Posted on 02/19/2002 3:18:50 PM PST by Dawgsquat
Davis--Inaugural Address
[Montgomery, February 18, 1861 ]
Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and to aid me in the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of the people.
Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place of this, and which by its greater moral and physical power will be better able to combat with the many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established .
The declared purpose of the compact of Union from which we have withdrawn was "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;" and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable; of the time and occasion for its exercise, they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in its spirit. The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognize in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of government. Thus the sovereign States here represented proceeded to form this Confederacy, and it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State its government has remained, the rights of person and property have not been disturbed. The agent through whom they communicated with foreign nations is changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their international relations.
Sustained by the consciousness that the transition from the former Union to the present Confederacy has not proceeded from a disregard on our part of just obligations, or any failure to perform every constitutional duty, moved b! no interest or passion to invade the rights of others, anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. Doubly justified by the absence of wrong on our part, and by wanton aggression on the part of others, there can be no cause to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the Confederate States will be found equal to any measures of defense which honor and security may require.
An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union. It must follow, therefore, that a mutual interest would invite good will and kind offices. If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of those States, we must prepare to meet the emergency and to maintain, by the final arbitrament of the sword, the position which we have assumed among the nations of the earth. We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued. Through many years of controversy with our late associates, the Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity, and to obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled. As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation; and henceforth our energies must he directed to the conduct of our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the Confederacy which we have formed. If a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled. But, if this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us, with firm resolve, to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause.
As a consequence of our new condition and with a view to meet anticipated wants, it will be necessary to provide for the speedy and efficient organization of branches of the executive department, having special charge of foreign intercourse, finance, military affairs, and the postal service.
For purposes of defense, the Confederate States may, under ordinary circumstances, rely mainly upon their militia, but it is deemed advisable, in the present condition of affairs, that there should be a well-instructed and disciplined army, more numerous than would usually be required on a peace establishment. I also suggest that for the protection of our harbors and commerce on the high seas a navy adapted to those objects will be required. These necessities have doubtless engaged the attention of Congress.
With a Constitution differing only from that of our fathers in so far as it is explanatory of their well-known intent, freed from the sectional conflicts which have interfered with the pursuit of the general welfare it is not unreasonable to expect that States from which we have recently parted may seek to unite their fortunes with ours under the government which we have instituted. For this your Constitution makes adequate provision; but beyond this, if I mistake not the judgment and will of the people, a reunion with the States from which we have separated is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of a confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole. Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered which must and should result in separation.
Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights and promote our own welfare, the separation of the Confederate States has been marked by no aggression upon others and followed by no domestic convulsion. Our industrial pursuits have received no check. The cultivation of our fields has progressed as heretofore, and even should we be involved in war there would be no considerable diminution in the production of the staples which have constituted our exports and in which the commercial world has an interest scarcely less than our own. This common interest of the producer and consumer can only be interrupted by an exterior force which should obstruct its transmission to foreign markets-a course of conduct which would be as unjust toward us as it would be detrimental to manufacturing and commercial interests abroad. Should reason guide the action of the Government from which we have separated, a policy so detrimental to the civilized world, the Northern States included, could not be dictated by even the strongest desire to inflict injury upon us; but otherwise a terrible responsibility will rest upon it, and the suffering of millions will bear testimony to the folly and wickedness of our aggressors. In the meantime there will remain to us, besides the ordinary means before suggested, the well-known resources for retaliation upon the commerce of an enemy.
Experience in public stations, of subordinate grade to this which your kindness has conferred, has taught me that care and toil and disappointment are the price of official elevation. You will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate, but you shall not find in me either a want of zeal or fidelity to the cause that is to me highest in hope and of most enduring affection. Your generosity has bestowed upon me an undeserved distinction, one which I neither sought nor desired. Upon the continuance of that sentiment and upon your wisdom and patriotism I rely to direct and support me in the performance of the duty required at my hands.
We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of our Government. The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of these Confederate States, in their exposition of it, and in the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning.
Thus instructed as to the just interpretation of the instrument, and ever remembering that all offices are but trusts held for the people, and that delegated powers are to be strictly construed, I will hope, by due diligence in the performance of my duties, though I may disappoint your expectations, yet to retain, when retiring, something of the good will and confidence which welcome my entrance into office.
It is joyous, in the midst of perilous times, to look around upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole-where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor and right and liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which, by his blessing, they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with a continuance of His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.
Source: CSA, Congressional Journal, 1:64-66, as reprinted in Lynda L. Crist and Mary S. Dix, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge, Louisana: LSU Press, 1992), 7:46-50.
Now, now. Rules of the forum -- no racism.
Yeah, how did that XII-1/2th Amendment read? "Two million bayonets can't be wrong: I can amend the Constitution"?
Early in the war the Hon. James Mason, Confederate Commissioner in Europe, affirmed that all cotton in that continent would be exhausted by February, 1862, "and that . . . intervention would [then] be inevitable"- yet before the end of 1861 Europe was learning to do without cotton. Davis could not believe that he was wrong; he staked the fortunes of his government and his people on this commodity and lost. On the other hand, Lincoln pinned his faith on what he believed to be the common rights of humanity.
In spite of division he saw one people, and in spite of climate and occupation, one nation. To him the Union was older than any state for it was the Union which had created the States as states.
He saw that whatever happened the nation could not permanently remain divided. His supreme difficulty was to maintain the unity of the North so that he might enforce unity upon the South; whereas Jefferson Davis's ship of state was wrecked on the fundamental principle of his policy that each individual state had the right to control its own destiny, a policy which was incapable of establishing united effort."
--"A Military History of the Western World Vol 3, P. 16 by Major General J.F.C. Fuller
Walt
Very good point. Sometimes I think, given the essential support of the Free-soiler movement in the Old Northwest (which included Mostly Honest Abe), that the anti-slavery movement had about it something of a Full Employment Act, given the tendency of slave labor in antiquity and in the South to create economic inequality and drive freehold farmers off the land.
You can't make a case in finance or economics against bond slavery: what the world needs, every industrialist and planter alike would have told you 140 years ago, is a good five-cent human being.
Hence the Free-soilers were correct to worry about the possible introduction of cotton-resuscitated, slave-powered agribusiness into areas where they wanted to go, like the Nebraska Territory. In Texas, historian Fehrenbach has recorded in Lone Star, his manual of Texas history, slaveowners like Jared Groce, who accompanied the Old Three Hundred to Texas in 1820 and 1821, were able to use their bondmen to stake out much more acreage than the freeholders under the Spanish land-grant rules. Each slave was allowed to stake out a holding, which then inured to his master -- how that worked, and why the Spanish sat still for it, is a minor mystery to me still. But that is how the planters in Texas, whether accepting mercedes from the Spanish Crown or, later, staking claims under the Republic, were able to put together very large parcels of "peach-bottom" or prize bottom-lands, and achieve the economies of scale that the freeholders both North and South rightly feared. Only in the South, the wrath of the freehold, hardscrabble farmer turned against the black bondman, not the Man in the Big House.
Also called teleology by historiographers, it is a fallacy. The ends, by mystical powers, summon the means to greatness: the moment makes the man, and the man fulfills the moment. And blah, blah, blah.
If Lee hadn't burned up 100,000 combat casualties in the 1862 campaigns, George Meade would have been dead meat at Gettysburg, and Fuller would have been singing another tune.
So it seemed, all through the ages. But an economic case against slavery really can be made. Toqueville made it. In his splendid "Democracy in America," near the end of the book he is taking a slow boat-ride down the Ohio River. He described what he saw along the Kentucky bank and on the Ohio bank.
Ohio was hustling and bustling. Kentucky was languid and pastoral. Toqueville observed that on each bank of the river there existed the same climate, same soil, same people, same language, same religion, same everyting -- but Kentucky had slavery. He brilliantly concluded that in Ohio, work was honorable, and men were out there, building and hauling and getting things done; while in Kentucky, work was that "they" did, and gentlemen were supposed to follow other persuits (hunting, leisure, etc.), so Ohio prospered while Kentucky stagnated.
Reading Toqueville was the first time I realized that not only was slavery bad for "them", but it was bad for "us" too.
By the time the South secceeded the USA had already been "Balkanized" to the point that there could be no peaceful reconciliation. Individuals viewed themselves as "northerners" or "southerners" before viewing themselves as Americans; when before they viewed themselves as "Marylanders" or "Pennsylvanians", etc...
Slavery was only a part of the issue - economics was the driving force behind the war. I even remember a quote from Lincoln regarding fearing the northern banks more than the abolitionists and the south....people that jump on these threads and decry slavery, and those who support seccession as racists, and can't get past that horror to evaluate the root causes have bought the revissionist history of the public schools hook, line and sinker. Slavery, while part of the issue and a horrible practice, is a tangential issue that distracts people from what was really going on.
the North's desire to create non-slave states in order to create a larger voting block in Congress (gosh, how similar that sounds to the liberal policies of today)Actually, it is exactly the opposite.
Liberal policies of today attempt to create a larger voting block in Congress by creating slaves- slaves to them and the government. Similarly, conservatives are trying to create a larger voting block in Congress by trying to stem that tide.
But in terms of the time before the Civil War, if you are trying to tell me that it was wrong of the North to desire to create non-slave states in order to create a larger voting block in Congress, I will say that sounds like persuing a reasonable reward for a just cause. Slavery was an abomination and was a blight on the tenets of liberty our nation was founded upon. And I will forever hold a grudge against those Confederate leaders, because it was their wrong-headed insistence on maintaining slavery that has forever damaged the cause of limited Federal government and states rights (the post-Civil War philosophical battle about the role of the Federal government has been lost because the issue of slavery drowns out everything else).
Address of Hon. John H. Reagan, only surviving member of the Confederate States Cabinet, before the R. E. Lee Camp, at Fort Worth, Texas., April 19, 1903.
for dixie LIBERTY,sw
I subscribe to the theory that the origins of the conflict go back to the founding of this nation. It stems from the arguments of the Federalists vs the Anti-Federalists. In other words, those that believed in a strong central government with weak states as opposed to those that believed in sovereign states and a weaker central government.
If you'll follow the link I provided in #27 you'll see that theory explained much clearer than I'm capable off explaining it.
I dunno. Fuller's assessement sounds a lot like Sam Houston's:
"Jefferson Davis is as cold as a lizard and as ambitious as Lucifer."
Walt
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