Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/134

 126 Southern Historical Society Papers.

the Indians on the frontier in the Blackhawk war. In early manhood Abraham Lincoln removed to Illinois, and, now, becoming a captain of volunteers, he and Jefferson Davis were under the same flag engaged in the same warfare.

John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell had once engaged passage for America, and George Washington was about to become a mid- shipman in the British navy. Had not circumstances changed these plans Hampden and Cromwell might have become great names in American history. And suppose Admiral George Washington, under the colors of King George III., had been pursuing the Count D'Estaing, whose French fleet hemmed Cornwallis in at Yorktown — who knows how the story of the great Revolution might have been written ? Had Jefferson Davis gone to Illinois and Lincoln to Mis- sissippi, what different histories would be around those names ; and yet I fancy that the great struggle with which they were identified would have been changed only in incidents and not in its great currents.

A planter's life — 1835 TO 1 843.

In 1835 Lieutenant Davis resigned his commission in the army, intermarried Miss Ta}dor, a daughter of Zachary Taylor, and retired to his Mississippi estate, where for eight years he spent his time in literary studies and agricultural pursuits — a country gentleman with a full library and broad acres.

Such life as his was that of John Hampden before the country squire suddenly emerged from obscurity as a debater, a leader of Parliament, and a soldier, to plead and fight and die in the people's cause against a tyrant's and a tax-gatherer's exactions. Such life as his was that of many of the fathers of the republic; and when Jefferson Davis entered public life, in 1843, ^^ came — as Washington, Jefferson. Madison, Monroe, Henry, Mason, Clay, Calhoun, and Andrew Jack- son had come before him — from a Southern plantation, where he had been the head of a family and the master of slaves.

HIS VARIOUS EMPLOYMENTS FROM 1 843 TO 1 86 1.

From 1843 to 1861 the life of Jefferson Davis was spent for the most part in public services, and they were as distinguished as the occasions which called them into requisition were numerous and important. A presidential elector, a member of the House of Repre- sentatives, a United States senator (once by appointment and twice by election), a colonel of the Mississippi volunteers in Mexico, twice