Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/126

 120 Southern Historical Society Papers.

war in Mr. Pierce's administration, he was its master-spirit, and that he was the recognized leader of the United States Senate at the time of the secession of the Southern States. For his character there let it be stated by his enemy but admirer, Massachusetts' own Henry Wilson. "The clear-headed, practical, dominating Davis," said Mr. Wilson in a speech made during the war, while passing in review the great Southern Senators who had withdrawn with their States.

When the seceding States formed their new Confederacy, in recog- nition of Mr. Davis's varied and predominant abilities, he was unani- mously chosen as its chief magistrate. And from the hour of his arrival at Montgomery to assume that office, when he spoke the memorable words, " We are determined to make all who oppose us smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel," all through the Confederacy's four years' unequal struggle for independence down to his last appeal as its chief, in his defiant proclamation from Dan ville. after the fall of Richmond, " Let us not despair, my country men, but meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts," he exhibited everywhere and always the same proud and unyielding spirit, so expressive of his sanguine and resolute temper, which no disasters could subdue, which sustained him even when it could no longer sustain others, and which, had it been possible, would of itself have assured the independence of the Confederacy. And when at last the Confederacy had fallen, literally overpowered by immeasurably superior numbers and means, and Mr. Davis was a prisoner, subjected to the grossest indignities, his proud spirit remained unbroken, and never since the subjugation of his people has he abated in the least his assertion of the cause for which they struggled. The seductions of power or interest may move lesser men, that matters not to him ; the cause of the Confederacy, as a fixed moral and constitutional principle, unaffected by the tri- umph of physical force, he asserts to-day as unequivocally as when he was seated in its executive chair at Richmond, in apparently irre- versible power, with its victorious legions at his command. Now, when we consider all this, what Mr. Davis has been, and most of all, what he is to day in the moral greatness of his position, can we won- der that his people turn aside from time-servers and self-seekers, and Irom all the commonplace chaff of life, and render to him that spon- taneous and grateful homage which is his due?

And we cannot indeed wonder when we consider the cause for which Mr. Davis is so much to his people. Let Mr. Davis himself state it, for no one else can do it so well. In his recent address at