Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/344

 334 Southern Historical Society Papers.

his people, and such as probably were never given before to a public man, old, out of office, with no favors to dispense, and disfranchised. Such homage is significant; it is startling. It is given, as Mr. Davis himself has recognized, not to him alone, but to the cause whose chief representative he is, and it is useless to attempt to deny, dis- guise or evade the conclusion, that there must be something great and noble and true in him and in the cause to evoke this homage."

This writer then goes on to review Mr. Davis' s career, both before and during the war, pays a splendid tribute to his character as a man, and his genius and ability as a soldier and statesman; says even Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, referred to him in a speech made during the war, as the "clear-headed, practical, dominating Davis." And after referring to the proud and defiant spirit of Mr. Davis, and his splendid bearing both in the last days of the Confederacy and after his arrest and imprisonment, he says:

" The seductions of power or interest may move lesser men, that matters not to him ; the cause of the Confederacy is a fixed moral and constitutional principle, unaffected by the triumph of physical force, and he asserts it to-day as unequivocally as when he was seated in its executive chair at Richmond, in apparently irreversible power, with its victorious legions at his command."

Mr. Davis, in his speech on the occasion referred to, alluded to the fact that the monument then being erected was to commemorate the deeds of those "who gave their lives a free-will offering in de- fence of the rights of their sires, won in the War of the Revolution, the State sovereignty, freedom and independence which were left to us as an inheritance to their posterity forever."

Mr. Willianiij says of this definition:

"These masterful words, 'the rights of their sires, won in the War of the Revolution, the State sovereignty, freedom and inde- pendence, which were left to us as an inheritance to their posterity forever, ' are the whole case, and they are not only a statement but a complete justification of the Confederate cause, to all who are ac- quainted with the origin and character of the American Union."

He then proceeds to tell how the Constitution was adopted and the government formed by the individual States, each acting for itself, separately, and independently of the others,* and then says:

" It appears, then, from this review of the origin and character of


 * See first resolution of the " First Continental Congress."