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Browsing named entities in a specific section of Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: Ex-President of the Confederate States of America, A Memoir by his Wife, Volume 1. Search the whole document.

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Fowler (search for this): chapter 43
and executed. In the already excited condition of public feeling throughout the South, this raid of John Brown made a deeper impression on the Southern mind against the Union than all former events. Considered merely as the isolated act of a desperate fanatic, it would have had no lasting effect. It was the enthusiastic and permanent approbation of the object of his expedition by the abolitionists of the North which spread alarm and apprehension throughout the South. We are told by Fowler, in his Sectional Controversy, that on the day of Brown's execution bells were tolled in many places, cannon fired, and prayers offered up for him as if he were a martyr; he was placed in the same category with Paul and Silas, for whom prayers were made by the church, and churches were draped in mourning. Nor were these honors to his memory a mere transient burst of feeling. The Republican party have ever since honored him as a saint or a martyr in a cause which they deemed so holy. Acco
Pugh (search for this): chapter 43
n pursuance of it, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect. These resolutions led to a protracted and earnest debate. They were finally-Mr. Davis writes--adopted seriatim, on the 24th and 25th of May, by a decided majority of the Senate (varying from thirty-three to thirty-six yeas against from two to twenty-one nays), the Democrats, both Northern and Southern, sustaining them unitedly, with the exception of one adverse vote (that of Mr. Pugh, of Ohio) on the fourth and sixth resolutions. The Republicans all voted against them or refrained from voting at all, except that Mr. Tenyck, of New Jersey, voted for the fifth and seventh of the series. Mr. Douglas, the leader if not the author of popular sovereignty, was absent on account of illness, and there were a few other absentees. While the resolutions were pending, Mr. Davis made every effort personally, and through others supposed to have more influence with Mr. Douglas, t
Toombs (search for this): chapter 43
mains. 5. Resolved, That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the Territorial government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency. The words, within the limits of its constitutional powers, were subsequently added to this resolution, on the suggestion of Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, with the approval of the mover. 6. Resolved, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within their jurisdiction; and shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their co
February 2nd, 1860 AD (search for this): chapter 43
ry, and thereby virtually to prescribe those of the future State, the advocates of popular sovereignty were investing those dependent and subsidiary bodies with powers far above any exercised by the Legislatures of the fully organized and sovereign States. The authority of the State Legislatures is limited, both by the Federal Constitution and by the respective State constitutions from which it is derived. This latter limitation did not and could not exist in the Territories. On February 2, 1860, Mr. Davis submitted a series of important resolutions, which were afterward slightly modified to read as follows: 1. Resolved, That, in the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the States adopting the same acted severally as free and independent sovereignties, delegating a portion of their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government, for the increased security of each against dangers, domestic as well as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more States, or by a
October 16th, 1859 AD (search for this): chapter 43
at particular purpose this was to be employed. He had long meditated an irruption in Virginia, to excite and to aid a rising of the slaves against their masters; and for this he had prepared. He had purchased two hundred Sharp's carbines, two hundred revolver pistols, and about one thousand pikes, with which to arm the slaves. These arms he had collected and deposited in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry. When the plot was ripe for execution, a little before midnight on Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, he, with sixteen white and five negro confederates, rushed across the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, and there seized the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory belonging to the United States. When the inhabitants awoke in the morning they found, greatly to their terror and surprise, that these places, with the town itself, were all in the possession of John Brown's force. It would be a waste of time to detail the history of this raid. Suffice it to say that, on Tuesday morning, eighteenth,
1848 AD (search for this): chapter 43
the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified me for the construction which I placed upon it. There were men mean enough to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson letter was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly reviewed it. He uttered (for him) very harsh language against all who had doubted the true construction of his letter, and he construed it just as I had done during the canvass of 1848. It remains only to add that I supported Mr. Cass, not because of the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite of it; because I believed that a Democratic President, with a Democratic Cabinet and Democratic counsellors in the two Houses of Congress, and he as honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a safer reliance than his opponent, who personally possessed my confidence as much as any man living, but who was of, and must draw his advisers from, a party the tenets of whi
1850 AD (search for this): chapter 43
extent to which the suggestions would be carried and the consequences that would result from it. Of Mr. Douglas and his claim to the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, Mr. Davis says: In the organization of a government for California, in 1850, the theory was more distinctly advanced, but it was not until after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, in 1854, that it was fully developed, under the plastic and constructive genius of the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. The lescribe at the time of their admission. 7. Resolved, That the provision of the Constitution for the rendition of fugitives from service or labor, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed, and that the laws of 1793 and 1850, which were enacted to secure its execution, and the main features of which, being similar, bear the impress of nearly seventy years of sanction by the highest judicial authority, should be honestly and faithfully observed and maintained by all wh
May 15th, 1854 AD (search for this): chapter 43
Douglas, the leader if not the author of popular sovereignty, was absent on account of illness, and there were a few other absentees. While the resolutions were pending, Mr. Davis made every effort personally, and through others supposed to have more influence with Mr. Douglas, to induce him to sanction, or initiate some policy which would reconcile the two extremes upon this question, as the following letter, kindly furnished me by the Hon. Cabell R. Breckenridge, will attest: May 15, 1854. Hon. J. C. Breckenridge. Dear Sir: Mr. Stephens, of Michigan, remarked to me this morning that all the Northern Democrats would vote for Douglas's original substitute. I remarked that it was preferable, and he repeated that every Democrat of the North would support it. As the principal difficulty with the Southern men has arisen from the modifications the bill underwent in the Senate after the substitute was offered, I thought it might be important and write that you may see the Hon
December, 1847 AD (search for this): chapter 43
the rapid growth of the Republican party. This was, as Mr. Davis has elsewhere explained, the dissension among the Democrats occasioned by the introduction of the doctrine called by its inventors and advocates popular sovereignty, or non-intervention, but more generally and more accurately known as squatter sovereignty. Its origin is generally attributed to General Cass, who is supposed to have suggested it in some general expressions of his celebrated Nicholson letter, written in December, 1847. On the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, it became necessary for me, in a debate in the Senate, to review that letter of Mr. Cass. From my remarks then made the following extract is taken: The Senator (Mr. Douglas) might have remembered, if he had chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to explain to him, ten years ago, the fact that I repudiated the doctrine of that letter at the time it was published, and that the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified
December 7th, 1859 AD (search for this): chapter 43
rehend it; but, for reasons which may hereafter appear, we forego the task. Incredible as it may seem, this book was bought in large numbers and issued by the Northern senators and members of Congress as campaign documents. They signed a paper recommending the disgraceful fanfaronade as a true exposition of the issue. All these acts aggravated the irritation of the Southern men, and society in Washington began to be divided by sectional lines. The Thirty-sixth Congress opened December 7, 1859. The political outlook was gloomy, and threatening storms were lowering everywhere. The whole country was greatly excited, and armed factions were carrying on a guerilla warfare on the plains of Kansas--the factions there being divided on sectional lines. They were the shadows of the coming war. The minds of men, both in and out of Congress, had become fixed, with feverish interest, on this petty but tragically significant conflict in the Territory. Its import was too plain to b
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