The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

In marked contrast with these exhibitions were the evidences of coming despotism at the North. The Federal judiciary was rapidly declining from its exalted purity, before the exactions of military power; the Federal Congress was charged by the press with open and notorious corruption, and was aiding Mr. Lincoln in usurpations which startled the despotisms of Europe, and have since led to the annihilation of the republican character of the Government.

Conspicuous, too, was the desire of Mr. Davis to conduct the war upon a civilized and Christian basis. His forbearance, his moderation, and stern refusal to resort to retaliation, under circumstances such as would have justified its exercise in response to the cruelties and outrages of the enemy, amazed the European spectator, and at times dissatisfied his own countrymen. “Retaliation is not justice,” was his habitual reply to urgent demands, and again and again did he decline to “shed one drop of blood except on the field of battle.” Never forgetting the dignity of the contest, he, up to the last moment of his authority, redeemed the pledge which he had made in the first weeks of the war: “to smite the smiter with manly arms, as did our fathers before us.”

There have been few spectacles presented to the admiring gaze of mankind, more worthily depicted than that union of capacities and virtues in Jefferson Davis, which so eminently qualified him, in the opinion of foreigners, for the position he held. An English writer has eloquently sketched him as “one of the world’s foremost men, admired as a statesman, respected as an earnest Christian, the Washington of another generation of the same race. A resolute statesman, calm, dignified, swaying with commanding intellect the able men that surrounded him; eloquent as a speaker, and as a writer giving state papers to the world which are among the finest compositions in our time; of warm domestic affections in his inner life, and strong religious convictions; held up by vigor of the spirit that nerved an exhausted and feeble frame—such was the chosen constitutional ruler of one-fourth of the American people.”

Colonel Freemantle, a distinguished English officer, whose faithful and impartial narrative of his extended observations of the American war, commended him to the esteem of both parties, thus concludes an account of an interview with President Davis, in the spring of 1863:

“During my travels many people have remarked to me that Jefferson Davis seems, in a peculiar manner, adapted to his office. His military education at West Point rendered him intimately acquainted with the higher officers of the army; and his post of Secretary of War, under the old Government, brought officers of all ranks under his immediate personal knowledge and supervision. No man could have formed a more accurate estimate of their respective merits. This is one of the reasons which gave the Confederates such an immense start in the way of generals; for, having formed his opinion with regard to appointing an officer, Mr. Davis is always most determined to carry out his intention in spite of every obstacle. His services in the Mexican war gave him the prestige of a brave man and a good soldier. His services as a statesman pointed him out as the only man who, by his unflinching determination and administrative talent, was able to control the popular will. People speak of any misfortune happening to him as an irreparable evil too dreadful to contemplate.”

Mr. Gladstone, a member of the British cabinet, the eminent leader of a party in English politics, and a sympathizer with the objects of the war as waged by the North, avowed his enthusiastic appreciation of the lustre reflected upon the new Government, by its able administration, in the assertion that “Mr. Jefferson Davis had created a nation.”

But the admiration of Europe was to prove a mere sentiment, unaccompanied by any practical demonstration of sympathy. In view of the course so persistently adhered to by the great powers of Europe, it is curious to note the purely sentimental and personal character of their professed sympathy for the South. The earliest expression of foreign opinion indicated a reluctant recognition of the valor and devotion of a people, from whom they had not expected the exhibition of such qualities. When, by the protraction of the struggle, the brilliant feats of arms executed by the Southern armies, the indomitable resolution of the South, and its evident purpose to encounter every possible sacrifice for sake of independence, there was no longer ground for misapprehension, they still disregarded all the precedents and principles which had governed their course respecting new nationalities.

Applauding the valor of the Southern soldiery, the heroism, endurance, and self-denial of a people whom they repeatedly declared to have already established their invincibility; rapturous in their panegyrics upon the genius, zeal, and Christian virtues of the Confederate leaders; they never interposed their boasted potentiality in behalf of justice, right, and humanity. English writers were eloquent in acknowledgment of the additional distinction conferred upon Anglo-Saxon statesmanship and literature by Davis; diligent in tracing the honorable English lineage of Lee, and establishing the consanguinity of Jackson; but English statesmen persistently disregarded those elevated considerations of humanity and philanthropy, which they have so much vaunted as prompting their intercourse with nations. Confessing a new enlightenment from the expositions of Mr. Davis, and from diligent inquiry into the nature of the Federal Government, Europe soon avowed its convictions in favor of the legal and constitutional right of secession asserted by the South. It declared that it but awaited the exhibition of that earnestness of purpose, and that capacity for resistance, which should establish the “force and consistency” which are the requisite conditions of recognized nationality.

The London Times, while the army of McClellan was still investing Richmond, used language which the North and the South accepted as significant and prophetic. Said the Times:

“It can not be doubted that we are approaching a time when a more important question even than that of an offer of mediation may have to be considered by England and France. The Southern Confederacy has constituted itself a nation for nearly a year and a half. During that time the attachment of the people to the now Government has been indubitably shown; immense armies have been raised; the greatest sacrifices have been endured; the persistence of the South in the war, through a long series of battles—some victories, some defeats—has shown the ‘force and consistency’ which are looked upon as tests of nationality. Wherever the Government is unmolested, the laws are administered regularly as in time of peace; and wherever the Federals have penetrated, they are received with an animosity which they resent, as at New Orleans, by a military rule of intolerable brutality. The vision of a Union party in the South has been dispelled, as the Northerners themselves are compelled, with bitterness and mortification, to admit.