He was a very persuasive man. His second inaugural address called for an end to bitterness and disunion:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
It is said that Jefferson Davis spent many of his final years studying the speeches and writings of Lincoln. And, it is clear that in the end Abe won him over. In 1887, Davis spoke the following words:
"The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes, and its aspirations. Before you lies the future, a future full of golden promise, a future of expanding national glory, before which all the world shall stand amazed. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation to be wished—a reunited country."
It was as if Davis was channeling Lincoln. What a wonderful country we have - "one nation, under God, indivisible".
I never thought much of davis - I’m glad to read that he came around to reality ;’)
"The withdrawal of a State from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a Sovereign a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language."
"Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people ."
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever."
"The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena." Jefferson Davis, address to the Mississippi legislature - 16 years after the wars end.
"The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form."