"The crocodile tears which have been shed over ruined creditors are on a par with the lawless denunciations which have been heaped upon that State."

To this the Times replied:—

"Taking its principles and its tone together, it is a doctrine which has never been paralleled. Let it circulate throughout Europe, that a member of the United States Senate in 1849 has openly proclaimed that at a recent period the Governor and Legislative assemblies of his own State deliberately issued fraudulent bonds for five million dollars to sustain the credit of a rickety bank, that the bonds in question having been hypothecated abroad to innocent holders, such holders have not only no claim against the community by whose Executive and Representatives this act was committed, but that they are to be taunted for appealing to the verdict of the civilized world, rather than to the judgment of the legal officers of the State by whose functionaries they have been robbed, and that the ruin of toil-worn men, of women and of children, and the crocodile tears which that ruin has occasioned, is a subject of jest on the part of those by whom it has been accomplished, and then let it be asked if any foreigner ever penned a libel on the American character equal to that against the people of Mississippi by their own Senator."[105]

Mr. Davis published a rejoinder, dated at Briarfield, Miss., August 29, 1849, addressed to the editor of the Mississippian. "It is a foreigner's slander," said he, "against the government, the judiciary, and the people of the Mississippi. It is an attack upon our republican government, the hypocritical cant of stock-jobbers and pensioned presses,—by the hired advocates of the innocent stock dealers of London change. It is a calumnious imputation."

The State of Mississippi had obtained the money in London on the solemn pledge of the faith of the State, and loaned it to the citizens; but the State had broken its pledge, repudiated the debt, and Mr. Jeff Davis eulogized the proceeding! The courts of the State decreed in 1842 that the debt was valid, and the decision was reaffirmed in 1853. Jeff Davis was then Secretary of War, and through his efforts and influence the State continued to repudiate the claims of the British bondholders. In 1863 Mississippi was indebted to Englishmen not only for the principal, $5,000,000, but for twenty-five years of unpaid interest; yet, notwithstanding this, the Times, eating its words of other days, came before the English people with a certificate of character for the repudiator, also publishing one from Slidell. "I am inclined to think," wrote Slidell, "that the people in London confound Mr. Reuben Davis, whom I have always understood to have taken the lead on the question of repudiation, with President Jefferson Davis. I am not aware that the latter was ever identified with the question."

The Times, commenting upon Slidell's letter, said:—

"It is satisfactory to find that the friends of the President of the Confederate States are anxious to free him from the charge of having been an advocate of the repudiation which has now been practised for exactly a quarter of a century by the State of Mississippi....

"Should it turn out that there has been a mistake, the announcement will be hailed with warm gratification,—not from any idle feeling of partisanship for the South, on the one hand, or the merely sordid consideration of the prospects of the bondholders on the other, but because there can be no question, whether his course be judged by Northerners or Southerners, that in his conduct of the existing war Mr. Jefferson Davis has displayed such qualities as to give the world an interest in wishing that the dishonorable classes who are to be found in every nation should not, either now or in the future, be able to point to him as an instance of the possibility of a heartless disregard of pecuniary rights being compatible with real greatness of character. It is to be apprehended, however, that the solution will not come in the manner contemplated. Nevertheless, in another way it is not out of reach, and the best probability is that the unhappy blot upon Mr. Davis's reputation was caused by the influence of an unscrupulous community upon a then young and aspiring politician, deriving his views, perhaps, from the sophistical perversions of fraudulent lawyers, and that he has since discovered his mistake, and learnt to feel and acknowledge that if he had again to act in the matter, it would be in a very different spirit."[106]

It was necessary, for the success of the loan, to show that the South was sure of obtaining its independence, and while the editor of the city article was whitewashing Jeff Davis, the editor in chief was assuring the public that the Union was forever broken up.

Thus wrote Mr. Delaine, the editor in chief, on the 19th:—