven.
One after another his great comrades entered the Beyond until he stood alone, but he never wavered.
He passed from us a stern and majestic figure, broken, but never bent.
‘In official life,’ said
Senator Reagan, his
Postmaster-General, ‘he knew no word but duty.’
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young man and an ambitious soldier, he refused
President Polk's offer of a brigadier-generalship, because he thought the appointment exceeded the president's constitutional power.
He answered thus the solicitations of friends to send a force of men to protect his plantation and property in danger of seizure, ‘The President of the
Confederacy cannot afford to use public means to protect private interests.’
His aide,
Governor Lubbock, of
Texas, said of him: ‘From the day I took service with him to the very moment we separated, subsequent to our capture, I witnessed his unselfishness.
He forgot himself, and displayed more self-abnegation than any other human being I have ever known.’
One of the strongest traits of his character was his aversion to receive gifts.
He declined the beautiful home offered him by the people of this generous city.
Over and over again he refused to receive gifts of money, even in his greatest extremities.
Mr. Davis' tenderness of heart was noticeable.
On one occasion a commander of the United States forces in
Missouri took nine Confederate prisoners and hung them in infamous disregard of the laws of war. The people clamored loudly for retaliation in kind, and it was proposed in the very cabinet that an equal number of prisoners of war, then in Libby Prison, should be taken out and hanged.
‘I have not the heart,’ replied the man, afterwards accused of cruelty to prisoners, ‘to take these innocent soldiers, taken in honorable warfare, and hang them like convicted criminals.’
His
Attorney-General said of him: ‘I do not think I am a very cruel man, but I declare to you that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep
Mr. Davis up to the measure of justice.
He wanted to pardon everybody.
If ever a wife or a mother or a sister got into his presence it took but a little while for their tears to wash out the record.’
