What we have just described occurred in Georgia—a State in which of all during the brothers’ war the most formidable opposition to his administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown—the most influential of all the Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I think I was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time. While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley’s integrity and statesmanship, we each said we were in haste to honor with our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis’s birth.
Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr. Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy. And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever given a dead husband—far nobler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells:
“Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed weeping by the bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him who had given them his life’s service. The noble army of the West and that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the Washington Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to his bier. The eloquent Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to weeping thousands, and the strains of ‘Rock of Ages,’ once more bore up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took it again to himself.”
These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief. Nobody can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and Dixon’s line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black.
In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing.
And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park. On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a monument itself, will long outlast the stone one.
Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who “can above himself erect himself” estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers—how dear are any of these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, child. For almost a generation all these tokens were given the ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering of regard from that brotherhood—to be made to feel that throughout the whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love—the true man would prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been given only by happy ones to their victors—to such as Washington, Lincoln, Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis’s historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown.
The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by the brothers’ war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of fame. There he will be the world’s contemplation, showing something like Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and glory.