The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

If other testimony were wanting, I would ask a suspension of judgment until those facts, better known to Southern men, transpire. The intercourse about to be reëstablished between the sections will cumulate the proof. It will also bring to the light many facts showing that, while President Buchanan was working for the Peace Conference, while Virginia had been gained to our side with her ablest men, there were even then in the Cabinet those who not only encouraged revolt, but foiled by letter and speech the efforts of the Unionists at Washington and Richmond. These letters and acts are referred to in the recent speech of General Blair. They will be, and should be brought into the sunshine, if only to vindicate the true Union men of that dark hour, and to condemn those who have since made so much pretension with so much zealotry, coupled with unexampled cruelty and tyranny.

In the light of subsequent events that policy was developed. It was the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion; or, as Senator Douglas expressed it, “a disruption of the Union, believing it would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrections, and finally the utter extermination of slavery in all the Southern States.”

While these fruitless efforts at compromise were in progress at Washington, public sentiment in the South, especially in the Cotton States, was rapidly reaching a point of exasperation, which refused to brook longer delay in the vain hope of justice from the exultant and unyielding North. In several of the States, so excited was popular feeling, that within a few weeks what was originally merely a purpose of resistance, intensified into a determination of absolute national independence and permanent separation. South Carolina, on the 20th December, 1860, adopted her ordinance of secession, and thus bravely gave the example, which other States speedily followed.

The work of secession, so thoroughly started by the opening of the new year, was not accomplished without a severe struggle in several of the Cotton States, in which contest, those who advocated unconditional separation were greatly assisted by the defiant position of the Republican party. The more sagacious Southern leaders foresaw the inevitable failure of the movement of separation, unless it should be sustained by an extensive coöperation among the Southern States. To secure the united action of the Cotton States, at least, was essential to give the movement strength and dignity. Mr. Davis, who advocated secession only in the event of the failure to obtain reasonable guarantees, and had never proposed to abandon the Union without an effort to save it, was a most earnest and influential advocate of the policy of coöperation. Of great historical importance is the fact, that the counsels of himself and those who acted with him, were adopted in preference to a more hasty policy, which, however ample the provocation to immediate action, would have deprived the South of the potent justification of having forborne until “endurance ceased to be a virtue.”

In a letter written a few days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, he thus expressed his views:

Warren County, Miss., Nov. 10, 1860.

Hon. R. B. Rhett, Jr.—Dear Sir: I had the honor to receive, last night, yours of the 27th ult., and hasten to reply to the inquiries propounded. Reports of the election leave little doubt that the event you anticipated has occurred, that electors have been chosen, securing the election of Lincoln, and I will answer on that supposition.

My home is so isolated that I have had no intercourse with those who might have aided me in forming an opinion as to the effect produced on the mind of our people by the result of the recent election, and the impressions which I communicate are founded upon antecedent expressions.

1. I doubt not that the Governor of Mississippi has convoked the Legislature to assemble within the present month, to decide upon the course which the State should adopt in the present emergency. Whether the Legislature will direct the call of a convention of the State, or appoint delegates to a convention of such Southern States as may be willing to consult together for the adoption of a Southern plan of action, is doubtful.

2. If a convention of the State were assembled, the proposition to secede from the Union, independently of support from neighboring States, would probably fail.