Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 17., Life, services and character of <a target="_blank" onclick="openPopupWindow(this); return false" href="entityvote?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0001&auth=davis,jefferson&n=1&type=person">Jefferson Davis</a>., The Constitution of nature and the jury of the sword.

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19th-Century American

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Table of Contents:

Confederate surgeons.

The race problem in the South —Was the Fifteenth Amendment a mistake?

A word with the critics.

A list of Confederate officers, prisoners, who were held by Federal authority on Morris Island, S. C. , under Confederate fire from September 7th to October 21st , 1864 .

Memoir of Gen. C. R. Wheat , commander of the Louisiana Tiger Battalion

The last words of Major Wheat .

The siege and evacuation of Savannah, Georgia , in December , 1864 .

Annual Reunion of the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia .

Life, services and character of Jefferson Davis .

Preliminary proceedings on the part of the General Assembly .

Committee on the part of the Senate :

Committee on the part of the House of Delegates :

Severe scrutiny of his life and character.

The South knew him and therefore honors him.

Some personal traits of character.

Neither selfish, Cold, nor cruel.

Humanity to prisoners of war.

He resented wrong, but bore neither hatred nor malice.

Rigid Adherence to principle.

Representative men interpret the genius of peoples.

A true representative man of the South .

He truly represented the South as a constitutional President .

He truly represented the South in not Negotiating for peace on other terms than independence.

Revolutions can only die in the last ditch.

Early days—Davis and Lincoln .

A planter's life— 835 to 1843 .

His various employments from 1843 to 1861 .

Military services in Mexico .

In the Cabinet of President Pierce .

First public appearance in politics—in the House of Representatives in 1845 .

In the Senate .

Two speeches in Congress about the Mexican war—Davis and Lincoln , again.

Both Davis and Lincoln revolutionists.

A great representative of American principles and of Anglo- Saxon character.

Germs of controversy not in differences of race, morals, or creed of Early settlers.

North and South controlled by predominant traits of race.

The unities of the Anglo - Saxon race.

Jefferson Davis entitled to stand in the Pantheon of the world's great men.

Unity of the Southern colonies against slavery.

Unity of American colonies in Yielding to slavery.

Unity of America in slavery when independence was declared and the Constitution ordained.

Lincoln and slavery— charity to all.

Decay of slavery in the North and Growth in the South due to natural and not moral causes.

Two revolutions rising on parallel lines—the Revolution of the North against the Constitution .

The Northern giant—free white labor.

The Southern Revolution.

The South stands for race integrity.

The South and the Union —its battles.

The love of the South for American institutions.

The South Leads in Acquiring the national domain.

Right of secession not denied until recently.

Secession an open question in 1861 .

No arbiter to decide the question of secession.

Secession preached and threatened in all sections—the Northern record for it and against extension of the Union .

Candid view from the North .

Contemporary Northern opinions of secession.

The balance of power the political question underlying secession.

The United States treated secession as a political question and met it by Revolution.

The country unified by natural laws.

The Constitution of nature and the jury of the sword.

The South in the Union at home.

Jefferson Davis a lover of the Union .

Repudiation of Disunionism and efforts to save the Union .

Pleading for conciliation.

Farewell to the Senate .

Secession and Virginia .

The odds against the Confederacy explain its fall.

Jefferson Davis created and maintained a nation.

The Cabinet of Jefferson Davis .

His Generals and his armies.

Let him rest in Richmond .

The future will honor him.

The Twelfth Georgia Infantry .

The Monument to General Robert E. Lee .

Incidents of the parade.

Testimonials from visiting soldiers.

Letters of R. E. Lee .

At Lee 's tomb.

Lee 's Birthday: eminent men of the United States send sentiments for the day—ministers, soldiers, statesmen and scholars each bring an offering.

Lee as an educator.

Robert E. Lee .

Itinerary of the Fourth Virginia cavalry . March 27th - April 9th , 1865 .

Prisoners of the civil war.

Valuable war relic.

Casualties in the old First at Gettysburg : two out of every three men who were carried into the charge shot down.

Lee 's Lieutenants.

Development of the free soil idea in the United States .

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The Constitution of nature and the jury of the sword.

The rivalry, not the harmony, of sections won the empire of the Union; its physical constitution proved more powerful than its written one; in the absence of a judge all appealed to the jury of the sword. We belong to a high-handed race and understand the law of the sword, for the men of independence in 1776 and 1861 were of the same blood as those who in each case cried, ‘Disperse, ye rebels.’ And were I of the North I would prefer to avow that it made conquest by the high hand, than coin the great strife that marshalled over three millions of soldiers into police-court technicalities and belittles a revolution continent wide into the quelling of an insurrection and the vicarious punishment of its leader. The greatest conqueror proclaims his naked deed.

Richmond, VA. 1889.

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