"But until that time arrive it is the judgment of the American people there shall be no compromise; that ruin to ourselves or ruin to the southern rebels are the only alternatives. It is only by resolutions of this kind that nations can rise above great dangers and overcome them in crises like this. It was only by turning France into a camp, resolved that Europe might exterminate but should not subjugate her, that France is the leading empire of Europe to-day. It is by such a resolve that the American people, coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword and stake the national existence on the integrity of the Republic, are now anything but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the people of the United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated this generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their children as of no account, and vowing before high Heaven that there should be no end to this conflict but ruin absolute or absolute triumph, that we now are what we are; that the banner of the Republic, still pointing onward, floats proudly in the face of the enemy; that vast regions are reduced to obedience to the laws, and that a great host in armed array now presses with steady step into the dark regions of the rebellion. It is only by the earnest and abiding resolution of the people that, whatever shall be our fate, it shall be grand as the American nation, worthy of that Republic which first trod the path of empire and made no peace but under the banners of victory, that the American people will survive in history. And that will save us. We shall succeed, and not fail. I have an abiding confidence in the firmness, the patience, the endurance of the American people; and, having vowed to stand in history on the great resolve to accept of nothing but victory or ruin, victory is ours. And if with such heroic resolve we fall, we fall with honor, and transmit the name of liberty, committed to our keeping, untarnished, to go down to future generations. The historian of our decline and fall, contemplating the ruins of the last great Republic, and drawing from its fate lessons of wisdom on the waywardness of men, shall drop a tear as he records with sorrow the vain heroism of that people who dedicated and sacrificed themselves to the cause of freedom, and by their example will keep alive her worship in the hearts of men till happier generations shall learn to walk in her paths. Yes, sir, if we must fall, let our last hours be stained by no weakness. If we must fall, let us stand amid the crash of the falling Republic and be buried in its ruins, so that history may take note that men lived in the middle of the nineteenth century worthy of a better fate, but chastised by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the world, 'I nursed and brought up children and they have rebelled against me.'"
Mr. Davis's most striking characteristics were his devotion to principle and his indomitable courage. There never was a moment when he could be truthfully charged with trimming or insincerity. His views were always clearly avowed and fearlessly maintained. He hated slavery, and he did not attempt to conceal it. He remembered the lessons of his youth, and his heart rebelled against the injustice of the system. His antipathy was deeply grounded in his convictions, and he could not be dissuaded, nor frightened, nor driven from expressing it.
He was not a great captain, nor a mighty ruler; he was only one of the people, but, nevertheless, a hero. Born under the flag of a nation which claimed for its cardinal principle of government, that all men are created free, yet held in abject slavery four millions of human beings; which erected altars to the living God, yet denied to creatures, formed in the image of God and charged with the custody of immortal souls, the common rights of humanity; he declared that the hateful inconsistency should cease to defile the prayers of Christians and stultify the advocates of freedom. No dreamer was he, no mere theorist, but a worker, and a strong one, who did well the work committed to him. He entered upon his self-imposed task when surrounded by slaves and slave-owners. He stood face to face with the iniquitous superstition, and to their teeth defied its worshipers. To make proselytes he had to conquer prejudices, correct traditions, elevate duty above interest, and induce men who had been the propagandists of slavery to become its destroyers. Think you his work was easy? Count the long years of his unequal strife; gather from the winds, which scattered them, the curses of his foes; suffer under all the annoyances and insults which malice and falsehood can invent, and you will then understand how much of heart and hope, of courage and self-relying zeal, were required to make him what he was, and to qualify him to do what he did. And what did he? When the rough hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which enveloped the rebellion, and it became evident that slavery had struck at the life of the Republic, unmindful of consequences to himself, he, among the first, arraigned the real traitor and demanded the penalty of death. The denunciations that fell upon him like a cloud wrapped him in a mantle of honor, and more truthfully than the great Roman orator he could have exclaimed, "Ego hoc animo semperfui, ut invidiam virtute partam, gloriam non invidiam putarem."
This man, so stern and inflexible in the execution of a purpose, so rigorous in his demands of other men in behalf of a principle, so indifferent to preferment and all base objects of pursuit, had a monitor to whom he always gave an open ear and a prompt assent. It was no demon like that which attended Socrates, no witch like that invoked by Saul, no fiend like that to which Faust resigned himself. A vision of light and life and beauty flitted ever palpably before him, and wooed him to the perpetual service of the good and true. The memory of a pious and beloved mother permeated his whole moral being, and kept warm within him the tenderest affection. Hear how he wrote of her:
"My mother was a lady of graceful and simple manners, fair complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, with a rich and exquisite voice, that still thrills my memory with the echo of its vanished music. She was highly educated for her day, when Annapolis was the focus of intellect and fashion for Maryland, and its fruits shone through her conversation, and colored and completed her natural eloquence, which my father used to say would have made her an orator, if it had not been thrown away on a woman. She was the incarnation of all that is Christian in life and hope, in charity and thought, ready for every good work, herself the example of all she taught."
It was the force of her precept and example that formed the man, and supplied him with his shield and buckler. His private life was spotless. His habits were regular and abstemious, and his practice in close conformity with the Episcopal church, of which he was a member. He invariably attended divine service on Sunday, and confined himself for the remainder of the day to a course of religious reading. If from his father he drew a courage and a fierce determination before which his enemies fled in confusion, from his mother he inherited those milder qualities that won for him friends as true and devoted as man ever possessed. Some have said he was hard and dictatorial. They had seen him only when a high resolve had fired his breast, and when the gleam of battle had lighted his countenance. His friends saw deeper, and knew that beneath the exterior he assumed in his struggles with the world there beat a heart as pure and unsullied, as confiding and as gentle, as ever sanctified the domestic circle, or made loved ones happy. His heart reminded me of a spring among the hills of the Susquehanna, to which I often resorted in my youth; around a part of it we boys had built a stone wall to protect it from outrage, while on the side next home we left open a path, easily traveled by familiar feet, and leading straight to the sweet and perennial waters within.
He lived to hear the salvos that announced, after more than two centuries of bondage, the redemption of his native State. He lived to vote for that grand act of enfranchisement that wiped from the escutcheon of the nation the leprous stain of slavery, and to know that the Constitution of the United States no longer recognized and protected property in man. He lived to witness the triumph of his country in its desperate struggle with treason, and to behold all its enemies, either wanderers, like Cain, over the earth, or suppliants for mercy at her feet. He lived to catch the first glimpse of the coming glory of that new era of progress that matchless valor had won through the blood and carnage of a thousand battle-fields. He lived, through all the storm of war, to see, at last, America rejuvenated, rescued from the grasp of despotism, and rise victorious, with her garments purified and her brow radiant with the unsullied light of liberty. He lived to greet the return of "meek-eyed peace," and then he gently laid his head upon her bosom, and breathed out there his noble spirit.
The sword may rust in its scabbard, and so let it; but free men, with free thought and free speech, will wage unceasing war until truth shall be enthroned and sit empress of the world. Would to God that he had been spared to complete a life of three score and ten years, for the sake of his country and posterity. When I think of the good he would have accomplished had he survived for twenty years, I can say, in the language of Fisher Ames, "My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I speak, and I could pour it out like water."
At the portals of his tomb we may bid farewell to the faithful Christian, in the full assurance that a blessed life awaits him beyond the grave. Serenely and trustfully he has passed from our sight and gone down into the dark waters.
"So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."