The Life of Jefferson Davis

The first resolution affirms the sovereignty of the States and their delegation of authority to the Federal Government, to secure each State against domestic no less than foreign dangers. This resolution was designed with special reference to the recent outrages of John Brown and his associate conspirators, several of whom had expiated their crimes upon the gallows, at the hands of the authorities of Virginia.

Resolution second affirms the recognition of slavery as property by the Constitution, and that all efforts to injure it by citizens of non-slaveholding States are violations of faith.

Third insists upon the absolute equality of the States.

The fourth resolution of the series, which embodied the material point of difference between Mr. Douglas and the majority of Democratic Senators, was modified, as stated by Mr. Davis, “after conference with friends,” and finally made to read thus:

“Resolved, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition remains.”

Fifth declares it the duty of Congress to supply any needed protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, provided the executive and judicial authority has not the adequate means.

The sixth resolution was an emphatic repudiation of what Mr. Douglas, by an ingenious perversion of terms, and a bold array of sophisms, was pleased to designate “popular sovereignty” – reading thus:

“Resolved, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within their jurisdiction; and ‘they shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.’”

The seventh and last of the series affirmed the validity and sanctity of the Fugitive Slave Law, and denounced all acts, whether of individuals or of State Legislatures, to defeat its action.

The struggle upon these resolutions lasted more than three months, the Senate not reaching a vote upon the first of the series until May 24, 1860. They constituted substantially the platform presented by the South at the Charleston Democratic Convention, in April, and upon which, after the withdrawal of the Southern delegations, the Presidential ticket of Breckinridge and Lane was nominated, and supported in the ensuing canvass, receiving the electoral votes of eleven States of the South.

It was alleged against these resolutions, and the general principle of protection to Southern property in the Territories, which their advocates demanded should be asserted in the Democratic creed, that they involved a new issue, raised for factious purposes, and were not sanctioned by any previous action of the party. This, even if it had been true, which assuredly it was not, constituted no sufficient reason for denying a plain constitutional right.

But, however sustained might have been this charge of inconsistency against other Southern leaders, it had no application to Davis. Indeed, Douglas unequivocally admitted that the position assumed by Davis in 1860 was precisely that to which he had held for twenty years previous. While the Oregon Bill was pending in the Senate, on the 23d of June, 1848, Mr. Davis offered this amendment:

“Provided, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed as to authorize the prohibition of domestic slavery in said Territory whilst it remains in the condition of a Territory of the United States.”

Eleven years afterwards, in his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, July 5, 1859, he said:

“But if the rules of proceeding remain unchanged, then all the remedies of the civil law would be available for the protection of property in slaves; or if the language of the organic act, by specifying chancery and common-law jurisdiction, denies to us the more ample remedies of the civil law, then those known to the common law are certainly in force; and these, I have been assured by the highest authority, will be found sufficient. If this be so, then we are content; if it should prove otherwise, then we but ask what justice can not deny – the legislation needful to enable the General Government to perform its legitimate functions; and, in the meantime, we deny the power of Congress to abridge or to destroy our constitutional rights, or of the Territorial Legislature to obstruct the remedies known to the common law of the United States.”

In 1848 he advocated General Cass’ election in spite of the Nicholson letter, and not because he either approved or failed to detect the dangerous heresies which it contained. As a choice of evils, he preferred Cass, even upon the Nicholson letter, to General Taylor, his father-in-law, both because Cass was the choice of his own party, and he distrusted the influences which he foresaw would govern the administration of Taylor.

The attention of Mr. Davis was far from being confined to the slavery question and the issues which grew out of it during the important period which we have sketched. His extensive acquaintance with the practical labors of legislation, and his uniformly thorough information upon all questions of domestic economy, foreign affairs, the finances, and the army, were amply exemplified, to the great benefit of the country.

During the debate in the Thirty-fifth Congress, on the bill proposing the issue of $20,000,000 of Treasury notes, which he opposed, he avowed himself in favor of the abolition of custom-houses, and the disbanding of the army of retainers employed to collect the import duties. Free trade was always an important article of his political creed. He valued its fraternizing effects upon mankind, its advantages to the laboring classes; and held that, under a system of free trade, the Government would not be defrauded. He traced the financial distress of the country, in the “crisis” of 1857, to its commercial dependence on New York, whose embarrassments must, so long as that dependence continued, always afflict the country at large. The army, as on previous occasions, received a large share of his attention, and he advocated its increase on a plan similar to that of Mr. Calhoun, when Secretary of War under President Monroe, providing a skeleton organization in peace, capable of expansion in the event of war. The fishing bounties he opposed, as being obnoxious to the objections urged against class legislation.

In the summer of 1858, during the recess of Congress, Mr. Davis visited the North, with a view to the recuperation of his health. Sailing from Baltimore to Boston, he traversed a considerable portion of New England, and sojourned for some time in Portland, Maine. His health was materially benefited by the bracing salubrity of that delightful locality, and, both here and at other points, he was received with demonstrations of profound respect. Upon several occasions he was persuaded to deliver public addresses, which were largely read and criticized. They were every-where commended for their admirable catholicity of sentiment, and not less for their bold assertions of principles than for their emphatic avowals of attachment to the union of the States. His speech at Portland, Maine,13 was especially admired for its statesman-like dignity, and was singularly free from partisan or sectional temper. In his journey through the States of Massachusetts and New York, he was tendered distinguished honors, and addressed the people of the leading cities. On the 10th of October, he spoke in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and, on the 19th, he addressed an immense Democratic ratification meeting in New York.

The following is an extract from his address upon the latter occasion:

“To each community belongs the right to decide for itself what institutions it will have – to each people sovereign in their own sphere. It belongs only to them to decide what shall be property. You have decided it for yourselves, Mississippi has done so. Who has the right to gainsay it? [Applause.] It was the assertion of the right of independence – of that very right which led your fathers into the war of the Revolution. [Applause.] It is that which constitutes the doctrine of State Rights, on which it is my pleasure to stand. Congress has no power to determine what shall be property anywhere. Congress has only such grants as are contained in the Constitution; and it conferred no power to rule with despotic hands over the independence of the Territories.”

The second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress was comparatively uneventful. Mr. Davis was an influential advocate of the Pacific Railroad by the Southern route. His most elaborate effort during this session was his argument against the French Spoliation Bill – denying that the failure of the Government, in its earlier history, to prosecute the just claims of American citizens on the Government of France, made it incumbent upon the present generation to satisfy the obligations of justice incurred in the past.

In reply to an invitation to attend the Webster Birthday Festival, held in Boston, in January, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote as follows:

“At a time when partisans avow the purpose to obliterate the landmarks of our fathers, and fanaticism assails the barriers they erected for the protection of rights coeval with and essential to the existence of the Union – when Federal offices have been sought by inciting constituencies to hostile aggressions, and exercised, not as a trust for the common welfare, but as the means of disturbing domestic tranquillity – when oaths to support the Constitution have been taken with a mental reservation to disregard its spirit, and subvert the purposes for which it was established – surely it becomes all who are faithful to the compact of our Union, and who are resolved to maintain and preserve it, to compare differences on questions of mere expediency, and, forming deep around the institutions we inherited, stand united to uphold, with unfaltering intent, a banner on which is inscribed the Constitutional Union of free, equal, and independent States.

“May the vows of ‘love and allegiance,’ which you propose to renew as a fitting tribute to the memory of the illustrious statesman whose birth you commemorate, find an echo in the heart of every patriot in our land, and tend to the revival of that fraternity which bore our fathers through the Revolution to the consummation of the independence they transmitted to us, and the establishment of the more perfect Union which their wisdom devised to bless their posterity for ever!

“Though deprived of the pleasure of mingling my affectionate memories and aspirations with yours, I send you my cordial greeting to the friends of the Constitution, and ask to be enrolled among those whose mission is, by fraternity and good faith to every constitutional obligation, to insure that, from the Aroostook to San Diego, from Key West to Puget’s Sound, the grand arch of our political temple shall stand unshaken.”

In the meantime a variety of events measurably added to the vehemence of the sectional dispute, which never, for a moment, had exhibited any abatement since the opening of the Kansas imbroglio. The antagonism between the two sections, becoming more and more pronounced each day, rapidly developed the true character of the struggle, as one for existence on the part of the South, against the revolutionary designs of the North. Mr. Seward, the Ajax of Black Republicanism, the founder and leader of the party organized for the destruction of Southern institutions, in the fall of 1858, at the city of Rochester, for the first time proclaimed his revolutionary doctrine of an “irrepressible conflict” between the civilizations of the two sections. This announcement, from such a source, could only be accepted by the South as a menace to her peace and security. Such was her construction of it.

In his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, in July, 1859, from which we have already quoted, Mr. Davis said:

“We have witnessed the organization of a party seeking the possession of the Government, not for the common good, not for their own particular benefit, but as the means of executing a hostile purpose against a portion of the States.”

Approaching more directly the doctrine of Mr. Seward, he said:

“The success of such a party would indeed produce an ‘irrepressible conflict.’ To you would be presented the question, Will you allow the Constitutional Union to be changed into the despotism of a majority? Will you become the subjects of a hostile Government? or will you, outside of the Union, assert the equality, the liberty and sovereignty to which you were born? For myself I say, as I said on a former occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the platform of Mr. Seward’s Rochester speech, let the Union be dissolved. Let the ‘great, but not the greatest, evil’ come; for, as did the great and good Calhoun, from whom is drawn that expression of value, I love and venerate the Union of these States, but I love liberty and Mississippi more.”

When Congress assembled, in December, 1859, the lawless expedition of John Brown had greatly accelerated the inevitable climax of disunion. Thenceforward the incipient revolution was, to a great extent, transferred from the hands of Congress, whose action was but lightly regarded in comparison with the animated scenes which marked the State conventions and popular assemblages, held with reference to the approaching presidential nominations.

Mr. Davis approved the test made at the Charleston Convention, by the Southern Democracy, as to the construction of the Cincinnati platform, and the demand for a more explicit announcement of the position of the party concerning slavery in the Territories. His speech, in reply to Judge Douglas, on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, is a vindication of Southern action at Charleston, and an exhaustive discussion of all the phases of the issue upon which the Democracy had divided.

Events soon demonstrated the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism which had severed this giant organization. It had simply realized the destiny of political parties. In one generation they rise, as a virtue and a necessity, to remedy disorders and reform abuses; in another generation, they are themselves the apologists of corruption and the perpetrators of wrong. The Democratic party became insensible to the appeals of principle, and its fifty years’ lease of power terminated, not speedily to be recovered.

HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS AT PORTLAND, MAINE[From the Eastern Argus.]

We are gratified in being able to offer our readers a faithful and quite full report of the speech of Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, on the occasion of the serenade given him by the citizens of Portland, without distinction of party, on Friday evening last. It will be read with interest and pleasure, and we can not doubt that every sentiment, uttered by the distinguished Mississippian, will find a hearty response and approval from the citizens of Maine. The occasion was indeed a pleasing, a hopeful one. It was in every respect the expression of generous sentiments, of kindness, hospitality, friendly regard, and the brotherhood of American citizenship. Prominent men of all parties were present, and the expression, without exception, so far as we have heard, has been that of unmingled gratification; and the scene was equally pleasant to look upon. The beautiful mansion of Rensallaer Cram, Esq., directly opposite to Madame Blanchard’s, was illuminated, and the light thrown from the windows of the two houses revealed to view the large and perfectly orderly assemblage with which Park and Danforth Streets were crowded. We regret that our readers can get no idea of the musical voice and inspiring eloquence of the speaker from a report of his remarks; but it is the best we can do for them. After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and as soon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided, he spoke in substance as follows:

Fellow-citizens: Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of your kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not the less gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an expression of regard to her sister, Mississippi. It is, moreover, with feelings of profound gratification that I witness this indication of that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one people. At a period but as yesterday, when compared with the life of nations, these States were separate, and, in some respects, opposing colonies, their only relation to each other was that of a common allegiance to the Government of Great Britain. So separate, indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when General Stark, of Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the headwaters of the Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albany, where they went to sell furs, and again led away a captive, without interference on the part of the inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain his release. United as we now are, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world, whether on land or sea, the people of each and every State of the Union, with one heart and with one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother’s blood cried to us from the ground. Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the justice with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation, and blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that, shoulder to shoulder, they entered on the trial of the Revolution, and step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence, and founded the constitutional representative liberty which is our birthright.

When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in disregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did not stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether the pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in it the infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, in defense of which they made common cause – Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost in the struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorable grave. Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, dignified by its noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to each other by its glorious memories, they abandoned the Confederacy, not to fly apart when the outward pressure of hostile fleets and armies were removed, but to draw closer their embrace in the formation of a more perfect Union.

By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our Constitution was framed. It stands a monument of principle, of forecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made each willing to sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice, or temporary good to the general welfare and the perpetuity of the republican institutions which they had passed through fire and blood to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for the functions of the general agent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing him who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domestic government – requisite in the social organization of each community – was retained by the States and the people thereof; and these it was made the duty of all to defend and maintain. Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart responds; and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed. It but requires that each should attend to that which most concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to act; that each should adhere to the terms of a written compact, and that all should coöperate for that which interest, duty, and honor demand.

For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we have a national Executive and a national Legislature. Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people. He who, holding either seat, would confine his investigations to the mere interests of his immediate constituents, would be derelict to his plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section, would be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depository, if not a treacherous guardian, of the inheritance with which we are blessed. No one more than myself recognizes the binding force of the allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a party to our compact, a member of the Union, fealty to the Federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the allegiance due to one of the United States. Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at Boston, nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their several States by their campaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her fame free from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations and to fulfill her duties to her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by the names and deeds of those who have well understood and discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated that we can no longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was formed lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact that the industry and persevering intelligence of the North has placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world – that our mother country, whose haughty Minister, some eighty odd years ago, declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was brought, some four years ago, to recognize our preëminence by sending a commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, and caused the name and character of the United States to be known and respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce and intelligence to honor merit? So long as we preserve and appreciate the achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Hamilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole country, and lived for mankind, we can not sink to the petty strife which would sap the foundations and destroy the political fabric our fathers erected and bequeathed as an inheritance to our posterity forever.

Since the formation of the Constitution a vast extension of territory, and the varied relations arising therefrom, have presented problems which could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration, even wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law should have been so fully adequate to all the wants of government, new in its organization, and new in many of the principles on which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as to the consequences of territorial expansion must give way before the evidence which the past affords. The General Government, strictly confined to its delegated functions, and the State left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice which fits our Government for immeasurable domain, and might, under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind.