If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory. Jefferson Davis
Of
all the leaders associated with the Civil War few are as overlooked as
Jefferson Davis. The president of the ill-fated Confederate States of
America, Davis is largely dismissed in the pantheon of the "Lost
Cause," passed over in favor of military leaders such as Robert E. Lee,
Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart.
Yet the
relegation of Davis to the shadows of Civil War history is
unsurprising; Davis was little understood and often a mystery to his
contemporaries, an intellectual who lacked the popular appeal of
Abraham Lincoln or the genteel grace of Robert E. Lee, who has since
become the figurehead of the Confederacy for many.
Neither current events nor history show that the majority rules, or ever did rule.Jefferson Davis
That
Jefferson Davis was ever elected to the presidency of the Confederacy
is a wonder. Davis had the credentials, certainly; a graduate of West
Point who'd served in the U.S. Army - and in the Mexican-American War -
and in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate representing his
home state of Mississippi, and later acting as Pierce's Secretary of
War, Davis appeared to be an excellent candidate for the presidency, at
least on paper.
Those who knew Davis, however, often found him to
be a mercurial personality, reserved and often intractable. Davis
resigned the Army at one point to marry Colonel Zachary Taylor's,
daughter against Taylor's wishes. Upon his first wife's death, Davis
retreated to Mississippi plantation, where he lived for eight years as
a virtual recluse, studying history and government, seeing few people
aside from his brother Joseph. He never filled out an entire term to
any office to which he was elected or appointed. At the conclusion of
the Mexican-American war, he refused President Polk's offer of a
Federal commission as a brigadier general, on the grounds that the
Constitution gives states the power to appoint militia officers, not
the Federal government.
"My devotion to the Union of our fathers
had been so often and so publicly declared; I had on the floor of the
Senate so defiantly challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my
services, civil and military, had now extended through so long a period
and were so generally known, that I felt quite assured that no
whisperings of envy or ill-will could lead the people of Mississippi to
believe that I had dishonored their trust by using the power they had
conferred on me to destroy the government to which I was accredited.
Then, as afterward, I regarded the separation of the States as a great,
though not the greater evil." Jefferson Davis
Although he was a
supporter of slavery, Davis initially opposed the secession of
Mississippi from the Union, a stance he took public both North and
South; believing that states were within their rights to leave the
Union, Davis nonetheless thought that secession would prove disastrous
for the South, who would be unable to compete with the U.S. Army on the
military front when the inevitable war that would follow secession
commenced.
But in the end, Davis, could not antagonize his home
state of Mississippi, and when Mississippi made the decision to secede,
Davis reluctantly capitulated. He became immediately the military
leader of Mississippi, and soon thereafter was elected president of the
nascent Confederacy by the First Confederate Congress.
The
presidency was never a post that Davis wanted to fill. His interest was
in the military. He initially served only as a provisional president,
but the growing antagonism between the Federal government and the
Confederate government gave little time for a true election for the
position, and Davis found himself elected for a six year term, that
like his other political office terms, he'd never fulfill.
"We
feel our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of
mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of our honor
and independence. We ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession
of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all
we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us
shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." Jefferson Davis
Davis'
first action as president was to attempt to prevent the inevitable war,
a war he knew the South could not win. He sent a peace convention to
Washington, but Lincoln refused to hear them out. He proposed buying
U.S. military installations in the South, and to pay the Southern half
of the national debt. Neither proposal was accepted. The imminent war
begins when Davis orders the attack on Fort Sumter.
Most of
Davis' time as president was spent dealing with the war that consumed
the Confederacy. There was no time to truly build the country he'd been
elected to lead. The war drained the South's meager resources and
Northern blockades strangled the Confederacy, leaving Davis unable to
supply his army or his citizens.
After the conclusion of the war
and the dissolution of the Confederate States of America, Davis was one
of few Confederate officers to be charged with treason and jailed. He
was released after two years, the charges against him dropped.
Davis
spent the years after the war at his home in Mississippi, writing,
refusing to repudiate his role in the Confederacy. He never took an
allegiance to the United States, and therefore was never reinstated as
a citizen. He never changed his pro-slavery views, and remained bitter
about the fatally flawed government he'd led, even until his death.
"Our
situation illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the
consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish them whenever they become destructive of the ends for
which they were established." Jefferson Davis
