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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

JEFFERSON DAVIS
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY

JEFFERSON DAVIS
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY

BY
MORRIS SCHAFFt • ^
AUTHOR OF
THE SPIRIT OF OLD WEST POINT, THE BATTLE
OP THE WILDERNESS, THE SUNSET
or THE CONFEDERACY

BOSTON
JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY

Copyright, 19SS
Bt Morris Schaff

Cic)

THE MUHRAY PMNTINa COMPANT
CAMBBIDQB, MASS.

To My Friends
General Elbert Wheeler, Nashua, New Hampshire
Thomas Allen, Esquire, Boston, Massachusetts
Mrs. Mary Deahing Christian, Lynchburg, Virginia
Arthur Lord, Esquire, Plymouth, Massachusetts
and last, but not least.
Honorable Henry St. George Tucker, Lexington, Virginia
this book is dedicated
as a token of attachment and esteem.

CONTENTS
Chapter I  1
Chapter II  17
Chapter III  29
Chapter IV  42
Chapter V  48
Chapter VI  61
Chapter VII  68
Chapter VIII  79
Chapter IX  86
Chapter X  93
Chapter XI  99
Chapter XII  107
Chapter XIII  120
Chapter XIV  125
Chapter XV  131
Chapter XVI  144
Chapter XVII  159
Chapter XVIII  166
Chapter XIX  185
Chapter XX  197
Chapter XXI  205
Chapter XXII  217
Chapter XXIII  229
Chapter XXIV  271

JEFFERSON DAVIS
HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY
CHAPTER I
There are two reasons for undertaking to write
this book. The first and main one is this: a longing
to see justice done, so far as my pen may prevail,
to Jefferson Davis, President of the ill-starred South
ern Confederacy, who, I feel and beUeve, has had
unfair treatment by the historians of the great war
between the States, known as the Southern Rebellion,
and against whose armies I fought on many fields,
including the bloody ones of Chancellorsville, the
Wilderness and Spotsylvania. So then, it is not
through sympathy with the cause he was at the
head of that I take up my pen; no, no, but at the
entreaty of two mighty advocates, Truth and Fair
Play. I am cheered on, furthermore, in my xmder-
taking by one of the handsomest, the noblest of our
coimtry's virtues. Magnanimity, proclaiming that,
out of hatred and revenge to perpetuate a false and
unjust portrait of the leader of the Confederacy,
the sons and grandsons of whose gallant defenders
helped so bravely to carry their imited coimtry's
1

2 JEFFERSON DAVIS
flag to victory on the fields of France, is unworthy
and out of keeping with a great-hearted people.
Moreover, Jefferson Davis, beside being leader in
the most unparalleled struggle of modern times — a
struggle commemorated by monuments, ceremonial,
and poetry that deck the green slopes of that height
called History — was in manner and reality, in
private and public life, the finest product of a democ
racy ; namely, a gentleman. The world has had many
types of the hero, statesman and philosopher, but
only one in its conception of the gentleman. Again,
his mind was not only stored with political, scientific,
and historic knowledge but ornamented also with
the ripened fruits and beauties of literature; and
his heart, the mind's working companion, was
naturally bold and had not only stood the dangers
of the battlefield but was strung also with the
finest chords of sweet tenderness.
The second reason is the silent, personal pleasure
that will attend the use of my pen in such a cause;
not arguing or contending, but talking as it were
to an open-minded reader who, I hope, on taking
up this book, is blessed with a light heart; but
should he be so unfortunate as to be harassed by
cares and sorrows will, while reading it, forget them
all and find his pillow sweet.
We learn, from a mere fragment of an autobiog
raphy dictated a few years before Jefferson Davis'
death, that he was born on June 3, 1808, at Fair-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 3
view, Todd County, Kentucky, and that his ances
tors, on his father's side, were Welsh Baptists who
one May morning, 1701, in a company of twenty of
like faith "after bidding farewell to their home and
brethren" — so says an old Delaware church record
— sailed from MiLford Haven, South Wales, on the
ship James and Mary and landed in Philadelphia
on the eighth of the following September.
Once at the end of their long voyage they made
their way — and no doubt with glad hearts — to a
settlement of fellow churchmen in Delaware, and
cast their lot with them. In 1735, the Delaware
Colony swarmed and settled on the Peedee River,
South Carolina, at a place afterward known as the
Welsh Neck Baptist Church. About 1754 or 1755,
Evan Davis, an old bachelor, the son of John, one
of the three brothers of the original company
from Wales, drifted down to the Peedee and there
married a widow Williams, whose maiden name
was Emory, with two children, boys; and in 1756,
Samuel, Jefferson Davis' father, was born.
Before the Revolutionary War broke out the
family had moved to near Augusta, Georgia, and
the head of it, Evan Davis, had died. While the
war was going on his widow sent Samuel with sup
plies to his two half brothers who were in the field,
and, boy like, yielding to the spirit of adventure,
fondness and pride in their gallantry, he stayed
with them. Later and notwithstanding his youth,

4 JEFFERSON DAVIS
he was made captain of a company and led it to
the defense of Savannah when attacked by the
British. After the war was over, the young Captain was
elected Clerk of the Courts and then fell in love
with and married Jane Cook, the mother of Jefferson
Davis. She was the daughter of a famously eloquent
Scotch-Irish Baptist preacher, and Mr. Davis in his
fragmentary autobiography says in loving terms
that she had a poetic nature, the som'ce perchance
of many a charm which graces the speeches and
addresses of her distinguished son.
Here then in Jefferson Davis' veins we have a
mingling of Welsh and Scotch blood carrying the
roots and seeds of their racial virtues and character
istics, chief of which has ever been a grim tenacity
of convictions and a prompt readiness to risk all,
and if need be to lose all in their defense. Davis'
blood fairly teemed with this ancestral character
istic and we are quite sure he would have been spared
many a trial, many a poignant hour if, when his
wounds were bleeding on the field of Buena Vista
in the Mexican War, the veins that carried a possible
excess of this too defiant blood had been somewhat
more completely emptied.
But let aU this be as it may, the voice of Ken
tucky, with its ever wild fascination for the frontiers
man, was heard in Georgia by the young Captain
and his wife Jane, and about 1790, with their rapidly

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 5
increasing family, they started through the wilder
ness for Tennessee, for the famous Blue Grass region;
and there Jefferson, the last of the ten boys and
girls, was born on June 3, 1808.
In a cabin within forty miles of his birthplace,
eight months and nine days later, February 12,
1809, Abraham Lincoln was born; and we think
even the stars must have wondered over the con
trasting fate of these two children asleep in their
cradles: one of them named in honor of the living
President, Thomas Jefferson, whose views on the
rights of the States determined his namesake's
career; the other in honor of the patriarch Abraham,
revered by Jews, Christians and Mohanomedans
the world over and whose namesake is likewise
revered throughout the civilized world and more
and more tenderly loved from generation to genera
tion by his fellow countrymen. Was there a far-
seeing genius that presided over the naming of
these children?
A Baptist church stands now on the spot where
Jefferson Davis was born, and when it was dedicated,
long after the war and old age had whitened his hair,
its builders begged him to come back and join in
the services, and, with a pensive gladness, he
complied with their request.
When he was four or five years old his father
sold his tobacco raising and thorough-bred horse
breeding plantation and struck off again into the

6 JEFFERSON DAVIS
wilderness, this time for the Bayou Teche country
in Louisiana. But the swampy cHmate proved so
bad that he soon sold out and bought a large tract
in Wilkenson County, Mississippi, building his
house on a knoll where the health-giving breezes
from the neighboring yellow pine forests blew softly
over it.
When the future President of the Southern Con
federacy was seven years old, one of his father's
friends. Major Hinds, who had fought in the battle
of New Orleans under Jackson, made a trip back to
his old home in Kentucky and Mr. Davis asked him
to take Jefferson with him to a school for boys
known as St. Thomas College, kept by Dominican
Fathers in Washington County, Kentucky. Mr.
Davis took this step without his wife's consent or
knowledge, because, perchance, he well knew she
would be unwilling to part with the baby, as it were,
of her large family.
The Major's party, with negro servants and suit
able camp outfit, consisted of his wife, his sister and
his son Howell, about Jefferson's age. All were
mounted — the boys on ponies. Here let me say —
and with a feehng of pensiveness, that in view of the
happiness with which these boys enjoyed their
ponies and the camp fires, I cannot for the moment
throw off — that Jefferson's little companion on this
ride became a soldier in the Confederate army and
was killed soon after the war was over while trying to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 7
separate two of his friends engaged in a pistol duel
in Greenville, Mississippi.
The trail the Major followed wound through the
wide, shadow-flecked wilderness of the Choctah and
Cherokee Nations, and when at last he reached Nash
ville, Tennessee, he at once led his party to the door
of his old conamander, Jackson, who welcomed him
and his charge with such heartiness that they stayed
there for several weeks.
Jefferson Davis never forgot that visit to the
Hermitage with its grove of towering primeval
trees and vast estate of grain and pasture fields,
and to his old age cherished the remembrance of
Mrs. Jackson's charms and the mingled dignity and
simplicity of her heroic and famous husband.
The lad's journey ended at the gateway of the
monks who, besides the school, had a large landed
property, flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, flour mills
and slaves; a very consistent and workable combi
nation of the spiritual and the worldly.
As might be assumed, nearly all of the pupils
were CathoUcs, but to the monks' credit, they did
not try to make a proselyte of their new pupil and
in later days, not alone when fame rested on him but
at the time of his great trials, spoke well of him and
were his warm friends to the end.
He was the youngest in the school and slept on a
cot in a room with one of the priests. One night, as
soon as the candle was blown out, the older boys

8 JEFFERSON DAVIS
who had a grudge against the priest, bombarded the
room with cabbages, turnips and other like vege
tables. On the immediate investigation of the riot,
the indignant authorities asked little Jeff if he knew
who were the leaders and actors in the affront; he
said he did, but refused to teU on them. Whereupon
one of the tonsured Fathers strapped him down to
receive the usual punishment, but before delivering a
blow asked him if he was ready to give the names of
the culprits. He replied, "No," but he v^as willing,
however, to disclose one fact; he knew who blew
out the candle, the signal for the vegetable-equipped
firing party. On being asked who it was, he re^onded
that he had done it. His answer was so unexpect
edly frank and he was so little that the monk
unstrapped him, and let him off with a serious
lecture. At the end of the second year, and President
Davis intimates at the insistence of his mother, he
was sent home, escorted thither on a steamboat
down the Ohio and Mississippi by a young law stu
dent at Transylvania. His brother Isaac met him at
the landing, and, to surprise their mother, it was
mischievously planned between them that little
Jeff should go ahead and ask her if she had seen
any stray horses about the place. He found her
sitting at the door and boldly putting the question,
she turned and clasped him in her arms saying,
"No, but I have got my stray boy." He then ran

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 9
out to his father in the fields who to his wonder, for
his father was habitually undemonstrative in his
affection, embraced and kissed him.
He attended neighborhood and select schools till
he was sixteen and then entered the sophomore
class of Transylvania University at Lexington,
Kentucky. That mysterious spirit, which in old age
we call fate but in boyhood our good angel, must
have directed his footsteps back to those college
grounds of his native State, for surely he could not
have been thrown in with a student body endowed
with more natural ability or animated, as time
proved, with more latent ambition; for six of his
feUow collegians, some from the North and some
from the South, were members of the United States
Senate at the same time with him. Now, in the eye
of every instinctively high-minded youth on enter
ing a student body. Nature in her friendly and wise
provisions, plants an ideal of what constitutes manli
ness and honor adorned by intellectual strength.
In some of the classes above him he soon discovers
the embodiment of that ideal and considers it one
of the happiest days of his life when he can call him
a friend. Hail, aU hail! "Nick" Bowen, Jones,
W. G., who fell at Chickamauga and Ramseur at
Cedar Creek in the valley, you filled my West
Point boyhood's ideals, and your manly faces are
still blooming as in your youth for me. The one in
that brilliant group at Transylvania who filled this

10 JEFFERSON DAVIS
ideal when Davis matriculated was Albert Sidney
Johnston, large in frame, erect, of open countenance
and clothed in natural dignity.
Johnston preceded Davis to West Point, main
taining among the cadets drawn from the high life
of all sections of the country the same preeminence
for character and ability as at Transylvania . It is
well known, it is a matter of history, that Davis
appointed Johnston second on the list of general
oflScers for the Confederate armies, and that he fell
at Shiloh just on the verge of gaining what prom
ised to be an overwhelming victory. His untimely
death was the heaviest blow in the mind of Mr.
Davis and that of others which the Confederacy
ever met, and Davis never spoke of him and that
battle in his old age without eyes filled with the dew
of tenderness.
Just after passing his examination for the senior
class, and with honors, Davis' father died on July 4,
two years to a day before the death of ex-President
Jefferson, in honor of whom he had named his boy.
Shortly afterward, Davis' oldest brother, Joseph
Emory, who from that time on was like a second
father, secured for him from President Monroe an
appointment as Cadet to West Point; and in
September, 1824, he entered that famous institu
tion which through its incarnated traditions and
mighty over-arching spirit had much to do, as we
believe, indeed we know, in developing certain inher-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 11
ent qualities, some playing a conspicuously favorable
and some an equally conspicuously unfavorable part
in his eventful life.
In the class two years ahead of him was his friend,
Albert Sidney Johnston; in the next class above,
Leonidas Polk, afterwards Bishop of Louisiana, who,
on the breaking out of the war, laid off his vestments
and was commissioned by President Davis a general
officer in the Confederate Army and, like Johnston,
met death on the field of battle. He and Sidney
Johnston were Jefferson Davis' closest friends at
West Point, a relation of joy and tenderness, con
fidences and affection which every graduate will
duly remember, for it blossoms on to old age in the
memory of every one of them.
From Virginia, in the Corps above Davis were
Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, little dreaming
what the future had in store for them in connection
with the tallish, spare, dignified but ever graciously
polite Cadet in the second class below them. Yet,
yet, the web was in the loom, the threads with their
varying hues were on the spools, and the shuttle
ready waiting till the guns would open on Sumter
to weave the involved and many-hued designs of
their fate.
A. E. Church, son of the Chief Justice of Con
necticut, graduated at the head of Davis' class and
in my day at West Point, 1858, was professor of
mathematics, and the only time I ever saw Jefferson

12 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis, he was walking at the close of a golden Sep
tember day between him and Professor Bartlett
under the bending elms that line the plain. We had
just passed them when my companion, a Southern
Cadet, observed, "that is Jeff Davis." I turned and
recall with distinctness his graceful figure and dis
tinguished bearing. He was arrayed in a dark blue
serge and wore a soft, light-colored, low-crowned,
gracefully brimmed hat. I have always been sorry
my Southern classmate did not tell me who he was
before we had met and passed them, for my mem
ory, I am sure, would have carried away the look in
his face.
He graduated July 12, 1828, standing twenty-
third in a class of thirty-three members. And now,
let me dwell for a moment on his four years of edu
cation at West Point, and make clear if I can my
convictions as to how advantageous and disadvan
tageous it proved to be as that beaming career
mounted and unfolded.
In his day and for many years afterwards, as
soon as a Cadet entered West Point, its spirit
began to prepare the ground of his nature, not as
for an athlete or football player, but to bear the
fruits of the educated soldier and gentleman. To
this end and in keeping with its traditions inherited
from its Revolutionary foimders, it held before him
day in and day out, good manners, honor, simplicity,
courage and love of truth as the virtues that, in

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 13
connection with the ornaments of a cultivated mind,
should adorn his life.
To consummate this high purpose the Academy
as a seat of learning was especially fortunate in its
student body; for in those days, as from the very
beginning, only the sons of famiUes of social dis
tinction, as a rule, received appointments. The
inevitable result was that the air of an aristocracy
more or less pervaded West Point, infusing the
bearing of every graduate, albeit unconsciously to
him, with some of its innate cast of exclusiveness.
While this combination of family distinction,
culture and a life position as an officer of the Army
with its attendant, possibilities of military glory gave
the graduate a ready entrance to the best society,
yet it had one very weighty drawback, it cut him
off from the great body of the people who, conscious
of equal abihties but less fortunate and more or less
doomed to toil, very naturally, for such is our
nature, withheld its friendliness, meeting his assured
advances with a cold eye. This was especially true
of the demeanor of the descendants of the Puritans;
who, very proud at heart and blessed with many,
many fine qualities, yet sparingly so of the spirit
of good fellowship, to this very day are keenly
resentful to any asserted social and poHtical
preeminence. Now such was the inborn nature of Jefferson
Davis that while all the virtues of West Point

14 JEFFERSON DAVIS
education, honor, frankness, truthfulness and good
manners found a native soil to grow in, still m it
too were already germinated seeds of a certain
reserve and dignity that found the au- congenial
and had flourished by the time he graduated into a
distinctively aristocratic bearing that clung to him
to the end; and much, very much, as all the world
knows to his serious disadvantage in his presidential
life. So then, the result of his four years at West
Point, instead of inculcating the pliancy and assumed
cordiality of the politician, was to develop a person
ality of the reverse order. But, heavy as was this
handicap, the powers and duties attending the
Presidency of the Confederacy imposed a far heavier
one upon him; in this that from the earliest days of
the Academy there has been in the minds of the
militia and volimteers. South and North, an unfav
orable prepossession of its graduates; that they not
only held themselves above and aloof from them,
but, what was more galling, gave their fellow grad
uates in time of war the precedence over them no
matter how well or bravely they had met their
duties. And as to this umbrage and unjust accusation I
do protest. For this is a fact, let it weigh what it
will; in my long life many a fellow West Point
graduate has opened his heart to me around camp-
fires in the field and before blazing hearths with

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 15
their evoking unreserve, and not a word or even a
hint ever fell from the lips of one of them to justify
such a charge.
But let this be as it may, no sooner had the war
begun and Jefferson Davis had to make appoint
ments for its armies than many of the officers of
volunteers and militia, but chiefly ambitious poli
ticians hungering for miUtary honors, whom he had
refused to appoint to high places as leaders of troops,
at once became his bitter, malicious enemies, declaim
ing that, as usual, like all West Pointers, he had
favored his fellow graduates. And thus was bred a
virulent faction; a faction whose poison soon mingled
in the editorial pages of leading newspapers, under
mining the President's influence and, as it persisted
throughout the war, weakening like a deep-seated
carbuncle the body of the Confederacy itself.
But, however intense and personal was this
hostihty, not even his most relentless enemy ever
alleged that in deed or act, in sunshine or shadow,
Jefferson Davis violated a single one of the great
virtues which West Point had helped to develop
in his character; namely, honor, courage, fidelity to
public and private trusts, purity of life, and the
bearing and speech of a gentleman. And it can be
said with all truth that his stem old Alma Mater
had no son who walked her velvety green plain,
who loved her more deeply or cherished more her
ideals. When his voice was almost gone, and death

16 JEFFERSON DAVIS
waiting at the doorstep, from his pillow he whispered
of her and his West Point bygone friends in loving
terms, and we think the Spirit of Old West Point
heard his whispering love and would have smoothed
his brow if she could.
We have dwelt, and perhaps too long, on some of
the advantages and disadvantages of his West Point
education; but not, we hope, without lighting a
candle here and there in the mind of the reader,
helping him to find his way, not necessarily to a
favorable, but a fair judgment of Jefferson Davis
as we go along with the narrative.

CHAPTER II
Upon graduation he was commissioned Second
Lieutenant in the First Regular Infantry, and in
September, 1828, at the expiration of the usual
graduation leave, reported at Jefferson Barracks,
St. Louis.
Shortly afterward he was ordered to join his
company at Fort Crawford, the present site of
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, journeying thither on
one of the triple-decked, stern-wheel steamboats,
an imperial princess of navigation in those days,
saluting grandly as they approached and departed
from cities and towns with prolonged, reverberating,
hoarse blasts, arousing in the breast of every pas
senger, however obscure, the momentarily pleasing
sense of a vague importance.
Fort Crawford at that time was one of the Army's
extreme outposts on the frontier; but for a hundred
years or more before its day on the same site had
been a trading post of the fur gathering companies
of Quebec. For at that point, near the mouth of the
Wisconsin, one of their long, winding trails through
the wilderness of lakes, forests, and beaver-homing
streams crossed the Mississippi, thence bearing on
over the wide ranges of buffalo and under soaring
17

18 JEFFERSON DAVIS
eagles to the faraway upper Missouri. As I write
these lines, the native wildness of that historic trail
steals back into this room and I wish, reader, that
we could have travelled and camped with its care
free hunters and trappers.
Around the fort and up and down the river were
many Indians; Sacs and Foxes, Wyandots, Menomi-
nees, Winnebagos and Pottawatomies, who, crowded
back day in and day out from their hunting grounds
and the graves of their people by equally fierce and
unmerciful frontiersmen, were not in a friendly mood,
and on several occasions when Davis was out with
detachments to get timber for the completion of
the fort, he and his men barely escaped massacre
from bands on the warpath.
But that first winter he had another and more
pleasing experience, one that he enjoyed recalling in
his old age. With a sergeant, he was out on a recon
naissance and some forty miles from the fort when
night overtook them. After wandering through the
darkness hour after hour, to their joy they came
across a cabin. On hailing, its occupant came to the
door and asked, "Who is there?"
Davis recognized the voice and answered, "Were
you ever at Transylvania?"
"Yes," responded the pioneer, "I was there
from 1821 to 1825."
"Do you remember a college boy named Jeff
Davis?"

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 19
"Of course I do."
"Well, I am Jeff."
"That was enough for me; I pulled him off his
horse and into my cabin and it was hours before
either of us would think of sleep," said George W.
Jones, later United States Senator from Iowa, in a
statement after Mr. Davis' death.
The next spring with a small detachment he was
sent up the Wisconsin to Yellow Creek, somewhat
over a hundred miles from Crawford, to establish
a sawmiU for additional lumber. There he met the
Indians again, but gaining their affection, he was
formally made a chief of the tribe, and an old squaw
a few years afterward, out of friendship and in remem
brance of him, notified an adjacent post of a con
templated attack. While on this lonely duty he
was seized with such a debilitating illness that he had
to be carried about and nursed like a child; but, fortu
nately, he had with him James Pemberton, colored,
a slave in law but on the footing with his master,
whom he had played with as a boy, of a friend and
glad companion — if ever there were two friends in
this world that knew each other and loved each other,
they were Jefferson Davis and James Pemberton.
Just before the breaking out of the Black Hawk
War, Davis rejoined his regiment at Fort Crawford,
then commanded by Zachary Taylor, later President
Taylor. Colonel Taylor had his family with him —
three girls and a boy — and Jefferson Davis for his

20 JEFFERSON DAVIS
first wife, married the eldest, Sarah Knox Taylor,
as will be told later.
April, 1831, Davis accompanied the troops in the
campaign against the Indians; their line of march,
made in early May, was up the pebbly-shored Rock
River; the wild plums, honeysuckles and pawpaws
in the thickets here and there along its sycamore-
shadowed banks, and the flowers of the prairies that
stretched away from them were in full bloom.
Besides the Regulars under Taylor, there were
militia organizations called out by the Governor of
Illinois, a thousand or more men, and among them
first as a private and later as a captain of one of
these companies was Abraham Lincoln, who brought
back from that campaign something that Davis'
nature could not give lodgment or whose value
as a foil he could not appreciate, namely, several
additions to that famous granary of funny stories
by which Lincoln avoided many a conflict with the
politicians of his own party, who, no matter how
angry on entering the White House, always went
away amused and more highly attached to him
than ever because of the clever way he had dodged
their issue behind a funny story.
The Indians were overwhelmingly defeated in
August at the Battle of Bad Axe some twenty odd
miles above Fort Crawford, and a few days later,
then- leader. Black Hawk, then an old man, his son
and the Prophet, a tall, straight chief with a broad

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 21
face, large, full eyes, abundant coarse black hair
ornamented with an eagle feather and dressed in a
suit of white deerskin, were taken prisoners by a
treacherous band of Winnebagos and delivered up
to the authorities at Fort Crawford.
A moving account of the sufferings of the Indians
in that last great battle of their race east of the
Mississippi may be found in a letter from Mrs.
Albert Sidney Johnston, whose husband was in the
engagement, to a member of her family. In years
gone by, more than once I loimged on what is known
as Black Hawk's Tower at the junction of the Rock
River with the Mississippi and pondered over their
fate. That spot with its commanding outlook had
been the home of his tribe for generation after
generation; his forefathers and favorite daughter
were buried there, and in my day the rows of their
cornflelds were still traceable. The view is wide
and you see the distant skyline asleep in the bosom
of the prairie.
It was decided that Black Hawk, his son, and a
number of others should be sent as prisoners of
war to St. Louis and Davis was detailed by Colonel
Taylor to conduct them thither. Black Hawk says
in his autobiography dictated the following year;
"Then started to Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis)
in a steamboat (the Winnebago) under the charge
of a young war chief, who treated us aU with much
kindness. He is a good and brave young chief with

22 JEFFERSON DAVIS
whose conduct I was much pleased. On our way
down we called at Galena and remained a short
time. The people crowded to the boat to see us; but
the war chief would not permit them to enter the
apartment where we were — knowing, from what
his own feelings would have been if he had been
placed in a similar situation, that we did not want
a gaping crowd around us." Verily, Davis' con
sideration for the feelings of his captives speaks
well for him.
On their arrival at St. Louis a ball and chain
were fastened on Black Hawk, and while there
Washington Irving went to see him and wrote, " He
is upwards of seventy years old, has a fine head, a
Roman style of nose and prepossessing counte
nance." Later he was sent to Fort Monroe for con
finement, little dreaming that Jefferson Davis
would follow in his steps to the same place and there
also wear manacles, people craving to gape at him
as at Black Hawk. But Black Hawk had almost
the freedom of the Post with its widely encircling
green ramparts, while Davis was closely guarded
by double lines of sentinels in a semi-dark casemate,
no one allowed to approach it, sentinels and blazing
lights in the room throughout the night.
Black Hawk was so kindly treated during his
imprisonment that on parting with the command
ing officer, Colonel Eustis, he said, "The memory
of your friendship will remain till the Great Spirit

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 23
says it is time for Black Hawk to sing his death
song," and presented Colonel Eustis with a white
deerskin hunting dress and some feathers of the
white eagle.
Jefferson Davis carried away no such feeling at
the end of his two years' confinement, at least for
his first keeper, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, and, in view
of his treatment, it is no wonder; but to the end of
his life he had the warmest gratitude for his last
keeper. Colonel Burton. There is something striking
to me, partaking of the mysterious, in these almost
identical occurrences in the Uves of Davis and
Black Hawk.
Upon the creation of the First Dragoons, winter
of 1832, a regiment famous in the history of our
Cavalry, Davis was selected for one of its officers
and soon became its Adjutant. Its headquarters
were at Fort Gibson and on one occasion, when it
was about to set off for the Creek Nation, his
Sergeant-Major who was sick in the hospital was
forbidden by the Surgeon to go with the troops.
He appealed to Davis, who on his death bed in New
Orleans received the following letter from the old
Sergeant (Davis died on December 6):
"November 28, 1889.
Honored Sir:
Once when there was much sickness prevailing
among the First Dragoons at Fort Gibson, and I was

24 JEFFERSON DAVIS
very sick in the hospital, the regiment was ordered
for the benefit of its health to remove from the Cher
okee Nation; but the surgeon refused to allow me
to be removed with the regiment. However you
came to my aid and had me taken to the Creek
Nation where I rapidly recovered. And I hope that
your temporary removal from Beauvoir to New
Orleans will result in a like benefit to your health,
and that when the long roll is sounded you will find
yoxirself in the camp of the Great Commander.
I am your old Sergeant-Major of the First
Dragoons." Reader, let me hope that when the long roll is
sounded you and I will be in the camp of that same
Great Commander.
Soon after the incident referred to in the Sergeant's
letter, Davis, longing for the quieter fife of a planter,
on June 30, 1835, resigned from the Army, and in
July married Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of
General Taylor, whom he had been in love with and
engaged to, for over two years. Now, his enemies,
passion at its height, and with pens dripping with gall,
declared, in an article which appeared in an encyclo
pedia, that beside being a slaveholder and a plotting
traitor he was base enough to elope with Miss
Taylor; but here are the facts.
When his daughter's engagement to Davis was
announced, the General told a friend that he had

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 25
only the kindliest feelings for her choice, but he had
hoped that not one of his daughters would marry
into the Army and undergo the inconveniences and
hardships that he had met with in his own soldier life.
Subsequently a garrison court-martial was ordered,
with Taylor as president, the other members a
Major "Tom" Smith (between whom and Taylor
there was a bitter feud), Davis and a young officer
who had just reported for duty and who, when the
Court assembled, appeared in citizen's dress, explain
ing that his uniform for some reason or other had
not been forwarded from St. Louis, his last station.
Taylor, a stickler for customs and rules, was unwill
ing to go on with the cases until the lieutenant
could take his seat in imiform with sword at his
side. An angry discussion at once broke out between
him and Smith over the question of proceeding and,
to the old General's surprise and disgust, Davis
voted with Smith to go on with the trial. A col
loquy at once took place between Taylor and Davis
over his vote, which was ended by the old General
letting fly an oath — and in that line we fear he
shared with his fellow Army and Navy officers a
fairly strong vocabulary — that any man who
would vote with "Tom" Smith. on a question of
that kind should never, never marry one of his
daughters, and forbade Davis from ever entering
his house.
It is with a smile my eye rests on that group;

26 JEFFERSON DAVIS
and I wonder how many young officers of this day,
engaged as Davis was to the old General's daughter,
would have voted against him? Not one in a hun
dred we venture to say. Major "Tom" Smith
would have been outvoted and the Court adjourned
till the careless Ueutenant could appear properly,
full uniform, epaulettes, sash and sword, the accused
meanwhile confined in the guardhouse.
When a year or more had elapsed after this amus
ing court-martial scene. Miss Taylor told her father
that, as he had not alleged anything against the
character or honor of her lover, she was going to
marry him. But that vote with "Tom" Smith
was still rankling and he woifld not give his consent;
so she made her arrangements to go to her aunt
in Kentucky and there be married. A stateroom
was taken on a boat for St. Louis, a Captain McRee
escorted Miss Taylor to the landing and lo, there
was her father transacting some business; she
made a final appeal to him, but without avail, and
sailed away to Kentucky, and in the house of her
aunt and in the presence of two of General Taylor's
sisters and many others of the Taylor family they
were married June, 1835. And this, Jefferson Davis'
enemies with a sneer called an elopement; much
to the amusement of Satan's secretaries at their
desks. They set out at once for his plantation, "Brier-
field" on the Mississippi, a part of "Hurricane,"

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 27
the greater plantation of his brother, Joseph Emory,
some thirty miles below Vicksburg. In August, to
escape the chill-and-fever malady which the unac-
cHmated to that region had to go through, they
went to his sister's plantation. Locust Grove,
Bayou Sara, Louisiana. But the dreaded, enfeebling
disease had sown its seeds and within a day or two
both came down with it and soon were dangerously
sick. Chill after chill is followed by a raging fever
in this ailment and, under its ravages day and night,
it was not long till Mrs. Davis became delirious and
her end drew near. Mr. Davis meanwhile was not
told of her condition, but on hearing her voice a
few hours before she breathed her last, September 15,
— she had begim to sing in her delirium "Faery
Bells," a song she had sung to him many a time, —
he struggled from his sick chamber to her room
and found her dying. She was buried in his sister's
plantation graveyard, and there she lies. "Faery
Bells" ! and the pathos of it all! Malignity, Vitu
peration and Vindictiveness, ill-visaged trio, and boon
companions of the Devil's secretaries, a word with
you. Miss Taylor had not eloped with her lover,
and you should have kept away from that lone grave
on Bayou Sara!
After days and days during which his life hung
in the balance, his faithful colored servant, James
Pemberton, Ufted him from his bed and carried
him home, but a cough set in and late in the year,

28 JEFFERSON DAVIS
for the benefit of his health, he went to Cuba, and
the following spring made his way home through
New York and Washington.
At Washington he feU in with his Transylvanian
friend, Jones, he who had given him shelter the
night he was lost some forty miles from Fort Crawford
and whom meanwhile ambition and ability had lifted
from a cabin to the United States Senate. With
him and others, Jefferson Davis called on the Presi
dent, Martin Van Buren, who interested in his talk,
asked Davis to breakfast with him.
After breakfast Van Buren, who like Davis put
a stake on personal care and appearance, noticing
his guest's shoes, a fine pair that set off his small,
proudly arched feet, inquired, "Where did you get
those shoes, may I ask?" "New Orleans, Mr.
President," rephed Davis. "I had a pair like that
made in France," said Van Buren, "but I have
never seen that stitch since."
Van Buren was noted for his grace and good
breeding and was the first to adorn the White
House with here and there a rare, precious bowl
and vase fiUed with roses; when I last saw his grave
at Kinderhook tall half-wild grass was waving over
it, and lichens were slowly stitching their gray seals
on his time-bleached marble tombstone.

CHAPTER III
In due time Jefferson Davis' eyes, after a passage
over the Alleghenies by stage and down the Ohio
and Mississippi by boat, fell on his blooming cotton
fields and then on his empty house. Faery Bells!
He turned his steps away from it and sought his
brother's door and there for five or six years made
his home.
Now, since in those four or five years of practi
cally unbroken seclusion the wealth of intellectual
acquirements, knowledge of science, history and
literature that distinguished and adorned his official
and private fife were harvested and the foundations
of the political views which determined his career
were laid, let us look at his plantation life and
surroundings. It was his rule, summer and winter, to pass
hours every day in the fields on familiar terms with
his slaves; and, as a result, abundant were his crops
of cotton and corn, for many a light-hearted song had
been sung as they grew into blade, bloom and tassel.
^His system for the government of his slaves
provided for a regular coiu-t with a judge, jury and
sheriff of their own body for the trial of aU offenses
committed by slaves against each other or serious
29

30 JEFFERSON DAVIS
violations of rules or proprieties. His servant
James Pemberton was the judge of this court and
the only appeal from its decisions was to Davis
himself, who invariably modified or remitted the
sentences when severe. When Pemberton died,
Davis had to hire white overseers, but in no case
were they permitted to inflict corporal punishment.
Any skilled workman, as blacksmith or carpenter,
was allowed to do work for neighboring plantations,
returning to his master common day-laborer's pay
and keeping the rest for himself. A missionary of
the Methodist Church was engaged and his salary
paid for religious training of the slaves. When a
marriage took place Mrs. Davis supplied the wed
ding gown and when death came the master mani
fested his sympathy with the sorrowful. Those who
were still living when death fell upon him, sent Mrs.
Davis this letter:
We, the old servants and tenants of our beloved
master, Honorable Jefferson Davis, have cause to
mingle our tears over his death who was always
so kind and thoughtful of our peace and happiness.
We extend to you our humble sympathy.
Respectfully,
Your old tenants and servants.
This letter should have been among the historic
papers in the hermetically sealed copper box set in

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 31
the foundation of his monument that stands on the
banks of the James in Hollywood Cemetery, Rich
mond; for it is a bit of enduring evidence as to the
kind of man he was far outweighing the work of
my or any pen.
His diversion was a stud of thoroughbreds, for
he and his brother were lovers of the turf and, by
the way, in their stables was Black Oliver, a Cana
dian horse, one of whose sons, a pony-Uke pacer,
was taken from the plantation in the Vicksburg
campaign and given to Grant, who named him Jeff
Davis and rode him from time to time, and this
horse's neck I once stroked on our way from the
Rapidan to Appomattox.
His nights and every leisure hour, for he was a
bom student, were passed in his brother's library,
that was fairly large for those days and on whose
shelves, beside the British poets. Spectator and Tatler,
were all the standard works on the history of the
Constitution, the Federalist, Elliott's Debates, etc.,
which in his solitude he read and reread. He and
his brother meanwhile followed with the keenest
interest the acrimonious discussion going on in
Congress and the press over slavery, the original
rights and sovereignty of the States, prerogatives
indisputable to their minds.
But there was no one, however, to challenge the
soundness of these convictions or the ultimate
results if insisted upon, for they were alone in an

32 JEFFERSON DAVIS
almost primeval wilderness; and about that let me
say something, for the wilderness breeds an unself-
conscious, indomitable, transparent personaHty and
type of mind of its own.
The isolation and solitude of their plantations,
as weU as those throughout the South and especially
the Gulf States, was very deep. They were in the
midst of miles of solemn woods shadowing the leaf-
stained waters of many sluggish streams and miasma-
breeding swamps, and over all a heavy, brooding
silence, broken by day, now near, now far, by cow
bells, some keyed high, some keyed low, and at
night by the lonely voice of an owl or the yelps of
a band of prowfing wolves. Now I am fain to think
an isolation of that depth and kind is bound to play
a part in the character of the human life it sur
rounds, developing not only the native senses of
courage and freedom, but also a reflecting serious
ness and the habit of looking at all questions as
when in the woods, through vistas only. Moreover,
the loneliness of a wilderness breeds a longing for
human speech, and to gratify that longing its cabin
and hewed log house indwellers would travel, as we
are told and I know from boyhood experience, miles
and miles to attend reUgious and poUtical meetings.
And once there what would they hear in those early
days? Not so much the language of reason or induc
tive philosophy, but assertion and the figurative
language of feeUng; and, as feeling is the kindler of

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 33
eloquence, which in turn is but the utterance of
emotion, they followed with rapture the preacher
and the poUtician, for they were expressing their
own suppressed emotions. And that, let me venture
to say, is what made the sermons and the speeches
of the Southern and Western orators so radiant and
teeming with pathos and sentiment. It was sup
pressed emotions, too, that made the touching
eloquence of the Indian chiefs.
Again, culture's clouds of doubt and disbefief did
not hang over the minds of the speakers or audience;
heaven and heU were realities to the shouting
preacher; and in the years before the war when the
stump orator in fierce tones, with extended right
arm and closed fist, declared the sovereignty of the
States, they were also realities — for did not his
hearers breathe the very air of independence in
their boundless woods, and had they not inherited
as Davis, Lee, and every other Southerner of prom
inence, the idea of the sovereignty of the original
colonies, not as a theory but as an indisputable fact?
Truly, truly, the natural feeUngs of the lonely
dwellers in the piny woods of the South played a big,
yes a profoundly dramatic part in the mighty sec
tional struggle; and those of us who had to meet
their sons on the fields of Virginia, slaveholders or
non-slaveholders, and be it remembered that not
one in thirty of the great Stonewall Brigade, and
probably not in one twenty of Pickett's Charge,

34 JEFFERSON DAVIS
was a slaveholder, soon realized we were facing a
foe of indomitable courage, fortified with heartfelt
convictions as to poHtical rights. General Sedgwick,
who was killed at Spotsylvania, wrote to his sister
just after Pope's defeat at Manassas, "the enemy
have outgeneraled us. Their hearts are in the cause."
What musket, what cannon matches the heart in
defense of home or a nation's life? Oh, faithful,
gallant, liberty-loving organ! You are the comrade
on the battlefield for me; let it be a field of defeat
or victory.
So then, let us not lose sight of this wilderness
background with its depths of primitive feelings and
convictions, not only in Jefferson Davis' case, but
the men who carried the colors of the Confederacy.
For the failure of historians to appreciate duly the
state of mind and heart in the South, ascribable in
great measure to the influences of their wilderness
homes, has done more, in my opinion, than any one
thing to mislead them as to the cause of the War
and to be unfair in their judgment of the Southern
people. Such then was the background of woods, political
beliefs and intense provinciaUsm in the plantation life
of Jefferson Davis.
Now, since of all these influences the one that
played the great and, as it turned out, fatal part
in his life and that of the Southern people was the
doctrine of State Rights, let us look up its grounds,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 35
for we think it essential to a fair judgment on him
and them.
Our first colonists, as we all know, settled, some
on the majestic James, some on the sand dunes of
Cape Cod, some on the mountain-born Delaware,
and some on the Savannah.
Fortunately for the planting of good manners and
the ideals of the scholar and the gentleman, the
first that landed were largely drawn from the aristo
cratic cavalier class of Old England, and the second
the Pilgrims who brought the roots and planted
them of a pure democracy infused with a stern
morality. To me it is truly mysterious but elating
that the genius to preside over the New World saw
to it that these brightest ornaments of a nation,
scholarship, good manners, high ideals and a democ
racy purely representative, acknowledging a spiritual
kingdom, should characterize the two foundation
colonies. New England and Virginia.
But when and wherever they landed, they all
carried with them the primal ideas of English law
and customs; and no sooner were the little groups
conscious of the necessity of established government,
than each crystalUzed around certain religious and
political dogmas; organized with a seat of govern
ment on the fines of an absolutely independent body,
with rivers and mountains, as a rule, for their
boundaries. Within these limits their original sov
ereignties were not to be questioned by any neigh-

36 JEFFERSON DAVIS
boring colony. And so deeply had the spirit of
these local sovereignties breathed into the daily life,
that when the mother country undertook to sub
ordinate this sovereignty under the guise of taxation,
they rebelled; and on the fields of Lexington, Saratoga,
Cowpens, King's Mountain and Yorktown they
fought it out and won. Now what is most signifi
cant and important, as bearing on the ground of
original State Rights, is this, when the peace was
signed the King of England signed it acknowledging
by name each of the thirteen colonies.
Here then in the King's acknowledgment of each
colony's sovereignty, we have the birthplace of the
doctrine of State Rights, with its fateful corollary
of a right to secede from the Union. It would be
idle in the light of the past to discuss that claim,
the graves that were filled in four years of war to
support it are arguments against it; notwithstand
ing, had that question been submitted to the States
prior to 1830 for determination, it would, in my
belief, have been carried unanimously in the affirma
tive. It was practically asserted by New England
at Hartford, 1814, and even as late as 1854 the fittle
hamlet of Fitzwilfiam, New Hampshire, voted
solemnly in_town meeting urging its representative
in Congress to take the stand of going out of the
Union if a further extension of slavery were allowed.
One word before we leave the question of State
Rights — each of the original colonies was repre-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 37
sented by a star in the blue field of our national
colors. The founders of the nation chose their
emblem from the over-arching heavens. Shall we
substitute in that field the waxing crescents of big
commercial interests, or a milky way of dreamy,
confused political theories? No, let us follow as our
forefathers did the ways of Heaven and keep the
stars of our flag undimmed in their original glory,
revolving around the central sun, the Constitution,
but each independent in its orbit.
And now a word as to slavery, which, although
originally it had nothing whatsoever to do with the
theory of State Rights, became its synonym with aU
its curse and universal condemnation. Yet in the
early days slavery was recognized, North as well as
South, as lawful; and the owner of a captured
Pequot Indian in Nev/ England or a purchased Afri
can in the South had the protection of the law for
the enjoyment of his slave property.
It is only fair to the South, which by a strange
fate had to bear the ignominy of slavery and
through secession to be the last indirect defender
of its curse, to say that more than once in colonial
days she tried to free herself from the abomination.
The Virginia House of Burgesses passed twenty-
three acts to prohibit the further import of slaves,
and the King of England vetoed aU of them; even
South Carolina, as late as 1760, enacted a similar
law against bringing in more slaves which the King

38 JEFFERSON DAVIS
vetoed, so profitable was the degrading, pitiless
slave trade to England's sordid commercial interest.
Again, when the Constitution was adopted its
first draft provided for terminating the slave trade
in 1800; an amendment was offered extending the
time to 1808, and it was carried, every vote from
the North for it, and all but one from the South
against it. New England ships, fike those of old
England, were in the business; saiHng out of Salem,
Boston and Newport to the west coast of Africa
to pack, in unspeakable cruelty, their between-
decks with the poor creatures bought with rum and
trinkets. The first EngUsh ship devoted to the slave
trade was called the Jesus, and the first American,
bmlt at Marblehead, was named the Desire. What
contrasts their names and their commerce suggest!
It is unnecessary to state that enormous profits
were made in the horrible traffic. Where was the
New England conscience in those days? But let
all this be as it may, long before the period dealt
with in this biography two mighty and noble-browed
advocates. Sympathy and Justice, had appealed in
behalf of the poor slave to the heart of the world,
and a movement backed by the finer instincts of
our natures had set in to put an end to slavery.
Virginia at an early day, under the influence of that
appeal, came within one vote of abolishing the curse
and shame, and many, like John Randolph of Roa
noke, emancipated their slaves. Unfortunately for

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 39
Virginia and her sister States, that movement toward
emancipation was checked by two causes and at
last died out: first, an invention for clearing the
cotton fibre from the seed thereby making slave
labor very profitable; and second, resentment over
the abuse and obloquy which opponents of slavery
heaped on the slaveholder.
In the beginning, the condemnation of slavery
was predicated on gentle and holy morals, but after
the unnatural alliance of hate, obloquy and refigion,
the movement in the North changed rapidly into an
inveterate crusade against slavery led on by what
was known as the Abofition Party whose news
papers by 1838, the Liberator, Emancipator, Phil
anthropist, National Enquirer and New York Evan
gelist were reaching the homes of thousands in the
North. It has long been observed that an issue
involving a moral question, fike that those periodi
cals were advocating, breeds bigoted radicals who
through temperament invariably make everything
personal and become, sooner or later, combative and
abusive toward whoever challenges the wisdom of
their views or refrains from joining in carrying
them out.
A survey of those time-yellowing sheets will dis
close that their columns were filled with sermons,
addresses at conventions, editorials, and letters
from farmers who tilled the rock-strewn winter-wind
swept fields of New England, all breathing a ferocious

40 JEFFERSON DAVIS
intolerance not only against slavery, but against
the slaveholder himself; some going so far in then-
wrought-up state of mind as to suggest, approve
and encourage an insurrection of the slaves. That
the appalfing Santo Domingo insm-rection, when gray-
haired, trembfing old age, and babyhood in the cradle
with its smiles and innocence were all left butchered,
should not have drowned the cry of mercy in their
natures, is simply astounding, for many were not
only intelfigent, but when not on the slavery
question, reasonable and charitable.
The present generation can have only a laint
notion of the intensity of the personal antipathy to
slaveholders and aversion from the South generally
by the members of the Abofition Party.
Naturally enough this antipathy was reciprocated
with full measure of scorn and disdain by the slave
holder, and indeed by the poorest whites of the
pineclad sand hills and swamps of the South.
Without a due appreciation of that long and deep-
rooted aversion and estrangement of the sections,
beginning, as we are convinced it did, away back in
old England from a marked difference in the point
of view of the part religion should play in social and
governmental fife, the conflict between the shrewd
ness of a commercial and the rustic simplicity of an
agricultural life, and at last by that inborn hatred of
aristocracy, intensified by the acknowledged and
actual social and political preeminence of the South

HIS LIFE ANLK PERSONALITY 41
— we say that without a full appreciation of all the
above facts, — the War of the Rebelfion will not,
we fear, be fully understood, or the leaders. North
and South, be duly, be fairly portrayed against the
stormy background.

CHAPTER IV
Davis' emergence from obscurity and the loneli
ness of the wilderness came about in this way.
Two ambitious Whigs, owing to the overwhelming
majorities cast by their party in Warren County,
were candidates for a seat in the Mississippi legis
lature of 1843. The Democrats, encouraged by the
rivalry between the Whigs, put a candidate in the
field, but within a week of the election became dis
satisfied with him and dropped him, and asked
Davis to take his place. He accepted, and at once
the Whigs, scenting danger, forced one of their candi
dates to withdraw and Davis, instead of leading
followers inspired with prospective triumph, led a
forlorn hope.
The Whigs, to make victory sure, called on Pren
tiss, the greatest orator of his day, and whose fame
still fingers along the lower Mississippi fike the glow
on the clouds from a setting sun, to come to their
aid. Moreover, they arranged for a joint debate
between him and Davis, who had never made a
pofitical speech in his fife. He was defeated as he
expected to be, although he cut down materially
the usual Whig majority. But he had held his own
so well with the famous orator, that the next year
42

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 43
he was sent as a delegate to a Democratic state
convention for the selection of a presidential candi
date. He there made a speech in behalf of Calhoun,
from whom as Secretary of War under Monroe he
had received his appointment to West Point, that
brought the convention to its feet with wild applause,
and the same fall he was named an elector-at-large
on the Polk and Dallas ticket. Davis canvassed the
State from one end to the other and was elected.
His readiness, breadth and clearness of view, aug
mented by a manifest sincerity and depth of con
viction — he never harangued — and that charm of
voice and manner that stayed with him to the end,
so won the hearts, not only of the lank "crackers"
in the piny woods, but those of his fellow cultivated
planters, that in the foUowing summer, 1845, they
elected him by a vote of the State-at-large to
Congress. During the campaign the question of the payment
of the bonds issued by the State for the stock of
certain banks having spfit both parties, the leader
of the Democratic party announced that no anti-
repudiator should have his vote or influence, where
upon Davis wrote a pamphlet against repudiation.
His friends advised, implored him not to make it
pubfic, but he went at once to the repudiator leader,
a Mr. Briscoe, and showed it to him. "Didn't you
know," observed Briscoe, "I said I would not vote
for any man holding these opinions?" "Yes,"

44 JEFFERSON DAVIS
replied Davis, "and therefore I thought you ought
to know mine."
That Briscoe in the end voted for him is not of
importance, but in the fight of this evidence we will
leave it to any fair-minded man whether or not the
charge made with trumpets, so to speak, against
Davis when the Confederacy was trying to nego
tiate a loan in England, and reiterated long after
the war was over by Roosevelt, the most frequent
and shrillest crowing cock on the roost and off the
roost, in pofitics of his day, was justified.
Of all the many charges brought against him not
one ever struck deeper or wounded him .more sorely;
and again and again, as he trod the path of his old
age, he protested and reprotested this honor-tainting
accusation. Before entering upon that campaign, Davis had
become engaged to the daughter of W. B. Howell,
whose plantation home was on a bluff near Natchez.
Their acquaintance began while she was on a visit
with his brother's family at "Hurricane," conducted
thither by a warm friend of her father. Judge George
Winchester, a distinguished lawyer, originally from
Salem, Massachusetts, who had become a slave
holder fike his feUow Northerners, Sergeant Prentiss
of Maine, Gen. John J. Quitman of New York, and
Robert J. Walker of Pennsylvania, leading spirits
in the defense and rights of slavery and strong advo
cators of the annexation of Texas. But surely in

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 45
the judge's case, whatsoever might have been his
Puritanic notions of slavery, a wide plantation on
the Mississippi with cotton fields in bloom was a
very different thing from a mournful hiUside farm
with its stunted cedars on Cape Ann. The judge,
I have no doubt, fully appreciating the difference,
luxuriated in the contrast and had no compimctions
about the institution, sweetly as might his boyhood's
memory cherish the church beUs of Salem and the
beams of Baker's Island lights in its harbor. But,
in a contest between morals and wealth with its
ease, distinction and freedom from care for a seat
at the right hand of our conscience, the chances I
think, and am sorry to say so, are heavy in favor of
the latter; and yet I have no misgiving that the old
judge was a right companionable, good-hearted New
Englander, notwithstanding he turned slaveholder.
Here is the first letter of his charge. Miss Howell,
to her mother. "Today Uncle Joe [Joseph Emory
Davis] sent, by his younger brother [did you know
he had one?] an urgent invitation to me to go at
once to the 'Hurricane.' [She had stopped on her
way at the plantation of Mrs. David McCaleb, Mr.
Joseph Davis' eldest daughter.] I do not know
whether this Mr. Jefferson Davis is yoimg or old.
He looks both at times; but I befieve he is old, for
from what I hear he is only two years younger than
you are. He impresses me as a remarkable kind of
man, but of uncertain temper, and has a way of

46 JEFFERSON DAVIS
taking for granted that everybody agrees with him
when he expresses an opinion, which offends me;
yet he is most agreeable and has a peculiarly sweet
voice and a winning manner of asserting himself.
The fact is, he is the kind of person I should expect
to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk, but to
insist upon a stoical indifference to the fright after
ward. I do not think I shaU ever like him as I do
his brother Joe. Would you befieve it, he is refined
and cultivated, and yet a Democrat!"
Having been born and bred a Democrat this sur
prise of the Whig miss over Jeff's refinement and
cultivation "and yet a Democrat!" brings a smile.
For aU that, those discerning young eyes had not
failed to note the one main weakness in his char
acter, namely, taking it for granted that whosoever
had thought the matter out as he had thought it
out must have reached the same conclusion as he
had reached. It was a trait, notwithstanding the
good breeding with which it was manifested, that she
did not fike, nor did any of his political adversaries
ever like. But in this connection let me venture to
say that tenacity and obstinacy of opinion are dis
tinctively a product of the wilderness, as well as
the sofitude of a cloistral life at a university, or
social isolation. Men who have reached conclusions
under such conditions are, as a rule, wiUful and un
manageable; Mr. Lincoln — Davis' reverse historic
counterpart — was no exception to this rule; for

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 47
with equal pertinacity he held to his opinions, but
he was vastly more sagacious in their presentation
and defense.
In the spring of 1845, Jefferson Davis and Miss
HoweU were married at her home in Natchez; and
when Davis took the boat at Vicksburg with his
faithful servant, James Pemberton, for the wedding,
lo! who should be aboard but General Taylor on
his way to New Orleans to take command of the
troops destined for the Mexican border. Davis had
not seen or heard from him since he left Prairie du
Chien some ten years gone by and keen was his
pleasure when Taylor greeted him with spontaneous
cordiafity; and as they journeyed on, their old-time
relations of mutual regard and esteem were resumed.
The good angels are near nations and individuals
when, under reconciliation's gracious powers, the
warm hand is reached out again and the eye beams
again with the old-time friendship.
This interview with Taylor must have made the
day doubly happy for Davis, and I have no doubt
his heart waslfighter therefor as he reached the door
of his bride's plantation home, its servants in their
best bib and tucker, the air fiUed with the fragrance
of the wild grape, yellow jessamine and magnolia.
Late that autumn, Davis and his wife, who had
soft, fiquid, dark eyes, a voice of Southern charm and
was a ready, pleasing talker, went to Washington and
on December 8, 1845, he took his seat in Congress.

CHAPTER V
As I have taken, in the preceding pages, some pains
to set forth Jefferson Davis' surroundings on the
plantation, convinced that in his case and that of
every man who makes a mark in the world, they
leave indelible traces of their handiwork in inteUec-
tual development and are the sources of certain
fadeless fines in character, I shall dweU for a moment
on his new surroundings and some of the issues
engrossing the attention of Congress.
There were four great figures masterful in mind,
personality and achievement with whom he was
brought face to face, John Qiuncy Adams, Clay,
Webster and Calhoun. In the eyes of Davis, Cal
houn was easily the greatest, but from the viewpoint
of historic perpetuity he now stands off and alone
from them all in the deep shadow that slavery cast;
while Clay, on the contrary, stands in the warm
beams of a life-long desire to reconcile the sections,
Adams in the perpetual light that is shed from his
diary, and Webster in that of his vision of the
Union's glorified destiny, a vision that ralUed the
forces of the North to accept the chaUenge for its
disruption and with a result that we aU know.
In Congress and the Cabinet were many able,
48

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 49
strong men. Seward whose fame will last welded as
it is to Lincoln's, Giddings of Ohio, the Abolition
champion with glowing white teeth and defiant
personal courage; Chase and Toombs both handsome,
large, striking men who were destined alike to life
long disappointed ambition, — Chase to be the
leader of the North instead of Lincoln, Toombs the
presidency of the Confederacy instead of Davis, —
Crittenden, the venerable, well-bred gentleman of
Kentucky, Winthrop of Massachusetts wearing
her mantle of social and intellectual aristocracy,
Stephens of Georgia, and many others who played
mighty parts in the Rebelfion. What a contrast to
the quiet loneliness and undisputed sway of a
plantation on the Mississippi!
Mrs. Davis in her Memoirs throws this light upon
the outset of her husband's Congressional life. "He
visited very fittle, studied until two or three o'clock
in the morning, and, with my assistance, did all his
writing, franking documents, letters, etc." This
would seem to indicate that he did not trust to the
inspiration of the moment to discuss a question in
Congress. She further says that the only one he visited
beside old army friends, was Calhoun, and as we
know, by following in his steps they led him to
CaUioun's place in the leadership of the South and
at last to manacles at Fort Momoe.
Early in that session he made a speech, but not a

50 JEFFERSON DAVIS
long one, on the Oregon boundary issue. Savage, a
newspaper reporter and author, says of it that when
Davis began his speech, — ^and we easily catch the
vibrant tones of his carrying voice, — Southern
friends of mine who heard him often have told me
they were a combination of the trumpet and harp —
Adams drew near him for it was his habit to listen
carefuUy to the first set speech of a new member,
apparently to discover if it were worth while for
him to pay attention the next time the speaker had
the floor. "At the close of the speech," goes on
Savage, "Adams crossed over to some friends and
said, 'That young man, gentlemen, is no ordinary
man. He will make his mark yet, mind me.' "
The country at that time was in high fever, from
one end to the other, over the admission of Texas
by joint resolution of Congress after a prolonged
debate marked with sustained earnestness and
extreme acrimony; for slavery, as usual, was at
the fore and charged with reaching out, as in the
Louisiana Purchase, for more territory to increase
her power in the national councils; when, as a
matter of fact, as Time's outgoing tide has revealed,
it was not slavery, but the Genius of our country
making her way to the Pacific in fulfiUment of her
preordained destiny yet meeting a furious New
England's resistance at every step.
Adams, who led the opposition to the annexation
of Texas, angered over defeat, prophesied that it

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 51
would be the death of the Union. He is in his grave,
and, lo! today his New England's cotton miUs
rejoice as they spin Texas cotton, and the country's
ships, propelled by Texas oil, sail proudly bearing
the products of their looms across the sea.
The fires of this discussion over slavery were still
smoking when up fiamed a long-smoldering dispute
with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary.
Both countries were in bad humor. Parfiament had
voted unanimously on a call from Peel for suppfies
to get ready for conffict, and the people beyond the
Alleghenies were longing to cross swords with
England. "Unfortunately," said Davis at the beginning of
his speech, "the opinion has gone forth that no
politician dared to be the advocate of peace when
the question of war is mooted. That will be an evil
hour — when it shall be in the power of any dema
gogue or fanatic to raise a war clamor and control
the legislation of the coimtry. The evils of war
must fall upon the people, and with them the war
feefing should originate. We, their representatives,
are but a mirror to reflect the light, and never should
become a torch to fire the pile."
He then went on and discussed — and we think
ably and fairly — the reasonableness of the claims
of the disputed boundary lines, recommending,
however strong our case might be theoretically, yet
in view of all the consequences, we should accede

52 JEFFERSON DAVIS
to an honorable compromise. As slavery had been
thrust into the discussion, as in all questions of a
national character after the rise of the Abolition
Party, and the usual sheet lightning had flashed
from the low-down war-gathering cloud of the sec
tions, Davis before he closed, touched the chords
that bound the Union; how in the hearts of North
and South the names of the battlefields of the Revo
lution were mingled in pride and affection, and
exclaimed. "What Southern man would wish it less
by one of the Northern names of which it is com
posed? Or where is he, gazing on the obefisk,
[referring to Bunker HiU Monument] that rises
from the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren,
would feel his patriot's pride suppressed by local
jealousy? Type of the men, the event, the purpose it
commemorates . . . pointing like a finger to the
sources of noblest thought, a beacon of freedom, it
guides the present generation to contemplate the
scene where Massachusetts and Virginia, as stronger
brothers of the family, stood foremost to defend our
common rights." This reference to the monument
overlooking Boston must have pleased Adams.
It is not my purpose or desire to encumber this
narrative with speeches, but this one reveals what I
believe to be the real Jefferson Davis, a man of
moral courage, of standards far above the level of
the demagogue and fanatic, and gifted with a rare
ornament, namely, a mind where reason and imagi-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 53
nation both play around the subjects that appeal
to it.
The speech, which has just been referred to, was
made on the sixth of February, and in May he was
appointed on a committee empowered to ask for
State papers and reports on some outrageous
charges against Webster in the use of secret funds
while Secretary of State under Tyler, alleging that
not only had he used those funds to corrupt the
press, but was a "definquent and defaulter" to the
sum of over five thousand dollars.
This scandalous resolution, to the disgrace of
Congress, was carried by a vote of one hundred
thirty-six yeas to twenty-eight nays. But, we must
remember that Webster loomed as a candidate of
the Whigs for the next presidency, that greatness
breeds envy, and that in both parties there are
always shoals of cheap, shifty pofiticians. There
was no lack of them in the Democratic party, who,
for political advantage, were base enough to hope
the committee's report, which was practically
written by Davis, although if it in the rnain should
exonerate Webster yet by implication would leave
a stain. The night before the committee reported,
one of them went to see Davis and hinted that he
hoped it would not "white-wash" Webster. Davis
fired up over the dishonorable suggestion, and said,
"No one could deprecate his [Webster's] poficy
more than I do," but, that he would not make a

54 JEFFERSON DAVIS
false and partisan report, or parley with his sense
of justice and honor.
Webster, after the finding was submitted exon
erating him completely, went to see Davis and
expressed in warm terms his appreciation of the
manly way he had dealt with the matter. Later he
cafied on Mrs. Davis and invited them to visit him
at Marshfield.
As the spirits of the dead in their transcendent
rest are free from all mortality's bickerings, I am
fain to befieve that Webster's met that of Davis
with a warm hand at the end of its upward flight,
for as Bacon says, "The nobler a soul is, the more
objects of compassion it hath."
Not long after this report on the Webster charges,
a resolution of thanks to Taylor and his men for
victories won over Mexican forces on the Texas
border was offered in Congress. Davis made a
fervent speech in its favor, saying that, as a friend
of the Army, his heart rejoiced that there was a
disposition in the House to deal justly and generously
with the defenders of the country's colors; that too
often and too long had they had to listen to harsh
and invidious reflections on the Army and the
accomplished officers who commanded it; that now,
as an American, his heart in response to whatsoever
iUustrates our national character or adds glory to
the name, rejoiced at the recent triumphs. Yet it
was no more than he expected, or when occasions

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 55
offer, it would achieve again. And then in fine
strain he went on, — "It was the triumph of Ameri
can courage, professional skill, and that patriotic
pride which blooms in the breast of every educated
soldier," — a simile that must have been pleasing to the
ear of his stern old Ahna Mater on the Hudson, and
as one of his fellow graduates, it pleases my ear too.
Davis, continuing his speech, spoke of a bastioned
field work and how, through the science of its con
struction, it had stood bombardment practically
harmless while its fire had crumbled the stone waUs
of Matamoras; and then, turning to a member of
the House, who had denounced the Academy and
its graduates, made an iU-fated and unmitigated
blunder by asking him if he befieved a blacksmith
or a tailor could have secured like results.
Now it so happened that the Congressman who had
made the charges and had been a blacksmith — but
Davis did not know it — retorted, not angrily, being
blessed with a genial temper, but well, saying in
effect, that the days when he was the companion of
the blazing forge and the ringing anvil were proud
days, and moreover that General Greene of Revolu
tionary fame had been a blacksmith also. Andrew
Johnson, however, Lincoln's successor in the Presi
dency, who had been a tailor in his youth and had
had to fight his way up against a domineering class
founded on wealth and family, fretting under Davis'
unwarrantable yet unintentional aspersion, rose the

56 JEFFERSON DAVIS
next day and gritted out: "He knew we had an
iUegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy
who assumed to know a great deal, but when the
flimsy veil of pretension was torn from it, was
shown to possess neither talents nor information,"
and declaring that when a blow was struck upon
the class he had sprung from, "either direct or by
innuendo, he would resent it."
Davis, in reply, said with deep earnestness that
his reference to the tailor and the blacksmithing
trades was whoUy, whoUy misimderstood, that he
merely wanted to show that an education, either by
teaching or by experience was necessary in every
professional career and that once for all he would
say, "that if he knew himself, he was incapable of
wantonly wounding the feelings or of making invidi
ous reflections upon the origin or occupation of any
man." But all to no avail, so far as Johnson was
concerned; his feelings had been hurt, and in all
likelihood it was not the first time by the speech
or bearing of some of his Southern coUeagues, not
one of whom, by the way, had in combination of
manner, tone and abifity more of the aristocrat
than Davis.
Yet, how truly and thoroughly this controversial
incident, so unexpected and unhappy, illustrates a
trait in human nature, namely, that the composure
of a man sure of his station, bom with a certain
austerity of manner and gifted with power of easy

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 57
and telling speech, always shoots a chiUiness that
provokes combative mediocrity whose chief weapons
are obloquy and reproach. That was Davis' mis-
fortime, and although he was without a single
affectation or lacking a heart for the warmest friend
ships, yet his combination of fine manners, cool
self-control and certain dignity that stood off unwar
ranted familiarity, was the source of much of the
hatred which neither punishment nor death appeased.
I have said that his blunder in bringing in the
blacksmith and the tailor was ill-fated. What I
had in mind was this — its probable contribution in
estabfishing Johnson's final antagonism to the
Confederacy which made East Tennessee practically
loyal, and by its appeal for defense from the North
threatened the life of the Confederacy at every stage
of its four years' struggle.
WeU, Andrew Johnson is buried among the stead
fast friends of his obscure youth, and the mountains of
East Tennessee with their blooming laurel and moon-
glittering tumbling streams proudly stand guard
in majestic silence over his and the graves of them
all — those who fought for the South and those who
laid down their lives for the North — and strangely
enough, before death overtook him the party whom
he had opposed, in its vindictive pursuit of pofitical
booty, hated him as they hated Davis, and thus at
last the humble taUor and the aristocratic planter
met on the same level.

58 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Whatever hold that unfortunate clash with
Johnson may have had on Davis' mind was quickly
broken by the United States declaring war on
Mexico, and the arrival soon thereafter of a special
messenger notifying him that he had been chosen
Colonel of the First Mississippi Rifles, who had
enlisted at once on the call for volunteers.
Davis gladly accepted the Colonelcy, and after
securing for his regiment the best arm of the day,
the Whitney gun, set off for Vicksburg, pursuing
his way by stage over the Alleghenies. June, with
her sunshine dome, daisies, green leaves and gently
drifting clouds was living her day of matchless
charm. A family council including James Pemberton
was held, at which it was decided that James should
stay at home and look after the plantation and Mrs.
Davis. That settled, Davis selected an Arabian
from his stables, and with Jim Green, one of his
brother's people for servant in Pemberton's place,
set off to join his regiment in camp at New Orleans.
Within a few days the regiment sailed and landed
on a sandy beach not far from Point Isabel on the
coast of Texas, where Davis at once began to drill
his men and conduct schools of instruction for
comnussioned and non-commissioned officers. Sub
sequently they moved to Comargo on the Rio
Grande. While in camp some of his men raided a corn

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 59
field, the ears in fuU silk offering a sweet change
from the army ration of hard tack and bacon.
Davis, on hearing of the wreck of the poor settler's
field, was deeply provoked and at once assembled
the men, rebuking them sharply for their conduct,
admonishing them that war against an enemy did
not allow the despoifing or destruction of private
property, and warning them that henceforth any
violation of this rule would meet with severe pun
ishment. The damages his men had done he paid
out of his own pocket to the farmer.
In this connection it may with propriety, we
think, be recorded, that not a single article or
trophy of any kind was brought home by the men
of his regiment; moreover, all the venerable bejew
elled tinsels of churches and cathedrals were left
untouched, and we dare say that if these old-time
revered objects of devotion with their strings of
pearls, rubies and diamonds could speak, they
would testify with subdued, fervent gratitude to
this fact, at least so far as the First Mississippi
Rifles were concerned. What a contrast to the
conduct of some of our men in the Civil War and
the Germans in the World War, lugging home
family treasures, silverware, pictures, and what
not! Surely Jefferson Davis' record in the Mexican
War, so far as deafing with individual enemies and
observing their rights was concerned, brought no

60 JEFFERSON DAVIS
shame to his country, and we believe that the old
flag he followed in those days would declare with
pride that it had no memory in its folds of a single
act by him unbecoming a soldier and a gentle
man.

CHAPTER VI
In August General Taylor, to whom Davis had
reported and by whom he had been received with
heartiness, set his forces in motion for Monterey
some hundred miles distant at a gap in the Mexican
mountains. After four or five hot days' march
through a desolation of sand, chaparral and bayonet
cactus that gave away at last to smiUng fields and
hills clothed in green, they reached the little town
of Marin, and from one of its belfries they could
see across an intervening, undulating valley some
twenty-odd miles v/ide, the gilded crosses of the
Cathedral of Monterey.
The dreamy old town, with a population of ten
or more thousand, and embowered with fig, lemon,
orange and pomegranate trees, lay at the mouth of
a pass through the Sierra Madres on the main
road to the City of Mexico. Its streets were svv^cpt
by artillery posted and protected by barricades
where they crossed each other; and the square one-
storied houses of sofid masonry, with a court in
the center and iron-barred windows, had flat roofs
with parapets made of sand bags for infantry. On
both sides of the pass above the town there were
fieldworks, and fortified stone structures caUed
fii

62 JEFFERSON DAVIS
castles, flying the green, white and red banner of
Mexico. In the suburbs, at the lower end of the
town, were several small works, and a little farther
along on the bank of the river was a large grove of
pecan and live oaks into whose shade, after the
capture, some of the weary storming troops retired
with their riddled, victorious colors. Beyond the
town fimits in the north and standing alone, was a
fort known as the Black Fort, with four salients
providing for eight guns each, walls very strong and
high surrounded by a deep ditch and enclosing two
or more acres.
After resting a few days they drew near to Mon
terey and Taylor sent George Gordon Meade, the
hero of Gettysburg, who in figure, bearing and
temperament was very like Davis, to conduct
Worth with his division off to the right and attack
the batteries and detached works guarding the
pass through the mountains. This was on a Sunday
forenoon and Worth and his soldiers could hear the
bells of the Cathedral ringing for morning service,
their soft tones wafting over the line of his march.
He reached his position about twifight and went
into bivouac.
The next morning, to make a diversion in favor
of Worth who had attacked with valor at an early
hour. Garland's Brigade, chiefly of Regulars and
the Washington and Baltimore Battalions of Mifitia,
and very gallant men they were, assaUed the lower

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 63
end of the town. Garland soon came under a heavy
artiUery fire from works not only directly in his
front, but also on his right and rear from Black
Fort, and on his left from Fort Taneria. He was
repulsed with a death toU that was heavy, and
among the dead were the grandsons of two of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, showing
that their forefathers' courageous blood was stUl
running. Quitman, commanding Davis' brigade was then
ordered up and the First Mississippi Rifles and the
First Tennessee attacked Fort Taneria. After suf
fering much from artillery and musketry fire, they
stormed and broke through, Davis abreast in going
over the works and in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
On reaching the gate of a fortified building they
forced it open and its commanding officer surrendered
his sword to Davis.
Meanwhile Butler's division had gone to the
support of Garland and met with like fortune,
whereupon the Mexican cavalry massed behind the
Black Fort hurried out to charge the broken infantry.
Davis who had been sent to Butler's aid, arrived
just in time to take position as a rear guard for the
broken battafions, and seeing the oncoming cavalry,
faced his regiment about and advanced against
them. In the engagement that followed, he repulsed
the cavalry, saving the fives of many of oiu- fimping,
bleeding wounded. Albert Sidney Johnston in talking

64 JEFFERSON DAVIS
with his son long after Monterey, gave Davis the
highest praise for his conduct.
The next day and the next the American forces
renewed the attack, fighting from house to house,
and from all accounts Davis showed great personal
bravery. One circumstance is worthy of mention:
a young Mexican officer was urging his men on
with much gallantry when one of Davis' men levelled
his rifle on him. Davis exclaimed, "Do not shoot
him!" The brave fellow's life was spared.
The next morning the Mexican general Ampudia,
of French descent and born in the West Indies,
asked for terms of surrender. Taylor having selected
Davis for one of the Commissioners to carry out
the terms of surrender, named an hour and place
for a conference. An officer who accompanied
Davis to the meeting says that Ampudia was in
full uniform, all courtesy, big speeches, abundance
of shrugs, nods, alternate smiles and frowns, in
short, manifesting the whole gamut of intercourse
common to Frenchmen. Taylor, on the contrary,
was dumb, dressed in his best coat that looked as
though it had been through a dozen campaigns, a
glazed oil-cloth cap, an old-fashioned white vest and
had the appearance of an aged farmer elected to a
military command. When Ampudia had got through
boasting about the number of troops he had and
how he and they would die in their tracks, etc.,
Taylor cocked his head a little to one side and, gently

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 65
raising his grizzly eyebrows so that the dauntless
fittle black eyes lurking beneath them might fall
directly upon the ammated Mexican, said coolly:
"General Ampudia, we came here to take Monterey,
and we are going to do it on such terms as please
us. I wish you good morning," and off he went
leaving Davis and his colleagues to settle the terms.
In the end Davis wrote them and they were gen
erous, too generous, as it turned out, to suit the
politicians in Washington, and Taylor was ordered
to revoke them; but owing to the long distance
the messenger had to travel they had about expired
before his arrival. Taylor, very naturally was
indignant, and felt he had been dealt with unfairly;
thereupon Davis came to his defense and his
colleagues joined with him.
Mrs. Davis unwell, and affairs on the plantation
— although James had done his best — unsatisfactory
and worrying, the Colonel got a leave of absence
and went home, taking with him his war horse Tartar
which had shown intelligence and spirit under fire.
Before returning to the Army, Davis made his
will, and consulted James whom he wished to set free,
as to its provisions in case of his death. James
said that he would prefer to take care of Mrs. Davis
whUe she fived, but wanted his freedom at the end
of her life, and the will was so framed with a bequest
of land or money as he might choose.
On the expiration of his leave of absence he left

66 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Tartar and took Richard, a bay with black points,
and rejoined the Army. The battle of Buena Vista
was fought shortly after his return, a battle against
vastly superior numbers, and every history of that
engagement wiU tell you Davis with his Mississippi
Rifies did as much if not more to win that great
victory than any other single command, although
there was conspicuous fortitude and bravery dis
played by regulars and volunteers on all parts of
the bitterly contested field.
Early in the action he was wounded seriously in
the right foot just below the instep, the ball driving
a part of his spur and stocking into the wound,
but he did not leave the field till it was won. His
boot had to be cut from his foot and all that night
a friend, Captain Eustis, kept a stream of cold
water pouring over the wound. The next morning
when it was rumored that the enemy was about to
renew the battle, Davis ordered that he be carried
out to the head of his regiment, but during the
night the enemy drew away silently; for two years
Davis was on crutches, the bone of his foot exf ofiating
from time to time.
Many, many gaUant men feU at Buena Vista
and among them Hardin, McKee and Clay, a son
and namesake of the great patriot Henry Clay.
He had been a year at West Point with Davis and
when the latter first met his father in Washington,
on reentering Congress, Clay said: "My poor boy

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 67
usuaUy occupied about one-half of his letters home
in praising you."
Taylor in his official report said: "The Mississippi
Rifles imder Colonel Davis were highly conspicuous
for their gallantry and steadiness. Brought into
action against an immense, superior force, they
maintained themselves for a long time xmsupported.
Colonel Davis, though severely wounded, remained
in the saddle imtil the close of the action."
Davis' regiment's term of service having expired
and the time having come for its departure, he
drew it up in front of General Taylor to say good-bye.
The old General exclaimed almost choked with
emotion, "Go on boys — go on — I can't speak."
On its arrival at New Orleans it received a great
welcome, and there were many manifestations of
joy and pride as the boat made its way up the
river to Vicksburg and home.
Davis had hardly reached his plantation when,
owing to the death of a senator from Mississippi,
the Governor, Albert GaUatin Brown, appointed
him to fill the vacancy and on crutches in December,
pale and emaciated, he took his seat in the Senate.

CHAPTER VII
Although the Mexican War was over, and over
victoriously, when Davis entered the Senate, yet
the storm of passion aroused by it had not died
down, so deeply emaged were the foes of slavery,
who, day in and day out, continued to denounce
it as a war, not waged in the defense of the country's
honor or rights, but for the conquest of new terri
tory for the extension of slavery. So, when Webster
in discussing a bill for the increase of the regular
army declared it was an odious war, this epithet
brought Davis to his feet, and naturally enough,
for did not the crutches at his side call on him to
resent the imputation?
"Odious for what?" he asked — and we see the
blaze in his blue-gray eyes and we hear his melodious
voice keyed with impelling fervor — "Is it odious
on account of the skill and gallantry with which it
has been conducted, or because of the humanity,
the morality, the magnanimous clemency v/hich
have marked its execution? Where is the odium?
Where are the evils brought upon us by this ' odious '
war? VvTiere can you point to any inroad upon our
prosperity, public or private, industrial, com
mercial or financial which, in any degree, can be
attributed to the prosecution of this war?"
68

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 69
While this warm, offhand reply did not go to
the root of the matter as it lay in Webster's mind,
yet having participated in that war, forbidden
plundering and having written the generous terms
for the capitulation of Monterey, it would have
been pusiUanimous in Davis to have sat there and
kept his silence.
Relative to slavery during that and subsequent
sessions, he said in defence of the South that it
had inherited and not instituted slavery, that it
had recognition in the voice of the Constitution
itself as an element in society and the nation's
pofitical body, that its extension into the territories
did not add a single soul to its numbers; that during
its existence in the South the slaves had risen to a
higher level in intelfigence than elsewhere in the
world, and that between them and their masters
had grown home ties of affection independent of
color; that the mere fact of ownership neither
estabfished inhumanity, obfiterated a single one of
the native feefings, debauched the standard of
good citizenship or loyalty to the Republic's ideals
in the owner of slaves in the South any more than
it did in the holder of slaves while slavery existed
in New England and New York. He recognized
and regretted that the antithetical use of the terms
freedom and slavery as appfied to parties had had
a powerful infiuence in forming the adverse opinion
of the world — for the word "freedom" was sweet

70 JEFFERSON DAVIS
and "slavery" repugnant — as against any claim
the South might make for its rights under the Con
stitution, or measures for its safety of life or property
from insurrection. To the last he held that, to
whatever extent the question of slavery may have
served as the occasion, it was really not the heart
of the conffict between the Confederacy and the
Federal Government.
In this connection we wiU venture to observe, that
whosoever delves into the history of those bygone
days so infiamed with bitterness of speech will
discover neither bluster nor intemperate language
by Mr. Davis in stating or defending his views on
slavery. State Rights and pubfic policy, or a single
failure to treat his opponents with the utmost
courtesy. We are quite sure, also, he will find no
instance when Davis descended to the level of the
demagogue; for, if ever a public man's life was built
up around sincerity, that of Jefferson Davis can lay
claim to the tribute.
During this same tempestuous session, what is
known as the Clay Compromise between North and
South on the question of slavery was passed. Davis
spoke against it, voted against it, and we think he
was wrong. But he claimed that it practically
denied the South its rights and, by its prohibition
of slavery in the District of Columbia, it virtually
committed the Government to the assumption of
power to destroy slavery whenever it saw fit. If it

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 71
could so deal with that wrong, it could and would
deal with whatsoever might be called thereafter a
national wrong. We think, in view of the power
the Government now exercises over the property as
well as the habits of its citizens, he not only had
logic on his side but prophecy also with her fulfiUing
eye. But if I had to choose in behalf of mankind
between emotion that stirred Clay's heart and
logic that ruled Davis, for a guide to the field of
progress and great deeds, I should choose emotion.
Let all this be as it may, there was an incident
during the heated debate which is worth recording.
Near the end of the discussion during which the
venerable Union-loving Clay had made heart-reach
ing, eloquent appeals in favor of the measure, he
turned toward Davis and said, "Allow me to say
to the Senators from the South and to my friend
from Mississippi, if he wiU allow me to apply that
expression to him, which I do with most profound
truth and sincerity, for he is not only my friend,
but he was also the friend of one who is no more."
Overcome by emotion. Clay could not speak and
bowing his head, whitened with the snow of age,
his eyes were seen to fill with tears; after regaining
control he went on.
When Davis secured the floor some hours later,
early in his speech he said: "I did not, however,"
referring to some phase in the debate, "intend to
arraign in an offensive sense the consistency of my

72 JEFFERSON DAVIS
friend from Kentucky, as I am permitted to call
him. I not only accepted the appellation when he
appfied it to me, I accepted it gratefuUy and I felt
the remarks which came from him in a suppressed
voice more deeply than I can express. Between us
there is a tie of old memories, an association running
back to boyhood days, near and dear, and conse
crated so that death alone can ever sever it. It is
one which he well knows and I can never forget."
Critics! condemnors of Jefferson Davis, may I
ask you to read this scene over? There is much, you
will agree, of our common human nature in it, much
that moves that vibrating chord which binds us
all, which tenderly binds you to me, reader.
There was another event that summer after
Congress adjourned, which we think throws some
light on the kind of man Davis was, and which
Carlisle says should be the main aim and endeavor
of a biographer to discover. It was this: the Whigs
nominated Taylor and the Democrats Lewis Cass
— a patriot if ever there was one and a warm friend
of Davis — for the presidency. He was now con
fronted by devotion to party on the one hand and
by the ties that bound him to Taylor on the other
— was not his first wife Taylor's daughter, and
had he not shared with him the dangers of the
battlefield, dangers that develop a tie that may grow
old but never breaks — ? The outcome of his defib-
eration was to remain loyal to his party's nominee.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 73
but not to enter the campaign in his behalf. When,
however, zealous Democrats attacked his old com
manding officer he came out boldly in his defense,
showing that strong as was the hold of party on
him stronger was that of justice and friendship.
And now a word as to how he passed his time
when not in the Senate.
Mrs. Davis in her Memoirs says that he came home
night after night tired out and then from dusk devoted
himself to a late hour, and often to nearly dayfight,
getting ready for the next day's work; that his
health, never robust since wounded in Mexico, so
interfered with social duties that he took little or no
part in the gayeties of society, although from time
to time he would ask his very intimate pofitical and
old army friends to dine with him. In my youth in
the field I met old officers who had been at his table,
and, although they were fighting against him, they
spoke of his graciousness, natural charm, and how
his face would fight up radiantly with the spirit of
comradeship. When Congress adjourned Davis went home, but
not to quiet, for the people of Mississippi were in a
pofitical ferment, fining up for the election in Sep
tember of delegates to a convention called by the
Legislature for the consideration of Federal rela
tions; in other words, to approve or disapprove of
the Clay Compromise. WhUe this canvass was
going on the regular parties. Whig and Democrat,

74 JEFFERSON DAVIS
nominated candidates for Governor to be elected in
November. The Whigs, who in the main approved
the Compromise, had nominated Foote; and the
Democrats, Quitman, who at heart, although born
in the North, longed to break with it.
Foote, with whom Davis had had a serious con
troversy in the Senate, ending with a mutual antip
athy that lasted as long as they lived, was an able
man, but at times outrageous in his language in
debate, entered upon the campaign with almost
savage delight. From county seat to county seat
he went haranguing, frequently challenging Davis to
meet him, and excoriating Quitman unmercifully.
The election of delegates in favor of the Compromise
was an overwhelming victory for him and the Union
party, chiefly Whigs. Quitman, whom Foote had
literally slashed into shreds, withdrew in utter dis
gust and loathing from the contest for governor;
thereupon the Democrats called upon Davis to lead
their bewildered party.
At that time he was confined to a darkened room,
suffering with a diseased left eye that ultimately
lost its sight entirely. However, he yielded to the
call, resigned his Senatorship and, walking back and
forth in his dark room, dictated his stand on the
issues, declaring that he had never advocated the
dissolution of the Union, that the time for secession
had not come, and, if ever, then only as a last
alternative, and as soon as he was able, set out to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 75
make the best canvass he could in the few weeks
that remained.
The election went against him, but he reduced
the majority of more than seven thousand that had
been cast at the delegate election, to less than a
thousand. That this defeat was a sore disappoint
ment we have no doubt; not only had he sacrificed a
position of honor that he had craved and enjoyed,
but had been defeated by a man he despised. His
resignation of the Senatorship to go into this cam
paign had ill-starred issue in this, that, it identi
fied him thenceforth with the Southern radicals with
whom he was not in full sympathy, and who were
for dissolving the Union at once, he only as a last
alternative. This step indicates his sense of pofitical obfigation
to the party that had bestowed its honors upon
him, a delicate fastidiousness of the proprieties of
official fife, and a keen oversensitiveness as to what
touched his motives and poficies, a trait in his
character that is never found in dictators. From a
worldly point of view, the Confederacy might have
gained here and there an advantage had he been
less sensitive, shrewder and more compliant; but,
while nature in gathering his clay had been bountiful
in her gifts to address the mind and put the torch
to enthusiasm, she forgot — or disdained — to give
him a faculty to deceive, to purr to the vanity of
the mighty, or to greet with a factitious smile and

76 JEFFERSON DAVIS
famifiarity the always ambitious and oftentimes
vulgar pofiticians that pack the ranks of mediocrity.
In this connection as iUustrative of the kind of man
he was, on one occasion in the Senate, he said: "I
wish now merely to add that what my heart tells
me is right, no casuistry can prevail upon me not to
do, or to do that which I befieve to be wrong."
We have wondered, more than once, what the
fate of the Confederacy would have been had it had
a leader of a different type. Would it have suc
ceeded? we hear some one ask. O, no! Entangled
in slavery's inextricable net, it was doomed to
defeat sooner or later let its leader have been the
shrewdest of mortals. In view of its heroic life,
although ill-starred, it was better, it was far better,
we think, to have had a leader such as he was, a
man with high standards of public and private life,
a stainless character, a tongue gifted with eloquence
and a heart of indonaitable courage. Every nation
at some period in its life furnishes material for
drama and I am glad that in the life of the Con
federacy there is so much of a high, inspiring character.
After the election he betook himself to the reju
venescence of his plantation which, due to his long
absence and the death of the faithful James Pem
berton, had become unfruitful and begun to Avear
the forlorn look of neglect. By his ever contagious
spirit he quickly inspired new zeal in the gangs
picking cotton and harvesting the crops, for it was

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 77
autumn and they were ripe; and when not in the
fields with the hands, devoted himself to the grounds
about the house, for they, among all the accessories
of an estate as we well know, are the first to show
the decline of prosperity.
His wife says they worked together looking after
ornamental blooming shrubs, cultivating roses in
the garden, of which he was very proud, and one
day they planted a fittle five oak that thrived so
well that when she wrote her book it spread a
shade of over ninety feet. So passed those autumn
days, the buoyant magnolia glorying in her bursting
carmine seeds, the clustered purple asters and golden-
rod in bloom, and the primeval woods basking in
the dreamy Indian summer silence, days that in
the eyes of the gray-haired wife, after the storm
and wreck were over, lay like a lost Eden in the
dreary past.
Meanwhile Davis' friend, Frankfin Pierce of New
Hampshire, had been elected President and one day
there came a letter from him asking Davis to a place
in his Cabinet. Mrs. Davis, dreading a change,
entreated him not to accept, and he declined the
honor. Pierce, sorely disappointed, for Davis had
had a warm' place in his heart for many a day,
hoped he would at least come on to his inauguration.
Davis, yielding as throughout his life to the pleas
of lifelong friendships, went to Washington; Pierce
renewed his request, backed earnestly by leaders of

78 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the party, a call that always had something of the
stir and raUying appeal of a bugle on a battlefield
for him, for he was a strong party man, and Davis
accepted the position of Secretary of War.

CHAPTER VIII
Of aU the pofiticaUy lordly places in the Cabinet
not one could have had for Davis the same inherent
distinction or duties so agreeable as that of the
Secretary of War. It gave him not only the oppor
tunity to render valuable services in behalf of the
Nation's defence but also to enhance the welfare
and efficiency of his boyhood's profession, the Army
he loved.
With his natural diligence and enthusiasm he
threw himself into the performance of his duties.
He urged and succeeded in increasing the Army's
numbers and its pay; he replaced the old smooth
bore muskets by the best modern rifles; caused the
revision of the tactics and Army regulations; strength
ened the seacoast defences and gave to Rodman,
the father of aU modern high-power cannon, every
help and encouragement while carrying on his stiU
fruit-bearing experiments. It was my fortune to
serve with this truly distingmshed officer during
and after the war, and he never fafied to speak of
Davis' wide knowledge of every science, his readi
ness to fisten, his uniform courtesy and charm of
manner; and, while his office room in the War
Department had an unmistakable atmosphere of
79

80 JEFFERSON DAVIS
dignity, yet there was none of the usual chill and
meticulous fussiness that pervade so many of our
self-conscious military headquarters.
Davis ordered surveys for transcontinental roads
to facifitate the assemblage of troops on the Pacific
coast, recommended the establishment of post
schools, sent a commission to report on the conduct
of the Crimean War and gave especial attention
not only to the betterment of officers' quarters at
West Point where Lee was superintendent, but also
and above all established at the Academy a depart
ment of ethics with a view to extending and elevating
the merely professional education into fields of
philosophy, history and fiterature, thus giving an
officer those intellectual acquirements befitting his
position as a representative of his country. He
tells us that he was led to this addition to the course
of study by deficiencies he had felt in his associa
tion with men of wider university education. It was
during his administration that Weir painted the
picture over the chancel in the old chapel. On the
left of the legend, "Righteousness exalteth a nation
but Sin is a reproach to any people," stands a
thoughtful Roman soldier, his hand resting on a
stand of lictors, and on the right of the legend the
figure of Peace with her heaven-fit face uplifted and
in her hand an olive branch. In that picture is the
sublimation of the ideals of the hero and noble
warrior, the embodiment of the spirit of old West

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 81
Point worshipping with the Cadets. A copy should
occupy a fike place over the chancel in the new
chapel. No graduate, we are fain to befieve, ever held his
Alma Mater in deeper love than Jefferson Davis,
whose wearied mind, when he lay on his last sick bed
and death very near, winged its way back to her, and
he said to his wife, to whom he was dictating his
autobiography: "I have not told what I wish to
say of my classmates Sidney Johnston and Polk
[the venerable bishop kiUed on Lone Mountain];
I have much more to say about them. I shall tell
a great deal of West Point, and I seem to remember
more every day." Sweet, like inflowing brooks from
meadows green, are old memories, but let us return to
the narrative's main channel.
It had been customary in those days of pofitical
spoils, upon a change of administration, to make
removals of clerkships to satisfy party workers.
Now it so happened that the Chief Clerk of the
War Department who, by long experience, had
pecufiar quafifications, had been removed by Davis'
predecessor, and although known to Davis officiaUy
only, he replaced him in his old position. Again,
and iUustrative of his ideas as to civil service, the
Quartermaster-General needing a clerk sent him a
fist arranged according to his judgment as to merit;
Davis gave the appointment to No. 1 ; within a few
days a delegation of Democratic Congressmen cafied

82 JEFFERSON DAVIS
on him and wanted to know whether it was true
that he had appointed a Whig to a position in the
War Department. He repfied, "Certainly not."
Whereupon, pleased at the brightening prospect,
the delegation observed that they thought he had
not been aware of it and proceeded to inform him
that the clerk he had appointed was a Whig, etc.
Davis listened to them patiently, and when they
were through told them in his usual respectful
tones and manner that they had been misinformed,
that he had appointed not a Whig but a clerk. No. 1
on a merit list that had been submitted by the
head of the bureau; and, moreover, that while he
was in office, merit and not politics would be his
rule in all such cases.
Of course this was not satisfactory to the Con
gressmen, but all high-minded men of today will
agree that it was creditable to Davis. Here is what
Carl Schurz in his Reminiscences has to say about
him: "The first caU I made was at the War Department,
to present my letter of introduction to the Secretary,
Mr. Jefferson Davis. Being respectful, even rever
ential, by natural disposition, I had in my imagina
tion formed a high idea of what a grand personage
the War Minister of this great Repubfic must be.
I was not disappointed. He received me graciously.
His slender, taU, and erect figure, his spare face,
keen eyes, and fine forehead, not broad, but high

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 83
and well shaped, presented the well-known strong
American type. There was in his bearing a dignity
which seemed entirely natural and unaffected —
that kind of dignity which does not invite famifiar
approach, but will not render one uneasy by lofty
assumption. His courtesy was without any con
descending air. Our conversation confined itself to
the conventional commonplace. A timid attempt on
my part to eficit from him an opinion on the phase
of the slavery question brought about by the intro
duction of the Nebraska Bill did not meet with
the desired response. He simply hoped that every
thing would turn out for the best. Then he deftly
resumed his pofite inquiries about my experiences
in America and my plans for the future, and expressed
his good wishes. His conversation ran in easy, and,
so far as I could judge, well-chosen and sometimes
even elegant phrase, and the timbre of his voice
had something peculiarly agreeable. A few years
later I heard him deliver a speech in the Senate,
and again I was struck by the dignity of his bearing,
the grace of his diction, and the rare charm of his
voice — things which greatly distinguished him
from many of his colleagues."
In contrast to this vivid sketch of the outer man,
let me give one or two incidents while Secretary of
War that reveal the inner man.
One morning as he was about to sit down to
breakfast, the doorbell rang and a young, careworn

84 JEFFERSON DAVIS
mother was ushered in with a crying baby and a
yelfing boy, his hand clutched in hers. She was the
wife of a private soldier and had come to appeal in
his behalf from a court-martial sentence. Davis
heard her story, had her accompany him to the
breakfast room, placed a chair for her at the table
and then led the boy to Mrs. Davis, saying: "My
little man, here is a lady who comforts crying boys."
Breakfast over he went with the woman to the
President and on her return sent a note to Mrs.
Davis asking her to provide an early dinner, to
give a dollar to each of the children, and the butler
to take them to the train and buy them tickets
home. Light must have been that poor woman's
heart as she put her children in their beds that night,
and so long as she lived deep and abiding, we are
sure, was her gratitude.
Again, there was a professional beggar, an old,
disfigured woman who daily — winter and summer
— would sit knitting stockings before the door of
the War Department. Every day Davis would send
the office messenger with a small sum of money to
the old creature, and insisted that Mrs. Davis
should provide her with a cushion. And by the
way, the messenger (Patrick Jordan was his name),
just before he died long after the war was over,
asked his wife to return a gold pencil that Davis
had given him. Mrs. Davis says in her Memoirs
that her husband's eyes were misty as he read

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 85
Patrick's widow's note accompanying the memento.
Here is another incident we think worth recording :
Lieut. Robert Ransom, later General Ransom of
the Confederate Army, came to Washington for his
wedding to an intimate acquaintance of the Davises,
who a few days after his arrival gave a reception.
When Ransom presented himself Davis remarked:
"Young gentleman, I expected to have seen you
before." Ransom turned to Mrs. Davis and said:
"Madam, do you think that even the Secretary of
War has a right to more than one visit from a fellow
on leave of absence, who is here to marry his sweet
heart day after tomorrow, when she and I hope to
see you and receive your congratulations?" Davis
instantly replied, "Go to your sweetheart and tell
her, with my love, I am her friend and shall be to
her husband if he be worthy of so noble a woman."
Pierce's administration ended on the fourth of
March, 1857, and at nine o'clock that day, Davis
went to the White House and handed in his resigna
tion as Secretary of War, having been reelected
Senator by his home State to the new Congress
that was to meet at noon. On rising to bid farewell
after a long interview. Pierce grasped his hand,
saying: "I can scarcely bear the parting from you
who have been strength and solace to me for four
anxious years and never failed me."

CHAPTER IX
Upon reentrance into Congress Davis rose at
once to a figure of marked national political promi
nence, for the Administration he had just left, and
of which he was credited as the master mind, had
approved the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, a bill that, by
its virtual repeal of the venerable Missouri Com
promise, threw the Abolition Party into a convulsive
frenzy, its leaders shouting from platform, press
and pulpit that it meant a wicked, premeditated
extension of slavery's curse, not only over territories
dedicated to freedom, but all over the wide land,
and with frowning brows and savage eyes singled
out Davis as the evil genius of the Satanic measure;
whereas, as a matter of fact, he had had nothing
whatsoever to do with its conception. It was the
child of Douglas, begotten by his eager ambition
for party leadership and then the presidency.
In magnitude of historic consequences that bill is
without an equal in all passing Congress up to that
time, or perhaps to this. Like a bombshell it startled
the thousands upon thousands in the North who
were reading with swimming eyes the fate of Uncle
Tom in that epoch-making fiction "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," and raUied every hitherto latent opponent
86

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 87
of slavery to the active support of the new-born
Repubfican Party, which, under the mighty impulse
of fervent recrmts, marched, so to speak, with flying
banners to the boundaries of the territories, south
as well as north of the Missouri Compromise line,
and proclaimed that slavery should not advance
another step. That position it never abandoned,
and the world has said it was right and wound its
chaplets on the brows of its leaders.
But what did it mean to the South? This, and
this only: that notwithstanding their forefathers
had marched to Cambridge to save Boston after
Lexington — and by the way, this book is written
within a look and a throw of the Old Elm where
Washington took command, — had yielded to New
England desire to extend the time for stopping the
slave trade when framing the Constitution; had
paid their full share of the burden imposed by the
operations of the tariff to protect the products of
Northern factories from foreign competition; had
done their full part in the War of 1812 on land and sea;
indeed, had practically alone defeated the British
veterans at New Orleans and borne the brunt of the
Mexican War; yet, and nevertheless, not one of
them aU should take his property in slaves with him
into an adjacent territory to establish a new home;
not one be aUowed to take with him the old mammy
who had rocked him in the cradle, or the old "uncle"
who had carried him on his shoulder in chUdhood,

88 JEFFERSON DAVIS
and shown him how to make and set his traps for
rabbits, partridges and wild pigeons; not one should
go with him to his new home. What would domestic
life be to him and his family without them?
Again, and surely, was not his property in slaves
recognized in the Constitution, and on the same
legal footing as the horses and oxen of the Northern
man when he came to the territorial line to start his
new home, unless we say that its terms had lost
their force and meaning? And lo, too, the significance
of this decree! Would not submission to it be equiv
alent to a passive acknowledgment that henceforth
he was not the equal of his fellow citizen in the
enjoyment of express Constitutional rights? But,
and above all, how long would it be, if his claim be
denied to go into the adjacent territory with his
property in slaves, before his right to hold them
anywhere would be denied?
Is there a Northern man of self-respect today who,
had he been in the slaveholder's shoes, would not
have resented, as the Southern man resented, the
threatened humiliation in the eyes of the world?
Would he not have said as a man of courage, such
as I know my fellow Northern men to be, "If you
push to extremes this crusade against slavery,
bound up as it is with our domestic and economic
fife, we shall have to take a stand, come weal, come
woe!" Now that was Davis' position, as well as that of

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 89
thousands of Union-loving slaveholders, in reference
to the aforementioned contingency. That over
that contingency hung a black cloud, carrying battle
fields strewn with dead bodies, some in blue and
some in gray, cannot be gainsaid, for it has its fiving
witnesses in the national cemeteries and soldiers'
monuments. Union and Confederate, and its history
in over fifty bulky volumes of war records bound in
black. But we are not writing history, that is a rapid,
impersonal chronicle of events; we are writing, or
at least trying to write, a biography which is, if
well done, the complete unfolding of what is called
the inner life of a man; for without a clear insight
into that inner life the writer may be in a Pilate's
court and pleading for the release of a Barabbas.
With this biographic aim in view then, we have
touched upon one of the tributaries of the main
stream of pofitical events that had carried Davis
into his position, the denial of what he and his
fellow Southerners befieved to be natural and in
law fundamental Constitutional rights; let us go
now to the source of another tributary of that main
stream, the States Rights Party, with which at that
time he was more or less identified.
As early as 1834 John Quincy Adams, in his diary
of August 29, gives the substance of an interview in
Washington which the editor of the Charleston
Courier had sought with him. In the course of their

90 JEFFERSON DAVIS
taUi the editor alluded to the apprehension, always
prevaifing in the South, that the Northern people
"had a perpetual propensity to promote the abofition
of slavery."
"That ghost," says Adams, when with pen in
hand he bent over his diary, "I believe wiU haunt
them till they bring it up in reality. I said I had no
longer the confidence in the duration of the Union
that I once had, but did not say why," and with
this cryptic remark closed the record of the day.
That haunting ghost was never laid; night after
night thenceforth it rapped on the door till it devel
oped a permanently morbid state of mind relative
to the abolition movement against slavery. Under
its influence Southern radicals, after Clay's Com
promise of 1850, following the example of Northern
radicals, each faction steeped with long-harbored
hate and scorn for the other, revived the doctrine
of States Rights which Northern radicals had made
use of in the Hartford Convention of 1814 threaten
ing withdrawal from the Union. Through the
increasing ill-feeling due to the discussion of slavery
and its contagious infection, the States Rights Party
grew in numbers and in the end played the part in
the South which the Abofitionists played in the
North; both in their turn becoming the paramount
force in determining the ultimate spirit of their
respective sections.
At the time we are dealing with — Davis'

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 91
reentrance into Congress — the Democratic Party
in the South was drifting toward the perilous beach
of secession, and he with it, a believer as he was
from his youth up in the sovereignty of the States
and their justification, under certain conditions of
humifiation breeding insurrection to reassert that
sovereignty. So then, on one of those preordained
tides in the life of nations, Jefferson Davis drifted
with the South, just as Abraham Lincoln drifted
with the North, for when he was in Congress, 1847,
and sixteen or seventeen years after that reputed
remark of his upon witnessing a slave auction in
New Orleans, which more than one of his biogra
phers have dwelt upon with satisfaction, "By God,
boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance
to hit that thing (meaning slavery) I'll hit it hard,"
he offered a bill whose fifth section was in these
words: "That the municipal authorities of Washington
and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdic
tional fimits, are hereby empowered and required to
provide active and efficient means to arrest and
deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping
into said district." Washington at that very time
had a public slave-auction room, with its weekly
heart-breaking spectacles. When Lincoln offered
that bill so in contrast with the well-known work of
art in which he is depicted breaking the chains of a
slave, the life of the Union was threatened, he was

92 JEFFERSON DAVIS
wiUing to return the fugitives to their owners for
the Union's sake, to which he was tied as Davis and
thousands of fellow Southerners were tied, by a
reverential memory of the days when their forefathers
made such a heavy sacrifice to found it; but on the
current of events he drifted, drifted from that slave-
capturing bill to the Emancipation Proclamation at
last, and then to fame immortal. The incident
only proves that he was human and not "that
faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw." In
the glaring fight of circumstances fike these, so
inconsistent with subsequent events illumined for
all time, whose voice shall we listen to in judging
the careers of the personages of those days? To me
the sweetest, and we think in the long run the wisest,
is that of charity.

CHAPTER X
Some time in the early winter of 1858, Davis fell
seriously ill with laryngitis, not only losing his speech
so that he had to make known his wants in writing,
but also his left eye, that had never fully recovered
its strength from a previous attack, became so
inflamed, swollen and at last totaUy bfind that he
could not endure any light whatsoever in the room.
His afifiction was long, painful and debifitating, yet
not without some compensation, for as in the wake
of devastating forest fires the willow-herb appears
and blooms, so sympathies and delicate attentions
from old friends decked the track of his sickness;
and no one was more devoted and spontaneously
kindly than Seward, his great political antagonist,
who almost daily would go and sit by his bedside,
teUing him what was going on in the Senate.
On one of these Good Samaritan visits the haunt
ing slavery question came drifting along on the
current of their gossipy, informal talk. Mrs. Davis
asked the visitor in view of his seeing slavery as it
actually was while an instructor at an academy in
Georgia, how he could make such piteous appeals
for the negro and believe all he said in the debates.
"I do not," he answered good-naturedly, "but these
93

94 JEFFERSON DAVIS
appeals, as you caU them, are potent to affect the
rank and file of the North." Davis, surprised by
Seward's remark, asked with gravity, "But, Mr.
Seward, do you never speak from conviction alone?"
"Never!" he responded emphatically; whereupon
Davis raised his blindfolded head and whispered,
"As God is my judge, I never spoke from any other
motive." Seward put his arm about him and gently
laid him down, saying, "I know you do not. I am
always sure of it."
This happening is full of light; favorable indeed
for Davis, and most illuminating as to the character
of Seward, whose whole subsequent career shows
that he had uttered an absolute truth.
On its face, however, that was the speech of a
charlatan; but he was not a charlatan, he was a
gifted, long-foreseeing, practical statesman, whose
life's aim was to enhance the welfare and the glory
of the country he adored. For this end he was ready
to make factitious appeals when dealing with the
incubus of slavery, ready to use duplicity with the
Commissioners of the South as to the evacuation of
Fort Sumter, to bid defiance to Great Britain and
France over the recognition of the Confederacy in
the darkest hours, and at last, and notwithstanding
his attempted assassination by a Southern sympa
thizer, to plead in behalf of the defeated, forlorn
and helpless South against the vindictive revenge
of the radicals of his own party. Truly, truly, fike

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 95
a great scarred battleship that had sent her boats
to a sinking enemy, he came into port grandly.
Moreover there was a grain of poetry in his nature,
for it was he who suggested to Lincoln that beautiful
and touching paragraph, ending so well his first
inaugural and gleaming its entrance into the company
of great State papers.
Davis had another friend, the famous Gen. Edwin
V. Sumner, who in the war commanded the Second
Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and whom the
fields of Virginia and Maryland remember right
well, who during Davis' illness used to visit him in
the darkened room and talk with him by the hour
over bygone days, engagements with the Indians,
frontier experiences, and all that army gossip that
has wiled away so many an hour for the soldier in
peace and war.
But the most interesting thing was this: Sumner
had come on to Washington seeking satisfaction for
a discourtesy and affront from Colonel Harney,
and had sent him a challenge through his friend
Colonel Hardie. When Davis heard the story he
whispered to Sumner, "You do not want to fight,
of course, but have the matter explained and the
wrong acknowledged."
"Well, I do not know about that," responded the
old warrior, "I rather think I prefer fighting," but
his and Harney's seconds smoothed out the trouble
and laid away the pistols. Let the war rage as it

96 JEFFERSON DAVIS
might, defeat come with calumny and imprisonment,
yet the ties that bound Davis to the old soldier
who sat by his bedside and officers who fought
against him never broke and were stiU green when
death overtook him.
The last of June, when able to travel, Davis, with
his family of little children, took a steamer at
Baltimore, sailed down the Chesapeake and around
Fort Monroe, where a few years later he languished
so long, and thence out to sea for Portland, Maine,
— drawn thither by the cool, refreshing breezes
that come in off the sea and play among the beau
tiful, wooded islands of Casco Bay — and to be
once more with a West Point friend who was spend
ing the summer there, Dallas Bache, then at the
head of the Coast Survey, and who had the grati
tude of every ship's captain of that day for the
lighthouses he had built and the harbors he had
charted. Davis met many weU-bred and well-known people,
and made many, many friends that summer; when it
was over he started in October for home, but the
day he reached Boston one of the chUdren was
stricken with membranous croup and came near
dying. Much to the comfort of Davis and his wife, Mrs.
Harrison Gray Otis, whose fame, like venerable lilac,
still blooms in the antique garden of Boston's aris
tocracy, went to their hotel, (the Tremont House,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 97
overlooking the Granary Burial Ground, the grave
of Sam Adams beneath its windows), and did a
nurse's part all the night long, a kindness the
Davises never forgot, and a perfect example of the
many charming surprises in the Puritan character.
During the child's convalescence Davis, at the
request of a committee of leading Democrats headed
by Caleb Cushing, his fellow member in Pierce's
Cabinet, made an address in Faneuil Hall. The main
body, the galleries, and the aisles of that famous
hall were packed. Davis was at his best, he felt the
spirit and heard the voice that abides there, and a
better, a fairer, a more thoughtful or earnest speech
he never made. He discussed the issues then engag
ing the aroused attention of the country, abandoned
no ground he had ever taken as to the Constitutional
rights of the South, used no epithets or disrespectful
language against the Abofitionists, notwithstanding
their almost personal enmity since the Pierce admin
istration, and closed with a glowing, solemn appeal
that the old ties which had bound the colonies in
their days of trial be not broken. And now, as from
time to time while writing this book, I pass the grave
of Sam Adams and his fellow-revolutionary patriots
in the Granary Burial Groimd on which the windows
of the Tremont House then looked down, it is
never without a feeling that the memories they
evoked swept as with a spectral hand the chords of
his love for the Union as he spoke in Faneuil Hall.

98 JEFFERSON DAVIS
He was the last great slaveholder that ever stood
on that historic platform and talked out of his
heart to the people of Boston; I am fain to befieve
he left on his audience an impression that was
favorable; in bearing and language he had shown he
was a gentleman, one, moreover, who had stood the
gentleman's final test — the dangers of a battle
field; and we are incfined to think, too, that as they
listened to his engaging, cultivated voice filled with
strength, respect and candor, he seemed to them a
worthy representative of the Southern men who had
stood by their gallant forefathers — the Adamses,
Sam and John, Knox, Hancock, Greene and Lincoln.

CHAPTER XI
The next three years, 1858 to 1861, of Davis'
fife and that of his fellow-countrymen, South and
North, were momentous for him and them, and we
are convinced that no one can read the newspapers,
the diaries, or the speeches in Congress of those
years without reafizing that our country was
approaching the brink of a volcano. In those three
years there were three events which stand out,
towering above all others and throwing long, dark
shadows. The first of these was the effort on the part of
some declamatory Southerners, fike Spratt of South
Carofina, and Yancey of Alabama, to re-open the
slave trade. This wicked movement, advocated by
a few and condemned by the bulk of the people in
the South, not only did the South more discredit
than any act in aU its history, but also had most
fateful results: for the Abofitionist conscience,
already in a state of chronic feverishness, now
became furious, and turned away from the path of
sympathy to that of hate and its fellow companion,
revenge. The newspapers of those days are fuU of evidence
that slavery as a question of morals was turning
99

100 JEFFERSON DAVIS
fast into one that encouraged violence for its extermi
nation. Here is an example, one of hundreds that
might be given in proof of this raving state of mind.
It is from a pamphlet circulated in Northern Ohio
and New England. "Our plan is to land mifitary
forces in the Southern States, who shall raise the
standard of freedom and call the slaves to it and such
free persons as may be wUfing to join it. Our plan
is to make war openly or secretly, as circumstances
may dictate, upon the property of the slaveholders
and their abettors, not for its destruction, if that
can be easily avoided, but to convert it to the use
of the slaves. If it cannot thus be converted, we
advise its destruction. Teach the slaves to burn
their masters' buildings, to kiU the cattle and hogs,
to conceal and destroy farming utensfis, to abandon
labor in seedtime and harvest, and let the crops
perish. To make slaveholders objects of derision
and contempt by fiogging them whenever they shall
be guilty of flogging their slaves."
Is it any wonder that, with a state of mind so seeth
ing with madness as this, John Brown should attempt
what he did — the seizure of the United States
Arsenal at Harper's Ferry — having in view to put
its arms into the hands of the slaves whom he
counted on joining him?
Up to that time no event since the Nat Turner
Insurrection so startled the South from one end to
the other. I was at West Point in those days, and

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 101
James B. Washington, whose father was a nephew of
George Washington, captured by Brown, was a
feUow cadet with me, and I know how the event
was interpreted by every Southern man in the Corps.
It is true that the bulk of the Repubfican Party,
with whom the original Abolitionists were mainly
incorporated, disclaimed, and with deep sincerity,
this act by Brown. But their disclaimers, however
sincere, were impugned by the fact that on the day
of his funeral streets and houses in New England
were draped in mourning, dirges were sung, and bells
were tolled.
Reader, put yourseff in the shoes of a Southern
man, with or without slaves. Would not those
draped streets, dirges and tolfing bells have been
ominous to you? Would they not have indicated, as
the rattle of a rattlesnake, that there was danger
near? For could any sane man fail to conclude that
manifestation, so solemn in its kind, was indicative
of deep-seated passion, one that even the horrors of
insurrection could not put under restraint.
Davis in an offhand speech characterized the
John Brown raid as an "invasion of a state by a
murderous gang of Abolitionists, one that might
have had its germ in the doctrine of an irrepressible
conffict between freedom and slavery," and, refer
ring to a remark by a Southerner as to the want of
sympathy on the part of the North, he exclaimed:
"I have not asked for any sympathy. Sympathy,

102 JEFFERSON DAVIS
however, is the character of fraternity, sympathy is
the nature of abhorrence of crime; sympathy in an
odious shuddering at the spectacle of those who
came to incite slaves to murder helpless women and
chUdren I might have expected in the breast of every
gentleman." This exclamation is so manifestly fuU of suppressed
feefing it may perchance be interesting for the reader
to see him as others saw him. A fittle while before
the raid, Greely, in an editorial in the New York Trib
une of August 8, said: "Mr. Davis is unquestionably
the foremost man of the South at the present day.
Every Northern Senator will admit that from the
Southern side of the floor the most formidable
adversary to meet in debate is the thin, pale, pol
ished, intellectual-looking Mississippian with the
unimpassioned demeanor, the habitual courtesy and
the occasional unintentional arrogance which reveals
his consciousness of great commanding power. It
is a mistake to confound him with declaimers fike
Keith or with vulgar brawlers like Brown, his Sena
torial colleague, or with mere scheming politicians
fike Greene [of Kentucky], Cfingman [of North
Carofina], SfideU and Benjamin [of Louisiana].
He belongs to a higher grade of pubfic men in whom
formerly the slave-holding democracy was prolific."
Greely had been in Congress with Davis, and I
think his description is the most vivid and his esti
mate probably the truest that ever was made of him.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 103
As a supplement to what Greely said of him we
will let the following extract from a speech he made
shortly after Greely's editorial speak for itself.
"And in this connection [referring to Senator
WUson of Massachusetts, with whom he had been
discussing earnestly] it is but proper I should say
that, if yesterday there was anything in my language
or my manner which personally reflected on that
Senator, it was not so designed. I am aware that I
am very apt to be earnest, perhaps some would say
excited, when I am speaking, and it is due to myself
that I should say now, once for aU, that I do not
intend ever to offer discourtesy to any gentleman.
By no indirection, by no equivocal expression, do I
ever seek to injure the feefings of any one."
The next precursory event in his fife was the split
of the Democratic Party at Charleston in April,
1860, resulting in four candidates in the field for the
presidency. Lincoln at the head of the Repubfican
Party, confined almost entirely to the Northern
States, Breckinridge practically to the South,
Douglas to the Democratic Party of the North, and
Bell to the old-line Union-loving Whigs, South and
North. Davis has much, very much of the blame to carry
for this split in the party; had his opposition to
Douglas not been so vehement he would have been
nominated and stood a fair chance to beat Lincoln.
But as we see things now in their true perspective,

104 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the war between the sections would have been post
poned for another four years only, at most. Deal
with this and that pofitical phase of those times as
we may, lay blame here and blame there, on the
leaders North and South, yet after aU there was
no escape from the bloody conffict; our country's
destiny was on her appointed way to future glories,
and battlefields she had to cross. The gist of the
platforms was as follows:
The Repubfican: "Slavery can exist only by
virtue of municipal law;" that there was no law for
it in the Territories and no power to enact one, that
Congress was "bound to prohibit it in, or exclude
it from, any and every Federal Territory," and that
it was the right and duty of Congress to prohibit
"these twin refics of barbarism, polygamy and
slavery" in the Territories.
The Douglas Party affirmed "the right of the
Territories in their territorial condition to determine
their own organic institutions," denying the power
or the duty of Congress to protect the persons or
property of individuals or nunorities in such Terri
tories against the action of majorities; in other
words, they were to aUow or disaUow slavery as
they saw fit.
The Breckinridge Party claimed that the Terri
tories were open for settlement to citizens of all the
States without inequality or discrimination; that is,
a slaveholder could take his slaves with him and

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 105
on the same footing as the citizen whose property
was in horses, or oxen and household furniture;
but on emerging from a Territorial government to
a State, the people could then determine whether
slavery should or should not exist.
The Bell Party ignored the territorial controversy
altogether, making a single declaration of adherence
to "the Constitution, the Union, and enforcement of
the laws"; that is, the Fugitive Slave Law, which
at that very time States of the North had set at
defiance by imposing imprisonment and fine on any
of their citizens who might try to enforce it.
During the campaign Democratic friends of Davis
requested him to interview Bell, Breckinridge and
Douglas, and urge them to withdraw in favor of
some one on whom all could unite, for it was obvious
that, with three candidates in the field, Lincoln was
sure to be elected. In compliance with this request
Davis went to see Bell and Breckinridge, who were
ready to retire, but Douglas said it was too late,
that in case he withdrew many of his supporters
would go to Lincoln, and there the matter dropped.
Here let me say that Douglas has never been given
the meed of praise he deserved; notwithstanding the
Republicans had lit his way from Washington to
Chicago by burning effigies of him, he stood by
Lincoln after he was elected, thereby rallying
Northern Democrats to his side by hundreds of
thousands. But they rendered a great service, in a

106 JEFFERSON DAVIS
moral sense a greater service than that, inasmuch
as after the war was over they were the first to hold
out their hands to the South and renew the old ties,
winning thereby that victory for peace which Milton
had in mind.
The voting at that election, the most historic in
our annals, may be to others what it is to me
— full of interest.
Number op Votes Cast por Candidates

Simth

Norlh

Total

LincolnDouglasBellBreckinridge

26,430
163,575
515,973 570,951

1,840,0221,213,382 72,906
278,830

1,866,4521,376,957 588,879849,701

Analysis of this tabulation shows that, exclusive
of Lincoln's vote, there were 679,548 voters in the
South who were not in sympathy with the Keiths,
Rhetts, Wigfalls, Slidells and Yanceys, contradicting
so many of our historians who, through oversight,
ignorance or intent, have left the impression in some
of our school books of an almost universal lust for
disunion and war on the part of the South. And
these same historians — is it unfair to say consciously
or unconsciously — harboring the spirit of vengeance,
attributed to Davis the desires that animated the
Rhetts, Wigfalls, SfideUs and Yanceys; in fact, that
he was the prime mover and leader for war and
disunion; a charge which I trust the narrative in
its course will demonstrate was as unfounded as it
was unjust.

CHAPTER XII
Mr. Lincoln's election was celebrated with great
rejoicing, but its bonfires had barely died out before
a deep silence settled all over the land, such as pre
vails at sea before the rush of a tornado. In that
silence men of character and heads of famifies. North
and South, were thinking deeply over what had
happened. The doctrine of the irrepressible conflict
had been obviously approved and had carried the
day. The victory had been complete, the forces
that had won it had been inspired by the sins of
slavery. And now what? Would the party that had
triumphed lay down its oars, so to speak, and bask
in the sunfight of pofitical power, or would the
irrepressible conflict go on? On the other hand,
would the South carry out its repeated threats to
secede if a party were elected pledged to confine
and gradually smother the fife out of slavery.
These were the ghost-fike questions that would
not down, and drove sleep away from many a pillow.
My roommate at West Point, from Georgia, night
after night would fie in bed execrating Southern
fire-eaters and Abofitionists. His state of mind was
a fair type of thousands South and North. Sweet,
107

108 JEFFERSON DAVIS
sweet was his nature! And no youth foUowed the
Confederate flag with more manliness, higher ideals
or courage than John Asbury West of Madison,
Georgia. His memory is dear to me. MeanwhUe,
conservative leaders of the Repubfican Party, reflect
ing on the situation and appreciating their responsi
bility, cast about for measures that would benumb
their victory and forestall peace-breaking move
ments, when lo, South Carofina, the infatuated
mother of secession, called a convention on Novem
ber 26 to take the legal steps for withdrawal from
the Union.
Like a fire through their dead canebrakes, this
madness of South Carolina went sweeping over the
Gulf States. The Border States, however, under
the lead of Old Virginia, wearing the mantle of
sovereignty, stood firm, yet in painful anxiety.
Through slavery they were bound to the Gulf, but
the graves of Washington, Jefferson, MarshaU and
Madison were pleading that the ties of the Union
be not broken.
It has always seemed to me that the ties which
bound the South to the Union were wound a little
closer around the heart than in New England. It
may have been a mere matter of temperament, but
an agricultural people, alone with their woods and
willow-bordered streams, have far deeper and keener
feefings than the huddled workers in noisy mills.
You can sing following a plough, at the end of a

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 109
long furrow while the horses are resting, you can look
on the floating, bulging clouds, can hear the bob-
white whistle and the bluebird warble, but you
cannot take your eyes off a clattering loom, lathe
or boot-sewing machine; nor from the doorstep of
your mill-owned tenement, when the day is done,
look off over fields where the dew is gathering on
blooming clover and blading corn to catch the beams
of a rising moon. To the planter the country was a
sentiment; to the mill-owner and pig-iron manu
facturer a commercial agency.
On Monday, December 3, 1860, Congress met,
and on Thursday a resolution was offered in the
Senate for the appointment of a Committee of
Thirteen to consider the state of the country and
recommend such legislation as would secure its
peace. At once bitterly acrimonious discussion over
the responsibility for the crisis began and continued
growing fiercer day by day. Although condensed it
covers pages of the Congressional Globe, abounding
with epithets and innuendo. It was nightly clicked
off by the telegraph to every leading newspaper,
North and South, to be read the next morning with
eager interest and increasing anxiety.
On the twentieth a motion was made to adjourn
over the holidays to January 2. Davis opposed the
motion, saying: "I do not know that we 'shall achieve
much good by meeting, but in the present perilous
condition of the country I am not wUfing to take a

110 JEFFERSON DAVIS
hofiday. I propose that we shaU continue our
sessions, for good if God grants it, and for evil if
we will have it so."
On the tenth he had made quite a long speech,
some of which was very untimely argument, I think,
but as we aU know weU when passion is raging, as
then, that wise master counsellor. Wisdom, with
draws and keeps her silence, for she knows her voice
wiU not be heard. In the course of it, however, he
said this: "I have heard with some surprise, for it
seemed to me idle, the repetition of the assertion
heretofore made, that the cause of the separation
was the election of Mr. Lincoln. It may be a source
of gratification to some gentlemen that their candi
date is elected; but no individual had the power to
produce the existing state of things. It was the
purpose, the end, it was the declaration by himself
and friends which constitutes the necessity of provid
ing safeguards for ourselves."
Later he said: "It may be pardoned me who in
my boyhood was given to the military service, and
who have followed under tropical suns and over
northern snows the flag of the Union, suffering from
it as it does not become me to speak of it, if I here
express the deep sorrow which overwhelms me when
I think of taking a last leave of that object of early
affection and proud association. But God, who
knows the heart of men, will judge between you and
us at whose door lies the responsibility of this."

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 111
After ten days of impassioned discussion the
resolution for the appointment of a committee
passed, and Davis was named as a member. He at
once asked to be excused, but that night at the
urgency of friends he consented to withdraw his
decfination, and the next day said:
"Mr. President, in the very words which I
addressed to the Senate yesterday I intended to
express my conviction. It was not a matter of
personal feeling with me. If I know myself, no
pubfic duty ever is. My opinion was that the State
of Mississippi having taken the subject into her
own hands, I could not expect to work advantage
ously on the Committee. Neither could I under the
circumstances enter upon the labor as wilfingly as I
trust I have usually done in all my service. But if
in the opinion of others it be possible for me to do
anything for the public good, the last moment while
I stand here is at the command of the Senate. If I
could see any means by which I could avert the
catastrophe of a struggle between the sections of the
Union, my past fife, I hope, gives evidence of the
readiness with which I would make the effort. If
there be any sacrifice which I could offer on the
altar of my country to heal all the evils, present or
prospective, no man has the right to doubt my
readiness to do it."
Davis took his seat on the committee and the
record shows that he voted again and again for

112 JEFFERSON DAVIS
measures aimed to avert dangers and pacify the
country; but all of them faUed to receive the neces
sary majorities, and after sitting ten days it reported
to Congress that it could not agree, and on December
31 was discharged.
Meanwhile the Gulf States, including his own,
had called conventions that were then in session,
and looking back at them now, their members in
tempestuous delirium appear like so many dead
leaves in the swirl of the whirlwinds we sometimes
see on a clear summer's day. On January 5 a con
ference of Southern Senators and Representatives
was held in Washington, and at its end a letter was
written to their respective Governors stating that
every measure to preserve peace had fafied and
that in their judgment secession was the only
ultimate safeguard for their interests. Davis was
present and signed this report, and, whatsoever
penalty may be the final verdict, he must bear it.
While this letter may have accelerated the move
ment, no power this side of Heaven could have
stopped it. Back of the North was the aroused
conscience of the civilized world in its attitude
toward slavery; back of the South was the funda
mental political axiom that peoples have the inalien
able right to decide the form and spirit of govern
ment which they will tolerate and submit to.
Mississippi withdrew on January 9; and, in con
nection with this step, there was a preceding one

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 113
which throws some fight on Davis. In November,
after South Carolina had taken wing, the Governor
of Mississippi called home its Representatives in
Congress for consultation as to the course of the
State relative to secession. O. R. Singleton, one of
the members of the House who was present, wrote
as follows concerning that conference:
"The debate lasted many hours and Mr. Davis,
with perhaps one other gentleman, opposed imme
diate and separate State action, declaring himself
opposed to secession as long as the hope of a peace
able remedy remained. He did not believe we ought
to precipitate the issue, as he felt certain from his
knowledge of the people North as well as South,
that once there was a clash of arms, the contest
would be one of the most sanguinary the world had
ever witnessed.
A majority of the meeting decided that no delay
be interposed for separate State action, Mr. Davis
being on the other side, but after the vote was taken
and the question decided, Mr. Davis declared he
would stand by whatever action the Convention,
representing the sovereignty of the State of Missis
sippi, should think proper to take. After the con
ference ended, several of its members were dissatisfied
with the course of Mr. Davis, believing that he was
entirely opposed to secession and was seeking to
delay action upon the part of Mississippi with the
hope that it might be entirely averted."

114 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Clay of Alabama, who was arrested and confined
in Fort Momoe with Davis, sometime before death
overtook him, wrote: "Mr. Davis did not take an
active part in planning or hastening secession.
I think he only regretfiilly consented to it as a
political necessity for the preservation of State
Rights. I know that some leading men and even Mississip-
pians thought him too moderate and backward,
and found fault with him for not taking a leading
part in secession."
These letters from friends of Jefferson Davis were
written after the war and are to be construed in
the light of defense and sympathy for a lost cause.
But does defeat crush the life out of all honor and
truthfulness? If the Revolution had met that fate,
would a letter from Hamilton, John Marshall, or
John Adams be discredited as to anything they saw,
heard, or did before they took their stand against
Great Britain? We think not; for honor and truth
fulness are deep-rooted plants in the American
character. Give these letters, then, the weight which
the scales of reason and knowledge of human
nature may say is their worth as evidence.
The official notice from the Governor of Missis
sippi, that the State had withdrawn from the
Union, reached Davis on the twentieth of January,
1861, and on that day he wrote to Ex-President
Pierce:

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 119
" I have often and sadly turned my thoughts to
you during the troublous times through which we
have been passing, and now I come to the hard task
of announcing to you that the hour is at hand which
closes my connection with the United States for the
independence and union of which my father bled
and in the service of which I have sought to emulate
the example he set for my guidance. . . .
May God bless you is ever the prayer of your
friend, Jefferson Davis."
It was known that, on the following day, Davis
would take leave of the Senate, and as soon as the
doors were opened the galleries, aisles, and all
standing room were filled. Every Senator was in
his seat, all eyes were on Davis, and awe and wonder
were in every heart-beat.
The hour came, he rose — care had left her tracks
of a sleepless night in his pale face and, as his eyes
swept the men he had served with so long, streams
of regret poured out of them for agreeable associa
tions that would never be enjoyed again.
His voice at first was low — he had been unwell
for several days — but as he went on restating the
grounds of his pofitical views, the sovereignty of
the States and their right to exercise that sovereignty
in the face of appalling dangers, his voice regained
its vibrating, winsome modulation and earnestness.
He closed as follows :

116 JEFFERSON DAVIS
"In the course of my service here, associated at
different times with a great variety of Senators,
I see now around me some with whom I have served
long; there have been points of difference, but
whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave
here. I carry with me no hostile remembrance.
Whatever offense I have given which has not been
redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been
demanded I have. Senators, in the hour of our
parting to offer you my apology for every pain which
in the heat of discussion I have inflicted. I go hence
unencumbered by the remembrance of any injury
received, and having discharged the duty of making
the only reparation in my power for any injury
offered. Mr. President and Senators, having made the
announcement which the occasion seemed to me to
require, it only remains for me to bid you a final
adieu." There is a strain of knightly manliness, its tones
mingled with sorrow and regret, runmng through
the conclusion of this leave-taking; a strain that
the spirit of the dead Confederacy can dwell on in
her loneliness with pensive pride.
We doubt if in all his career he ever rose above
the level of that occasion; nor one, it seems to me,
when all the elements of his character were in fairer
light or fuller play. That apology for any wrong
or pain inflicted; that assurance to his associates

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 117
in the Senate of going away unencumbered by the
remembrance of a single injury received from any
one of them, speak for the inborn goodwill and
chivalry of his nature.
Persons who were present say that as he made
his way out of the Senate Chamber, hushed by a
portentous awe of what it all meant, he was followed
by many swimming eyes.
This farewell to the Senate marked one of the
crests in his fife's travelled road. Behind him lay
what has already been set forth, his services to his
country in the field where he shed his blood in
defense of her flag; his Congressional and official
life where he had been steadfastly loyal to her ideals.
Meanwhile not a stain had fallen on his private,
nor a charge of insincerity or unscrupulous ambition
on his public, character. The broad-minded Repub
licans in the Senate, although opposing and con
demning his pofitical views, nevertheless held him
personally in highest respect, and those of both
parties who knew him intimately, in warmest
affection. As for the pubfic at large he had never
courted its esteem, yet he had never joined a group
or addressed an assemblage. North or South, in
Faneuil Hall or New Orleans, without securing it
— a mighty proof of his inteUectual power and the
atmosphere of personality in which nature had
clothed him. On every occasion in aU the years
that now lay behind him, he had stood for the

118 JEFFERSON DAVIS
sovereignty of the States as weU as the sovereignty
of the Government which they had created and set
over them; maintaining that there was a vein con
necting the poUtical bodies of both in which the
same blood flowed with every heart-beat of the
Nation. It is true, and natural, that the inveterate haters
of slavery and the South were glad to see the last
of him; inasmuch as for years they had suffered, as
the ambitious always suffer, in the presence of an
opponent born into a class of acknowledged social
prestige who meets their heated arguments, not
only with cool, masterful reply, but also uniform
urbanity, augmented in Davis' case with that
unconscious air of austerity in which nature had
wrapped him. Many had been their conflicts with
him, but he had never lost his self-control; not even
when defending the South from their severe denun
ciation and, at times, outrageous abuse; moreover,
he used no opprobrious or abusive language, yet
there was a tone of challenging defiance in his voice
and manner that showed indignation. His departure,
then, from Congress was the end of a long and galfing
servitude for leaders that might be mentioned; a
servitude of a kind and nature that always forges
while it is endured those well-known characteristic
weapons — obloquy and revenge. The history of
our country abundantly shows that, so long as
certain leaders and their disciples lived, these

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 119
weapons were in use, let the spirit of goodwill and
magnanimity which Grant showed Lee at Appomat
tox plead as it may with their users to lay them down.
Mrs. Davis says in her Memoirs that that night
she heard the often reiterated prayer, "May God
have us all in His holy keeping, and grant that
before it is too late, peaceful councils may prevail."
That prayer was not alone in its heavenward flight;
like prayers were going up from many a bended
knee in North and South.
As soon as they could gather up their belongings,
Davis, Mrs. Davis and the three children set off
for home.

CHAPTER XIII
The States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana having seceded,
held conventions and appointed delegates to meet in
Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 and there lay
the foundation of a provisional government. These
delegates were chosen from the pofitical leadership
class, men who had made their mark; some for native
abifity; some for glowing eloquence; all for well-
sustained integrity and character. Among them
were Toombs, Stephens, the brothers Howell and
T. R. Cobb of Georgia, Judge Chilton of Alabama,
Rhett, Withers and Barnwell of South Carolina.
Barnwell was a very wealthy planter carrying the
atmosphere of gentleness, thoughtfulness and right
eousness; a fine type of man for the building of a
State. By the time they reached Montgomery, it was
overflowing with rabid pofiticians from all over the
Southern States, hankering for war and swaggering
in every hotel lobby and in every garish barroom.
The delegates, forty-two out of the forty-eight
appointed, organized by electing Howell Cobb for
chairman, a bulky man with a broad face, double
chin and mild, serious eyes, who had lately left
120

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 121
Buchanan's disrupting Cabinet, and was an ardent
Secessionist. He and his brother were men of fine,
high character and their memories are cherished by
their native State to this day.
The Convention proceeded at once to draft a
constitution for the provisional government, taking
the one their forefathers had built and making only
such changes as would more explicitly embody
their ideas of state sovereignty, and such notions
of administration as experience under the old one
had suggested.
Along toward midnight on Friday the eighth,
the Constitution was agreed upon, and the Conven
tion adjourned tUl noon the next day for choice of a
president, a captain to sail the ship they had
launched in the face of a stormy sea; the voting to
be by States. As it turned out, there were three
delegates who in secret cherished the hope that
they would be chosen for the presidency, the chair
man Cobb, Stephens and Toombs, aU from Georgia.
Stephens in body was a puny man with a sad,
appealing, beardless face, his eyes a rich hazel,
his voice thin and high. He had vigorously opposed
secession, and Lincoln had practically offered him
a place in his Cabinet; the letters they exchanged
on this matter are weU worth reading for the fight
they throw on the times and the men themselves.
Toombs was in marked contrast to Stephens;
he was conspicuously large, with plenteous, shiny.

122 JEFFERSON DAVIS
black hair and glistening white teeth which fiashed
in his laughter, for by nature he was joyous, but
when in office, however, there was an air of urgent,
imperative demeanor about him, re-inforced by
abifities that had no acknowledged equal among
his fellows to master the intricacies of finance or
problems of state administration. Beneath all
these endowments was an unsubduable restlessness
when under authority which impaired his usefulness,
annoyed his superiors, and embittered his old age.
As soon as the Convention adjourned, T. R. Cobb,
a younger brother of the chairman and who wrote
to his wife almost daily, in a letter written on the
eleventh says: "We had a counting by noses and
found that Alabama, Mississippi and Florida were
for Davis, Louisiana and Georgia for my brother
Howell, South Carolina divided between Davis and
Cobb with Memminger and Withers wavering.
Howell immediately announced his wish that Davis
should be nominated unanimously."
When the Georgia delegation met at ten o'clock,
Stephens at once moved that a complimentary
vote be given Toombs. Whereupon T. R. Cobb
observed that it would put Toombs in an awkward
position, as four of the six States were for Davis.
That was a surprise to Toombs and, doubting the
statement, he asked Crawford, one of its members,
to go out and report the facts. On Crawford's
return verifying Cobb's statement that Davis

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 123
was virtually the choice of all the other states,
Toombs with spontaneous good will nominated
Stephens for the vice-presidency. A dead silence
ensued upon this very imexpected move; then Howell
Cobb got up and went out, followed by Barton his
colleague, who was killed at Bull Run. The younger
Cobb wrote to his wife that it was a bitter pUl to
swaUow — Stephens, who had opposed secession, had
been rewarded with its first honors.
At noon the delegates met and elected Davis
and Stephens unanimously, and appointed a special
messenger to notify Davis of his election. The
Convention then took up the framing of a consti
tution for the permanent government. T. R. Cobb,
a profoundly refigious man, an elder in the
Presbyterian Church, offered four motions: that
the newborn government should be named "the
Repubfic of Washington"; that there should be
an expficit recognition of God; that the slave trade
be absolutely forbidden; and no mails be carried
on Simday. This last motion was lost by a single
vote; and, fortunately for South and North, the
Convention defeated his first motion, sparing the
name of Washington from association with the
tragedy of a sectional war. The other motions
prevailed. Before Davis reached Montgomery, Cobb wrote
his wife saying: "The best friends of the Confederacy
here are troubled at the continuous rumors of

124 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis being a Reconstructionist; that is, one ready
to make a settlement with the North and the
States resume their places in the Union."
Do not these rumors bear some testimony, at
least, that Davis had not held extreme views?
We think they do.
A few days before the arrival of the special
messenger bearing the tidings of his election, Davis
had had a conference with the foremost among
the slaves, advising them in case public affairs
should call him away, to have a care for the planta
tion, and above all to look after the aged and helpless.
Upon asking Bob, the oldest among them and
who had suffered long from rheumatism, what he
would like for his comfort, he requested rocking
chairs for himself and Rhinah his wife. Davis
bought the chairs as well as a number of blankets
for the old couple, and cochineal flannel for Bob
to wrap his rheumatic limbs. Mrs. Davis says
in her Memoirs that when the Union soldiers after
the fall of Vicksburg sacked the plantation, they
took all of Uncle Bob's blankets, declaring against
his remonstrances that he had stolen them.
The special messenger found Davis in his garden
assisting in rose-cutting; that night he assembled
all his slaves and bade them an affectionate farewell,
and the next morning started for Montgomery.

CHAPTER XIV
Davis' inauguration took place in the Capitol,
whither he was accompanied by Stephens the vice-
president, and a Reverend Mr. Manly. Alabama
had provided a handsome coach lined with saffron
and white silk hangings, and drawn by six spirited
iron-gray horses driven by a colored man, of course,
who doubtless was the proudest of his race that day.
The marshals were decorated with white silk
scarfs, every buQding in hofiday attire, and vast,
cheering crowds, white and black, thronging the
streets. On arrival at the State House, Davis
was conducted by Rhett of South Carolina and
Chilton of Alabama to the Congress in session;
Rhett saying: "Gentlemen of the Congress, allow
me to present to you the Honorable Jefferson Davis,
who in obedience to your choice has come to assume
the important trust you have confided to his care."
Davis was then escorted to a platform erected
in front of the imposing Capitol; on a table lay the
Bible in the midst of a wreath of red, white and
blue fiowers. If that blessed, sacred book should
write its memoirs, we are quite sure it wiU embrace
that wreath of red, white and blue among the mighty
incidents of its wondrous career. He took the
125

126 JEFFERSON DAVIS
oath and then read his inaugural. Its close was as
follows :
"Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers
to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate
the principle which by His blessing they were able
to vindicate, estabfish and transmit to their posterity.
With the continuance of His favor ever gratefuUy
acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to
success and prosperity."
His inaugural was not keyed on home, its fire
sides, its inalienable rights to be free from a perpet
ually menacing danger, but on bleak, cold-blooded
legal rights; and thus, lacking in sentiment and
appeal, falls far below, as an effective State paper,
that of Lincoln defivered a few weeks later. Napoleon
said, and it is true, " 'Tis by speaking to the soul
that you electrify men." These two inaugurals
make clear the difference of the mold and clay
in the natures of these two historically linked-up
characters. Davis, in dwelling upon the men for his Cabinet,
had decided upon Toombs for Secretary of the
Treasury and BarnweU of South Carofina for
Secretary of State. It so happened that he first wrote
to Barnwell, who meanwhile, having joined his
fellow-members of the Provisional Congress in
recommending their colleague Memminger, a com
mercial lawyer, for Secretary of the Treasury,
declined on grounds of propriety, knowing well that

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 127
pubfic opinion would not approve of South Carolina
holding two appointments in the Cabinet. Davis
then offered the position to Toombs, who after
some hesitation accepted.
The other positions were filled by Walker of
Alabama for Secretary of War, Mallory of Florida
for Secretary of the Navy, Reagan of Texas for
Postmaster-General; for Attorney-General, Benjamin
of Louisiana, a Hebrew born with a perpetual
smile, who had married a French Roman Catholic
and was by far the all-around ablest man
in the Cabinet. He had served in the Senate with
Davis, and on one occasion when debating an
army bUl, Davis, in a nervous, irascible state from
iUness, made remarks in replying to him that he
felt were insulting. He sent Davis a challenge by
the hands of Senator Bayard of Delaware. Davis
on reading the chaUenge tore it up, saying: "I was
all wrong, and will apologize to Benjamin," and
the next day in open Senate made handsome amends.
Davis, in the first letter to his wife after
reaching Montgomery, said: "I was inaugurated on
Wednesday. Upon my weary heart were showered
smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I
saw troubles and thorns innumerable. We are
without machinery, without means, and threatened
by a powerful opposition, but I do not despond
and wUl not shrink from the task imposed upon it. "
That he thoroughly realized the South's unreadi-

128 JEFFERSON DAVIS
ness for war is made clear by a resume of its unpre-
paredness found among the papers of Colonel
Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance for the Confederacy.
Gorgas was a graduate of West Point; he married
a daughter of Governor Gayle of Alabama and,
although a Pennsylvanian, joined the South. It
was his son, a surgeon in the United States Army,
who overcame yellow fever, gaining a fame that
winged its way the world around. It appears from
the papers of Colonel Gorgas that there were about one
hundred and fifty thousand arms in the arsenals, chiefly
smooth-bore muskets; no equipment for infantry,
artillery or cavalry; no field artUlery or cartridges
[the state and volunteer militia companies, however,
had a few batteries and serviceable arms]; no rifle,
and only about sixty thousand pounds of old cannon
powder, and two hundred and fifty thousand per
cussion caps; no machinery in the arsenals to
speak of and not a firearm or gun carriage had
been made in the South for fifty years; not a rifle
powder mill, and but one cannon foundry, the
Tredegar Works at Richmond, in the entire South.
For years after the War the charge was made,
and it is believed to be true to this day by thousands
of naturally fair-minded people born since the
conflict, that the South, premeditating secession,
secured the transfer from the North of vast quantities
of small arms and cannon. Here are the facts as
established by Congressional investigation:

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 129
First. The Ordnance Department in 1857 offered
for sale fifty out of one hundred and ninety thousand
muskets on hand. The only Southern State that
made a bid was Louisiana; it bid for five thousand
at the rate of 12.50 apiece, and finally took only
two thousand five hundred; the balance were left
on the hands of the Department.
Second. On the twenty-ninth of December,
1859, eleven months before Lincoln's election, the
Secretary of War ordered one-fifth of the old flint
lock and percussion muskets stored at the Springfield
Armory, Springfield, Mass., to be sent to Southern
arsenals to make room for guns of a better model.
[It was the barrels of these guns that inspired
Longfellow's poem.] One hundred and fifteen
thousand were sent, and they were included in
Gorgas' one hundred and fifty thousand.
Third. In late December, 1860, financial irreg
ularities of a serious nature on the part of John B.
Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, who up to
that time had been a pronounced opponent of
secession, were called to the attention of Buchanan,
who asked for explanations. Floyd, so it was alleged,
foreseeing an enforced resignation with its traUing
disgrace, shifted from an opponent to an advocate
of secession and, durmg the ten days preceding
his formal resignation, ordered cannon to be sent
from Pittsburgh to forts along the southern coast.
But the eyes of the North, doubting his loyalty.

130 JEFFERSON DAVIS
were on him, and his orders were countermanded;
these guns thundered at last in defense of the
Government that had made them. So much, then,
for the proof of premeditation on the part of the
South to make war on the North [as a matter of
fact it had never gone a step beyond fits of bluster];
and so much, too, for the prospect that spread
away from the "smiles, plaudits and flowers" of the
inauguration of its first and only President.
On the twenty-seventh of February, Davis
appointed three Commissioners to go to Washington
for the "settlement of all questions of disagreement
between the two governments upon principles of
right, justice, equity and good faith."
They arrived in Washington a few days before
Buchanan's fluctuating, bewildered administration
ended, but to his credit, he refused them audience.

CHAPTER XV
And now that we may have a clear view of the
actual outbreak of the war by the firing on Fort
Sumter and Davis' responsibility for that prodigious
tactical blunder, we must turn back from the
eighteenth of February, the date of his inauguration,
to December 11. On that day the War Department
in Washington wrote to Major Anderson, a Ken-
tuckian commanding a company of Regulars, the
only forces in Charleston, and who was occupying
Fort Moultrie on Sulfivan's Island, a weak and easily
accessible field work: "You are carefuUy to avoid
every act which would needlessly tend to provoke
aggression; and for that reason you are not, without
evident and imminent necessity, to take up any
position which could be construed into the assump
tion of a hostile attitude, but you are to hold pos
session of the forts of the harbor, and if attacked
you are to defend yourself to the last extremity."
To comprehend fully the circumstance under
which he exercised the powers and intent of this
order, it must be borne in mind that ever since
South Carolina had seceded she had indulged in an
orgy of bluster and grotesque assumptions of sov
ereignty, which in the light of today are amusing
and astounding. For example, it sent three Com-
131

132 JEFFERSON DAVIS
missioners to Washington empowered to treat with
the Government of the United States for the delivery
of the forts, magazines and fighthouses in South Caro
lina; for an apportionment of the pubfic debt; a part
of the territories; and division of aU other property
held by the Government of the United States, which
of course meant ships, gold in the treasury, etc.
Indeed, from the Governor down to the whiskey
and brandy decanting barkeepers in shirt sleeves
of the crowded saloons, a fantastic war delirium
prevailed in Charleston. All business in that rose-
blooming, beautiful city was suspended, and gaily
dressed mifitia companies, carrying the Palmetto
flag and keeping step proudly to fife and drum,
paraded the streets daily, manifesting an ever-
increasing disrespect for Anderson and his soldiers.
As early as November 29 the Governor wrote to a
Mr. Prescott, Assistant Secretary of State at
Washington, who was secretly informing him of all
that was going on in the various departments:
"I have found great difficulty in restraining the
people of Charleston from seizing the forts, etc."
The situation became so threatening at last that
Anderson, on the night after Christmas, spiked the
guns, burned their carriages, and transferred his
command to Fort Sumter three miles down the
harbor from the city.
This move startled South Carolina; but delighted
the men of backbone in the North, who, although

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 133
not in favor of war, were resenting her buUying
gasconade. This display of loyalty lifted Anderson
to fame, and the chime of bells hung in his honor
in the belfry of West Point's stately chapel over
looking the Hudson and Highlands does now and
wiU through coming years proclaim his name.
South Carofina, frothing with rage, began to
throw up batteries bearing on Sumter and along
the channel leading out to the ocean four nules
away, to prevent any ship coining in with reinforce
ments for Anderson; meanwhile, the Governor of
the State sent one of his aides demanding "cour
teously but peremptorUy" that he should return
his command to Fort Moultrie, which Anderson,
with language equally courteous and peremptory,
decfined to do.
The Administration, as soon as it heard from
him, secretly took steps for his reinforcement and
relief; on the fifth of January the Star of the West,
a merchant vessel sailed from New York with one
hundred fifty Regulars, and suppfies. The ship
reached the mouth of the harbor on the ninth and,
as soon as she came within range on her inward
trip to Sumter, batteries opened on her and she
had to withdraw and return home.
It is easy now to see that, had Buchanan, as he
first intended, sent the Brooklyn — intrepid Farrugut
was in command of her — instead of the Star of the
West, the history of those days would not be what

134 JEFFERSON DAVIS
it is and the roar of the Brooklyn's guns would be
heard to this day in fiterature and poetry; but at
the urgent advice of friends to avoid giving offense
and provoking war, he sent a merchant, and not a
war, vessel.
The Governor of South Carolina now posted her
Attorney-General to Washington with some pre
posterous demands. Davis, who had not yet resigned
his seat in the Senate, joined the Senators from
Florida, Louisiana, and Texas in a letter to him
saying: "We desire to see such an adjustment, and
to prevent war or the shedding of blood. We must
and will share your fortunes, suffering with you the
evils of war if it cannot be avoided; and enjoying
with you the blessings of peace, if it can be preserved.
We therefore think it especially due from South
Carofina — to say nothing of other slaveholding
States — that she should, as far as she can consist
ently with her honor, avoid initiating hostilities
between her and the United States, or any other
power." It has been charged by several historians
that this letter was a mere mask on Davis' part
to give the South more time to get ready for war.
On the contrary I am willing to befieve he was
plotting for time to give the old love of the Union
time to make one more appeal, hoping thereby that
adjustments might be made at last to avoid blood
shed. We leave that, however, to the final judge
of us all.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 135
Buchanan very properly refused to give an
audience to the South Carofinian ambassador. The
cloud that envelops Buchanan is black and deep;
but, when all the facts are laid bare the conclusion
is irresistible, that great injustice has been done
him. Oh, the ghosts that shriek from the graveyards
of history over malicious and irreparable wrongs !
Such, then, was the state of affairs at Washington
and at Charleston when Davis, a few days after
his inauguration, received an appeal from the
Governor of South Carolina to assume control of
all forces getting ready to open fire on Sumter.
He at once sent Beauregard to take command in
the name of the Confederacy "but not to begin
the attack"; for at that very time the Peace Con
ference, assembled by request of Virginia to avert
a conflict between the sections, was in session, and
prayers were going up from South and North
imploring God to bless its efforts.
Lincoln, on the eighth of March, four days after
his inaugural, called the first council of his Cabinet
to discuss the situation at Charleston. On the
fifteenth he called them together again; it appeared
that General Scott, who had privately advised
Buchanan to reinforce and hold Fort Sumter, had
changed his mind and now recommended that it be
given up and the "wayward sisters" be allowed to
go in peace, In the face of this serious turn of
affairs, Lincoln put the question, "assuming it to

136 JEFFERSON DAVIS
be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, is it well
under all the circumstances to attempt it?" Chase
and Blair said "yes" and the latter emphaticaUy;
Seward, Cameron, WeUes, Smith and Bates said
"no." On the twentieth, Lincoln sent Lamon his long
time friend and law partner, to South Carolina to
find out just how things stood. Meanwhile parleys
relative to supplies, mails, etc., were going on
between Anderson, officers of the War Department
and the South Carolina authorities. Lamon reached
Charleston on the twenty-fifth and lost no time in
seeing the Governor. At the interview he told him
that Lincoln had practically made up his mind to
withdraw Anderson. Lamon escorted by Colonel
Duryea, one of the Governor's aides, then went to
see Anderson and told him the same story, which is
confirmed by the following extracts from Anderson's
letters in the first volume of War Records, to the
Adjutant-General :
"The remarks made to me by Colonel Lamon,
taken in connection with the tenor of the newspapers
here, induced me, as stated in previous communica
tions, to believe that orders would soon be issued
for abandoning this work." In a letter received in
Washington on the twenty-ninth: "Having been
in daily expectation since the return of Colonel
Lamon to Washington of receiving orders to vacate
the Fort, I have kept these laborers as long as I

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 137
could" [They were clearing up the cisterns of the
Fort.] "Mr. Lamon left here [Charleston] last
night saying that Major Anderson and command
would soon be withdrawn from Fort Sumter in a
satisfactory manner," so wrote Beauregard to Davis
on the twenty-sixth. On the same day Beauregard
wrote Anderson :
"My dear Major: Having been informed that
Mr. Lamon, the authorized agent of the President,
advised Governor Pickens, after his interview with
you at Fort Sumter that yourself and command
would be transferred to another port in a few days;"
and then went on to say that he would provide
suitable conveyances when Anderson was ready to
move. Moreover there is unquestionable testimony that,
whUe Lamon was South, Seward had assured the
Commissioners appointed by Davis that the prom
ises he had made them that Fort Sumter would be
evacuated would be kept.
In the fight of these letters and this testimony,
was it not natural in Beauregard, Governor Pickens
and Davis to befieve that the authorities in Wash
ington were acting in good faith, and that Anderson
would be withdrawn and war, at least for the
present, avoided?
Meanwhile what was actually happening in
Washington? Lamon, of course, hastened on his
return to see Lincoln and must have told him all

138 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the Governor said and aU Anderson had said, and
what he in turn had said to them. There is no
evidence that Lincoln then or ever committed him
self to an absolute withdrawal of Anderson; on the
other hand, there is no evidence that he ever dis
claimed Lamon's representations to the Governor
or to Anderson. Seward, however, in an interview
with Judge Campbell immediately after Lamon's
return, declared that he (Lamon) had no agency
from him (Lincoln), nor title to speak.
Let aU these circumstances, and a fleet with
nearly one hundred guns and twenty-four hundred
men gathering at the mouth of Charleston harbor,
speak for themselves as to good faith.
On the twenty-ninth of March Lincoln assembled
his Cabinet at noon and each member submitted
written answers to a memorandum relating to
reinforcing Anderson; the Cabinet was practically
unanimously in favor of it. Thereupon Lincoln
wrote to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of
the Navy: "I desire that an expedition to move by
sea be got ready to sail as early as the sixth of
April." On the fourth of April Lincoln, through
the Secretary of War, notified Anderson that he
would be reinforced. Anderson acknowledged that
letter on the eighth, saying: "I ought to have been
informed that this expedition was to come; Colonel
Lamon convinced me that the idea, merely hinted
at by Captain Fox, would not be carried out." Fox

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 139
had been to see him before Buchanan's term ended,
relative to reinforcing him by the bay.
This qmck about-face of the Administration
must have stunned Lamon.
On the evening of April 8, Robert S. Chew, Chief
Clerk of the State Department, and in his old age,
when I saw him, a venerable, admirable gentleman,
delivered in person this message to Governor Pickens:
"I am directed by the President of the United
States to notify you to expect an attempt will be
made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only,
and if such attempt be not resisted no effort to
throw in men, arms, or ammunition wiU be made
without further notice or in case of an attack upon
it." Pickens called in Beauregard who was in
an adjoining room to hear this message.
Beauregard immediately wrote Davis: "An
authorized messenger from Lincoln has just
informed Governor Pickens and myself that provi
sions wiU be sent to Fort Sumter, peaceably if they
can, forcibly if they must."
To this Davis replied: "If you have no doubt of
the authorized character of the agent [he was
evidently thinking of Lamon] who communicated
to you the intentions of the Washington Government
to supply Fort Sumter by force, you wUl at once
demand its evacuation, and if this be refused, pro
ceed in such manner as you may determine to
reduce it."

140 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Had Beauregard sent Lincoln's notice in fuU and
not a paraphrase, we have often wondered what
would have been Davis' answer? Would he have
reafized the significance of Lincoln's adroit threat
— if that be the right name for it — and parried
it by ordering Beauregard to notify Washington
that he would supply Anderson with every possible
need for the welfare and comfort of himself and his
troops, thus escaping the responsibiUty of firing
the first shot? I am afraid not; for Davis was not
built on the line of shrewdness; but had he done so,
Lincoln could not have said, as he did in his message
to Congress a few months later, that he was bound
to relieve a starving garrison, knowing fuU well the
weight of that word "starving." Lincoln knew his
fellow men far, far better than Davis, and he also
knew far better than he how to strike the tender
chords of their nature. He forced Davis to fire that
first shot, the shot that struck the heart of the
North, tearing away all the questions of law and
expediency that were hampering its free move
ments. Beauregard, who was itching to begin the attack,
upon receipt of Davis' despatch, sent a letter to
Anderson demanding the evacuation of the Fort.
Anderson in reply said his sense of honor prevented
compUance with the demand; but, when handing
his letter to Beauregard's aide, he remarked that
in a few days he would be starved out whether the

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 141
Confederate guns did or did not batter the Fort to
pieces. Upon hearing this statement from his aide,
Beauregard sent him back to Anderson to ask when
he would agree to give up the Fort. Anderson
said: "At noon on the fifteenth if meanwhUe I do
not receive controlfing instructions or suppfies."
Beauregard referred the matter to the Confederate
Secretary of War, who, of course, carried it at once
to Davis, who probably dictated the answer: "We
do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter,"
that if Anderson would agree to evacuate he should
not be fired upon, but in case he refused, Beauregard
was to use his own judgment. Beauregard immedi
ately sent word to Anderson that he would open
fire at 4.30 a.m. the next day, which he did, and
after a day and night's bombardment, Anderson
lowered his fiag. Davis in acknowledging the
despatch from Beauregard announcing the sur
render said: "If occasion offers, tender my friendly
remembrances to Major Anderson." They had
been Cadets together at West Point.
My pen has dwelt, and perhaps too long for the
reader's patience, on the firing of Sumter; but, as
Davis was officiaUy responsible for the momentous
deed, it has seemed to me only fair to him that all
the circumstances be resurrected, and stand once
more as living witnesses before the bar of public
opinion. It has been claimed, and in one sense

142 JEFFERSON DAVIS
truly, that he made a great blunder tactical and
political, in giving the first blow, a blow which the
manhood and honor of the North felt deeply and
was bound to resent; but over and above aU, incur
ring the moral responsibifity for beginning the war,
which to this day overshadows him and the South.
Yet, in the inexorable march of the world's progress,
it was ordained that from some one, in his or the
following generation at latest, a first shot should
be fired, so intense was the feeling, so inevitable
was the struggle between the sections, from the
day the bells tolled the funeral of John Brown.
Upon the fall of Sumter, Lincoln called for seventy-
five thousand men, virtually declaring war, and we
think rightly, on the Confederacy. This call included
North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, and under
it the overstrained ties that bound them to the
Union snapped, and they rushed to the defense of
their feUow Southern States. Strangely enough, but
true, from that day on to the end, in every eye that
fell on the banners they lifted, from the Potomac
to the Rio Grande, they were banners, not in defense
of slavery, but in resistance of an invasion of home.
While in the eyes of the North, as a whole, from the
coast of Maine to the Pacific they were banners of
treason locked in the embrace of slavery. Be that
as it may, after three years of battle had elapsed
I saw both flags, the Stars and Stripes and that of
Lee's army, flying for hours within a few paces of

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 143
each other after the explosion of the crater at
Petersburg; a gentle breeze would now and then
waft them out from their staffs, and to my eyes
they really looked friendly and gallant.

CHAPTER XVI
In May, 1861, the capital of the Confederacy was
moved from Montgomery. Although Montgomery
is beautiful, indeed charming, yet the transfer of
the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond was
almost imperative in view of the fact that the first
and main attacks would be from the direction of
Washington; the President had to be near, not only
for consultation, but to settle questions which
did not admit of delay.
The change was in every sense fortunate and
propitious. A city with finer good manners, freer
from cheap politicians, or with more stimulating
and richer traditions could not have been chosen
for a capital; there the heart of the Old Dominion
beat, whose arms in pre-colonial times had been
quartered with those of her mother. Great Britain.
From the very beginning of our country, and espe
cially throughout the South, Virginia enjoyed a
position of pride and reverence in the affections of
the people: her sons, with Frankfin and the Adamses
of Massachusetts, had been the master workmen
in building the government and directing its course;
at her firesides had sat Washington, Henry,
Marshall, Madison, Jefferson, the Lees, Masons
144

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 145
and Randolphs, and in their names Richmond and
Virginia welcomed the Confederacy, staking all
as in Colonial days, on that immortal principle —
the right of a refigiously free and intelligent people
to decide the kind of a government that should
rule over them. And now with more than seventeen
thousand soldiers dead Richmond keeps on her
way with the same good manners and the same
graceful, unconscious dignity, holding dear the
memory of the Confederacy that made her its
-capital and the ashes of its President now resting
on the banks of the James as it swings along by
its last green islands on its way to the sea.
Before the removal from Montgomery, one army
under Joseph E. Johnston had assembled in front
of Harper's Ferry and one at Manassas under
Beauregard. On the twenty-first of July the Battle
of Bull Run was fought, and Davis, keyed with
anxiety, left Richmond and arrived at Manassas
Junction four or five mUes from where the fighting
was going on at about three o'clock in the afternoon.
The forenoon had gone badly; the station was
thronged with stragglers who crowded about the
train with the usual fearful stories of defeat. Davis,
looking for some one who could give him refiable
information, espied a man with a gray beard and a
calm face, who told him that their line was broken, aU
was confusion, the army routed, and the battle lost.
He finally reached Beauregard's headquarters

146 JEFFERSON DAVIS
and, while horses were being got ready, Beauregard's
adjutant-general advised him of the hazard he
took in going to the field, that as President he ought
not to expose himself to its dangers. But the spirit
that had carried him to the front at Monterey and
Buena Vista had not grown timid with age, and he
set out for the guns that he could faintly hear.
They soon encountered shoals of stragglers and
then the limping, bleeding wounded. Davis says
that among them was a mere boy badly hurt and
supported on the shoulder of a man, who swung his
hat with a cheer as he passed him. I hope that little
gallant fellow lived through the war and enjoyed
an old age blessed with friends and plenty.
After a while, Davis fell in with Johnston, whose
army most opportunely had joined Beauregard,
and was told that the victory had been won,
though fitful firing from the breaking Union forces
was still going on. By that time the sun was low.
Davis then went to the extreme left of the Con
federate line and there fell in with General Early,
whose forces were lying down resting waiting for
orders. Early told him of near-by wounded that
needed attention, especially a Colonel Gordon of
the Eighth Georgia. Davis at once looked up Gordon
and foimd him in severe pain and one of our Federal
soldiers, a prisoner, ministering to, his wants. He
then hunted up a surgeon and, upon leaving, Gordon
asked him to give protection to the prisoner who

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 147
had been so kind. Davis took the man's name and
address and left orders on his return to headquarters
that he should not be treated as a prisoner but be
released and sent home. Some days after Davis
had returned to Richmond, he received a notice
from the officer in charge of prisoners that there
was one who claimed that he had been promised
protection by the President at Manassas. Davis
sent for him and gave orders for his release and
freedom to rejoin our lines at Fort Monroe. The
man said he hada sister not far from Richmond
whom he would like to visit before availing himself
of parole. Davis readily granted the request, and
the next thing heard from him was in a newspaper
from the North -boasting how he had escaped, and
how he had availed himself of the opportunity
to visit the "sister" to make sketches of the forti
fications around Richmond! I hope the good
angels in charge of Paradise, out of compassion, have
assigned a place to this bogus Samaritan somewhere
a long way off from Davis — away, away on the
other side of the Delectable Mountains — for I think
it would be uncomfortable for him to meet the man
who had befriended him.
It' was near eleven o'clock at night when Davis
joined Johnston and Beauregard in an upper room
of the headquarters, not one of them dreaming that
at that very hour McDoweU's troops were fleeing
through the darkness in the wfidest panic.

148 JEFFERSON DAVIS
WhUe Davis was at a table writing a despatch
to Richmond, Beauregard's adjutant-general.
Colonel Jordan, came upstairs, saying that an
officer had just come who declared he had been as
far as CentreviUe in the tracks of McDowell's
forces and found the town full of artillery that they
had abandoned. "As soon as I had made my
report," says Colonel Jordan, "Mr. Davis, with
much animation, asserted the necessity for an urgent
pursuit. I took my seat at the same table and wrote
the order for pursuit substantially at the dictation
of Mr. Davis. " This order, for one reason or another,
was not carried out; the responsibifity for failure
of execution soon became a question attended
with most serious results; some claiming after the
war was over that it was the primal cause for the
defeat of the Confederacy. Later, at the risk of
wearying the reader, we shall have to go into this
matter with detail, but for the present it must bide
its time.
With the break of daylight the next morning, a
steady down-pouring, aU-day rain began, and by
the afternoon, when Davis set out to visit the
hospitals in search of a youth of his own family
reported sinking slowly, every little run and creek
was bank fuU. At last at the approach of night he
found the right hospital, and here is what he says:
"It was too late, the soul of the young soldier had
just left his body; the corpse lay before me. Around

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 149
it were many gentle boys suffering in different
degrees from the wounds they had received." One
of them replied to his expressed sympathy that he
was glad to die for such a cause, and Davis adds:
"Many kindred spirits ascended to the Father
from that field of glory."
That night he had another conference over what
was next to be done, with Johnston and Beauregard
who by that time had gained a true measure of
the victory; but both agreed they were not strong
enough nor in condition to take the offensive.
That settled, Davis promoted Beauregard to the
rank of General with handsome recognition of the
part he had played in the battle, and in the morn
ing returned to Richmond.
For weeks the South was literally drunk with
joy and pride over the victory; bonfires were lit,
bells were rung, guns fired, old grudges were for
gotten and men and women embraced one another
when they heard the news. But while sobering off,
facts of the utter demorafization and flight of
McDowell's army came filtering down through
newspapers and from letters sent home by soldiers
telfing what they had seen and found in the track
of their panic-stricken foes. Of course, from all
over the South broke the usual question: "How in
the world did it happen that Johnston, Beauregard
and Davis, aU three right on the ground, did not take
advantage of such a rout to capture Washington?"

150 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis wisely at first paid no attention to the
malicious gossip that soon followed, and, with
the limited means at hand, went on tackfing the
distracting difficulties of arming and equipping
new forces.
At this point and now, a chapter which will be
tedious for me to write, and more tedious I fear
for the reader to read, must be devoted to the
outcome of this malignant gossip, namely, an
antagonism between Davis, Johnston and
Beauregard which arrayed parties in the South with
consequences fatal, it has been claimed, to the success
of its cause. Moreover, it is one of the many tragic
parts in the history of the Confederacy; but that
phase has no immediate interest for my pen, it is
the hues of Davis' personafity lit up by the unquench
able fires of the controversy.
Congress, in May, passed a bill creating the
regular Confederate Army [it had hitherto been a
provisional one] providing for five general officers
with the title of General, and conferring the power
of selection on the President. A previous Act had a
provision that officers resigning from the United
States Army should have corresponding rank in the
Confederate Army.
Davis, on August 31, appointed to rank as Generals :
1. Samuel Cooper, assigned as Adjutant-General
and Chief of Staff,
2. Albert Sydney Johnston,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 151
3. Robert E. Lee,
4. Joseph E. Johnston,
5. P. T. Beauregard,
and now trouble began. Cooper, Albert Sidney
Johnston, and Lee had won no battles; and
the jealous friends of Joseph E. Johnston and
Beauregard were fiercely indignant. "Had not
they won the greatest victory that had ever been
won?" and lo! they were overslaughed by Davis'
pets. "Are the leaders of the troops of the South
to be chosen for merit and accomplishments, or
for old-time friendships and capacity for adulation?"
Johnston, immediately on receiving the general
orders promulgating these appointments, protested
that a great injustice had been done him, and was
obviously touched to the quick, as the following
extract from his letter to Davis shows: "It reduces
my rank in the grade I hold. This has never been
done heretofore in the regular service but by
sentences of Court Martial. It seems to tarnish
my fair fame as a soldier and as a man, earned by
more than thirty years of laborious and perUous
service." He ended his letter: "These views and
the freedom with which they are presented may be
unusual; so likewise is the occasion that calls them
forth. " Davis aUowed his temper, ever quick when
the integrity of his official action was impugned,
to take the reins, and he acknowledged the receipt
of that letter: "Its language is as you say 'unusual,'

152 JEFFERSON DAVIS
its arguments and statements utterly one-sided
and its insinuations as imfounded as they are
unbecoming." It is conceded that Johnston had a technical
legal reason for his contention under one of the
Acts preliminary to the General Act of Congress,
but we wfil leave the decision as to whether or not
he was right or wrong to minds better stored with
law than mine.
That Johnston was very sensitive, morbidly
so it seems to me, as to rank, is iUustrated by a letter
written two days after the battle of Bull Run to
Cooper, who had assigned, without consulting him,
an officer to his staff. "I had already, " says Johnston,
"selected Major Rhett for the position in question,
and can admit the power of no officer of the Army
to annul my order on the subject, nor can I admit
the claim of any officer to command of the 'Forces',
being myself the ranking General of the Con
federate Army." Later he wrote: "I had the honor
to write you on the twenty-fourth on the subject
of my rank compared with other officers of the
Confederate Army. Since then I have received
daily orders purporting to come from Headquarters
of the Forces. Such orders I cannot regard, because
they are illegal."
When Cooper sent these letters to Davis he
endorsed them "Insubordinate." Lincoln once told
Secretary Welles that McClellan was afflicted

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 153
with the "slows;" Davis might have said that
Johnston was afflicted with the "snarls." But,
seriously, of aU the fungus growths that attach
themselves to mifitarism, that of querulous fussiness
about "rank" is the worst, and has impaired the
usefulness and bfighted the old age of many an
otherwise good soldier. It was the ruin of Benedict
Arnold. Meanwhile, the resolute North, stung by the defeat
at Bull Run, was rushing troops to Washington,
and McCleUan, who had refieved McDowell, under
the charm of his matchless personafity, was organiz
ing them into a formidable army. The Navy, too
was growing and, ever ready to undertake hazardous
enterprises, led an expedition against Fort Hatteras
which it captured on August 29, and then set sail
for Port Royal, threatening Charleston and
Savannah. The Southern public, alarmed by these disasters,
asked : "Why is the Army of Johnston and Beauregard
lying idle?" Johnston heard the question at Fairfax
Court House, and the last of September requested
Davis to come up for a conference as to what he
should do. On his arrival, Johnston called in
Beauregard and G. W. Smith, a division commander,
who, by the way, a few months later submitted to
them a report which was kept secret till the war
was over, of what took place at this interview.
Davis did not see this report untU twenty years had

154 JEFFERSON DAVIS
elapsed and it is needless to say it rekindled for a
moment the dying-down fires in his nature.
In discussing the situation as to future movements,
it was proposed by Smith to cross the Potomac
above Washington and force McClellan to come
out of his works and fight them on an open field.
Davis asked how many men they would need; Smith
said fifty thousand; Johnston and Beauregard,
sixty thousand seasoned troops, that is a reinforce
ment of about thirty thousand strong, and suggested
that they be drawn from Norfolk, West Virginia,
and Pensacola or wherever Davis could lay his
hands on them. Davis told them it was not possible
to detach from these locations, adding that the
whole country was demanding protection and
praying for arms and for defence, but that he would
send all the reinforcements he could; and there
the matter dropped.
Apropos of the plan Johnston, Beauregard and
Smith suggested, had they been suppUed with
troops to carry it out, it is my befief, knowing as I
do McClellan's Army of the Potomac, that they
would have been thrown back as Lee was thrown
back in 1862 and 1863; for the fates had decided,
as the war as it went on showed, that no Confederate
army should stay long north of the river that flows
by Mount Vernon.
There are side lights in the background of this
famous interview which help to illuminate it.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 155
The highest flaming one was the fact that the
victory of Bull Run, supplementing the surrender
of Fort Sumter fike a south wind to a plum tree,
brought Beauregard into a fuU bloom of nufitary
glory; and as the election of a permanent President
was approaching, politics had begun her usual
game. Beauregard's biographer, a member of his
staff, says: "Gentlemen of position and influence
outside of the Army now urged him to allow his
name to be presented." Jones, in his "Rebel War
Clerk's Diary Notes" says: "The battle of Manassas
made everybody popular and especially General
Beauregard. If he were a candidate, I am pretty
sure he would be elected."
Davis had asked him for his report of the battle
early in August, but up to the time of the interview,
he had not handed it in, although when submitted,
October 18, it appeared to have been finished on
August 26.
It is a shabby, a despicable thing for a biographer
to ascribe maficious motives for the conduct of his
hero's enemies; and, so far as I can, I wish to avoid
it; but is it unreasonable to ask, in view of the
persistent criticism and innuendoes of Davis by
Beauregard's friends throughout the war, why
did he hold back his report with its indirect, yet
damaging, charges? And, may I ask, was it strange
that Davis should feel hurt when he saw it? Beaure
gard's biographer says it was held back that he

156 JEFFERSON DAVIS
might get the benefit of Northern accounts of the
battle. But however this may be, the belated report
began with a preliminary statement to the effect
that before the battle of BuU Run he had sent one
of his staff to Davis with a plan for the defeat of
McDowell's Army and the capture of Washington,
which Davis had unquafifiedly disapproved.
The charge of Davis' responsibifity for the faUure
to capture Washington after Bull Run, that had
begun as a whisper, suddenly broke aloud as a fact
by a speech made to Congress by one of its members,
who had been a volunteer aide on Beauregard's
staff at the time of the battle. Davis could not
stand this unfair, baseless charge and had to clear
himself from its damaging imputation; for it was
not only poisoning public opinion, but was also
undermining the administration's power to carry
on the war. Therefore on October 30 he wrote
Beauregard: "Yesterday my attention was called
to various newspaper publications purporting to
have been sent from Manassas and to be a synoposis
of your report, in which it is represented that
you had been overruled by me in your plan for a
battle with the enemy south of the Potomac for the
capture of Baltimore and Washington."
A few days later he wrote Johnston: "Reports
have been and are very widely circulated to the
effect that I prevented General Beauregard from
pursuing the enemy after the battle of Manassas,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 157
and had subsequently restrained him from advancing
upon Washington City. I caU upon you as the
commanding general and as a party to aU the
conferences on the twenty-second and twenty-third
of July, to say whether or not I obstructed the
pursuit of the enemy after the victory at Manassas,
or have ever objected to an advance or other active
operations which it was feasible to undertake."
Beauregard exonerated him from the charge of
the responsibility for not pursuing McDowell, and
so did Johnston but in his answer said: "After
a conference at Fairfax Court House with the three
senior general officers, you avowed it to be impractic
able to give this Army the strength which these
officers considered necessary to enable it to assume
the offensive, upon which I drew back to its present
position (CentreviUe) . ' '
Here then at last are the leading circumstances
of the break of mutual confidence between Davis,
Beauregard and Johnston. Sooner or later, as the
outcome of it all, every pofitician that had faUed
to get an appointment in the Army for himsefi or a
friend, every army contractor that had been thwarted
in his greed, every Senator, Congressman, or Governor
that had a grievance, every editor and reporter
that had been snubbed by any member of the
Cabinet — aU joined in the ranks behind the
champions of Johnston or Beauregard as the war
went on, attributing defeat to Davis, and when the

158 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Confederacy feU, laid its death on his shoulders.
A few Southern and practically aU Northern histo
rians have in a measure sustained this verdict;
many of the Northern, thoroughly convinced that
he was bad in every way, were only too glad to
help load him down with the failure of the South.
Let me say in conclusion of this prolonged and
possibly wearying account, that I think the pre
ponderance of evidence is in favor of Davis in this
controversy and that the spirit of the dead
Confederacy does not hold him responsible for her
failure, on the contrary, glories in his constancy and
love of her.
But I do think Davis made a great mistake in
going to Manassas. A battlefield is no place for a
President, a Kaiser, or a King. They do not
help, they only embarrass the Commander. More
over, had he stayed in Richmond, Johnston and
Beauregard would have, in all probability through
their failure to pursue McDowell, gone into a
perpetual eclipse, and Lee, Davis' ever loyal helper,
would have come into his own that much sooner.

CHAPTER XVII
That first year of the Confederacy, whose morning
broke with such glowing enthusiasm and whose first
summer was so brightened for Davis and the people
of the South by the victory of Bull Run, had, never
theless, before its sun set, brought to him and them
a sore disappointment. He had hoped, and they
were sure, that the nations of the Old World would
at once reach out the hand of welcome; for was not
Cotton a king that would throw the doors wide
open of every country with mills filled with looms
or spindles. But to his and their surprise the Con
federate ambassadors who had been received with
warmly gracious formalities, soon discovered an
hesitation, if not a latent unwilfingness, to acknowl
edge the independence of the South. Day after
day and week after week they plead for recognition;
to this end they held out tempting commercial
advantages, they appealed to the Englishman's
hereditary notion of the right to be free, they used
every argument, but all feU on deaf ears and they
soon reafized, what they had not surmised, that
Vice-President Stephens, in declaring that the
cornerstone of the Confederacy was slavery, had
dealt a blow which aroused a sentiment more power
ful than King Cotton. 159

160 JEFFERSON DAVIS
It is one of the curious episodes of history that
that fittle, pale, pathetic-looking man who had
opposed secession, and in his heart worshipped the
old Union, raised a ghost that could not be laid
and that dragged the Confederacy down to its
grave. In the autumn the seizure of the Confederate am
bassadors, Slidell and Mason, from the deck of the
British steamer Trent, by that "I'll show you,"
spare-faced old Commodore, Wilkes, for a moment
raised the hopes of the South; but Seward with his
cool adroitness released them from Fort Warren,
defivered them to an English man-of-war, and thus
blew out that hope like a candle. Although dis
appointed, the South did not despair of England
coming at last to her aid, for she was bound to
reafize that, if victorious, the North in due time
would be her inveterate rival on the seas. Cotton
was still an illusion, as well as that other fatal
illusion, that the North lacked courage and would
not fight long. This last illusion Davis did not
share with his southern countrymen; from the very
first he knew the indomitable resolution of the
North, and all that autumn never relaxed a moment
in preparation for the coming spring's campaigns.
In September his first Secretary of War, Walker,
who had had no experience that aided him in his
trying difficulties and immense labors, for the sake
of health of body and peace of mind, resigned his

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 161
position. He wrote Davis this letter: "In with
drawing from your Cabinet I can, I feel assured,
without any impeachment of my motives, say to
you in writing what I have often said of you; that
you were the only man I had ever met whose great
ness grew upon me the nearer I approached him,
and whose rare fidefity to principle often wounded
when he most preferred to oblige." Walker's
friends said that he was a brave, impulsive man
and this letter shows it.
Davis appointed Benjamin in Walker's place,
and before the year ended he had snubbed the
Senate and made a host of enemies in and out of
the Army. For, born with a contempt for mifitary
self-importance, and wearing that air, which success
ful Jews so often wear, of marching to the music of a
triumph, his face always wreathed in smifing con
descension and with manners invariably formal, did
not inspire or encourage intimacy. And yet he was
universally credited by friend and foe with natural
and developed abifities far surpassing any one in
Congress or the Cabinet, and thus this marked
personafity, together with the fact that he was a
Hebrew, made him the target of violent anti-
administration newspaper attacks. But between
him and Davis there never was a break of friendship
or confidence.
Only those who have had experience in staff
departments can know or conceive the work that

162 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Benjamin and Davis had to do that first year of
the war in organizing, providing suppfies for the
army they were creating, and the innumerable per
plexing questions from contractors, manufacturers,
and governors of States that poured in by every
mafi and by telegraph almost every hour. To plan
and to answer those questions they had to work all
day and long into the late hours of every night, but
the next morning Benjamin greeted the public with
the same alert smile and lofty manner, and Davis
with the same dignified courtesy and air of uncon
querable will.
Toombs, restless in his position of Secretary of
State and longing for the field of action as soon as
the guns opened at Bull Run, resigned and Davis
appointed Hunter of Virginia in his place. Nature
had built Toombs on a large scale mentally and
physically. He was over six feet in height, had
depth and force of character. His eyes were large,
black and flashing, he dressed well and kept his
small, delicate hands with the care of a woman.
He loved stimulating, joyous, good-hearted com
pany, as well as that, from time to time, unfortun
ately, of the cup. His temper was qtdck but his
judgment, when evoked by serious questions, calm
and sure. Before the year ended he had joined
Wise, Floyd, Clingman, Cobb, and other civilians
craving for military glory in dislike of Davis who
had appointed West Point men over and ahead of

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 163
them. At one of the early steps we took in this
biography, we referred to this very attendant dis
advantage of a West Point education.
Poor Clingman! One of the most disappointed, one
of Davis' earfiest, most persistent and virulent critics,
I never think of without pity. While in the Senate
he had had his portrait painted as addressing that
body, and Corcoran, the Washington banker and
famous art critic, had hung it in his gaUery among
presidents, senators, judges and generals. After
the war was long over, Cfingman in old age and
utter poverty, his coat shiny and threadbare, his
hair white, long was in the habit of going to the
gaUery and gazing on his portrait. One day, to his
surprise, the portrait had been moved and he asked
a stranger. "Why do you suppose they placed it
here in this dark room?" "Oh, it is probably just a
temporary change." "I do hope it is," he murmured,
his lips trembfing and the tears springing out of
his eyes. Oh, that look back upon other days!
It wiU be remembered that Davis had assigned
his boyhood and West Point friend, Albert Sydney
Johnston, to the command of the Department of
the West. Its frontier extended from the Allegheny
Mountains to the western boundary of Arkansas.
It was a long fine pierced by the Mississippi, the
Cumberland and the Tennessee, each offering the
aid of iron-clad gunboats to forces making an
attack. In front of Johnston was his old West Point

164 JEFFERSON DAVIS
roommate Anderson of Sumter, Grant, Thomas and
Sherman with stronger forces than he had and
much better armed — indeed many of his soldiers
had only converted rifles and shotguns. Conscious
of this inferiority and reafizing its dangers he had
repeatedly called for better arms and equipment.
The War Department had told him the truth —
that none were to be had. This he could not make
pubfic and had to lie idle, knowing full well that an
idle army, not only breeds contagious diseases,
unnerves morale, and weakens confidence in its
commander, but it breeds distrust in that mighty
shape called public opinion. He was troubled and
worried day and night, but he found no fault with
Davis, for he was sure his boyhood friend thought
of him and would do all he could to enable him to
take the offensive.
Meanwhile, although McCleUan's immense army
lay idle, yet such was the charm of his personafity
together with his well staged, frequent reviews,
it neither suffered from disease nor distrust, its
rank and file waiting in perfect confidence that he
would in his own good time lead them to victory.
But the cool-headed North had no illusions as
to him nor to chance; all day and all night its looms,
its foundries, its ammunition- and gun-making
estabfishments and its powder miUs were busy.
And so were its numerous shipyards. Through the
dead hours of the night they clanged with the

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 165
riveting of boUers for men-of-war, forging plates
for iron-clad gunboats and for the turret of the
fittle Monitor dreaming with a smUe of its coming
battle with the huge Merrimac. Moreover an
expedition of land and sea forces had sailed to attack
Roanoke Island; another under Farragut was
about to sail for the capture of New Orleans, and
Grant was waiting for Halleck's authority to fall
on Johnston's fine.
Such then was the situation and the prospect that
lay before Davis at the end of the first year. There
can be no doubt that he was conscious he had made
enemies, of the loss and weakness that came to him
through the abandonment of his Cabinet by one
of the most powerful leaders of the South, of the
mighty dangers that hung over its armies. Yet,
and notwithstanding, his courage faltered not. The
spirit of the youthful-browed and aspiring Con
federacy, that spirit that inspired poetry, built
monuments, brought tears of affection, was at his
side, for she knew right weU that within his breast
were a wiU and devotion that would never quail,
and that would carry her banner on many a vic
torious field and would never forsake her.

CHAPTER XVIII
Davis' second year had barely begun when a
storm of defeat set in that swept the entire northern
frontier of the South. On January 19 that loyal
Virginian, Thomas, who looked like, and by nature
was more fike, Washington than any other man of
his day, broke Albert Sydney Johnston's fine at
MiU Springs, Eastern Kentucky. Grant, on Feb
ruary 6, broke it at Fort Henry on the Tennessee,
and ten days after, at Fort Donelson on the Cumber
land, capturing both garrisons, many guns and
prisoners; Curtis broke it on March 5 at Elkhorn,
amid the wild turkey-roamed and white oak-
covered hills of Southwestern Missouri. Meanwhile
Burnside had captured Roanoke Island just below
the Virginia line on the coast of North Carofina.
Some years after the war Benjamin in a letter to
Colonel Charles Marshall, Lee's confidential aide,
said in reference to the faU of Roanoke Island and
the loss of Fort Donelson, for which the Confederate
Congress by the report of a Committee found him
responsible: "I consulted the President [Davis]
whether or not it was best for the country that I
should reveal to a Congressional Committee our
poverty and my utter inability to supply the requisi-
166

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 167
tions of Wise [in command of Roanoke Island] and
thus run the risk that the fact should become known
to some of the spies of the enemy, of whose acti
vities we were weU assured. It was thought best
for the public interest that I should submit to
censure." The weakness and final rupture of Johnston's
lines were in a great measure due to the lack of arms
and ammunition — a fact that neither he nor Davis
could let the world know.
These were all bad blows and the effect on the
pubfic mind was staggering. But the one that
struck nearest the heart was the faU of Donelson
on the sixteenth of February. The news of this
supreme disaster reached Richmond while the
workmen were engaged in building a platform in
front of Clark's celebrated equestrian statue of
Washington, for the inauguration of Davis on . the
twenty-second as permanent President of the Con
federacy. To add to the gloom of the forenoon of
the twenty-second, a day that had been looked
forward to as a day of sunfight, pomp and pride
and for which great preparations had been made,
the clouds that had gathered in the night and been
hanging gray and lowering began to rain. Davis
read his inaugural to an uncomfortable, cast-down
audience under dripping umbrellas. In the course
of his address he said: "At the darkest hour of your
struggle the provisional gives place to the permanent

168 JEFFERSON DAVIS
government. After a series of successes and victories
which covered our arms with glory we have recently
met with serious disasters. But in the heart of a
people resolved to be free, these disasters tend
but to stimulate to increased resistance." With
upfifted hands and face, he closed as follows: "My
hope is reverently fixed on Him whose favor is
ever vouchsafed to the cause which is just. With
humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging
the Providence which has so visibly protected the
Confederacy during its brief but eventful career,
to Thee, 0 God, I trustingly commit myself, and
prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country
and its cause." I have never stood where he stood
that rain-pouring day and looked up without a
strange feefing coming over me; for Washington's
drawn sword is pointed directly toward Appomattox
and his horse, with nervous pointed ears and staring
eyes, is looking fuU in the same direction as if fiUed
with prophetic terror.
Donelson having faUen opening the way to
Nashville and Northern Alabama, Johnston had to
draw back his fines, abandon Kentucky and give
up Nashville itself, where stores had been gathered
and industries for the manufacture of suppfies
gotten under way. This turn of affairs was so
sudden, unexpected, and mortifying that all of
Middle and Western Tennessee and the people of
Kentucky, who had thrown their future with the

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 169
South, broke into fury; their Senators and Congress
men marched in a body to see Davis and poured out
their boifing indignation over Johnston's manage
ment, demanding that he give them a General.
Davis Ustened to them with a pained heart; he
could not tell them why Johnston had not had
men enough to hold his fine, or why Wise had not
been able to hold Roanoke Island, but said that
if Johnston was not a General he did not know
where to find one. This was fittle comfort in the
interview with Davis for the Congressional dele
gation; and we have no doubt that that night he
and his Administration were criticised most severely
in Richmond's taverns, lobbies of hotels, clubs,
and newspaper offices.
Davis wrote Johnston a long letter: "My dear
General: We have suffered great anxiety because
of recent events in Kentucky and Tennessee, and
I have been not a little disturbed by the repetition
of reflections on yourself. In the meantime I have
made you such defense as friendship prompted
and many years of aquaintance justified." It then
went on to say that he was in need of facts to rebut
the wholesale condemnation not only of Johnston
but also of the administration itself, and that
the adverse comment meanwhile was undermining
public reliance.
"I respect the generosity which has kept you

170 JEFFERSON DAVIS
sUent, but would impress upon you that the question
is not personal but public in its nature, that you
and I might be content to suffer, but neither of us
can wilfingly permit detriment to the country.
With the confidence and regard of many years,
I am truly your friend, Jefferson Davis"
To this Johnston repfied: "I anticipated aU
that you have told me as to the censure that the
fall of Donelson drew upon me and the attacks to
which you might be subjected;" and then goes
on to give the facts before and after its faU, ending
feelingly his long letter thus: "The test of merit
in my profession, with the people, is success. It
is a hard rule, but I think it is right. Your friend,
A. S. Johnston."
Davis wrote back: "My dear General: Yours
of the sixteenth is just received. I have read it
with much satisfaction. So far as the past is con
cerned, it but confirms the conclusions at which I
had already arrived. My confidence in you has
never wavered. I hope the pubfic will soon give
me credit for my judgment [he had approved plans
by Johnston for attack on Grant] rather than to
arraign me for obstinacy. May God bless you is
the sincere prayer of your friend, Jefferson Davis."

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 171
Johnston's plans were the assembfing of an
army at Corinth and falling on Grant before Buell
could join him. The battle of Shiloh took place
on Sunday, April 6, and just as Johnston had broken
the center arch of Grant's line and victory was in
his grasp, a chance musket ball cut his femoral
artery and with the loss of blood he was fifted from
his horse and had hardly touched the ground when
he drew his last breath.
Beauregard succeeded Johnston, and the weight
of the testimony seems to be that he threw away
the victory. "One more lunge and Grant was gone.
One more hour for Johnston in the saddle," said a
Confederate General, "and the Confederate States
would, in all probability, have taken their place
at the Council Board of the Nations of the Earth."
Davis in a message to Congress two days after
Johnston's death said: "Without doing injustice to
the living it may be safely asserted that our loss is
irreparable; and among the shining hosts of the
great and good who now cluster around the banner
of our country, there waits no purer spirit, no more
heroic soul than that of the iUustrious man whose
death I join you in lamenting. He rode on to the
accompfishment of his object forgetful of seK,
whfie his very fife blood was fast ebbing away.
His last breath cheered his comrades to victory.
The last sound he heard was their shout of triumph.
His last thought was his country's, and long and

172 JEFFERSON DAVIS
deeply wUl his country mourn his loss." Oh, the
friendships of boyhood! And one of the charms in
Davis for me is that they stayed green untU he died.
Johnston's body was taken to New Orleans and
had barely reached there when the city feU under
the indonutable Southern-born Farragut, closing
the door of recognition of the Confederacy by that
most brilfiant and most incomprehensible of all
nations — France.
MeanwhUe McClellan, under the pressure of
pubfic opinion which Grant's exploits in the West
had stirred up demanding movement on his part,
in March transferred his Army from in front of
Washington to in front of Yorktown; Joseph E.
Johnston, his very fike opponent in some ways,
was holding him there, the peach trees in bloom
and the red-winged blackbirds warbling along their
fortifying fines.
In the midst of all this disappointment, anxiety,
and labor, Davis received a confidential letter
from a friend. Honorable W. M. Brooks of Macon,
Alabama, telling him of the adverse criticism going
on as to himself and his administration. Davis
in reply said: "I acknowledge the error of my
attempt to defend all of the frontier, sea-coast and
inland, but will say in justification that if we had
received the arms and munitions which we had good
reason to expect, the attempt would have been
successful and the battlefields would have been

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 173
on the enemy's soil. Without mifitary stores,
without workshops to create them, without the
power to import them, necessity, not choice, has
compeUed us to occupy strong positions. The
country has supposed our armies more numerous
than they are and our munitions more extensive
than they have been. I have borne reproach in
silence because to reply by an exact statement of
facts would have exposed our weakness. Your
estimate of me I hope assured you that I would
not, as stated, treat the Secretary of War 'as a mere
clerk,' and if you knew Mr. Benjamin you would
reafize the impossibifity of his submitting to degrada
tion at the hands of any one . . . Against the
unfounded story that I keep the Generals in leading
strings may be set the frequent complaints that I
do not arraign them for what is regarded as their
failures or misdeeds, and do not respond to the
popular clamor by displacing Commanders upon
irresponsible statements. You cite the cases of
Johnston and Beauregard, but you have the story
nomine mutata, and though Johnston was offended
because of his relative rank, he certainly never
thought of resigning, and General Beauregard in a
portion of his report, which I understand the
Congress refused to publish, made a statement for
which I asked his authority, but it is smely a slander
on him to say that he ever considered himself
insulted by me.

174 JEFFERSON DAVIS
If, as you inform me, it is credibly said that I have
scarcely a friend and not a defender in Congress or
the Army, yet for the sake of the country and its
cause, I must hope it is falsely said. " As to appoint
ments in the Army, he closed this long and what
must have been to him a painful letter: "I have
endeavored to avoid bad selections by relying on
mUitary rather than on pofitical recommendations. "
Mr. Lincoln did not follow this course; in appoint
ing Generals he was much wiser. What if they
should lose a few battles? Was it not better to
have them fighting the "rebels" than fighting his
Administration? And were they not much less
harmful strutting around with feathers in then-
hats and big spurs on their heels than haranguing
conventions and infiaming the press against him?
Davis never knew how to play the political game;
Nature had not buQt him that way. From his
youth up and on to the end he faced his feUow-men
with the same look of dignified respect and sincerity
without a suggestion of premeditated caution.
At last McClellan got his Army within hearing
of the church bells of Richmond, and Davis, reafizing
that a crisis was at hand, recaUed Lee from
Charleston, and when Johnston was wounded at
Seven Pines, put him in supreme command.
Then, as with a magic hand, the clouds that
hung over Davis and over Richmond, were swept
away. McClellan's star, that had blazed, entered

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 175
and Lee's star emerged, from a mist. Those seven
days' battles, beginning among the timbered swamps
of the Chickahominy and ending on Malvern Hill
overlooking the James, were hard-fought and the
losses were great. Davis could not keep away
from them and Lee had to caution him not to expose
himself. Here let me pay a tribute to the steadfast, heroic
old Army of the Potomac with whose colors I served.
Never did an army show more courage than she
in defending the fines of Gaines' MiU or the fields of
Glendale and Malvern Hill on retreat! My heart
beats with pride as I recall the conduct of my
instructor Alexander S. Webb and my fellow cadet
friends at West Point, Randol, Kirby, Cushing,
"Nick" Bowen, Custer, and many others. Sweet,
sweet are your memories, oh gallant friends of my
youth. My sense of the path a biography should follow
warns me not to yield to the witcheries of battle
fields; but there is one event connected with
Stonewall Jackson that I heard from the fips of my
friend E. Porter Alexander, which can be found in
his most interesting book, "The Memories of a
Confederate Staff Officer," and one about Lincoln
which can be found in McDowell's report of his
countermanded movement from Fredericksburg to
join McClellan just before Lee's attack, that I
cannot resist:

176 JEFFERSON DAVIS
McClellan's right having been smashed in, he
first withdrew across the Chickahominy and then
White Oak Swamp and there stood at bay while
his vast trains made their way to the James. Lee
set out in pursiut, but when Jackson reached White
Oak Swamp, he sat down; it was Sunday and he
made fittle or no attempt to cross. Hampton, after
making an examination of the swamp and finding an
easy and feasible way to cross it and attack, sought
Jackson and found him sitting alone on a fallen
pine tree and told him what he had discovered, but
Jackson, probably praying, only puUed his cap
lower over his closed eyes and said nothing. Alexander
attributed his idleness to his desire to keep holy
the Sabbath day. Owing to his after brUfiant
exploits, Lee nor Davis ever found fault with him,
although it is generally conceded that had he shown
the vigor which had characterized his movements
in the Valley, McClellan's Army could not have
escaped destruction. That Davis and Lee were
both disappointed in Jackson and had exchanged
frank views of his failure, is indicated by the follow
ing extract from a letter Lee wrote to Davis October
2, after Antietam: "My opinion of the merits
of Jackson has been greatly enhanced during this
expedition. He is true, honest, and brave, and has
a single eye to the good of the service and spares
no exertion to accompfish his object."
The other incident is this: McDowell's order to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 177
move from Fredericksburg with some twenty-five
thousand men and join McCleUan, reached him on
a Sunday morning. Now it so happened that
Lincoln was on a visit to him and thought he had
better not set out, as God would probably be on the
side of him who kept the day holy.
Here are the two characters, Lincoln and Stonewall
Jackson, very, very unfike, as unfike as the violet
evoking south wind of an April morning is to
the shivering cold blast of a winter day — both
under the swaying awe of the same mystery! Surely
there are depths in human nature where traits
finger that we fittle dream of, yet when revealed
how potent, how intrinsically interesting, and how
they five on, at least with me, let immortal deeds
and sayings overshadow them as they may.
One or two more things before we leave the battle
fields around Richmond. Mrs. Davis had gone to
Raleigh, North Carofina, with the children, and
here are a few extracts from letters Davis wrote her :
"You wUl have seen a notice of the destruction
of our home. If our cause succeeds, we shall not
mourn over our personal deprivations; if it should
not, why 'the deluge'. I hope we shall be able to
provide for the comfort of the old negroes."
"I packed some valuable books, and the sword I
wore for many years together with the pistols used
at Monterey and Buena Vista. These articles wUl have

178 JEFFERSON DAVIS
a value to the boys in after time, and to you now. "
When he heard that the youngest child was at
the point of death he wrote: "My heart sank within
me at the news of the suffering of my angel baby.
Your telegram gives assurance of the subsidence
of the disease. But the look of pain and exhaustion,
the gentle complaint 'I am tired' which has for so
many years oppressed me seems to have been
revived, and unless God spares me another such
trial, what is to become of me, I don't know. "
One thing more: Of course McClellan had to
abandon thousands of his sick and wounded, and
a surgeon who had remained in charge of them
wrote to Lee telling him of their wants and sufferings.
Lee at once wrote as follows: "I regret to hear
of the extreme suffering of the sick and wounded
Federal prisoners who have fallen into our hands.
I will do all that lies in my power to alleviate their
sufferings. I will have steps taken to give you every
facility in transporting them to Savage Station.
I am wiUing to release the sick and wounded on
parole, not to bear arms until regularly exchanged."
That letter was written on the fourth of July,
a worthy celebration of the day, and it is a deed
fike that which accoimts for the Nation's pride in
Lee. And now, in contrast to that despatch,
Beauregard in that same year sent to his friend
MUes in the Confederate Congress: "Has biU for
execution of abolition prisoners after January 1

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 179
been passed? Do it and England will be stirred
into action. It is high time to proclaim the black
flag for that period. Let the execution be with the
garrote. P. T. Beauregard."
What a dispatch! When this life is over it may
be that we pass through a blessed stream which
washes away all desire for cruelty and vengeance,
at least I hope so
Lee next attacked Pope, who was marching an
army southward through Culpeper. Pope was a
handsome man and at heart kindly, but after an
interview with Stanton, who despised McClellan
and was most bitter toward the South, he issued
manifestoes provoking the Army under McClellan
and authorizing severe treatment of non-combatants
of the territory he was operating in. Complaints of
atrocities poured in to Davis, and he wrote to Lee
that he was issuing an order denying the customary
treatment of exchange of prisoners of war to Pope
and his officers, saying: "For the present we renounce
our right of retaliation on the innocent and shall
continue to treat the private enlisted soldiers of
General Pope's army as prisoners of war, " and that
if any hostages in the hands of Pope should be
executed, a like number drawn from commissioned
officers would meet the same fate. "WhUe these
facts," he concluded, "would justify our refusal

180 JEFFERSON DAVIS
to execute the generous cartel by which we have
consented to fiberate an excess of thousands of
prisoners held by us beyond the number held by
the enemy, a sacred regard for plighted faith shrinks
from the mere semblance of breaking a promise
and prevents any resort to this extremity. Nor
do we desire to extend to any other forces of the
enemy the punishment merited alone by General
Pope and such commissioned officers as chose to
participate in the execution of his infamous orders. "
If we bear in mind the natural and inevitable
feeling of hate that was bound to follow in the
territory invaded, and the heartless destruction of
property and the outrageous crimes committed by
stragglers, it is easy to see how Davis was driven
by public opinion to promulgate the orders he did.
Nevertheless, they accomplished little or no good;
in fact, they only gave the North an excuse for not.
carrying out the cartel, thereby prolonging the
duration of imprisonment with its increasing low
spirits and accompanying fatal diseases. The saddest
part of it all was that the truly brave had to suffer
for the conduct of the cowardly stragglers.
About this time, too, a Federal officer in Missouri,
where a most savage state of partisan murder
reigned, took nine Confederate prisoners and shot
them, so it was charged, in violation of the laws of
war. Newspapers called for revenge, and it was
proposed in Davis' Cabinet that a fike number

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 181
should be drawn from Libby Prison in Richmond and
executed. Davis said: "No, I have not the heart
to take innocent soldiers, taken in honorable war,
and hang them like convicted criminals." This,
and fike repeated examples of Davis' freedom from
vindictiveness, the hardest-faced of all human
fraUties, will appeal, I know, to the reader's brave
heart. It wiU be remembered that Pope met with a most
disastrous, overwhelming defeat; that Lee invaded
Maryland and that Lincoln begged McClellan to
resume command of his old Army of the Potomac,
and that at Antietam he fought a desperate battle
with Lee, forcing him to withdraw into Virginia.
That most sanguinary of battles, on the rolling
fields that cradle the winding Antietam Creek, in
one way has been made more famous than any other
field of the war; in this, that Lincoln, in the silence
of meditation, had promised himself that if victory
should come after all of Pope's disheartening defeats,
he would issue an Emancipation Proclamation.
The same spirit of religious awe that was with him
at Fredericksburg, when he suggested to McDowell
that the holy day be kept, was with him still;
indeed, from his youth up he passed, as the world
weU knows, many an hour on that border land where
melancholy and mystery make their home. He
doubted the constitutionafity of the act; he was
not sure that as a war measure it would prove

182 JEFFERSON DAVIS
effective; he was ready, as his letter to Greely shows,
to continue slavery if that would save the Union,
but with the guns of Antietam, he was on that
borderland of mystery and heard the voices of the
ages. On Davis, and the South generally, the Emancipa
tion Proclamation had no effect; with him and with
the Army it only welded them into closer union
and substituted the defense of home and the right
to be free for mere political doctrine and vainglory.
Moreover, whatsoever its increase of menace to
the domestic life of the South and moral advantage
to the cause of the North, all was more than counter
balanced by the almost simultaneous speech of
Gladstone at Newcastle, in which he said: "We
know quite well that the people of the Northern
States have not yet drunk of the cup — they are
still trying to hold it far from their lips — which
aU the rest of the world see they, nevertheless,
must drink of. We may have our own opinions
about slavery; we may be for or against the
South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis,
and other leaders of the South, have made an
army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and
they have made what is more than either — they
have made a nation."
We aU know how that great man repented of this
speech, but little can we fully realize what joy it
was to the South: they saw England reaching out

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 183
her hand and peace blessing their land and homes.
To add to the fervor of their hopes, in December,
Burnside who had supplanted that disappointing
chUd of fortune, McCleUan, attacked Lee at
Fredericksburg, met with a most bloody repulse
and was saved from destruction by a kindly fog,
underneath whose gray folds the poor old bleeding
Army of the Potomac regained the hills of Stafford
on the north side of the Rappahannock.
Davis at the time, anxious about affairs in the
Southwest, had gone thither to get information at
first hand from the officers commanding the Armies
and from the people at home, and above all, to
show them that their interests and welfare were in
his mind as well as that of Virginia and the East.
While on this trip he addressed the Legislature of
Mississippi, in the course of which he said relative
to provisions for the support of families in poor
circumstances: "Let the provisions be made for
the objects of his affection and his solicitude, and
the soldier engaged in fighting the battles of his
country will no longer be disturbed in his slumbers
by dreams of an unprotected and neglected family
at home. Let him know that Mississippi has spread
her protecting mantle over those he loves and he
will be ready to fight your battles, to protect your
honor, and in your cause to die."
The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on the
fifteenth of December and gave Davis a happy

184 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Christmas, but it was the last happy one in the
fife of the Confederacy and I think for him, too;
for on New Year's day. General Bragg was defeated
at Stone River, Tennessee, by the vaUant troops
whose fathers were the pioneers of the West and
who had all the courage and intrepid initiative of
the South.
In connection with this battle there is a cir
cumstance that may be worth mentioning, showing,
as it does, the sudden turn of the wheel of fortune
for Davis and the South. When the first day was
over there came a despatch from Bragg to him
claiming a great victory, and two days after came
another — a story of defeat. The same thing
happened at Shiloh, at Chickamauga, and at
Gettysburg. These abrupt changes of the tide
must have been trying, but Davis, as a boy, had
read " PUgrim's Progress," and as these victories
turned to defeat, we have fittle doubt that like
Great Heart he bore on toward, what to him, was,
the House Beautiful and the bells that were ringing
in the Celestial City to welcome the Pilgrim at
last — the independence of the Confederacy.

CHAPTER XIX
It is with some feeling that we enter upon the
events in Davis' life that marked the third year of
his administration; for that year we met the Army
of Northern Virginia at ChanceUorsviUe and at
Gettysburg — I can hear the guns to this day —
and many warm friends of my cadet days, some in
blue and some in gray, were kiUed in these battles;
and it is with tenderness, too, I recaU the dead
bodies of the gallant Confederates that strewed the
field of Gettysburg.
It was in early May. The azaleas, the violets and
the dogwood were in bloom, when we fought the
battle of Chancellorsville. Never was that old Army
of the Potomac worse led or worse handled; and
never, too, did Lee show more audacity or brilfiant
generalship. The world, however, has forgotten
Hooker's failures and Lee's successes, and only
remembers Chancellorsville as the last battlefield
of Stonewall Jackson. Twifight had just given way
to darkness; a fuU moon was just clearing the tree-
tops when he feU from the fire of his own men. He
fived for a few days — tiU the eleventh — and then,
as Death laid his cold hand on him, he murmured,
185

186 JEFFERSON DAVIS
"Let us pass over the river and rest in the shade of
the trees."
Our old Army retreated back to the hiUs of
Stafford. On the day of StonewaU's funeral the
Confederate bands played a dirge at retreat; our
bands heard them and played a responsive dirge.
I never think of that chivalrous rejoinder without
a flush of soldier pride.
On the death of StonewaU, Davis wrote Lee:
"A great calamity has befallen us, and I sympathize
with the sorrow you feel and the embarrassment
you must experience. The announcement of the
death of General Jackson followed frequent assur
ances that he was doing well. And though the loss
was one which would be deeply felt under any
circumstances, the shock was increased by its
suddenness. There is sincere mourning here and it will extend
throughout the land as the intelligence is received.
Your friend, Jefferson Davis."
Lee wrote to Jeb Stuart the day after Jackson's
death: "I regret to inform you that the great and
good Jackson is no more. He died yesterday. May
10, at 3.15 p.m., of pneumonia — calm, serene and
happy. May his spirit pervade our whole army.
Our country will then be secure." No, no. General

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 187
Lee; Jackson could not have saved your Confed
eracy. He would have won you new victories,
doubtless, but the North with its vast resources
was sure to win the final battlefield.
Meanwhile, on the seventh, Lee wrote to Davis:
"There are many things about which I would fike
to consult your Excellency, [Lee never broke
through formafity with Davis or any other fiving
being.] and I should be defighted, if your health
and convenience suited, if you could visit the army.
[Davis was far from well aU that summer.] "l learn
today that the remaining eye of the President is
faifing . . . is in a very feeble and nervous condition,
and he is really threatened with the loss of sight
altogether." — Rebel War Clerk Jones, in his Diary.]
General Lee went on to say: "I could get you a
comfortable room in the vicinity of my headquarters,
and I know you would be content with our camp fare.
Hoping that your health is entirely restored, and
that you will be attended with every success and
happiness." On the twentieth Lee wrote to Davis: "I cannot
express the concern I feel at leaving you in such
feeble health, [He had just been to Jackson's
funeral.] with so many anxious thoughts for the
welfare of the whole Confederacy weighing upon
your mind. I pray that a kind Providence wiU give
you strength to bear the weight of care."
The anxious thought that was weighing on Davis'

188 JEFFERSON DAVIS
mind was the fate of Vicksburg; at that very horn-
Grant was crossing the Big Black, driving Pemberton
into and encircfing his works. MeanwhUe Joseph E.
Johnston, who had been sent to refieve Pemberton
and extract him, if possible, from ruin, was sending
vague and discouraging messages to Davis.
Johnston may have been — ^what many of his friends
estimated him to be — a great soldier; acquaintances
of mine, who knew him intimately, were fond of
him; but if there be in all his military correspondence
a fine or a word breathing confidence and hope I
have failed to see it. Perhaps Davis did not have
patience enough with him, but Lincoln had to relieve
McCleUan at last; and for the same reasons that
Davis had to refieve Johnston — the faUure to
accomplish results.
On the thirty-first of May, 1863, Davis, in a long
letter to Lee about troubles in Mississippi, North
Carofina and Tennessee, and threatening movements
on Richmond from the line of the York and the James,
said: "General Johnston did not, as you thought
advisable, attack Grant promptly, [He was then
investing Vicksburg.] and I fear the result is that
which you anticipated, if time be given. ... It is
useless to look back, and it would be unkind to
annoy you, in the midst of your many cares, with
the refiections which I have not been able to avoid."
Here we have a trait in Davis; he never throughout
his fife burdened his friends with his trials; no one

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 189
had keener feefings, no one appreciated sympathy
more, but complaint or indirect plea for sympathy
never passed his fips; he shouldered his troubles
and bore on in brave silence. That he was now
encompassed day and night with care, a survey of
the situation most clearly discloses. Pemberton,
besieged by Grant; Banks moving with a heavy
force to lay a fike siege around Port Hudson, thereby
cutting the Confederacy in two; Bragg confronted
by an army which, if successful, meant leaving all
of Tennessee, Northern Alabama, and about all of
Mississippi open to subjugation; and the people of
those States, realizing the danger, imploring help
by telegraph and every mail.
He laid the matter before Lee; could he hold
Hooker with a part, and go with the rest of his
army, assume command, defeat Rosecrans and thus
compel Grant to give up his hold on Vicksburg?
Lee with superb loyalty left that to Davis to decide;
he would go, but did not hesitate to say that he
feared that lack of whole-hearted support, that lack
of fellow-enthusiasm which common experiences
alone give and which weld the different corps of an
army together. On the other hand, if he should
seriously threaten Washington, would he not as
effectively refieve the situation in the West, and in
case he should gain another victory over the Army
of the Potomac, as at ChanceUorsvUle, would not
England and France recognize the Confederacy?

190 JEFFERSON DAVIS
That Lee's heart was set on this move, there can be
fittle or no doubt.
Davis caUed his Cabinet together and told them
Lee's proposed campaign across the Potomac.
Reagan, the Postmaster-General, whose home was
in Texas and who fully reafized the dangers of the
Southwest, opposed it, urging that he should go
with a part of his army to the help of Bragg. AU
the rest of the Cabinet was against him. More letters
and despatches pouring in begging Davis to send
reenforcements to Pemberton, he called his Cabinet
together again. "It was Saturday," says Reagan
in his "Memoirs." "We went early and remained
in session until after dark in the evemng." It was
decided that Lee should cross the Potomac. Reagan
went home cast down and records: "I could get no
relief by talking to my wife; remained restless till
probably midnight before going to bed and did not
go to sleep that night. I got up before dayfight and
wrote a note to the President, telling him, in sub
stance that I felt so strongly that we had made a
great mistake, and asking him to again convene the
Cabinet and reconsider the question." Davis
granted his request, but the decision was not reversed,
and Lee set off for Gettysburg. The world knows
what happened. He was not only defeated but,
whUe his army was withdrawing on the fourth of
July from what was in one sense the field of their
glory, Pemberton was surrendering Vicksburg to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 191
Grant, and Bragg was melting away before Rosecrans.
And fate set her loom in motion to weave the shroud
of the Confederacy.
And how did Davis take these two mighty dis
asters? As his biographer, I would disdain to paint,
if I could, the agony they gave him; if I gain him a
single friend it must not be through pity. Let it
suffice that his heart bled, but did not break; and
if I may venture on further familiarity with the
reader, it was that kind of courage, going hand in
hand with tenderness and refinement, that cheers
on this pen. Naturally enough these two terrific
disasters were most depressing upon the public.
Every enemy that Davis had, opened fire on him
and his administration, using Johnston and Beaure
gard as their barricades. If any one wishes to see
with what venom these attacks were made, let him
turn to the Charleston Mercury, the Richmond
Examiner and Pollard's "Secret History of the
Confederacy." Little did these editors dream of
the use to which their contemptuous editorials
would be put by vindictive Northern historians to
gratify their execration of Davis and the South
for the war.
Even Lee was not wholly spared; suffering from
their innuendoes, after Gettysburg, on August 8,
he asked Davis to accept his resignation and appoint
some one else to take his place, stating, what Albert
Sydney Johnston had said when under like criticism.

192 JEFFERSON DAVIS
that, for any general commanding an army, it was
absolutely essential not only to have the confidence
of his troops, but the confidence of the pubfic also,
and that with the pubfic the only test of fitness to
command was success. Lee closed his letter as
follows: "To your Excellency I am especially indebted for
uniform kindness and consideration. You have
done everything in your power to aid me in the
work committed to my charge, without omitting
anything to promote the general welfare. I pray
that your efforts may at length be crowned with
success, and that you may long five to enjoy the
thanks of a grateful people.
With sentiments of great esteem, I am
Very respectfully and truly yours,
Robert Lee."
To this letter Davis repfied: "I admit the pro
priety of your conclusions, that an officer who loses
the confidence of his troops should have his position
changed, whatever his abifity; but when I read the
sentence, I was not at all prepared for the appfication
you were about to make. Expressions of discontent
in the pubfic journals furnish but fittle evidence of
the sentiment of an army. I wish it were otherwise,
even although all the abuse of myself should be
accepted as the result of honest observation.
Were you capable of stooping to it, you could

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 193
easily surround yourself with those who would fill
the Press with your laudations and seek to exalt
you for what you have not done, rather than detract
from the achievements which wUl make you and
your Army the subject of history for generations to
come. . . .
But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to
admit with all their impfications, the points which
you present, where am I to find that new commander
who is to possess the greater abifity which you
befieve to be required? I do not doubt the readiness
with which you would give way to one who could
accompfish all that you have wished, and you will
do me the justice to befieve that, if Providence
should kindly offer such a person for our use, I
should not hesitate to avail myself of his services.
My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to dis
cover such hidden merit, if it exists. ... To ask
me to substitute you by some one in my judgment
more fit to command, or who woiUd possess more
of the confidence of the Army, or of reflecting men
in the country, is to demand an impossibility.
It only remains for me to hope that you will
take aU possible care of yourself, that your health
and strength may be entirely restored, and that the
Lord will preserve you for the important duties
devolved upon you in the struggle of our suffering
country for the independence of which we have
engaged in war to maintain."

194 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Was there ever a day in the Confederacy's fife
so momentous for it, or one in the fife of Lee and
Davis so momentous for them? Where would the
star of Lee ride today had Davis yielded to his
request, prompted by the subdued yet widespread
disaffection, and substituted Johnston or Beauregard,
whose friends thought they were his equal? Would
Lee be in the country's HaU of Fame? Would the
star of Davis be clearing the clouds that have been
hanging over him so long? We think not; and
history would have lost a precious page, one of
those pages in which poetry and glory live.
It is only fair to Davis to repeat what Lee had
said: "I am especially indebted for uniform kindness
and consideration. You have done everything in
your power to aid me in the work committed to
my charge, without omitting anything to promote
the general welfare." If any two men showed
mutual respect and singleness of purpose and recog
nition of abifity, Davis and Lee, from the beginning
to the end, maintained that relation to each other.
In no two men of their day, or ever in any day,
did the roots of convictions strike deeper, or with
wills more indomitable to maintain them, than in
Davis and Lee. Both, by barriers inborn, were
isolated more or less from their fellow men; each
met them, however, with the same urbanity; neither
ever thought of gaining their good will or popularity
by any affectations of cordiafity. But there was

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 195
this marked difference between them: Davis, how
ever apparently cold and austere he might be
officially, when he mingled with old friends was as
warm and free as a boy; while as for Lee, he had
the respect, the admiration of every one in official
and private life, but, so far as I can learn, no one ever
fived who claimed to be on close or intimate terms
with him.
A single incident told me by Babcock of Grant's
staff and friend of mine, may not be urunteresting.
At Appomattox, while the terms of surrender were
being copied, Seth Williams, the Adjutant-General
of the Army of the Potomac and of whom it has
been said, so dearly was he loved, "had a harp in
his breast," went up to Lee. He had been his
adjutant at West Point when he was superintendent.
Lee's face, for a moment, beamed with old-time
friendship, but immediately resumed an air of not
inviting familiarity or any revival of old relations,
and WiUiams withdrew. In Lee's behalf it must be
said it was a trying place and day for him.
Lee was born for high levels, approaching, if not
fulfilfing, the ideals of his countrymen. North and
South. That Davis commanded his loyalty and
respect, up to the very last, is a fact which this pen
throws into the balance against the charges of his
enemies, let it count for what it may. Here is what
Lee said, after the war, when asked by a lady his
opinion of Davis: "If my opinion is worth anything

196 JEFFERSON DAVIS
you can always say that few people could have
done better than Mr. Davis. I knew of none who
could have done so weU." And Lee had a chance to
weigh the abilities of every prominent man in the
pubfic fife of the South.
That year, 1863, — a year of high combing waves
of disasters — closed with the crushing defeat of
Bragg at Chattanooga, and in the recesses of the
heart of every refiecting Southerner the fate of the
Confederacy was sealed. But as a rule he kept it
to himself and manifested no wilfingness to abandon
the cause and accept subjugation; ready to fight on,
be the odds what they might and the result as
humifiating and disastrous as overwhelming defeat
could make it. That spirit in Davis was the color-
bearer and never quailed; the trumpet for him and
for Lee and the self-respecting was the principle
involved, a principle — we venture to prophesy —
which wiU be the rallying ground for the people of the
United States when the rights under the Constitu
tion are all in the constricting folds of the Lernsean
Hydra of complete centralization.
The bells that rang out the old and rang in the
new were in one sense glad bells, for although they
marked the end of a year of sore, heart-breaking
troubles, our natures have a way of comforting us
with the thought, "Well, thank God, that year is
at last over!" Oh, blessed, youthful, cheery-faced
Hope, what a friend you are to us all!

CHAPTER XX
Of aU the years in our country's life, hardly one
compares in vital interest and historic significance
with 1864. Throughout the South from stormy
Cape Hatteras light to the wUds of Texas, through
out the North from Cape Ann with her twin Thacher
Island fights to the Pacific, there was a vague con
sciousness in every home of coming portentous
events; one or the other section must go down
before the year ended.
That vague consciousness was not confined to
our country alone. England and France, the entire
Old World, were on their feudal watch towers, so to
speak, gazing across the Atlantic in cold, unsym
pathetic wonder as to which — North or South —
would be victorious. And when we think of the
grandsons of those who wore the gray and those
who wore the blue moving side by side gallantly
under the Stars and Stripes to save that Old World's
civifization, there is a momentary rekindling in the
fagots of the ashes of old fires as we recall the con
descending attitude toward us in 1864. England,
it was our inheritance of your laws and the inspiring
glory of your fiterature in our common language
that drove us to your side on the fields of France.
197

198 JEFFERSON DAVIS
The outlook for the Confederacy was bad when
1864 threw her New Year doors open; and must
have driven sleep away from Davis till a late hour
on many a night. The finances were in collapse;
the blockade was growing more and more effectual;
the supply of medicine for the sick and wounded in
the field and for the prisoners in the camps almost
exhausted; the North vigorously enforcing its procla
mations declaring medicines of all kinds contraband;
the gathering of food and supplies for the army
more and more difficult through the breaking down
of the railroads; in certain quarters of Georgia and
North Carolina unmistakable signs of revolt against
orders and decrees for the conscription of men and
suppfies. And, above all, opposition to the adminis
tration, led on by several leading newspapers, growing
daily more personal and mafignant, distracting the
pubfic attention, enfeebfing the heartbeat of resolu
tion and beclouding the future.
To add to his trials, Bragg's crushing defeat was
followed not only by charges against him of incom
petency, Ul-temper and bad manners, but, what was
worse for the morale of the Army, his corps and
division commanders fell out among themselves
and began accusing each other of misconduct and
failure to obey orders. Each headquarters became
the breeding place of angry, fault-finding communica
tions to the pubfic and to the War Department.
To one of Bragg's whining letters Davis repfied:

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 199
"It must be a rare occurrence if a battle is fought
without many errors and faUures, but for which
more important results would have been obtained;
the experience of these diminishes the credit due,
impairs the pubfic confidence, undermines the morale
of the Army, and works evil to the cause for which
brave men have died and for which others have the
same sacrifice to make."
To one of Bragg's grumbfing officers he wrote:
"In this hour of our country's greatest need, when
so much depends upon the harmonious cooperation
of aU the agents, I feel that I may confidently ask
of those who have so often Ulustrated their patriotism
by gaUant deeds upon the field, that they will not
aUow personal antipathies to impair their usefulness
to the pubfic service." It is difficult to see how
rebuke could have been made less offensive or appeal
more impressive.
Meanwhile, Johnston who had relieved Bragg,
and Lee confronted by Meade on the Rapidan,
were begging for food and clothing; thousands of
the faithful, heroic men were without overcoats or
shoes and the winter was unusually severe. Lee's
letters to his family and the War Department, the
diaries and the newspapers tell the wants and
suffering of the southern armies. Moreover the
North was gathering an immense army under
Sherman to attack Johnston and one under Grant
to attack Lee as soon as vi^inter was over. From

200 JEFFERSON DAVIS
any point of view the situation caUed for patience,
courage and fortitude.
In February, upon the reenlistment of veteran
regiments, Davis issued a feefing address to the
Army in which he said: "Would that it were possible
to render my thanks to you in person, and in the
name of our common country as well as my own,
while pressing the hand of each war-worn veteran
to recognize his title to our love, gratitude and
admiration. With pride and affection my heart has
accompanied you on every march, with solicitude
it has sought to minister to your every want, with
exultation it has marked your every heroic achieve
ment." He closed saying: "Citizen defenders of the
home, the liberties and the altars of the Confederacy !
That the God whom we all humbly worship may
shield you with His fatherly care and preserve you
for safe return to the peaceful enjoyment of your
friends and the associations of those you most love,
is the earnest prayer of your Commander-in-Chief."
It is said that what comes from the heart goes to
the heart; and why?; because there are spirits whom
God has given homes in the breast who clear the
way. And is that address hushed and gone forever?
Oh, no! it is speaking from every monument in the
Southland. Defeat, as a rule, has been but another
word for oblivion, but not so in the war between
North and South; magnanimity and battlefield born
esteem have made it an honored guest of victory.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 201
While Davis was straining every nerve to meet
the impending dangers and under a gaUing fire of
criticism, on AprU 30, "Joseph Emory, the most
beautiful and the brightest of our children," says
Mrs. Davis in her "Memoirs," "feU while playing
on an upper gallery, down on a brick pavement and
was almost instantly kiUed." A despatch came to
Davis as he sat heartbroken by the dead child, and
in trying to write an answer stopped and stared at
his wife, asking in soft tones, "Did you tell me what
was in it?" and laid down his pen saying "I must
have this day with my little child."
On the morning after the funeral in sweet Holly
wood, Sherman took up his march for Atlanta,
Butler sailed up the James for Richmond, Siegal
struck up the Shenandoah VaUey, and Grant crossed
the Rapidan. That was a bright, bird-singing May
morning and I remember it well as the sunshine fell
on the waving colors. Lee with the vafiant army of
Northern Virginia struck Grant in the WUderness.
Let the fields of that battle summer — the Wil
derness, Spotsylvaiua, Cold Harbor, Petersburg,
Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Frankfin and Nash-
viUe, tell their story. We befieve there are no
battlefields on this green earth that can tell a fike
one, have like memories, or a pride so exulting or
affectionate in the forces that on them contested
for victory. All spoke the same language, all had
the same ideals, all the same faith in and attachment

202 JEFFERSON DAVIS
to constitutional government "of and by the people."
We are sure that on the anniversary nights of any
one of these battlefields, the others send up a cheer
as they catch the gleam of the magic camp fires in
the bending sky.
The first twenty days of May were days of intense
pressure on Davis and fuU of strange fate for the
Confederacy. For example, on the fifth the battle
of the Wilderness began; on the sixth Longstreet,
Lee's right-hand man, was wounded within a mile
and a half of where Jackson in that same Wilderness
fell and under almost identical circumstances, just
as victory was within the grasp of Lee.
When Butler came within striking distance of
Richmond, Davis joined Beauregard in repulsing
his advance and driving him back into his works
at Bermuda Hundred.
On the tenth Sheridan, who had left Spotsylvania
to cut Lee's communications, defeated Stuart at
Yellow Tavern, and was within gunshot of Rich
mond. Davis hurried home from his office, armed
himself and rode to the front, urging by his presence
the mixed commands defending the city to higher
displays, if possible, of courage, and who finally
drove Sheridan away. Davis then went to the
bedside of the gallant Stuart who had been mortally
wounded, and taking his hand said, "How do you
feel, General." Stuart repfied, "Easy, but wiUing
to die if God and my country think I have fulfiUed

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 203
my destiny and done my duty." Mrs. Davis says
in her "Memoirs" that that night her husband on
bended knees entreated God that the precious life
might be spared to our needy country, but that
night he died. Stuart was only thirty-one years
old, and of a joyous nature. He fies with Davis in
Hollywood Cemetery.
Richmond, through the superb gallantry of Lee's
army, was safe for that summer; but not so Atlanta.
Sherman with his superior numbers was outflanking
and forcing Johnston to fall back from one position
to another. If Lee, Grant, Stuart, StonewaU Jackson,
or Hampton had been in Johnston's place we think
Sherman would have had to fight for his fife long
before he reached the Etowah and Chattahoochee.
The pubfic of aU that territory, the granary of
suppfies of food for Lee as well as Johnston, began
to besiege Davis with urgent, almost indignant.
inquiries as to whether Johnston was to fall back
forever without giving battle, finally posting a
delegate to Richmond to lay before him their
anxieties and manifest dangers. Thereupon Davis
sent Bragg to interview Johnston as to his plans,
he was then within sound of the church beUs of
Atlanta. Johnston giving Bragg no assurance of
taking the offensive or defending the city to the
last, Davis refieved him and put Hood in command,
who at once gave battle, met with defeat, and
Atlanta was given up to Sherman.

204 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis then visited Hood and addressed his Army,
reviving its cast-down resolution, and Hood struck
off with it to cut Sherman's communications, and,
by one of the merest chances of war, lost gaining a
a victory over the forces left by Sherman who had
headed for Savannah.
In August, Farragut, lashed to his mast, forced
his entrance by Forts Morgan and Gaines into
Mobile Bay and captured the Confederate iron-clad
Tennessee. In September, Sheridan swept Early
from the Shenandoah VaUey; in December, Hood
was utterly defeated at Nashville and on Christmas
Day, Savannah feU ringing the knell of the Con
federacy. Thus ended that battle summer. But,
unfortunately, while it was going on and the armies
were making a record of stirring valor, another
record was being made, not of glory but of shame
and sorrow, impeaching the humanity of South and
North. Namely, the ghastly suffering and frightful
death roll in the prison camps of both sections,
mainly through the suspension of exchange, which
calls for a chapter of its own.

CHAPTER XXI
In 1876 when the pre-war fraternal relations
between North and South were beginning to revive,
a resolution extending uruversal amnesty was offered
in Congress. James G. Blaine, a brUfiant, magnetic
man and a prospective presidential candidate of
the Repubfican Party, declared, in the discussion
of the resolution, that Davis was the author "know
ingly, defiberately and wilfully of the gigantic
murder and crime of AndersonviUe, " where in that
summer and autumn of 1864 the mortafity of
Federal prisoners was shocking in the extreme.
This charge iterated and reiterated for years by
politicians, playing as he for the old soldier vote,
found its way into the histories of the war, leaving
on the mind of every schoolboy who read them
a lasting impression that Davis was guilty of the
aUeged crime. In behalf of justice, fair deafing,
and the integrity of history, let us give the facts.
The first Confederate prisoners taken in the
war, May, 1861, were the officers and crew of the
Savannah, a Charleston pUot boat fitted out as a
privateer and saifing under letters of marque and
reprisal. They were immediately imprisoned, some
put in irons, and subsequently aU brought before
the courts, charged with piracy and treason.
205

206 JEFFERSON DAVIS
As soon as this was known, Mr. Davis by one
of his aides sent a letter to Mr. Lincoln saying,
after rehearsing the treatment of the officers and
crew as given in the newspapers: "It is the desire
of this Government so to conduct the war now
existing as to mitigate its horrors as far as may be
possible, and, with this intent its treatment of the
prisoners captured by its forces [referring to
those taken in the battle of Big Bethel] has been
marked by the greatest humanity and leniency
consonant with pubfic obfigation. Some have been
permitted to return home, others to remain at
large, and all have been furnished with rations for
their subsistence such as we allowed to our own
troops." He then went on to say: "A just regard to
humanity and to the honor of this Government
requires me to state expficitly that, painful as will
be the necessity, this Government will deal out
to the prisoners held by it the same treatment and
the same fate as shall be experienced by those
captured on the Savannah; and if driven to the
terrible necessity of retaliation, that retaliation
will be extended so far as shall be requisite to secure
the abandonment of a practice unknown to the
warfare of civilized man and so barbarous as to
disgrace the nation which shaU be guilty of inaugurat
ing it. With this view and because it may not have
reached you, I renew the proposition made to the

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 207
Commander of the blockade squadron, to exchange
for the prisoners ... an equal number, now
held by us, according to rank."
The bearer of this letter was not allowed an
interview with Mr. Lincoln, and no answer ever
was made.
That his repugnance for retafiation was deep
and inborn, is beyond question. Here to that
effect is one of a sheaf of testimony that might be
given; it is in a letter to the London Times by
Benjamin. "For the four years during which I was one of his
most trusted advisers, the recipient of his confidence
and the sharer, to the best of my abUities, in his
labors and responsibifities, I learnt to know him
perhaps better than any other fiving man. Neither
in private conversation nor in Cabinet council
have I ever heard him utter an unworthy thought
or ungenerous sentiment. . . It was urged [in a
special case from Missouri, the McNeil case] not
only by friends, but by members of his Cabinet in
Council also, that it was his duty to repress such
an outrage by retafiation; he was immovable in
resistance of such counsels, insisting it was repug
nant to any sense of justice and humaruty that the
innocent should be made the victims for the crimes
of such monsters."
Again in the same letter Benjamin said, in referring
to the prisoners in the Dahlgren raid, upon whom

208 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the people called for execution, papers having been
found on his body after the repulse and capture of
many of his party, authorizing the burning of
Richmond and the killing of Davis and members of
his Cabinet, "A discussion [in the Cabinet] which
became so heated as almost to create unfriendly
feeling, by reason of the unshaken firmness of Mr.
Davis in maintaining that, although those men
merited a refusal to grant them quarter in the heat
of battle, yet they had been received to mercy by
their captors as prisoners of war, and, as such, were
sacred; and that we should be dishonored if harm
should overtake them after their surrender. To
Jefferson Davis and to his constancy of purpose
did those men owe their safety, in spite of hostile
public opinion and in opposition to two-thirds of
his Cabinet."
Davis of North Carolina, who succeeded Benjamin
as Attorney-General, said on one occasion after the
war: "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, a mother or a sister got into his presence, it
took but a little while for their tears to wash out
the record."
As wiU be remembered the battle of Bull Run
was fought July 21, and many of our men fell into
the hands of the South. In the autumn relatives

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 209
and friends began to implore for their release, and
both Houses of Congress requested Mr. Lincoln to
take steps immediately to that end. To avoid
official recognition of the belfigerent Confederacy as
a nation, he appointed two Commissioners empow
ered not expressly to make an exchange but to
visit the prisoners and provide for then: wants and
comfort. Of course these Commissioners were not aUowed
to cross the Confederate fines, for reasons that will
occur to any thoughtful reader; but the Southern
officials they met under flags of truce manifested
such a frank readiness for entering upon some sort
of a general arrangement of exchange that they
agreed to a temporary cartel, which was subse
quently approved at Washington. Some months
later, in February, 1862, a formal cartel was entered
into by HoweU Cobb on the part of the South and
General Wool of the North, providing for the
exchange, man for man, within a short time after
capture, and any surplus on either side to be released
on parole.
This cartel for a while, or as long as the South
had a surplus of prisoners, was carried out in fairly
good faith by both sides, although its operation and
continuance were seriously interfered with by Butler
hanging Mumford, a citizen of New Orleans, on
Saturday June 7, 1862, at thirteen minutes before
eleven a.m., in the presence of a vast crowd, for

210 JEFFERSON DAVIS
hauling down and trampling on the flag; by Davis
proclaiming Butler a felon and authorizing his
execution if captured in retaliation for Mumford;
and by Pope's orders which have already been
mentioned. The status of the recaptured slaves also
complicated the carrying out of its terms.
At length because of the death and suffering of so
many of our prisoners at Belle Isle and because the
exchange was blocked by contentions of one kind
or another, Davis, July 2, 1863 — the battle of
Gettysburg was going on — asked Stephens, his
Vice-President, to go to Washington under flag of
truce and lay before Mr. Lincoln, if he could see
him, all the difficulties in the situation; to arrange
and settle all differences and disputes which had
arisen in the execution of the cartel; to agree to any
modification of its terms as might be found neces
sary; and, finally, "to enter into such arrangements
or understanding about the mode of carrying on
hostifities as should confine the severities of the war
within such limits as were rightfully imposed not
orUy by modern civilization, but also by our common
Christianity." Mr. Stephens was not allowed to pass the lines,
and when the object of his mission was telegraphed
to Washington, the War Department, fully appreci
ating by this time the significance of Lee's repulse
at Gettysburg, curtly replied: "The customary
agents and channels are adequate for all needful

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 211
communication and conferences between the United
States and the insurgents." Had Pickett broken
through and the old Army of the Potomac been
defeated, would Stephens have been allowed to cross
our fines? Oh, yes; would such a contemptuous
answer have been sent? Oh, no, and the gates of
every prison camp. South and North, would have
swung wide open.
With the repulse of Lee and the surrender of
Vicksbmg and Port Hudson, the tide turned as to
surplus of prisoners, the cartel broke wide apart;
aU exchanges were suspended, and the cry from
prison camps was pitiful.
The Commissioners, Federal and Confederate, at
once began charging each other with the responsi
bifity for wrecking that humane agreement. After
weighing the evidence we are constrained to deny
entire innocence to either. Technically, in reference
to the slaves recaptured, the North had decidedly
the best defence; but, on the other hand, the South
was far more frank, generous and consistent.
Notwithstanding the cartel's official suspension,
special exchanges dribbled along till Grant took
command of the Army in the spring of 1864. Before
moving on Lee he visited Butler, then at the head of
the Department of Eastern Virginia and North
Carolina, who, with his usual assumption of power,
had entered into arrangements with Judge Ould,
the Confederate Commissioner of Prisoners, for

212 JEFFERSON DAVIS
renewal of exchange. Grant, on learning what had
been done, forbade any further exchanges. In
August, while before Petersburg, he wrote to Butler,
who had again, without any authority so to do,
surreptitiously reopened negotiations with the Con
federate Commissioner: "It is hard on our men
held in Southern prisons not to exchange them,
but it is humanity to those left in the ranks
to fight our battles. Every man released, on
parole or otherwise, becomes an active soldier
against us, either directly or indirectly. If we com
mence a systemi of exchange which fiberates all
prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the
whole South is exterminated. If we hold those
caught, they amount to no more than as many dead
men. At this time to release all rebel prisoners
North would insure Sherman's defeat and would
compromise our safety here."
This letter is the highest testimonial that was ever
paid to the gallantry of Lee's army. Grant's losses
from the day we crossed the Rapidan, the fourth of
May, till the date of this letter in August, had
almost, if not quite, equalled Lee's entire strength
at the outset of the campaign; and it was the mem
ory of these losses that beat down, for the moment,
the charitable impulses of Grant's nature. When
the immediate dangers were over, it will be seen
that he was true to himself and extended every
facUity for the welfare of the prisoners of both sides.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 213
At this point it is only due to Butler to say that
no man. North or South, did more, not one even
approached him in persistent endeavor to effect
exchange and thereby save thousands of fives; and
we have no doubt that in the meditative hours of old
age these efforts, clothed in beauty, came back to
comfort him.
When Grant's letter to Butler prohibiting further
exchange became known in the prison camps. South
and North, hope fled; cold-eyed despair took her
chair beside the hospital cots; shallow graves soon
welcomed the pale, homesick, emaciated youths,
and from then on almost every hour of day and
night, from AndersonviUe and Salisbury, from Rock
Island and Elmira, their spirits were flying upward,
duly exchanged; yes, duly exchanged to join the
army of the blessed.
AU the autumn and early winter of 1864 the death
rate at AndersonviUe was especiaUy shocking; and
at every other , Southern camp as well as at every
Northern camp it was heavy. The South maintained
that it did the best it could; that its suppfies of
medicine were exhausted and its supply of food
reduced to barely enough to keep soul and body
together in its army; which I know to be true from
the haversacks of the dead on the fields of Spotsyl
vaiua and Petersburg.
It is a matter of fact. Confederate authorities
throughout that autumn when the captives were

214 JEFFERSON DAVIS
faUing like the leaves of a white ash the morning
after a frost, plead and plead for exchange, offering
at last to let every one go home without equivalent.
The South can without fear or hesitation appeal to
the official War Records as to the desire and will of
the Confederate War Department to mitigate the
horrible conditions.
Authors of repute have seen fit to incorporate in
their histories of the war, moving accounts of the
suffering in the Southern camps and the ghastly
spectacle of their victims; accompanied, furthermore,
by extracts from letters, written by prominent per
sons to Davis, protesting conditions in some of the
camps as a shame and dishonor; thereby, with
infernal malice, thrusting him into the picture with
all its speaking condemnation. But they have not
described the like suffering or the ghastly spectacle
of the hollow-eyed prisoners in Northern camps, on
delivery; nor have they given extracts from letters
written by clergymen and men of prominence to
Mr. Lincoln, censuring him for refusal to exchange,
all of which can be found in the same volume of
official War Records. Much of the reports by Com
mittees of Congress, Federal and Confederate, as to
the condition of camps and the appearance of
returned prisoners, was mere war propaganda; and,
as such, is unrefiable, carrying with it, as that of
all wars, the seeds of its own early decay.
If, as has been said before, Mr. Davis is to be held

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 215
responsible for the dead Northern prisoners merely
because he was Commander-in-Chief of the Con
federate armies, may not Mr. Lincoln by similar
reasoning be held responsible for the Southern dead
in Northern prison camps?
A word, now, as to the records of deaths and the
number of prisoners. They were first brought to
fight by Hill of Georgia replying to Blaine's charge.
He gave the figures of the deaths as reported by
Stanton in response to a request of Congress: "Con
federate dead in Northern prisons 26,436. Uruon
dead in Southern prisons 22,576." As to the number
of prisoners. Hill referred to a report of Surgeon-
General Barnes, claiming that it, as well as Stanton's
report, was available for the inspection of any
member of the House. Barnes gave: "Total pris
oners held in North 220,000; held by the South
270,000." Blaine and Garfield in their reply on the
foUowing day did not deny the existence of this
report; Garfield said that he had had a note from
Surgeon-General Barnes relative to the figures in it,
which seems to confirm its existence at that time.
Twenty-seven years after, when the celebrated
historian Rhodes asked the then surgeon-general for
a copy of the Barnes Report, he was told there was
no such document in the War Department; and to
my request for a copy, I was so informed. What
became of it? It is possible that Barnes, finding his
figures unreliable, withdrew his report; but that he

216 JEFFERSON DAVIS
did make such a report is beyond the shadow of
doubt. My only excuse for bringing in its contested
figures is to defend Mr. Davis from a charge that
in the main was untrue and did him much wrong.
FinaUy let me avow there has been no point in
this narrative that I have dwelt upon with so little
pleasure. For in all reason, propriety and self-respect
I submit that the day for the discussion of the
treatment of prisoners, South and North, has long
gone by. In the winged language of the gifted Sir
Thomas Browne, "Let us write our wrongs in ashes;
draw the curtain of night on our injuries; shut them
up in the tower of oblivion and let them be as though
they had not been." So then, let us leave this
disgrace where it fies — off, off to one side in the
graveyard of our country's history. She laments the
record, it was not creditable to either section.

CHAPTER XXII
In the South, from the earfiest Colonial times.
New Year's, for high and low, young and old, white
and black, had been the culmination of a week of
hospitafity, family visiting, feasting and happiness;
outdoor sports during the day, dancing at night in
cabin and manor-house, which were decked with
mistletoe, ferns and holly.
But not so the week ending January 1, 1865. There
was not a home in which was rejoicing. Crutches
and empty chairs had taken the place of mistletoe
and hoUy. Many had lost one or more soldier sons,
and instead of joy and plenty, sorrow and want
looked in at the window when the evening lamp or
candle was lit. Bare chimneys, torn gardens and
fire-scorched dooryard trees were all that was left
of hundreds of field and flock-overlooking mansions.
Where Festivity was wont to hold her holiday of
joy. War's Furies were having one of their orgies on
the track of desolation that Sherman had left in his
relentless march. The fate of the Confederacy,
— when would the war end — was the one all-absorb
ing topic before the fireside of every home; nothing
else was talked about; grave care never left the
doorway nor the pillow. 217

218 JEFFERSON DAVIS
But that was not aU, nor the worst of it, by any
means. The mighty soldier, pubfic opinion, had lost
heart, and the humble, who had risked aU they had
— their lives — for the Confederacy were cast down
and low in mind, wondering if God had turned His
face away from their cause.
It was a dark, sore time for the South; and what
fiUed her cup with wormwood and gaU was the fact
that the Governors of several States, under the
cloak of law, were stabbing the body pofitic; many
ambitious, jealous and disappointed pofiticians and
impatient fiery editors had turned fault-finders and
were sowing broadcast the seed of discord and
gloom. The spirit of the Confederacy, that up to that
time had been their welcome and honored guest,
now in sorrow quitted their querulous firesides for
the hearths of her more steadfast friends and for the
campfires of her gallant lovers with the colors.
But since only here and there a ragged fragment
was left of her armies that had so valiantly contested
the battlefields of Shiloh, PerryvUle, Stone River,
Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, Franklui
and NashviUe, there was no place for her to find a
soldier home save in Richmond, Johnston's and Lee's
armies. On the first day of January then, 1865, there was
widespread, peevish disaffection; and confidence in
ultimate success had given way to despair in many

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 219
a household. Sherman was on his devastating,
triumphant march with more than twice as many
men as his adversary. Grant was only waiting for
spring to attack Lee. WUmington, the last port,
was about to be closed. Available suppfies of food
and clothing were almost exhausted. The situation,
to lookers-on, seemed, and almost was, hopeless;
only a matter of weeks and months now till the
South would have to lay down its arms. In other
words, at the beck of its conquerors it would have to
come under the yoke, a contingency, which for four
years it had fought against and dreaded, subjugation
to a section that it had reason to fear was revengeful.
To this day there are people in the world (and
some are in the South) who wonder, in view of the
inevitable downfall of the Confederacy, that Davis
did not own up to defeat and ask for terms. Terms!
terms! if suffrage to the emancipated slaves should
be insisted upon; if high officials in or out of the
army should not be efigible for Congress, who would
or could carry them out? Of all the phases in the
fife of the Confederacy, not one opens upon such a
field of speculation. But mark my word, whoever
enters it will soon find himself in a labyrinth of
delusive, contingent possibilities, not a path he can
take that will lead him to certainty, all ending in
miry, tangled pofitical swamps, so to speak, or to
the brink of anarchy.
It may be that a wiser mind than mine can enter

220 JEFFERSON DAVIS
this labyrinth and find a way out that would justify
asking for terms, but I cannot find such an one and
am convinced that it was better, far better for the
South as weU as the North, and above all for our
country at large, that Davis did not ask for terms
and stood by the ship untU she went down.
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to give an
account of the Hampton Roads Conference where,
on February 3, 1865, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward
met commissioners appointed by Davis to confer
upon bringing the war to an end. The Conference
was the outcome of a visit by Mr. F. P. Blair, Senior,
of Washington, D. C, to Davis in Richmond. Blair
was a boyhood friend of Davis at Transylvania, the
editor of the Globe in Washington when Davis was
Secretary of War and Senator, a sagacious politician,
had pulled the stroke oar in every contest between
Whig and Democrat for thirty years, and was then
on intimate and confidential terms with Mr. Lincoln.
His pass through Grant's lines was as follows,
written on a card: "Allow the bearer, F. P. Blair,
Senior, to pass our lines, go South and return.
A. Lincoln." Manifestly he and Mr. Lincoln had
talked the matter over more than once.
From his manuscript giving an account of his
interview, it appears that the scheme he had worked
out in the longing hours of his old age for reuniting
the sections was to assert the Monroe Doctrine and
have the armies of North and South march to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 221
Mexico and drive out Maximifian, whom Napoleon
III had placed on the throne with a view of making
Mexico a colonial dependency of France. The
armies' common experiences in the campaign into
Mexico and the turning of public attention away
from immediate home questions, Mr. Blair befieved,
would give a chance for the renewal of old ties.
After fully unfolding his scheme in his interview
with Davis, he observed: "There is my problem, Mr
Davis; do you think it possible to be solved?" Davis
after consideration repfied: "I think so." Touching
the project of bringing the sections together, Davis
thought the great difficulty was the excessive vin
dictiveness produced by outrages perpetrated in the
invaded States during the war. "In relation to the
vindictiveness produced by the war," says Blair, "I
thought he was mistaken in supposing it would be
attended with great difficulty in producing reconcile
ment between the States and the people."
Blair goes on in his manuscript to tell what had
happened in passing through the lines as a proof of
early reconcilement, that the soldiers had manifested
no unfriendly feelings; that Captain Deacon of
Boston, who carried him through the fines to defiver
him over to Captain Davis of South Carolina, drew
his bottle from his bag and proposed to drink his
health; that they drank with mutual good wUl and
gave each other their hands. "This spirit of magna
nimity exists in the soldiers of both sides. It is only

222 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the politicians and those who profit or hope to profit
by the disasters of war who indulge in acrimony.
Mr. Davis said that what I remarked was very
just in the main."
In reply to Blair's holding out the fame Davis
would acqmre by bringing peace, he replied: "What
his name might be in history he cared not, if he
could restore the prosperity and happiness of his
country; that was the end and aim of his being.
He said I ought to know with what reluctance he had
been drawn out of the Union; that he had followed
the old flag longer and with more devotion than any
thing on earth; that when the flag unfurled itself in
the breeze [at BuU Run] he saw it with a sigh."
A memorandum was made of the interview and
when written out was submitted to Mr. Blair,
"and," says Mr. Davis in the "Rise and Fall of
the Confederacy", "altered in so far as he desired in
any respect, to change the expressions employed."
Mr. Blair was given a copy and authorized to show
it to Mr. Lincoln.
The last sentence of this memorandum was as
follows: "Our conference ended with no other result
than an agreement that he would learn whether Mr.
Lincoln would adopt his [Mr. Blair's] project and
send or receive Commissioners to negotiate for a
peaceful solution of the questions at issue; that he
would report to him my readiness to enter upon
negotiations; and that I knew of no insurmountable

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 223
obstacles to such a treaty of peace as would secure
greater advantages to both parties than any result
which arms could achieve."
Davis gave a letter to Mr. Blair saying: "I have
no disposition to find obstacles in forms and am
wUfing, now as heretofore, to enter into negotiations
for the restoration of peace, to send or receive Com
missioners . . . and renew the effort to enter into
conference with a view to secure peace to the two
countries." Mr. Blair, upon submitting this letter to Mr.
Lincoln, received from him a reply as follows: "Sir:
You having shown me Mr. Davis' letter to you of
the twelfth instant, you may say to him that I have
constantly been, am now, and shall continue ready
to receive any agent whom he or any other influential
person now resisting the National authority may
informally send to me with a view of securing peace
to the people of our common country. Yours, etc.,
A. Lincoln."
Blair returned to Richmond and gave Davis this
letter, and in the course of their talk Blair suggested
that Lee and Grant might enter into an arrangement
by which hostifities would be suspended and the
way paved for ending the war. Davis told him that
he "would wilfingly intrust to General Lee such
negotiations as were indicated," and, subsequently
Lee, at his suggestion, wrote to Grant for an inter
view with that end in view; Grant repfied wisely

224 JEFFERSON DAVIS
that he had no power to bind the North, that the
matter was wholly in the hands of civU authorities.
Mr. Blair, during his two visits to Richmond,
had met and taUsed freely with many of his old
friends and pofitical associates now members of the
Confederate Congress or connected with Depart
ments; and here let me observe that there was no
man so open-hearted in the world as the old-time
Southerner once he was sure of the sincerity of his
companion. So then, they withheld nothing of then-
hopes or fears from their aged friend, and doubtless
freely confessed that the tide was strong against
them; in fact, it only had to rise a fittle higher and
they were done for. But the great question they put
to Mr. Blair was, What terms wfil the North give?
Blair assured them that Lincoln was inclined to treat
them generously, every drop of his blood was
Southern, conservative and not radical, beside he
was naturally kind-hearted. The result was that such
a fervent sentiment for opening negotiations with
Lincoln for peace set in, that Davis had to take the
matter up, although from the very outset he had fittle
faith in success, for the reason that, when it actually
came to concrete terms, it would not be Mr. Lin
coln the South would have to deal with, but Stanton
and the forceful, radical members of Congress.
However, he appointed Vice-President Stephens of
Georgia, to whom Lincoln had virtuaUy offered a
position in his Cabinet, Hunter of Virginia, an

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 225
ex-United States Senator, and John A. Campbell,
Assistant Secretary of War, and ex-member of the
Supreme Court of the United States, a Commission
to go to Washington with the following certificate of
appointment: "In conformity with the letter of
Mr. Lincoln of which the foregoing is a copy, you
are requested to proceed to Washington City for an
informal conference with him upon the issues
involved in the existing war, and for the purpose of
securing peace to the two countries."
Benjamin, Davis' Secretary of State, had drawn
up a much more diplomatic form of appointment:
"You are requested to proceed to Washington City
for conference with him [Mr. Lincoln] upon the
subject to which it relates." Davis made a serious
mistake in modifying Benjamin's draft — more than
one of my unconverted friends has characterized it
as "a h — 11 of a mistake," and for the sake of
good fellowship I never found fault with their
amendment. However, after the war was over,
Benjamin, in reply to a letter from Davis as to the
reasons given by him to the Cabinet when the draft
was submitted, says that he [Davis] contended if
the words "two countries" were left out, it would
be a virtual concession from the head of the Con
federacy that it had abandoned its claim for
existence, had been a mere factional rebelfion and
would be so argued if the case ever came before the
Courts. Benjamin approved the change of language.

226 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Nevertheless we think it was a naistake, for under
whatever certificate of appointment his Comnus-
sioners might meet Mr. Lincoln or Conunissioners he
might appoint, the terms would not have been other
than they were, and Davis would have had the same
reasons for refusing to accept them and thereby
would have escaped the charge of obstinacy. It
goes without saying, that Davis never was made for
a diplomat; and so far as the nature of the issue
involved, it was mighty lucky for the Confederacy
and the country he was not; for a diplomat, as soon
as Vicksburg fell, would have patched up some sort
of a peace that would have lasted but a little while,
and war broken out again more bitterly than before
between the sections.
On the third day of February, 1865, Mr. Lincoln
and Mr. Seward had a conference with the Con
federate Commission on board a vessel in Hampton
Roads off Fort Momoe. The upshot of it aU was
that the Southern forces should lay down their arms
and go home, accept the abofition of slavery as an
irrevocable fact, with an assurance of freedom from
penalties of all kinds so far as Lincoln could secure
them, and their States admitted to representation
as of old in Congress.
The Confederate Commission urged more explicit
terms, but Mr. Lincoln could not and wisely did not
pledge himself to anything more explicit and parted
with them as friends and not enemies. They went

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 227
home disconsolate and had to report that no extended
armistice would be allowed, no treaty or agreement
leading to ultimate settlement between the Con
federate or individual States would be considered,
because that would be a recognition of their existence
as a separate country, that there was nothing left
for them but unconditional submission. In view of
all that had happened in the four years of war, we
think they had no right to expect anything else.
On February 6, Davis wrote to Senator Hill of
Georgia: "The Commissioners have returned. They
met Lincoln and Seward at Fortress Monroe, were
informed that neither the Confederate States nor an
individual State coiUd be recognized as having power
to enter any agreement presenting the conditions of
peace. Nothing less would be accepted than uncon
ditional submission to the Government and laws of
the United States, and that Congress had adopted a
Constitutional Amendment for the emancipation of
all the slaves, which disposed of that question."
On the same day, in obedience to an Act of Con
gress, Lee was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all
the armies and in acknowledging his appointment to
the Adjutant-General said: "I am indebted alone to
the kindness of his ExceUency, the President, for my
nomination to the high and arduous office and wish
I had the abifity to fiU it to advantage." As a matter
of fact his appointment was made by the newspapers
and a cabal in the Confederate Congress inimical to

228 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis that had secured the passage of the Act. On
the fourteenth, Lee issued a general order to the
Army, saying: "The choice between war and abject
submission is before them. To such a proposal,
brave men with arms in their hands can have but
one answer. They cannot barter manhood for peace,
nor the right of self-government for life or property."
Meanwhile mass meetings, stirred to the deepest
enthusiasm by Davis and others, had been held in
Richmond, protesting unwillingness to accept sub
jugation and determination to fight it out to the last.
That Davis rose to a great height in eloquence on
these occasions was conceded by his bitterest
enemies. But never was defiant eloquence more
fatefuUy thrown away or so futile; the eyes of the
dying Confederacy were glazing, and all that it
accompfished was to focus on him the responsibility
of the entire South for the war, and to increase in the
North a will to punish and reluctance to forgive.
But suppose he had made an apology or expressed
hopes for charity, what a figure this would have been
and how scorned by every battlefield where the
banners of the Confederacy had been carried!
Nature loves her peaceful, ranging hills with their
rich valleys of waving grain and grazing flocks, but
she calls on the sturdy granite to face an angry sea.

CHAPTER XXIII
In desperation over the Peace Conference, and the
black oncoming cloud of defeat turning gray show
ing it had a tempest in its breast, a measure to free
all slaves who would enfist was passed by the Con
gress with the approval of Davis and Lee. But it
was altogether too late, as well as the offer Davis
made to England to free every slave if she would
acknowledge the independence of the Confederacy.
The negroes, v/ith good sense, paid no attention to
the offer of Congress, for they knew right well that
freedom was coming to them, without shedding a
drop of their own blood or that of any one. Their
course was no disappointment to Davis and he never
found fault with them, nor is there any evidence
that he grew petulant or despondent over the failure
of the whites who, for one reason or another, turned
a deaf ear to Lee's appeal to come back into the
ranks again where they were needed so much. Let
this be said for Davis, that while he was sensitive,
over-sensitive, to any disrespect or reflection on his
honor, he never gave way to ill-natured disappoint
ment over the conduct of any one, but he would
wonder over the lack of spirit in the face of trial.
As for himself, dark as the hour was, he met the
229

230 JEFFERSON DAVIS
world, in his home or on the street, with the same
unfailing natural courtesy. His face was paler and
care sat on his brow, but the Peace Conference had
not benumbed but had, in fact, stimulated his wiU.
In the early morning of March 25, after long
consultation with Davis over the situation, Lee made
a well studied assault on Grant's fine near the
Appomattox with a view to compel him to pull back
his left, which threatened Lee's only way of safe
withdrawal toward Johnston, who was confronting
Sherman in North Carofina. Gordon, who made the
attack, was not supported as was planned and met
with defeat. He was a strikingly handsome man
with very black hair, fair temples and something
superb in his bearing. Like Lee, McPherson and
Hancock he seemed to carry glory with him to the
battlefield. Instead of puUing back his fines. Grant, the most
modest and sweetly attractive man that ever wore a
uniform, fathoming Lee's design, pushed forward and
captured Five Forks. That victory was won on a
lowery Saturday afternoon, April 1, and on Sunday
forenoon the sun was shining and the people of Rich
mond were on their way to church. Lee sent a
despatch to Davis that he would withdraw that night
all troops in the lines of Petersburg and Richmond.
Davis was in St. Paul's — it was communion
Sunday — when a messenger brought in the despatch.
He at once withdrew and, that night toward mid-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 231
night, boarded a train for DanviUe. The last com
mand from Lee's army from the fines around Rich
mond passed through its streets and crossed the
James just before daybreak on its way to Appomat
tox, and when the sun rose the capital of the Old
Dominion was on fire and her people in tears.
The train Davis was on with his Cabinet and Con
gressmen and others whose homes were not in
Virginia was long and heavy. The engine, like the
Confederacy, had seen its best day and its speed was
slow; the news that he was aboard outran it, and
wondering crowds gathered at every station, crying
to see him. He addressed them in confident terms,
sajdng that, although the capital had fallen, Lee's
indomitable old army was still in the field and, if
they would still keep up their courage, and those
who were able would rally to the colors and meet
the enemy with the bravery of old, all would be
well at last.
On the fifth of April, from Danville, he issued a
proclamation in which he said: "It would be unwise
to conceal the moral and material injury to our
cause resulting from the occupation of our capital
by the enemy. It is equally imwise and unworthy
of us to allow our own energies to falter and our
efforts to become relaxed under reverses however
calamitous they may be. . . . It is for us, my
countrymen, to show, by our bearing under reverses,
how wretched has been the self-deception of those

232 JEFFERSON DAVIS
who have believed us less able to endure misfortune
with fortitude than to encounter danger with cour
age. . . . Animated by that confidence in your
spirit of fortitude which never faUed me yet, I
announce to you, my feUow-countrymen, that it is
my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole
heart and soul, that I never wUl consent to abandon
to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the
States of the Confederacy. Let us, then, not despair
but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance
and with unconquered, unconquerable hearts."
The Dan that flows by DanvUle and is bom in the
AUeghenies is a pleasant river to see, with its big
wiUows and adjacent farms. Along its banks spring
was weaving her bridal veil; new-shorn sheep were
grazing in stump-dotted pastures; the crescent-
breasted lark, the catbird and the mocking bird
were singing light-heartedly, but Davis' heart was
not light as he looked over the fields along the Dan.
Those were long and anxious days for him. His first
thought in the morning and the last at night was.
How is it going with Lee and his gallant old army of
Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania?
Not hearing a word, he could stand it no longer and
sent young Wise, the author of that fascinating book,
"The End of an Era," to Lee for tidings. Wise
found Lee at FarmviUe pushing on with his heroic
army, its banners, that had waved triumphant
on many battlefields, still flying, but its corps

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 233
reduced to mere remnants, tired, hungry and hope
less, yet displaying that soldierly steadfastness which
lights the last days of the Confederacy with enduring
glory. That was on Friday and on Sunday fore
noon — it was Palm Sunday — at Appomattox the
end came.
MeanwhUe, Davis with his Cabinet had gone to
Greensboro, North CaroUna, to be near Johnston and
Beauregard. Yoimg Robert E. Lee, who had been
cut off in the retreat, had made his way thither and
was in the room with Davis when the official despatch
announcing his father's surrender was received. In
his "Recollections" of his father young Lee says:
"After reading it he [Davis] handed it without com
ment to us; then turning away, he silently wept
bitter tears."
Jehovah! Designer of the starry firmament, this
green world and human nature, that fountain which
begins to play when what we dearly love is gone
forever seems to testify to your live and daily com
passion for us poor mortals!
That night Davis having sent word that he wanted
to see them, Johnston and Beauregard came to his
room where he and his Cabinet were assembled.
"I have requested you," so writes his Secretary of
the Navy, MaUory, "to join us this evening that we
might have the benefit of your views upon the situa
tion of the country. Of course, we aU feel the magni
tude of the moment. Our late disasters are terrible,

234 JEFFERSON DAVIS
but I do not think we should regard them as fatal.
I think we can whip the enemy yet if our people
wiU turn out; we must look at the matter calmly,
however, and see what there is left for us to do."
He then turned to Johnston, saying: "We should
like to hear your views. General Johnston." John
ston blurted out: "My views are. Sir, that our people
are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped and
will not fight," and went on to say that the men
were deserting in large numbers, and suggested that
terms for surrender should be asked for. Davis,
meanwhile, was folding and unfolding a bit of
paper, and then turned to Beauregard for his views,
who replied that he concurred in all that Johnston
had said. Then followed a silence, Davis' eyes still
on the bit of paper he was folding and refolding. At
last, without a sign of impatience either in his
manner or the expression of his face or tone, he
asked Johnston if he thought Sherman would give
terms and if so, to proceed, adding: "If we can
accomplish any good for the country. Heaven
knows I am not particular as to forms." As we all
know, Johnston accepted Sherman's terms and
surrendered his army.
While these negotiations were going on Davis
went to Safisbury, North Carolina, accepting the
hospitality of an Episcopal clergyman. One morning
while at breakfast the clergyman's little daughter,
seven or eight years old, came in crying, "Oh,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 235
Papa! old Lincoln's coming and going to kUl us aU."
Mr. Davis laid down his knife and fork, placed his
hand on the fittle girl's head and turning it around
toward him said, looking into her face: "Oh, no,
my fittle lady, you need not fear that; Mr. Lincoln
is not such a bad man as that; he does not want to
kUl anybody and certainly not a fittle girl like you."
A few days after came a rumor of Mr. Lincoln's
assassination but Davis doubted its truthftUness,
observing, however, that in such a condition of public
affairs a crime of that kind might be perpetrated.
When the news was confirmed, Mallory reports him
as saying: "I certainly had no special regard for Mr.
Lincoln, but there are a great many men of whose
end I would much rather hear than his. I fear it will
be disastrous to our people, and I regret it deeply."
Upon hearing the unconditional surrender of
Johnston's and Beauregard's army, Davis set out to
join the forces stiU in the field beyond the Mississippi.
The specie that was in the Confederate treasury,
amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, was
transferred from the railway box cars into army
wagons and, guarded by detachments of Wheeler's
cavahy, the march began. With Davis rode Mal
lory, Reagan, Benjanun and Breckinridge of his
Cabinet. They crossed the Savannah River on the
fourth of May; Davis, Mallory and Reagan accom
panied by Captain CampbeU's company of cavahy,
pushed on to Washington, Georgia.

236 JEFFERSON DAVIS
The main body of the escort and train of wagons,
aU under command of Secretary of War Breckin
ridge, at last gathered into camp on the Georgia side
of the river. The members of the escort who had
left their homes behind them and, hopeless of any
revival of the war spirit, now turned insurbordinate,
practicaUy demanded a distribution of the specie
they were guarding. After Breckinridge had reported
this state of affairs to Davis the treasury was divided,
the troops then disappeared, and Breckinridge and
Benjamin struck off for the Florida coast and finaUy
reached England.
On arrival at the little village of Washington, the
doors of a private house were thrown open to Davis
and the next day the last Cabinet meeting of the
Confederacy was held. MaUory bade goodbye to his
chief; Davis then with Reagan and four or five of his
personal staff set out for southwestern Georgia.
Before starting he had a conference with Captain
Campbell, telfing him of his plans and refieving him
of all obligations to go any farther, but that he would
like to have ten volunteers to go with him if they
felt fike doing so; Campbell on notifying his men
of this request reported that the whole company
volunteered. Davis selected ten of .the big-hearted
company, joining after a march of two or three
days Mrs. Davis, her sister Miss Howell, the chil
dren and servants, who under the immediate charge of
the President's private secretary. Burton Harrison,

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 237
and an escort of a few paroled Confederate soldiers,
had started on their travels several weeks previously.
On the evening of the second day after overtaking
them and whUe preparations were being made to
leave at daybreak and continue the journey, one of
Davis' aides. Colonel Preston, who had been to a
neighboring viUage, reported that it was rumored a
band of marauders would attack the camp that
mght. About daybreak, hearing firing, Davis sprang
to his feet and going out saw that regular soldiers
and not bandits were making the attack; he went
back to the tent to notify Mrs. Davis. He picked up
and put on Mrs. Davis' raglan, mistaking it in the
dark for his Ught overcoat, and as he went out Mrs.
Davis threw her shawl over his head as a disguise.
He had advanced but a few steps when a mounted
soldier, after some angry words from Davis, presented
his carbine and ordered him to halt. Mrs. Davis
rushed out and threw her arms about his neck and
begged the soldier not to kill him. Seeing now all
hope of escape gone, he qmetly turned back and
seated himself on a fallen tree near the dying-down
camp fire till the commanding officer of the troops.
Col. Pritchard, came up, demanding his name and
surrender. A correspondent of fively imagination, who was
not present at the capture, at once telegraphed his
paper from Macon that Davis had been taken, and
in women's clothes. Thereupon the cartoonist seized

238 JEFFERSON DAVIS
his pad, and then his pencU pictured Davis accord
ingly, much to the exuberant amusement and
defight of his enemies. But in time, as usual, truth
made its way, and the cartoonist's testimony was
ruled out, and now in the periodicals of the past
they fie petrified, so to speak, like the bones of the
Saurians of the carboniferous period.
While on his way to Macon to be defivered to
General Wilson, whose troops had made the capture,
he learned that a reward of one hundred thousand
dollars had been offered for his arrest by President
Johnson, charging him, Stephens, Clay and others
with compUcity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.
He was amazed and indignant.
On his arrival at Macon, some troops drawn up
before Wilson's headquarters saluted him as he
passed through their ranks to the door of Wilson's
hotel. WUson treated him well; and in the course of
an extended interview with him referred to the
President's proclamation for his arrest, when Davis
replied: "The man who signed that proclamation
knew that I would a thousand times rather have
Abraham Lincoln to deal with as President of the
United States than to have him."
Wilson, who had been at West Point as a cadet
while Davis was Secretary of War and Senator, says
that in his long talk with Davis that, however petu
lant he may have been at the time of his capture,
he had regained complete equanimity and inquired

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 239
most kindly of his old friends in the West Point
faculty — Church, Bartlett and Mahan — and that
he spoke unreservedly and feefingly of Lee, declar
ing him to be the ablest, most courageous, most
aggressive and most beloved of all the Confederate
generals, and that he referred to Mr. Lincoln and
his untimely death in terms of respect and kindness.
At the close of the day WUson started Davis and
all his party on a special train for Augusta. Mrs.
Clay of Alabama, whose husband was included in
the proclamation as one of the conspirators and had
given himself up conscious of his innocence, says that
as she entered the car Davis embraced her, saying,
"This is a sad meeting, Jennie!" and offered her a
seat beside him. At Augusta, they with Vice-
President Stephens, General Wheeler and his adju
tant-general, were packed in a miserable river boat,
which took them down the river and around to
HUton Head where they were transferred to the
steamer Clyde, which soon sailed accompanied by the
war vessel Tuscarora with shotted guns for Fort
Monroe. Before saifing Mrs. Davis sent a note to
General Saxton in command at Hilton Head, asking
him, as an old friend, if he would not take her fittle
negro prot6g6 Jim Brooks and see to his education
and welfare.
Jim, left an orphan in babyhood, EUen, Mrs. Davis'
maid, had been a second mother to him, and being
about Jeff Junior's, age, they had been playmates

240 JEFFERSON DAVIS
from the cradle. Shortly before the Clyde saUed, a
boat from Saxton came along side and by strategem,
he was induced to go aboard of her, and as she backed
off, realizing what it meant, he screamed pitifully.
His playmate, Wilfie, Ellen and all cried bitterly as
they steamed away from the heartbroken, mother
less little feUow.
Two days afterward the Tuscarora, her flag flying,
turned in round Cape Charles with the Clyde, and
crossing the sunshiny bay, anchored off Fort Monroe.
There she lay swinging with the tide by her convoy,
while brick-masons, blacksmiths, and carpenters,
walled up openings, made heavy doors, and placed
iron bars in the embrasures of the casemates that
were to serve as prisons for Clay and Davis. Mean
whUe, Stephens and Reagan were started for Fort
Warren, Boston Harbor; Wheeler and Davis' staff
to Fort Delaware; and Burton Harrison, his private
secretary, to Fort McHenry at Baltimore.
General Miles, who had been assigned to the com
mand of the Fort, at one p.m. of the twenty-second,
set off in a tug accompanied by a squad of soldiers,
for the Clyde. Davis bade goodbye to his children
who were crying, but on taking leave of his wife
whispered: "Try not to weep, they will gloat over
your grief." On landing at the wharf. Miles, holding
Davis by the right arm and preceded by a cavalry
detaU, first appeared; behind him was a half-dozen
soldiers, then came Colonel Pritchard, holding Clay

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 241
by the right arm, followed by another armed squad.
The procession crossed the moat, passed through the
postern, and then to the casemate. Assistant Secre
tary of War Dana, who with Halleck overlooked the
procession, says: "Davis bore himself with a haughty
attitude." — ^This reminds me of a remark he made to
one of his prominent officers in Richmond who had
just had an interview with a distressed poor woman
and had to bring the matter to Davis' attention, he
said to him: "Never be haughty to the humble, nor
humble to the haughty." — Davis was conducted into
the inner room of the casemate. There was a sentry
before each door leading into the outer room, an
iron hospital bedstead, a stool table, a chair, a
movable stool closet, and a Bible; two sentinels
outside the doors, an officer and two sentries in the
outer room with instructions to see the prisoner every
fifteen minutes, the outer door of all locked and key
in charge of the officer of the guard; a line of sentries
to cut off all access to the casemate, another fine
beyond the moat and another on top of the parapet
over the casemate; and yet, with all these precautions
they put manacles on him!
Davis, left alone, walked to the barred embrasure
and asked the direction it faced; neither of the two
sentinels would answer; he sat down. And this was
the Fort Momoe whose guns had thundered for
him when Secretary of War and whose troops had
saluted with arms and colors — colors that had

242 JEFFERSON DAVIS
waved over him as a Cadet and that he had helped
to carry to victory at Monterey and Buena Vista.
That afternoon, Dana, notifying the War Depart
ment of Davis' and Clay's incarceration, said, "I
have not given orders to have them placed in irons,
as Halleck seemed opposed to it, but General Miles
is instructed to have fetters ready if he thinks them
necessary." Two days afterward. Miles reported
to Dana, "Yesterday I directed the irons to be put
on Davis' ankles, which he violently resisted, but
he became more quiet afterward. His hands are
unencumbered." The following day Davis, as well as Clay, asked
if beside the Bible they might have the Prayer Book
and some tobacco. Miles referred the request to
Halleck who answered "Yes." Tobacco, deficious
weed, and my comforter on many a page of this
biography, you were in mighty good company that
night — the Prayer Book and the Bible.
Meanwhile Mrs. Davis, the children, and Mrs.
Clay, after being searched and their baggage thor
oughly examined for evidence of their husbands'
alleged crimes, were on their way to Savannah aboard
the Clyde in charge of an officer who treated them
well. The manacles began to chafe Davis' ankles, and
the cruelty of it all got wing through the reporters'
accounts from Fort Monroe, furnishing afternoon
editions with startfing headlines. Stanton translated

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 243
the deep headlines as reproach and telegraphed
Miles, "Please report whether irons have or have
not been placed on Jefferson Davis. If they have,
when was it done and for what reason, and remove
them." Miles repfied: "I directed that anklets be
put on his ankles, which would not interfere with
his walking but would prevent his running should
he endeavor to escape. In the meantime I have
changed the wooden doors for grated iron ones with
locks, and the anklets have been removed."
For one hundred and ten nights with two soldiers,
a bright fight in his room, two sentinels in the
adjoining room walking their posts and refieved
every two hours with rattfing of arms on the brick
floors; the traifing sabre of the officer of the guard
who, beside looking after posting the refiefs, had to
take a look at the prisoner every fifteen minutes,
how much unbroken sleep did or could a night offer?
His food was sent in, but neither knife or fork
aUowed for fear he might cut his throat or puncture
a vein and cheat the gallows. The glaring light on
his eye which had never quite recovered from the
attack that had destroyed the other, keyed as he
was, was intense. In knowing what we do now, the
question nught be put in aU earnestness. Why did
he have to suffer as he did?
It is only fair in behalf of MUes, Stanton, and
Judge Advocate-General Holt who had to deal
with Davis officially, to say that no one not living

244 JEFFERSON DAVIS
at the time can conceive of the depth of the passion
over the assassination of Lincoln and the barbarous
attempt on the life of Seward. Convulsion after
convulsion of feefing took place all over the North,
attributing the crime to the South, and especiaUy
laying it at the door of its leaders and calling for
their execution as traitors and murderers. Sumner
in the midst of this frenzy wrote to a friend in
England: "You enjoy the overthrow of belligerent
slavery. In assassinating our good President it
acted naturally, logically and consistently, and yet
there are foreigners here who are astonished that
Jefferson Davis can be thought guilty of such an
atrocity." This letter fairly represented how passion,
like a forest fire before a high wind, was sweeping
the country.
Moreover, while Davis and Clay were waiting
on the Clyde till the casemates were made ready
the MUitary Commission for the trial of the assassi
nators was in session, the newspapers fiUing column
after column with the testimony and vivid descrip
tions of the criminals, all of which the public read
with deepening horror.
Again, among the earliest witnesses was a shrewd,
impecunious lawyer, Conover by name, who testified
early in the trial that Davis and Clay, from his own
knowledge, were implicated in bringing about the
assassination. Later he went to Holt, the Judge
Advocate-General and told him he could furnish

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 245
evidence, written and verbal, to estabfish the truth
of his testimony before the Commission. Holt
befieved him, and Conover began at once to organize
a gang of perjurers who supplied Holt with sworn
depositions confirming his allegations. Holt laid
these depositions before Stanton; he also believed
them true and it was not until eleven months later,
that, upon the confession of one of this gang, the
discovery was made of the utter fraud which Conover
had perpetrated. While this testimony remained
unchaUenged, and the fires kindled by the assassi
nation of Lincoln still burning fiercely, it is only fan-
to Stanton, Miles and Holt to bear these circum
stances in mind. Not to have been infiuenced by
them in dealing with Davis and Clay is more than
can be expected of human nature.
Contributing to the harshness of Davis' treatment
and above all to root deeply a calloused unfavorable
opinion, during the trial of Wirtz, the prosecuting
attorney from the Bureau of Mifitary Justice offered
testimony to prove that Davis was as much, if not
more, to blame than Wirtz for the cruelties and
deaths at AndersonviUe.
The trial began on the twenty-third of August
and Wirtz was executed on the tenth of November.
On the night before his execution two men sought
an interview with him in his cell and one of them
gave him to understand that by a confession impfi-
cating Davis with the responsibifity of the treatment

246 JEFFERSON DAVIS
of prisoners, they had power to save him from the
gaUows. That same night his counsel, a Mr. Schade
of Washington, says: "Some parties came to the
confessor of Wirtz, Reverend Father Boyle, and
also to me as his counsel, one of them informing me
that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirtz
that if he would implicate Davis with the atrocities
committed at AndersonvUle, his sentence would be
commuted. The messenger requested me to inform
Wirtz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told
Wirtz next morning what had happened. Captain
Wirtz simply and qmetly replied, 'Mr. Schade, you
know that I have always told you that I do not
know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no
connection with me as to what was done at Anderson
viUe. I would not become a traitor to him or any
one else even to save my fife'."
This statement of Wirtz' counsel is confirmed by
a letter to Mr. Davis from Father Boyle. "I know
that on the evening of the day before the execution
of Major Wirtz, a man visited me on the part of a
Cabinet officer to inform me that Major Wirtz
would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson
Davis in the cruelties of AndersonviUe."
Wirtz, his counsel, and Father Boyle are in the
grave. No one to this day knows the name of the
Cabinet officer or the mysterious messenger who
under the shades of night made his way to and from
Wirtz' cell. It was all a horrible, horrible business.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 247
and we think a November night's stars never looked
down on a wickeder one.
Relative to the charges against Davis of cruelty
to prisoners, it is opportune to say that Mrs. Davis
having appealed to Horace Greely and he realizing,
through the sensitiveness of his nature what Davis,
guilty or innocent, must be suffering in prison,
asked Judge Shea of New York, if he would not
try to secure an early trial for Davis. Shea was
unwilling to give his professional services unless
satisfied that the charge against him of famine and
cruelty to Northern prisoners was untrue.
It so happened that the Confederate archives
were in Canada, and at the request of Greely,
Governor Andrew and Vice-President Wilson Shea
went to Montreal and there examined the records.
He returned to New York convinced that Davis,
directly and indirectly, was guUtless of indifference
to the welfare of prisoners that fell into Confederate
hands. Whereupon Greely threw his whole heart
into an effort to secure a trial at once, let the charges
be what they might, for as an American citizen,
Davis was entitled to a speedy trial. O'Connor of
New York had aheady volunteered his services,
and from then on to the end became the fearless
legal champion for Davis. When Conover's malicious
charges were exposed and one after another of the
real facts became known, a reaction set in, and
President Johnson said in an interview with Mrs.

248 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Davis that he was satisfied that Davis was not a
party to the assassination of Lincoln. So much then
as to the intensity of public feeling and its reaction
on Stanton and Holt who had to deal officially with
the character of Davis' imprisonment at its beginning.
It wUl be remembered that the Secretary of War
in a somewhat peremptory despatch ordered General
Miles to unshackle Davis. The order was executed
on the forenoon of a Sunday, May 28, and in the
afternoon Dr. Craven, who had been assigned to
look after the health of Davis and Clay, went to
his casemate. "Immediately on entering," says
Craven in his "Prison Life of Davis," "Mr. Davis
rose from his seat, both hands extended and his
eyes filled with tears. He was evidently about to
say something, but checked himself; or, was checked
by a rush of emotion, and sat down on his bed."
A month later General Miles entered the casemate
while the doctor was making his professional caU
and announced that Davis would be aUowed an
hour's exercise on the ramparts; and that afternoon.
General Miles supporting him on one side and the
officer of the day on the other, followed by four
armed guards, he enjoyed his first breath of open
air and the sight from the green parapets of the
coming and going ships, the low, distant, dreaming
coast line and the wide expanse of softly heaving sea.
On one of these walks he met Clay and exchanged
greetings in French with him, which alarmed the

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 249
guard who did not understand the language, and
they were not aUowed to pass each other or meet
again. Davis, struck with Clay's appearance,
inquired with much sympathy for his fellow-prisoner,
and Dr. Craven says this: "Let me here remark
that despite a certain exterior cynicism of manner,
no patient has ever crossed my path who, suffering
so much himself, appeared to feel so warmly and
tenderly for others."
President Johnson, to satisfy himself as to Davis'
condition and treatment, sent McCuUoch, his
Secretary of Treasury, to Fort Monroe to see Davis.
McCuUoch says: "I was most favorably impressed
by his manners and conversation, . . . hearing
Davis' account of his treatment, I felt as he did that
for a time he had been dastardly treated ... he
had the bearing of a born and high-bred gentleman."
Says Craven, ' I called with Captain Evans, officer
of the day, on the twenty-eighth of August. Davis
was then suffering great prostration from erysipelas
and a carbuncle, and was in low spirits, — fearing
that he should die without opportunity of rebutting
in pubfic trial the imputed stigma of having had a
share in the conspiracy to assassinate Mr. Lincoln
and leave the reproach on his chUdren.
"Of Mr. Lincoln he then spoke, not in affected
terms of regard and admiration, but paying a simple
and sincere tribute to his goodness of character and
honesty of purpose . . . also to his official purity

250 JEFFERSON DAVIS
and freedom from avarice . . . that the Southern
papers in the beginning of the war had labored to
render Lincoln abhorrent and contemptible, but
that such efforts were against his judgment."
"They charge me with crime, Doctor, but God
knows my innocence. I endorsed no measure that
was not justified by the laws of war. FaUure is all
forms of guUt in one to men who occupied my posi
tion. Should I die, repeat this for the sake of my
people, my dear wife, and my poor darling chUdren.
TeU the world I only loved America, and that in
following my State, I was only carrying out doctrines
received from revered fips in my early youth and
adopted by my judgment as the conviction of riper
years." Vice-President Stephens and Reagan, Postmaster-
General in Davis' Cabinet, were released on parole
in October, and Clay a few months later.
In the spring of 1866, Congress appointed a
committee, headed by Boutwell of Massachusetts,
to report on the facts in Davis' case, and recommend
his trial by a Commission or the Courts. The War
Department turned over all the evidence it had
to the Committee, who in turn put it into the hands
of Lieber, the sun of whose fame as a writer, scholar,
jurist, has not yet set. Lieber says, among other
things, that the Judiciary Committee had asked him
to report upon whether or not there was any evidence
that Jefferson Davis or the Richmond government

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 251
knew about the assassination plots, and whether or
not there was any circumstantial evidence confirming
things that appeared in the trials of Lincoln's
assassins. ' ' Some 270,000 letters have been examined
for this and other purposes. There remain about
60,000 more to be examined and verified . . . Davis
wiU not be found guilty and we shall stand there
completely beaten."
Meanwhile Davis' counsel were pushing more and
more ardently for a trial and at last a day was set,
and on the tenth orders were issued directing General
Burton, Miles successor, to produce his prisoner
before the United States District Court in Richmond,
on Monday, May 13.
During the week of the tenth, two events took
place worthy of record, — Ex-President Pierce made
a visit to Davis and we can easUy imagine then-
greeting, for they loved each other well; they had
not only shared the dangers of battle fields in Mexico,
but also fom- years of trying official relations as
President and Cabinet officer.
The other event was the marriage of Ellen, Mrs,
Davis' maid, and Frederick Maginnis, of whom
Mrs. Davis says, "a colored man, a courteous,
refined gentleman in his instincts." He had offered
his services gratuitously to Mrs. Davis on her
arrival at Savannah from Fort Monroe, but she
paid him wages regularly, which he divided with
his old mistress in Georgia. "He was a second

252 JEFFERSON DAVIS
Providence to us by his care of Mr. Davis after I
was allowed to go to him," says Mrs. Davis.
On one occasion when asked by a curious woman
who had made an excursion to the Fort the where
abouts of "Jeff" he answered, with a bow, "I am
sorry. Madam, not to be able to tell you where he is.
I do not know such a person." "Are you not his
servant? " she inquired. "No, Madam," he answered,
"you are quite mistaken, I have the honor to serve
Ex-President Davis." "What this judicious, cap
able, deficate-minded man did for us could not be
computed in money or told in words; he and his
gentle wife took the sting out of many indignities
offered to us in our misfortune. They were both
objects of affection and esteem to Mr. Davis as
long as he fived," so says Mrs. Davis.
On Friday, May 11, the United States Marshal
accompanied by Judge Ould gave General Burton
the order of the War Department to bring Davis
before the Court in Richmond. Saturday morning,
Davis, arrayed in a mixed black suit, bade good-bye
to the officers of the garrison and then, with Mrs.
Davis, General Burton, Dr. Craven, and Burton
Harrison, his affectionate private secretary, boarded
the John Sylvester and started up the James, and
the green parapets of Fort Monroe, where for just
eight days short of two years he had been confined,
faded away with their over-streaming colors. When
the boat reached Brandon Landing the Misses

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 253
Harrison came aboard, greeting Davis with swim
ming eyes. They arrived at Richmond about six
o'clock and the party drove to the Spottswood
Hotel, and at every doorway and window on the
way were smiling faces wafting welcome home again.
The street was packed in front of the hotel, and
when he and Mrs. Davis got out of the carriages,
some one shouted "Hats off, Virginians!" He was
assigned to the very same rooms that he had occupied
on arrival from Montgomery six years before. There
were flowers there to welcome him and old friends
came in, their faces blooming with a deep joy, tears
hanging on their lashes or sparkfing there as we
sometimes see the gathered dew in the early morning.
The next day, Sunday, he stayed in his rooms,
receiving callers who came in on the way from
church. At eleven o'clock Monday, he was taken to the
court room in the Custom House, a room about
forty feet square — and already every seat was
fiUed, while outside were great crowds of white and
black. Davis was first placed in the prisoner's dock,
and the Marshal, with fine feefing, asked Harrison
to go and sit beside him. Later the courtesy was
extended by conducting him to the counsel's table
within the bar to a seat beside O'Connor, a smalfish
man with thin gray hair, brilfiant eyes and a firm
but low voice. By his side sat Reed of Philadelphia,
Judge Shea, Ould and Beverly Tucker of Virginia.

254 JEFFERSON DAVIS
On the other side of the table sat Evarts, spare,
pale and grave. Chandler and WeUs representing
the United States.
There was a sensation when an elderly man wear
ing glasses and dressed in an antiquated black suit,
his black silk cravat in wUd entanglement, and
totally unselfconscious of place or occasion, walked
up and took a seat beside Evarts. He brought in
an atmosphere of natural gentleness with him. It
was Horace Greely who had done more than any
man living to arouse his countrymen against slavery
and who was the first to ask for mercy to Davis and
every Southerner who had borne arms in behalf of
the Confederacy.
And may I at this point say that were I to his
torically duplicate .the Constellation of Orion, I
should put Lincoln for the upper star, Davis the
lower. Grant, Greely and Lee in the belt.
With Greely came in Augustus Schell of New York,
with a benevolent face — a life-long Democrat,
representing himself and Vanderbilt on the bail
bond of $100,000 which it was understood would
be called for in case of Davis' release for future
trial. Presently the judge, Underwood, entered from
the lobby, whereupon the Marshal cried out, "Hear
ye, hear ye! The United States District Court is
now opened and silence is commanded. God save
the United States!"

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 255
Burton then brought Davis before the Court and
reading the order he had received, the Marshal took
charge of the accused, who then took a seat beside
O'Connor. The Judge proceeded to deliver a lecture on the
wickedness of rebelfion, the magnitude of treason,
etc., during which unusual proceedings, Davis never
raised his eyes. O'Connor then addressed the Court
to the effect that the defence was ready for the
trial of the case. Evarts then notified the Court
that the Government was not ready for trial but
was wUfing the accused should go on bail. There
upon the bail bond was offered. Greely was the
first to sign it and then Schell. Davis went at once
to Greely, grasped his hand and in a few words
earnestly thanked him. Greely accepted his thanks
with an abashed expression, his countenance, how
ever, filled with an inward pleasure, and the song
of his pillow that night was like that of the Good
Samaritan. When the baU bond was fully signed, the Court
released Davis, and a mighty shout went up from
inside and outside the court room. Hundreds of
colored men wished to take Davis' hand, and a
mighty mass, cheering and waving hats escorted
him back to the Spottswood, and on entering his
room it was redolent with the scent of flowers, and
old friends were there to give him their hands.
That afternoon he and Mrs. Davis drove out to

256 JEFFERSON DAVIS
HoUywood and placed roses and violets on the grave
of their fittle boy who had been accidentally kiUed
by faifing from the upper veranda. A prayer of
thankfulness was held in their room, led by his old
friend Dr. Minnegerode, and that night he and
Mrs. Davis started for Montreal, where the chUdren
were at school.
The thoughtful of the North, and not few in
numbers, who, during the two years he had been in
prison had feared the results of a trial with its
frightful possibifities of a gallows throwing its
shadow across the sky of the country's past, drew
a deep sigh of relief over his release and thanked
God that mankind had outgrown the old barbaric
notion that the sleep of the dead, to be unbroken,
demanded a sacrifice.
But the companions of vengeance, on whose ears
the voice of compassion broke in vain now, like a
pack of thwarted timber wolves, set up a dismal
howl over the escape of their prey and at once
turned on Greely, snarfing and showing their teeth.
The President of the Union Club of New York
wrote to him that a special meeting of the Club had
been asked for to take into consideration his conduct
in going on the baU bond of Davis and desired to
know what evening would be convenient. Greely
at once replied:
"Gentlemen: I shaU not attend your meeting this
evening. You evidently regard me as a weak sen-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 257
timentafist misled by a maudlin philosophy. I
arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads who
would fike to be useful to a great and good cause,
but do not know how. Your attempt to base a
great enduring party on the hate and wrath neces
sarily engendered by bloody civil war is as though
you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had
somehow drifted into a tropical sea. I tell you here
that out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of
human kind, your children will select my going to
Richmond and signing that bail bond as the wisest
act. ... So long as any is at heart opposed to the
National Unity ... I shaU do my best to deprive
him of power. ... So long as any man was seeking
to overthrow our government he was my enemy;
from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he
was my formerly erring coimtryman."
While Davis was in prison, Greely was writing
his "American Conflict," and the second volume
was in press when he went on Davis' bail bond;
thereupon thousands of the subscribers cancelled
their subscriptions throwing heavy losses on his
publishers. Lee wrote to Davis, June 1, 1867: "My dear Mr.
Davis: You can conceive better than I can express,
the misery which your friends have suffered from
your long imprisonment. To none has this been
more painful than to me; and the impossibifity of
affording refief has added to my distress. Your

258 JEFFERSON DAVIS
release has fifted a load from my heart which I have
not words to tell, and my daily prayer to the Great
Author of the world is that He may shield you
from aU evil, and give you that peace which the
world cannot take away. That the rest of your
days may be triumphantly happy is the sincere
and earnest wish of your most obedient, faithful
friend and servant. R. E. Lee."
The winter climate of Canada proving too severe
for Davis in his weak condition, toward the end
of the year, by advice of his physician, he went to
Havana, and after the holidays to New Orleans.
The people thronged to greet him, giving him a
reception that was spontaneous and tender. At
first in the furrowed lines of his face they saw what
he had gone through and were touched with sym
pathy, but on meeting him and noting the same
old dignity in his bearing, the same noble lustre of
fortitude and kindliness in his eye, and his voice
still keyed with its courteous, appealing tones, they
gave him their hands and cheers that went to his
heart. To them he was the embodiment of the
Southern gentleman and the champion of the Lost
Cause hallowed by many a deed of bravery and
death on the field.
From New Orleans he went to his old plantation,
now a scene of neglect, conflagration, waste and
pillage; stables, flower beds, roses yellow and red.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 259
gardens, aU the labors of his early fife blotted out,
and desolation, with her feet in the ashes, sat at
the foot of lone chimneys croaking to the sUence of
the one-time happy dooryard and blooming cotton
fields. The aged slaves, who stiU clxmg to the old home
quarters, fiocked to see him, glad, truly glad to take
the hand of the proud, kind master of their youth.
For the sake of his health, he went to Europe
with his family and received many civilities from
members of the English nobifity. Could he go now,
from the British officers and soldiers who served
with the grandsons of the Confederacy and the
grandsons of the Union when they broke the German
line we think many a high cheer would welcome
him and should Grant's spirit appear at his side,
applause would break from Westminster and where-
ever the sea strikes the shores of Old England.
WhUe in Paris, Napoleon III sent a staff officer
offering an audience, but not wishing to say anything
uncivil, Davis begged to be excused, as he felt that
Napoleon had not been sincere in his dealing with
the Confederacy.
On his return he accepted the presidency of a
Southern Life Insurance Company with headquarters
in Memphis, whose generous-hearted people offered
to buy him a handsome residence which, from a
deficate sense of propriety, he decfined, although
deeply appreciating their fiberality. Owing to a

260 JEFFERSON DAVIS
reckless system of issuing poficies and the prevalence
of yellow fever, the company was soon in trouble,
and after putting everything he could command into
it to save it, the company wound up with heavy
loss_es to himself and stockholders.
General Robert Ransom of North Carolina and
the Confederate army, in his "Reminiscences of
Davis" relates the following incident while on a
visit to Davis in Memphis, prefacing it by stating:
"At the table he said grace, or asked a blessing, first
seating himself and then with bowed head, in silence
making the invocation.
"During one of my visits, just after being seated
an unusual commotion was heard in the passage
leading to the dining room, and almost instantly
in rushed the bright, fair-haired Willie, his youngest
son, a lad of eight or ten years, followed by a half-
dozen or more about his own age whom Wilfie had
brought in to dinner. He rapidly told of some gar
dening or other work he had in hand and which he
wished finished at a certain time and, not being
able to accompfish it so soon himself, had gone into
the streets and gathered a promiscuous party of
laborers, completed the task voluntarily assumed,
and now wanted dinner for his co-workers. I could
easily discern the feeling of his father; with great
cheerfiUness and an expression of pride and satis
faction, Mr. Davis aided in providing for his fine
boy's guests, and with delicate tact and discriminat-

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 261
ing conversation soon had each fittle fellow as com
fortable and unembarrassed as if on a picnic."
Soon thereafter this son, WiUiam Howell, died
with diphtheria, and in October, 1878, when the
yeUow fever raged in Memphis, his only surviving
son, Jefferson junior, twenty-one years old and who
had become a companion of his aged father, fell a
victim, and his death struck deep.
Some time previous, Mrs. Dawson, a friend, had
sold to Davis her home at Beauvoir, Mississippi.
It had a broad veranda, flowered approaches, and
stood amid an open grove of live oaks close by the
shore of the Gulf lapping its beach day and night
with soft murmurs. He was there when this grief
fell upon him, writing the "Rise and Fall of the
Confederacy." He laid down his pen and for days
sat in silence till that blessed Comforter which feels
for us all reached out a hand, and he took up his
pen again.
He who would see how the mind of Jefferson
Davis worked tmder the shadow of grief and a
raging storm of calumny; how deep in it lay the
foundation of his beUef in the sovereignty of States;
with what fairness he dealt with the four years of
battUng campaigns in the discharge of the duties of
the Presidency, let him read the "Rise and FaU of
the Confederacy."
It was begun in 1878; it was finished in 1881,
and here is the way it ended. Mrs. Davis in her

262 JEFFERSON DAVIS
"Memoirs" says: "It was four o'clock, and I had
been writing since eight o'clock in the evening, when
Mr. Davis dictated : ' In asserting the right of seces
sion it has not been my wish to incite to its exercise.
I recognize the fact that the war showed it to be
impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong;
and now, that it may not be again attempted, and
the Union may promote the general welfare, it is
needful that the truth, the whole truth, should be
known, so that crimination and recrimination may
forever cease, and then on the basis of fraternity
and faithful regards for the rights of the States, there
may be written on the arch of the Union Este
perpetua.' I looked up after a momentary sUence to remind
him that he had forgotten to continue, and he
smifingly said, 'I think I am done.' And so he
finished his life's work for his Countrymen."
In every great moving symphony there is one
impelling note and bar that is repeated and
re-repeated. We think the candor of this final state
ment in the "Rise and Fall of the Confederacy,"
is such a note and bar in the character of Davis.
A few years later in an address before the Legis
lature of Mississippi, after referring to his boyhood
in the State and his ambition to do something that
would rebound to its honor and glory, he touched
again that high, manly chord, saying: "Our people
have accepted the decree, it therefore behooves them

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 263
to promote the general welfare of the Union, to
show the world that hereafter, as heretofore, the
patriotism of our people is not measured by line of
latitude and longitude but is as broad as the obliga
tions they have assumed and embraces the whole
of our ocean-bound domain."
Meanwhile Southern mothers, wives and sisters
had established the touching and beautiful ceremony
ot Decoration Day. The effect of this ceremony
with its processions and music, old veterans in their
gray uniforms, here and there a surviving color-
bearer who had secretly stripped the flag from its
staff on surrendering, and had brought it forth
marching proudly as it waved over him again on
his way to the graves of his comrades — all this was
to endear the memory of the Confederacy and to
lift Davis in his old age, to a throne as it were, of
affection and reverence. For had he not been their
intrepid never-quaifing standard-bearer, the exponent
and representative of ideas for which he and thej'^
had staked all? The result was, that a longing to
see him grew, invitations weighted with tenderness
poured in thenceforth to attend the dedications of
monuments and celebrations of one kind and another.
On one of these occasions in addressing delegates of
the Southern Historical Society at New Orleans, he
said: "As for me, I speak only for myself, our Cause
was so just, so sacred, that had I known aU that has
come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted

264 JEFFERSON DAVIS
on me, aU that my country was to suffer, I would do
it again. If I be asked, as is possible. Why do you
wish to perpetuate these bitter memories [that is
the historic records of the war], I say in no spirit
of vengeance, with no desire for vainglory, with no
wish for sectional exultation, but that the posterity
of men such as I have described may rise equal to
their parents, higher if possible, and that the South
may exhibit for all time to come the noble qualities
which her sons have hitherto manifested."
In that same address he said, speaking of the
Southern troops: "Throughout the war, I never
went into an army without finding their camp
engaged in prayer." Our men on the picket fine at
Petersburg heard their hymns and prayers more
than once during the winter of '64-'65.
About this time a teacher in a Southern college
for girls wrote Davis for a sentiment at an exercise,
and he sent her the following:
"For my fellow-countrywomen:
Be ye slow to anger, swift to forgive, and hold
fast that charity that raises the lowly with the self-
respect that stoops not to the haughty."
About this time too. General Grant was dying at
Mt. McGregor, and the Boston Globe asked Davis
to prepare a criticism on Grant's career. He replied
declining for the following reasons:
"First, General Grant is dying.
Second, Though he invaded our Country, it was

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 265
with an open hand, and, so far as I know, he abetted
neither arson, nor pillage, and has since the war,
I believe, shown no malignity to Confederates either
of the military or civil service.
Therefore instead of seeking to disturb the quiet
of his closing hours, I would, if it were in my power,
contribute to the peace of his mind and the comfort
of his body. Jefferson Davis."
It will be remembered that Buckner and Joseph
E. Johnston of the Confederate army were paU-
bearers at Grant's funeral, a tribute to his character
beyond measure, and a glorious example also of the
natural magnanimity of our country — North and
South. As the fires of the war burned down there was
in the broad-minded of the North a desire to see and
to know Mr. Davis. We wiU give but two of the
many recorded interviews with him; and first that
of Massachusetts' greatest all-round man of his
day, my friend, Charles Francis Adams, who in
his autobiography says:
"Recurring to Fessenden and what he told me
of my grandfather, Jefferson Davis was on that
topic the most outspoken of all I met. [He is relating
incidents of a visit to Washington before the war.]
I do not, indeed, with the exception of Joshua R.
Giddings, remember any public man of that epoch

266 JEFFERSON DAVIS
who seemed to feel such a genuine sense of apprecia
tion for J. Q. Adams as Jefferson Davis, and he
repeatedly put himself on record on the subject.
Davis, by the way, impressed me that winter more
agreeably than any Southem man I met. I did not
see him again until in May, 1885, I called on him
at his home at Beauvoir, near New Orleans; but
to me he was a distinctly attractive as well as
interesting personality. Of medium height and
spare figure, he had an essentially Southern face,
but he was very much of a gentleman in his address
— courteous, unpretending and yet quietly dignified.
A man in no way aggressive, yet not to be trifled
with. I instinctively liked him; and regret extremely
that it was not my good fortune, then or later, to
see more of him."
McClure in his "Recollections of Half a Century"
on a visit at Beauvoir says that Mr. Davis in reply
to a question as to terms he might have offered or
received to end the conflict, said: "He could not of
his own motion have made any proposition that
did not involve the perpetuity of the Confederacy."
He concisely stated the difference between the
Federal and the Confederate Governments; that
the President of the former was practically a sov
ereign, while the President of the Confederacy
represented a nation founded on individual States
and, as such, he could not make a peace that denied
their sovereignty.

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 267
"I shall never forget," says McClure, a life-long
Republican, "the earnest and pathetic conclusion
of his remarks about Lincoln, when he said sub-
stantiaUy 'Next to the faUure of the Confederacy,
the darkest day the South has seen was the day of
Lincoln's assassination'."
Such then, was the impression Davis' personafity
— that has been my chief aim to set forth, — made
on two keen, manly observers who had fought
against him.
And now, as I wish to hold the reader's respect
and that I may not be open to the charge of delib
erately withholding from him adverse opinions of
Mr. Davis, let me give the severest estimate, con
sidering its source, that was ever made of him.
It is to be found in a letter from John A. CampbeU,
Confederate assistant secretary of war, written from
Fort Pulaski while undergoing arrest for compficity
in the assassination of Lincoln, to Ex- Judge B. R.
Curtis of Boston with whom, before the war he had
served on the bench of the United States Supreme
Court. They had been feUow-democrats, and the
main and declared purpose of the letter, was to
enfist Curtis' influence with Andrew Johnson,
Lincoln's successor to the Presidency, for his release
on parole and a speedy trial.
After a r^sumd of his efforts to prevent secession
and the groimds in justification for giving it his
support, namely, "It appeared to be a war upon

268 JEFFERSON DAVIS
the pofitical and government within the Confederate
states," he went on to say:
"But he [Davis] was unfitted to manage a revol
ution or to conduct an administration. Slow, pro
crastinating, obstructive, filled with petty scruples
and doubts, and wanting in clear, strong, intrepid
judgment, a vigorous resolution and a generous
and self-sacrificing nature, he became in the closing
part of the war, an incubus and mischief."
Campbell had been, as stated in his letter, an
original and ardent opponent of secession: convinced
of the North's overpowering numbers and resources
in case of war. To whatsoever degree the South's,
early victories may have sapped this conviction,
on the faU of Vicksburg and the defeat of Lee at
Gettysburg it regained full vigor and soon blew
out hope's candles of ultimate success. Born with
deficacy of feeling, long, keen foresight and haunted
by this foreboding prepossession, it is easy to
realize his state of mind as the war -drew on
and he came in fuU view of inevitable and utter
defeat. To him worn, grieved and hopeless, every hour
the Confederacy lived thereafter was only a painful
prolongation of mental agony. "In the light of
the inevitable, why in Heaven's name not ask for
terms?" that, that we befieve was the appeal of
his troubled, judicial mind. In times of revolution
and faced with a national crisis there is no mind so

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 269
worried and we think so helpless as the fully devel
oped judicial mind, for it is born wingless.
One can easily see, then, how Davis' defiant,
unconquerable will must have annoyed and provoked
Mr. Campbell as day after day he continued the
struggle. Truly, to a mind in the state of Judge
Campbell's, Davis must have been "an incubus and
mischief." But refined, able, gifted and high-minded as
Mr. Campbell was, and inevitable as defeat was,
could the South with honor and self-respect have
laid down its arms and acknowledged defeat? Could
Lee's old army of Northern Virginia have broken
away, gone off home leaving him and Davis standing
alone? Oh no, no! For the rearing of that arch of
triumph that spans North and South, its abutments
on Gettysburg and Appomattox, it was better, far
better, we think, that Lee and his army should
stand by Davis, march on to Appomattox and there
lay down their arms in honorable surrender, cheering
Lee when he returned from accepting Grant's gen
erous terms, and he with tears in his eyes saying
he had done the best he coiUd for them. Yes, he
and Davis had done the best they could for the men
who had carried the colors of the Confederacy on
so many fields. That is the reason why Sherman's
army, the Army of the Potomac and the country at
large is proud of the victory won, a victory won by
gallant men over gallant men, and above all, the

270 JEFFERSON DAVIS
fruits of that victory, that triumphant arch of good
wUl, aheady spoken of, spanning North and South.
History has no page, so far as I am aware, that
equals the achievement embodied in that arch by
any nation in the world, namely, the people of the
sections after four years of bitter war, overmatching
their bravery by becoming friends once more before
old age had whitened the hair of the men who wore
the blue and the gray.
Next to Grant I befieve that Davis by the friend
liness of his bearing and candor in intercourse with
Northern men of influence and character, by urging
his people on all occasions to obey the laws, and
above aU by refraining in addressing associations.
of veterans from saying anything to re-kindle the
fagots of animosities, contributed more than any
one man to the accompfishment of that great national
achievement.

CHAPTER XXIV
And now with this background of cadet, army,
plantation. Cabinet and Congressional fife, of leader
ship of the Confederacy, of defeat, aU suffused in
his old age with the light of a brave integrity and
good feeling for friend and foe, he waited the sunset
of this mortal fife.
About this time, and when old age is prone to
dwell on the past, he wrote the following letter to
one of his former slaves: "Both Mr. and Mrs. Davis
are thankful to their old friend Milo Cooper for the
lemons and for his congratulations. Mr. Davis
passed his eightieth birthday in good health and
spirits for one of his age, and is cheered by the kind
spirit evinced by so many friends.
Your friends,
Jefferson and Mrs. Davis."
When Cooper heard a few months later that
Mr. Davis was dangerously ill, he set out on foot
from Florida for New Orleans to be by the bedside
of his old master.
By the way, the explanation for the friendship
of every colored man who had ever known Davis
may be found in the foUowing incident related by
the President of MiUsap CoUege, Mississippi. "I got
271

272 JEFFERSON DAVIS
a lesson in the treatment of negroes when I was
returning South from Harvard. I stopped in
Washington and called on Jefferson Davis, then
United States Senator. We walked down Pennsyl
vania Avenue. Many negroes bowed to Mr. Davis
and he returned the bow. He was a very polite man.
I finally said to him that I thought he must have a
great many friends among the negroes. He repfied:
"I cannot allow any negro to outdo 'me in courtesy."
But indeed there must have been something back
of this formal courtesy which the negroes' deeply
sympathetic natures had discovered, felt sure of,
and appreciated, and to which their spontaneous
testimonials bear witness on his death that came
about in this way.
During a visit to his plantation at Brierfield in
the last of November, 1889, he was exposed to a
cold rain that brought on an acute attack of bron
chitis. He started at once for home, but on arrival
at New Orleans was so ill he was taken from the
steamboat in an ambulance to the home of Mr.
Justice C. E. Fenner.
In the afternoon of December 6 he was stricken
with a congestive chill and began to sink rapidly.
On Mrs. Davis urging him to take some medicine
that his devoted surgeon Dr. Chaille, had prescribed,
with that ever courtesy and gentleness that marked
his speech he whispered, "Pray excuse me? I cannot
take it," and the eyes that had met his feUow man

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 273
with respect and courage closed, and about midnight
he died.
Meanwhile, a gray mist had drifted in from the
Gulf, which from the veranda at Beauvoir he had
gazed on so often, enjoying its murmur, and in deep
and heavy drops from live oaks and late-blooming
roses it dripped, dripped through the remaining
night hours like tears.
Upon the announcement of his death, hands all
over the South, associations of veterans, orphans in
asylums, school children, students in coUeges, began
to weave chaplets for his bier; among them were
those of his surviving slaves at Brierfield; and we
think that not a wreath that was woven or eulogy
delivered bore such testimony to the kind of man
he was; he had been their friend, he had shared the
joys and the griefs of their youth; and as the memories
and the friendships of those bygone days came
back, their affection wove them into the wreath.
The letter they wrote has aheady been given, but
we think it wiU bear repeating: "We, the old servants
and tenants of our beloved master, Honorable
Jefferson Davis, have cause to mingle our tears
over his death, who was always so kind and thought
ful of our peace and happiness. We extend to you
our humble sympathy. Respectfully, your old
tenants and servants." Signed by a dozen or more.
Thornton Montgomery, then a man of means,
a son of Joseph E. Davis' body servant, Ben Mont-

274 JEFFERSON DAVIS
gomery, wrote to Mrs. Davis the day after her
husband's death, as follows, from North Dakota,
addressing her in the old plantation style :
"Miss Varina: I have watched with deep interest
and solicitude, the iUness of Mr. Davis at Brierfield,
his trip down on the steamer Leathers, and your
meeting and returning with him to the residence
of Dr. Payne in New Orleans; and I had hoped that
with his great will power to sustain him, he would
recover. But, alas for human endeavor! an over
ruling Providence has willed it otherwise. I appre
ciate your great loss, and my heart goes out to you
in this hour of your deepest affliction.
Would that I could help you bear the burden
that is yours today. Since I am powerless to do so,
I beg you to accept our tenderest sympathy.
Your very obedient servant, Thornton."
James H. Jones sent the following despatch to
the mayor of New Orleans: "Raleigh, North Carofina
As the old body servant of the late Jefferson Davis,
my great desire was to be the driver of the remains
of my old master to their last resting place. Return
ing too late to join the State Delegation from this
city, I am deprived of the opportunity of showing
my lasting appreciation of my best friend.
James H. Jones."

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 275
After funeral services in a church — nine governors
of Southern States were present, the battle flag of
the First Mississippi Rifles that Davis commanded
in the Mexican War was on the right of the altar —
conducted by clergymen of various denominations.
Father Hubard, S. J., making the closing prayer,
the body clothed in Confederate gray, was taken
to the City Hall and there lay in state under the
guard, day and night, of veteran soldiers. On the
coffin was a sUk Confederate flag and the sabre he
had worn in Mexico. It was estimated that over
fifty thousand people passed through the hall, the
eyes of many swimming in tears.
In the afternoon the coffin, surmounted by a
catafalque, its dome festooned with blended State
flags, was placed on a caisson and drawn by six
black horses, set out for Metarie graveyard, escorted
by veterans of the famous Washington ArtUlery of
New Orleans and foUowed by a long procession.
BeUs began to toll and minute guns to fire. At the
grave a choir sang "I heard a voice from Heaven;"
then, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust"; and the
sun was going down as the service ended.
On the day of his funeral aU over the South
minute guns were fired and beUs were toUed. Special
services were held in Lexington, Virginia, where Lee
and StonewaU Jackson lay buried, and in St. Paul's,
Richmond, where Davis had worshipped. AU the
leading newspapers of the North devoted editorial.

276 JEFFERSON DAVIS
obituary columns and many, like the Springfield
Republican and the New York Sun, paid feefing and
high tributes.
In 1893, the body was taken to Richmond, back
to the Capitol of the Confederacy; the train bearing
it stopped on its way at his home at Beauvoir, where
the little children of the neighborhood had covered
the railroad track and the platform at the station
with white flowers. On the train's arrival at Mont
gomery, the body was taken to the Capitol escorted
by veterans, the streets thronged and bedecked.
Over the right hand of the entrance to the Capitol
was "Monterey"; over the left, "Buena Vista,"
and in an arch between them, in evergreen, was
"He suffered for us."
As the train proceeded on its way to Richmond
masses of people met it at every station, children
offering magnolia and yellow jessamine to the
guards. Through the night as the train approached
lonely stations in the primeval woods, bonfires
greeted it, lit by dwellers of the wilderness, some of
whom had ridden over fifty nailes to pay their
respects. At DanviUe a vast crowd had gathered in the
depot and as the train came to a stop, they sang
"Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to Thee." On
its arrival in Richmond, the coffin was taken to
the Capitol and placed facing Houdin's statue of
Washington; thence by a mighty procession, to

HIS LIFE AND PERSONALITY 277
where it lies in Hollywood on the banks of the James.
Reader, here we must part. I have enjoyed your
company; I have tried to be fair with you, for I
wanted you to be fair with him; here is my hand,
and farewell.

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