Jefferson Davis, American
Page 41
In each of his public appearances Davis emphasized the same themes, starting with the single heritage of all Americans. When called for remarks on the Fourth of July aboard the Joseph Whitney, he talked about the “common sense of nationality beat[ing] in every American bosom.” Those in any section who wanted to divide the country, he denounced as “trifling politicians” engaged in a futile endeavor: “They are like the mosquitoes around the ox; they annoy, but they cannot wound, and never kill.” He touched upon the shared Revolutionary legacy of all Americans and “the fraternity of our revolutionary fathers,” when all states aided one another in a common cause. And he assured listeners that should danger arise anew, Mississippi would rush to the side of Maine, and he was sure Maine would do the same for Mississippi. Fanatics who wanted to do away with the constitutional Union, like Senator Seward, who appealed to a “higher law,” he branded as “traitors.” “We became a nation by the constitution,” he declared, “whatever is national springs from the constitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms.”36
Obviously referring to slavery, Davis insisted that local matters should remain local concerns. He refused to discuss Maine issues because as an outsider he would not interfere. America had been built on the principle of “each willing to sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice or temporary good to the general welfare.” The Founding Fathers had rightly turned from consolidation; he argued their respect for local or community interests—read states’ rights—underlay the success of the Constitution. He believed the great majority of Americans wanted to continue in that tradition, ensuring the continued development and prosperity of the country.37
Davis also underscored other common interests binding the different parts of the country into a whole. Although he expressed his conviction that agriculture was “the basis of all wealth,” he gloried in the economic diversity of America. He saw New England as a center of manufacturing that bought quantities of the major southern staple, cotton, and the South in turn purchased manufactured goods from New England. “This is an interweaving of interests, which makes us all the richer and all the happier.”38
Davis evinced little patience with the Republican message proclaiming the aggressiveness of the slave states. He wanted to know how the migration of American citizens with their legal slave property into a territory could possibly be defined as aggressive. “We have nothing to aggress upon,” he announced, adding that even if the South wanted to be aggressive, it no longer possessed the power to do so. As for the Republican charge that the Supreme Court would accede to southern wishes and declare slavery legal in the free states, Davis termed it a “palpable absurdity.” On the contrary, he said, the Court would have to overturn any such wild law should Congress enact it. In Davis’s view, the states absolutely controlled slavery within their borders, except for the right of transit for a slaveowner traveling with his property.39
At the same time he squarely faced the issue of slavery. In his judgment, the political agitation wracking the country rested on slavery, or, more precisely, on the northern fanatics meddling in somebody else’s affairs. “With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men’s sins.” He did not hesitate to defend southern slavery. In the citadel of abolition, Faneuil Hall, he demanded to know who gave abolitionists the right to call slavery a sin. He could find no denunciation of it in the Constitution and no teaching against it in the Bible. In contrast, he claimed slavery had helped blacks more than anything else, to Christianize and to civilize them.40
Throughout these speeches Davis sounded a note of optimism but one tempered by reality. If “each man should attend to his own business, that no community should arrogantly assume to interfere with the affair of another,” he believed, “every American hand [would] unite in the great object of National development.” He employed what he hoped would be a resonating metaphor. Observing the interaction between the sea and the land along the rocky Maine coast, Davis watched the waves rush onto the cliffs, only to be thrown back. But when the tide receded, “I saw that the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating of the sea, and fragments riven from the rock were lying on the beach.” “Thus the waves of sectional agitation are dashing themselves against the granite patriotism of the land,” he went on. “If long continued, that too must show the seams and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility must sooner or later produce political fragments.” The danger should be stopped now, he concluded. And he provided the prescription: Americans should heed the lessons of fraternity and union from the Revolution.41
All these speeches received positive assessments. Davis often spoke before large audiences that gave him enthusiastic receptions. Of course, he addressed chiefly Democrats, not Republicans. Still, after the bitter battle over Lecompton and Douglas’s break with the president, the warm response to Davis was remarkable. The reports in the Democratic press repeated the reactions of those who actually heard the speeches. Even Republican newspapers approvingly noted Davis’s emphasis on the Union.42
Davis delighted as much in his political reception as he did in the climate. Repeatedly, he thanked his audiences for their hospitality and attentiveness. As a result, he saw “a brighter sky” and felt “a firmer foundation beneath [my] feet.” Looking back after three months, he found no reason to abandon his hopefulness. He wrote to Franklin Pierce that his tour persuaded him “temperate true men” could make a great difference by visiting in opposite sections. He had discovered that “The difference is less than I had supposed.”43
While Davis in New England experienced a renewed conviction about the American future, he was taken aback by a totally unanticipated assault on him by southern states’ rights zealots. Certain reports of Davis’s remarks aboard the Joseph Whitney had him proclaiming the inviolability of the Union, which violated the states’ rights creed. But though Davis certainly praised the blessings of the Union, he never declared it inviolable, for he had long believed in the right of secession. In the South, fire-eating newspapers, such as the Charleston Mercury and the New Orleans Delta, vilified him for betraying his section and for turning his back on his political friends. Davis’s phrase “trifling politicians” especially angered them, for they assumed he meant them. One disgusted fire-eater denounced “corruption & treachery of Southern Politicians (Jeff Davis in particular).” An Alabama editor castigated the speech as “a pitiable spectacle of human weakness and political tergiversation.”44
The outbursts had important ramifications in Mississippi, where Davis had long upheld the states’ rights banner but also had foes eager for an opening against him. Immediately upon seeing an account of the Fourth of July address, a close political and personal friend in Vicksburg wrote telling Davis he needed to correct the report. Understanding the potential political danger, Davis responded immediately, denying that he ever said the Union could not be dissolved. He declared his record on states’ rights needed no defense. He went on to say he had not spoken from a prepared text and his words had been twisted. But he proudly stood by his positive sentiments about the Union. At the same time, he condemned politicians who refused to see the benefit of the Union and for personal grievance or arrogance wanted to destroy it. He concluded that they “trifle with a grave subject, and deserve rebuke from every reflecting citizen of the United States.” With Davis’s permission requested and granted by telegraph, the letter appeared almost immediately in the Jackson Mississippian. Three weeks later the Mississippian carried another lengthy response from Davis defending his position to a constituent.45
Meanwhile Albert G. Brown moved rapidly to exploit an excellent opportunity to best Davis as a defender of the South and slavery. Speaking to his fellow Mississippians in the fall, he made his most extreme statements since 1851, telling his listeners they must give up either the Union or slavery. Like many Republicans, but unlike Davis, Brown asserted that the country could not su
rvive part slave and part free. In his view, it was “madness” for anyone to assume the tide of abolition could be turned back. Declaring all must soon “stand in the breach as one man determined to do or die in defense of our common heritage,” Brown claimed to quote Oliver Cromwell, “Pray to the Lord, but keep your powder dry.”46
Politically knowledgeable Mississippians recognized the reality of a political contest. Long a champion of Davis, the Jackson Mississippian, the major Democratic newspaper in the state, made every effort to shore up his standing among states’ rights loyalists. Not only did it readily publish Davis’s own statements, it also joined in his defense, condemning sheets like the Delta and the Mercury for trying with “unjustified censure” to drum Davis out of the states’ rights camp. Emphasizing Davis’s sterling credentials, the Mississippian also delighted in both the correctness of his remarks in New England and the positive reception he received. “Mississippi may well experience a feeling of just pride in these attentions to her distinguished statesman. The honors showered upon him are reflected back on her.” While the Mississippian erected defensive barricades around its hero, the Vicksburg Whig welcomed him to the conservative ranks. Never a Davis partisan during the Whig-Democratic rivalry, the Whig during that period spoke for the party whose name it carried. In the great struggle of 1850–51, it championed the Union-Democrats and ever since had branded Davis as too radical. Now, however, this hometown paper praised him for “the most eloquent” tributes to “the value and permanence” of the Union. At the same time, it delighted in what it saw as confusion among some fire-eating editors “dumbfounded” by his speeches. The Whig bored to the core of what was happening: “As Jeff. Davis goes North, Brown comes South.” “Davis goes to Portland and Brown goes to the Equator,” chortled the editor. “If Davis should penetrate further into Maine, we shall probably hear of Brown bathing in the crater of a volcano.”47
The turmoil in Mississippi prompted Davis to make a personal journey to the state. Varina remembered his need to check on his plantation, but he made sure his visit coincided with the meeting of the legislature. Taking the western route, Davis left Washington on October 28 and reached Brierfield on November 5. Three days later he went by train from Vicksburg to Jackson. There he spoke before what was called the largest crowd ever to gather in the Hall of Representatives in the Capitol. An eyewitness described Davis as worn and having aged but with a clear mind and a voice still vigorous.48
He started out with his traditional opening; it was a privilege to be among those he loved, those who trusted and honored him, and those for whom he worked. But he savaged those who he said had intentionally misrepresented him: “For the wretch who is doomed to go through the world bearing a personal jealousy or a personal malignity, which renders him incapable of doing justice, and studious of misrepresentation, I can only feel pity, and were it possible to feel revengeful, could consign him to no worse punishment than that of his own tormentors, the vipers nursed in his own breast.” Then he plunged straight to his main purpose, defending himself. He had been surprised and delighted by his reception in New England, and by discovering the South had friends there. He also justified his record on states’ rights and “the equality of the South,” claiming no one had been more vigilant than he. But he repeated that he had never advocated disunion “except as the last alternative.” It is not time now, he announced to the assembly.
In his view, the passage of the English Bill along with the sentiment he found in New England proved that the South was not isolated. The Democratic party remained a bulwark for protection of southern constitutional rights. Despite this positive assessment, Davis did not advocate complacency. If in 1860 the abolitionists elected a president, Mississippi would have to decide whether to let the government “pass into the hands of your avowed and implacable enemies.” He defined that eventuality as “a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would be destroyed and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no respect.” At that point he thought Mississippi would have a “duty” to “provide safety” for itself outside the Union and prepare itself by constructing armories and railroads, for example. Still, he reaffirmed his contention that secession was “the last remedy—the final alternative.” He clung to the Union, concluding, “I love the flag of my country with even more than a filial affection.”49
Before returning to Washington, Davis also addressed citizens of Vicksburg in a shorter version of his speech before the legislature, saying he “d[id] not yet despair of the Union” because of the “many sterling and patriotic Democrats at the North,” who still upheld the constitutional rights of the South. The Republicans were another matter, however. Davis did not believe that even if elected in 1860, “an Abolition President” should be allowed to occupy the presidential chair. The South would never be secure, and he would feel “disgraced by living under an Abolition government.” In that case, he acknowledged, appeal might have to go to “the God of Battles”; but not yet. After three weeks of stressing his political position, reinforcing his allies, and affirming his loyalty to his state and its values, Davis once again headed northward. He left Vicksburg on November 28 and arrived in Washington by December 6. When the second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress convened, he was in his seat.50
Despite Davis’s public letters, his newspaper support, and his flying trip home, his friends told him he needed to do more. Warning that his political foes constantly distorted his stand on critical sectional questions, they urged him to collect his New England speeches and publish them in book form. They also let him know that Albert Brown was already engaged in preparing a volume of his speeches. Initially, Davis demurred, citing “diffidence.” But he hurried on to say that if public duty demanded it, he would not permit his personal feelings to control his actions. Yet he feared that the labor required in such an endeavor exceeded his physical capability, especially his inability to work at night. Early in 1859, however, he began preparation of such a collection, gathering all the newspaper reports of his addresses during the summer and fall of 1858. Because he wanted them in the precise form they had originally appeared, he made no revisions. He added to the eight speeches he gave in New England and New York City extracts from two on the Compromise of 1850 and the discourse he had just made before the Mississippi legislature in November.51
Published in Baltimore, the fifty-six-page book was out by April 1859. It was dedicated “To the people of Mississippi,” and the preface clearly spelled out his hope and his intent: “I have been induced by the persistent misrepresentation of popular addresses made by me at the North during the year 1858, to collect them, and with extracts from speeches made by me in the Senate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected form; to the end that the case may be fairly before those whose judgment I am willing to stand or fall.” Davis worked hard to distribute the book, for which there was a substantial demand outside as well as inside Mississippi. In that effort, Varina, even though in the later stages of her fourth pregnancy, was most helpful. In fact, she worked up until the day prior to her delivery, telling her husband, “it gives me pleasure to be doing something which seems to bring us nearer to each other.”52
As the 1850s drew to a close, the Davises approached the completion of a decade and a half of marriage. At this moment in their life together, they were devoted to each other and did not hesitate to express their feelings. That in the spring of 1859 Varina worked on mailing political materials so late in her pregnancy powerfully confirmed her commitment to her husband. But there were joyous times apart from work. Varina’s account of their New England trip dwells on the pleasures she and Jefferson shared during those months, and Jefferson specifically commented on how much she enjoyed their time together in that region.53
Their words and actions toward each other demonstrated the bond they shared. On the eve of Varina’s giving birth to their third living child, Jefferson was at Davis Bend battling a flooding Mississippi River. “I do so long to see you my dear Hu
sband,” she wrote. “It saddens me to realize that there is so very much in ones being the first love of early youth.” She confided to him that since he had been away, she had often “experienced that queer annihilation of responsibility, and of time, and gone back fourteen years to the anxious loving girl, so little of use, yet so devoted to you.” But reality intruded: “my grey head, swollen feet, and household cares awakes me from the dream.” Fearful, she verged on “becoming sentimental,” saying he might “wish my romance had been indefinitely postponed”; but she closed with the assurance, “hourly my prayer is that ‘the Lord bless thee, and keep thee.’ ” Three months later identifying him as her “only love” and her “all,” she made clear her adoration for “my precious good Husband.”54
Jefferson matched that devotion. When he learned by telegraph that Varina had become seriously ill after the delivery, he informed his father-in-law that his anxiety had become “so uncontrollable” he could not feel “joy” about the new baby boy, only “depression.” Thinking of nothing else, he left Mississippi on a hurried trip back to her side, where he stayed for six weeks. While there, he took pains to make arrangements for “some cool and healthy retreat” where Varina could spend the summer. Within the month he took the family to the village of Oakland, in a hilly section of western Maryland.55