Jeff Davis was a True American Hero. I am especially fond of these lines from Davis' second inaugural:
The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for the purposes specified in a solemn compact, and been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will. The Government had ceased to answer the ends for which it was ordained and established. To save ourselves from a revolution which, in its silent but rapid progress, was about to place us under the despotism of numbers, and to preserve in spirit, as well as in form, a system of government we believed to be peculiarly fitted to our condition, and full of promise for mankind, we determined to make a new association, composed of States homogenous in interest, in policy, and in feeling.
This makes me shiver. "To save ourselves from a revolution... we determined to make a new association." Nothing more American than that.
Before you “shiver” too much, you might want to that the chief example of the “solemn compact” being violated according to Davis was the failure of the Northern states to enforc the fugitive slave clause.
Before you “shiver” too much, you might want to know that the chief example of the “solemn compact” being violated according to Davis was the failure of the Northern states to enforce the fugitive slave clause.