Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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“ [211] of America, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that Government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two Governments, upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.”¹

Persistent and to a great extent successful efforts were made to inflame the minds of the people of the northwestern states by representing to them that, in consequence of the separation of the states, they would lose the free navigation of the Mississippi River. At that early period in the life of the Confederacy, the intercourse between the North and South had been so little interrupted, that the agitators, whose vocation it was to deceive the masses of the people, could not, or should not, have been ignorant that, as early as February 25, 1861, an act was passed by the Confederate Congress, and approved by the President, “to declare and establish the free navigation of the Mississippi River.” That act began with the announcement that “the peaceful navigation of the Mississippi River is hereby declared free to the citizens of any of the States upon its borders, or upon the borders of its navigable tributaries,” and its provisions secure that freedom for “all ships, boats, or vessels,” with their cargoes, “without any duty or hindrance, except light-money, pilotage, and other like charges.”²

By an act approved on February 26, all laws which forbade the employment in the coasting trade of vessels not enrolled or licensed, and all laws imposing discriminating duties on foreign vessels or goods imported in them, were repealed.³ These acts and all other indications manifest the well-known wish of the people of the Confederacy to preserve the peace and encourage the most unrestricted commerce with all nations, surely not least with their late associates, the Northern states. Thus far, the hope that peace might be maintained was predominant; perhaps the wish was father to the thought that there would be no war between the states lately united. Indeed, all the laws enacted during the first session of the provisional Congress show how consistent were the purposes and actions of its members with their original avowal of a desire peacefully to separate from those with whom they could not live in tranquillity, albeit the government had been established to promote the common welfare. Under this state of feeling the government of the Confederacy was instituted.

My own views and inclinations, as has already been fully shown, were