An INterview with President Jefferson Davis

Federation of StatesAN INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS ^

[Aurelius]

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[Support Free Republic]

Hi mom!

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[stand watie]

!

[shuckmaster]

ping!

[Colt .45]

And the truth shall set us free!

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Judah Benjamin was a Jew. Before the war he was resented and hated by many in the senate, while the people of Louisiana were damned for electing a Jew as a US Senator. "Once on the floor of the US Senate, Ben Wade of Ohio charged Benjamin with being an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing. " With characteristic eloquence, Benjamin replied, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain." (fn 1)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He later valiantly served the Confederacy in three capacities, attorney general, secretary of state and secretary of war, Benjamin was the only man Davis trusted explicitly without question. Nothing of consequence was ever plotted or carried out by the Confederate government that was not guided or counseled by Benjamin. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "He wanted freedom granted to any slave that would take up arms in the defense of the south, he propose this to an audience of 10,000 persons in Richmond in 1864, his remarks lit a firestorm." (fn 2) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During the war Lincoln's people damned Benjamin as the brains of the Confederacy, and having done more than any other single man to keep the south sustained so as to continue the war. If I remember right he was going to charged in the complicity of Lincoln's assassination and had a death penalty awaiting him if captured. When the war ended he had an harrowing escape to England where he later wrote a much acclaimed classic legal text on the sale of personal property.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Perhaps the best-known posthumous caricature of Benjamin appears in the epic poem John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Describing him as a "dark prince," Benet depicts Judah Benjamin as "other" in Confederate inner circles:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judah P. Benjamin, the dapper Jew, Seal-sleek, black-eyed, lawyer and epicure, Able, well-hated, face alive with life, Looked round the council-chamber with the slight Perpetual smile he held before himself continually like a silk-ribbed fan. . . . [His] quick, shrewd fluid mind Weighed Gentiles in an old balance . . . The eyes stared, searching. "I am a Jew. What am I doing here?" (fn 3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (fn 1,fn 2 & fn 3 sourced from American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) at, ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jewish Virtual Library

[sheltonmac]

Thanks for the post, Aurelius!

A *ping* to anyone who might have been missed!

[billbears]

But amnesty, Sir, applies to criminals. We have committed no crime. Confiscation is of no account, unless you can enforce it. And emancipation! You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves, and if you will take care of them you may emancipate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to them; they never were of any to me. Against their will you 'emancipated' them, and you may 'emancipate' every Negro in the Confederacy, but we will be free. We will govern ourselves.

Great line, and two things jump out immediately. The concern and care of the emancipated slaves, something the northern tyrant could have cared less about. And the fact that even if every slave was emancipated we would still want our freedom. Doesn't sound like something one would say if the war was fought over slavery, as our northern occupiers have 'taught' year after year after year forcefeeding a bold face lie

Bump for a great man

[Cannoneer No. 4]

What, no tiresome Yankees to pontificate on what a traitor President Davis was?

The Confederacy was diverse before diversity was cool.

I sure hope we can put the hard feelings from the last internicine blood-letting behind us before the next one starts.

[Ditto]

And emancipation! You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves...

I thought it was an article of dogma in the Neo-Confederate (and Socialist) religion that the Emancipapion Proclamation never freed one slave and here we have Jeff Davis saying 2 million were freed even before Sherman made his march through Georgia and the Carolinas?

What the hell gives? Was Davis part of the Lincoln cult or was he just educated in government schools?

[x]

That would be Rev. or Colonel Jacques or Jaquess, who went with Gilmore on an unofficial peace mission to Richmond. But really, is it any surprise that Davis, the supposed head of the supposed Confederacy would make Southern independence the only possible ground for peace he would accept? Anything short wouldn't have left him with much of a role. Of course if he were to go on fighting, it would have to be for independence. But that doesn't tell us much about the deeper or ultimate causes of the war.

Curiously, this interview may have cost Davis the war. It's said that the interview confirmed that a negotiated peace and union were incompatible, and strengthened Lincoln's position in the 1864 election.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Federal occupation of much of Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and coastal South Carolina emancipated the slaves to which President Davis refers.

[Aurelius]

As you know very well the emancipation that Jefferson referred to had nothing to do with Lincoln's phony Emancipation Proclamation.

[Aurelius]

"Great line, and two things jump out immediately. The concern and care of the emancipated slaves, something the northern tyrant could have cared less about. ..."

"When asked by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stepehens at the 1865 Hampton Roads 'peace' conference what would become of the freedmen without property or education, Lincoln sarcastically recited the words to a popular minstrel song, 'root, hog or die.'"

The Great Emancipator

[Aurelius]

"But really, is it any surprise that Davis, the supposed head of the supposed Confederacy would make Southern independence the only possible ground for peace he would accept? "

Not hardly, since the preservation of their independence was what the Confederacy was fighting for in the first place.

[PeaRidge]

Davis was rightfully concerned with independance. He wanted the Confederacy to return to the days of freedom from invasion.

Considering the history of the situation, the Union representatives were dealing in the absurd.

I can see why he was angry.

The issue of Lincoln enforcing non-constitutional law had become the critical issue that produced the secession.

At the time of the establishment of the US Constitution, fortunately the resolution of this problem was left more or less open.

The concept of a Federal institution with coercive powers to enforce law went beyond the powers that the founding fathers were willing to delegate to the government.

The state representatives at the Constitutional Convention knew that without Federal authority to coerce the states, there could be no armed conflict.

Whatever the practical limitations of its enforcement, however, the idea of federal law, which emerged in a rudimentary form as a result of the philosophical discussion prompted by the discovery of America, and later codified in the Constitution, became supremely important. It began the process of thought that each state was not a moral universe unto itself, but morally bound in its behavior by basic principles on which civilized peoples might agree. The state, in other words, would come to be seen as not morally autonomous.

This became the philosophical and eventually moral foundation for the rationalization of politicians in the United States to conduct "just" warfare.

The idea of the "just" war became a moral issue, and not of Constitutional law. A war could begin if a state had violated the norms of moral law in its interaction with another state. This then justified one state or several states having grounds for waging a just war against another.

In essence, morality defined by one was sufficient justification for war against another, the Constitution notwithstanding.

This was the underpinning of the anger of the South then and now.

[lowbridge]

What, no tiresome Yankees to pontificate on what a traitor President Davis was?

President? You call him President after all the disenfranchised minorites that werent allowed to vote? pResident is more like it. ;-)