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Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 3: (search)
policy they had indicated and instructed me in their official character to pursue. I pointed out the mode in which their policy could, in my opinion, be executed without bloodshed or disastrous convulsion, but in terms of bitter scorn alluded to such as would insult me with a desire to destroy the Union, for which my whole life proved me to be a devotee. Pardon the egotism, in consideration of the occasion, when I say to you that my father and my uncles fought through the Revolution of 1776, giving their youth, their blood, and their little patrimony to the constitutional freedom which I claim as my inheritance. Three of my brothers fought in the war of 1812. Two of them were comrades of the Hero of the Hermitage, and received his commendation for gallantry at New Orleans. At sixteen years of age I was given to the service of my country; for twelve years of my life I have borne its arms and served it zealously, if not well. As I feel the infirmities, which suffering more than
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 7: (search)
New York Tribune, which had been the organ of the abolitionists, and which now declared that, if the cotton States wished to withdraw from the Union, they should be allowed to do so; that any attempt to compel them to remain, by force, would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and to the fundamental ideas upon which human liberty is based; and that, if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Union in 1861. Again, it was said by the same journal that sooner than compromise with the South and abandon the Chicago platform, they would let the Union slide. Taunting expressions were freely used—as, for example, If the Southern people wish to leave the Union we will do our best to forward their views. All this, it must be admitted, was quite consistent with the oft-repeated declaration
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 8: (search)
ical temple. Members of the legislature vacated their seats and left the state to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from the land of his birth, the state he had served so long and so well, with feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a resting place among those who did not regard it a crime to adhere to the principles of 1776 and 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them in the resolutions of 1798-‘99. About the same time others of great worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that where liberty is there is my country, left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation, to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an inheritance to their posterity. Space would not suffice for a complete list of the refugees who became
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 11: (search)
overnment deceptively delayed to answer, while making ready for war. To the calm judgment of mankind is submitted the question, Who was responsible for the war between the states? Virginia, whose history, from the beginning of the Revolution of 1776, had been a long course of sacrifices for the benefit of her sister states and for the preservation of the Union she had mainly contributed to establish, clung to it with the devotion of a mother. It has been shown how her efforts to check dissorom the ground; the spirits of Washington and Jefferson moved among her people. There was but one course consistent with her stainless reputation and often-declared tenets, as to the liberties of her people, which she could have adopted. As in 1776, reluctantly she bowed to the necessity of separation from the Crown, so in 1861 the ordinance of secession was adopted. Having exhausted all other means, she took the last resort, and, if for this she was selected as the first object of assault,
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 14: (search)
r masters. The one is justifiable, if necessary, the other is iniquitous and unworthy of civilized people; and such is the judgment of all writers on public law, as well as that expressed and insisted on by our enemies in all wars prior to that now waged against us. By none have the practices of which they are now guilty been denounced with greater severity than by themselves in the two wars with Great Britain, in the last and in the present century, and in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when an enumeration was made of the wrongs which justified the revolt from Great Britain. The climax of atrocity was deemed to be reached only when the English monarch was denounced as having excited domestic insurrection among us. The subject is to be viewed by us, therefore, solely in the light of policy and our social economy. When so regarded, I must dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the slaves for the duty of soldiers. Until our white population shall prov
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Appendix B (search)
egislature has recently so resolved, and her Governor, in a late message, says, If war comes, to us it will bring blight and desolation, yet we are ready for the crisis. Sir, could there be a higher obligation on the representative of such a people than to restrain excitement—than to oppose a policy that threatens an unnecessary war? . . Mr. Chairman, why have such repeated calls been made upon the South to rally to the rescue? When, where, or how, has she been laggard or deserter? In 1776 the rights of man were violated in the outrages upon the Northern colonies, and the South united in a war for their defense. In 1812 the flag of our Union was insulted, our sailors' rights invaded; and, though the interests infringed were mainly Northern, war was declared, and the opposition to its vigorous prosecution came not from the South. We entered it for the common cause, and for the common cause we freely met its sacrifices. If, sir, we have not been the war party in peace, neither