Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  The bolters did not go far. They set up nearby, adopted the rejected majority platform, but made no nominations. They acted as if they wanted to rejoin the convention, but attempts to pull all back together failed. Sensing their opportunity, the Douglas camp rushed to get the much-desired nomination for their man. Chairman Cushing foiled them, however, by ruling that two-thirds of the original number of votes were still required for nomination. When the convention upheld Cushing, Douglas’s chances slipped. Although delegates cast fifty-seven ballots, Douglas never reached two-thirds of those still in their seats, much less two-thirds of the original delegates. Finally, recognizing they could not reach their goal, his supporters adjourned on the tenth day of the convention to meet once more in Baltimore on June 18. In similar manner, the bolting delegations, which had not only lost on the platform but also failed to force the choice of a compromise candidate, decided to come back together on June 11 at Richmond, Virginia. Although most bolters were southern, they called themselves National Democrats.

  This crushing outcome did not kill Davis’s hopes. He did not even lash out at the Mississippi delegation for not heeding his advice. Aware of popular sentiment back in his home state, on the floor of the Senate he commended the delegates for asserting their state’s “equality of right.” At the same time, he exerted every effort to get the convention back together. He conferred with Cushing upon the latter’s return to Washington. In addition, he joined with eighteen other southern members of Congress in a public letter urging the eight bolting delegations to postpone the Richmond meeting until after Baltimore. All the delegates should appear in Baltimore, the missive said, rejoin the convention, and work to gain approval for a satisfactory platform and a strong nominee. The lawmakers argued that a reunited convention could thus hold together “our party, the sole conservative organization remaining in the country.” In mid-June, still pressing his friends to make “an honest effort” to save the party, Davis unrealistically clung to Pierce but worried that southerners could not agree on any single candidate. But even more troubling were signs that the northern majority would insist on Douglas and, as he feared, destroy the party. Yet Davis did not want to give up. To Pierce he wrote, “The darkest hour precedes the dawn and it may be that light will break upon us when most needed & least expected.”90

  But for Jefferson Davis darkness descended. In Baltimore the Democratic party failed to mend itself. The Douglas forces stood fast, even turning away some of the seceding delegations in favor of hastily chosen replacements favoring the Illinoisan. The disarray within the party turned into public dismemberment when each of the two dominant groups in the aborted convention called itself the Democratic party. For the first time since its creation, the Democratic party could settle upon neither a standard-bearer nor a platform. The Douglas loyalists hung on, giving their nomination to their hero, while the breakaway southerners chose John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, vice president of the United States. By 1860 standards Breckinridge was a sectional moderate, but he was a staunch southerner. The Democratic party stumbled out of Baltimore, reeling from the political wreck that had split it asunder.

  Even before the fracturing of the Democracy, the centrifugal forces tearing American politics led to the entry of another group in the presidential field, chiefly in the South. This new entrant called itself the Constitutional Union party, though it was more accurately an ad hoc reaction to particular circumstances rather than a party. The almost simultaneous occurrence of Democratic disruption, the Republican threat, and the presidential election coalesced non-Democrats into a unit. Almost all Constitutional Unionists had been conservative Whigs, and many had shared the brief life of the Know-Nothing party. Calling for patriotism and forbearance as the watchwords of all Americans, they cried for all to stand on the Constitution. Their nominations went to old-line Whigs, John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president. At best, theirs was a desperate exercise.

  In the midst of this political splintering, Jefferson Davis had no doubt about his path. He vigorously supported the ticket of Breckinridge and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. In a public letter sent to Mississippi, he admitted his distress about the division of the party but said Democrats should congratulate themselves that they had “enough of vitality to bear amputation, and adhering to fundamental principles, to give us good candidates on a good platform.” Addressing a ratification meeting in Washington just after the nominations, Davis praised them as based on the Constitution, fraternity, and states’ rights. Before another gathering in the capital, he condemned the Douglas party as “the spurious and decayed off-shoot of democracy,” while he praised the Breckinridge party as “the cause of our common country.” He also served on the National Executive Committee formed in Washington. As an experienced national politician, Davis knew a divided Democratic party faced mortal danger in the presidential contest. As a result, he became a leader in the attempt to arrange a truce that would involve combining the forces of Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas, with each man stepping aside for a new choice around whom all anti-Republicans could rally. According to Davis, Bell and Breckinridge agreed, but Douglas refused. As a political professional, Davis could have little doubt what the failure of combination meant. Breckinridge himself told Varina, “I trust I have the courage to lead a forlorn hope.”91

  The election that placed four candidates before the voters was not at all what Jefferson Davis wanted. His goal had been a united Democratic party facing the leading Republican, Senator William Henry Seward, who had popularized two key Republican phrases, “the higher law” and “the irrepressible conflict,” even while becoming Davis’s friend. Davis believed a concentrated Democracy could defeat Seward and put the Republicans to flight. But the autumn of 1860 found his beloved Democracy severely wounded, and with the advent of the Constitutional Unionists he knew the Democrats could not even count on sweeping the Upper South and the border states. Worst of all to Davis, the energetic and enthusiastic Republicans presented a solid front behind their candidate. While the Democrats had not been able to get past the controversial Douglas to a unifying man, the Republicans had spurned the highly visible Seward for someone they perceived as more electable, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a man Davis did not know at all.92

  Despite his undoubted disappointment and apprehension, in September Davis headed for Mississippi to campaign, leaving Varina and the children behind. In the fall of 1860 Mississippi was one giant political carnival: barbecues, torchlight processions, fireworks, flag presentations, and speechmaking pervaded the state. A galaxy of public figures, congressmen, the governor, former governor, even Henry Foote, who returned in a futile effort for Douglas, joined Albert Brown and Davis in courting the voters. “Wielding the battle axe of Richard,” as a friendly editor characterized him, one more time Jefferson Davis traveled the roads and spoke from rostrums throughout the critical central and northern counties, in so many familiar towns and villages—Jackson, Oxford, Holly Springs, Corinth, Columbus, Enterprise, Benton, and Vicksburg. His tour included a rally just across the state line in Memphis, where he spoke for two hours. For places he could not reach, he prepared public letters. For six weeks, from September 21 until election eve in early November, he knew little rest from his political labors.93

  Davis delivered a clear message, though on one crucial point—the question of secession—he equivocated. He made clear that he considered Breckinridge the strongest spokesman for southern interests, and the best hope to maintain his vision of the constitutional Union. Besides praising the Breckinridge campaign, Davis concentrated on attacking the Republicans, paying but little attention to either Douglas or the Constitutional Unionists. In his words, a Republican victory would present southerners with “a very bad and disagreeable Union.” Any southern man who would either live under or accept office from a Republican administration would immerse himself in “self-disgrace and self-degradation.”94

  Across the state Democratic speakers cried
that a Republican victory would mean the secession of Mississippi. Few could doubt the claim of the editor of the Mississippian that 99 percent of Breckinridge’s supporters favored secession if Lincoln were elected. When handed a written question asking whether secession would be justified upon Lincoln’s election, Davis answered yes, but. He responded that he had really been asked whether he believed Lincoln a Black Republican, because he felt bound by resolutions of the legislature and the Democratic state convention. These declared that in the event of a Black Republican’s victory, “on the avowed purposes of that organization,” Mississippi would discern a hostile act and be prepared to cooperate with other southern states in whatever fashion required. Davis hastened to add that the declaration did not necessarily mean secession would be the remedy decided upon, but it did mean at least the possibility of secession. Once more, he repeated his conviction that anyone who denied the right of any state “to judge in the last resort of its wrongs and the remedies to be applied, repudiated the Democratic creed, and reject[ed] every common sense idea of State sovereignty.”95

  After a month and a half of traveling through much of the state and talking with voters, Davis certainly had a sense of his constituents’ attitude. In Vicksburg just before the election, he moved ever closer to the shouts resounding through the state:

  If Mississippi in her sovereign capacity decides to submit to the rule of an arrogant and sectional North, then I will sit me down as one upon whose brow the brand infamy and degradation has been written, and bear my portion of the bitter trial. But, if on the other hand, Mississippi decides to resist the hands that would tarnish her star on the National Flag, then I will come at your bidding, whether by day or by night, and pluck that star from the galaxy, and place it upon a banner of its own. I will plant it upon the crest of battle, and gathering around me Mississippi’s best and bravest, will welcome the invader to the harvest of death; and future generations will point to a small hillock upon our border, which will tell the reception with which the invader met upon our soil.96

  Finally, the fateful day arrived. In Mississippi, Breckinridge received 59 percent of the popular vote, sweeping the state except in the southwestern river counties, the old Whig stronghold, where Bell did well. Bell wound up with 36 percent and Douglas a dismal 5 percent. But the country did not go as Mississippi did. The news flashed across the land that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president. By carrying every free state but New Jersey, which he divided with Douglas, Lincoln amassed 173 electoral votes, a clear majority. Yet he garnered but a minority of the popular vote; just 40 percent of American voters cast their ballots for him, and practically none in the slave states. His name was not even on the ballot in ten of them. Suddenly, talk about what to do if a Republican were elected moved from the theoretical to the practical.

  Lincoln’s election prompted a flurry of activity in the southern states. Public discussion weighed various courses of action, while governors summoned legislatures and legislatures called for elections to choose delegates to state conventions to determine state action, if any. In Mississippi, Governor John J. Pettus prepared his message to a special legislative session that would convene on November 26. Jefferson Davis, who during the campaign had not insisted on immediate secession in case of a Republican victory, was at Brierfield for a brief respite before returning to Washington for the opening of Congress.97

  From Brierfield on November 10, he made his first important statement on how the South should meet the long-feared election of a Republican president. Responding to a request for his views from Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., editor of the leading fire-eater journal the Charleston Mercury, Davis urged caution. In an obvious attempt not to fuel Rhett’s eagerness to dissolve the Union, Davis said he knew nothing of the public mood in his state, even though he had just spent six weeks mingling with voters. He told Rhett that he saw no reason to rush ahead; moreover, he doubted whether the Mississippi legislature would call for a state convention or even appoint delegates to a possible southern convention. To Davis all the planting states shared a “common interest of such magnitude” that they would eventually act in unison for protection, but only after they consulted together. In his judgment South Carolina should not secede alone. Secession should not take place before the slave states had been able to cooperate in a common venture. Apologizing for his inability to “give more precise information,” Davis closed by assuring Rhett he had given his confidential opinion.98

  Davis carried this cautious approach to Jackson, where he met with the governor and other members of the congressional delegation. Governor Pettus had asked the congressmen and senators to confer with him about his recommendation to the special session of the legislature. All but one congressman attended. After considerable deliberation, a proposal was made to advocate immediate secession. The governor and a majority of the delegation favored that policy; but not Davis. He opposed secession as long as any hope remained for a peaceful settlement of the sectional dispute. During the conference, Davis received a telegram from two southern members of Buchanan’s cabinet appealing for his prompt return to Washington for consultation on the president’s message to Congress. He left immediately. Although he departed while deliberation continued, he announced he would abide by whatever decision was made. After his departure, his reluctance to embrace immediate secession caused comment within the group.99

  Arriving in Washington on November 27, Davis encountered a gloomy atmosphere and one filled with uncertainty. “Men’s faces wear a somber and melancholy aspect, and the place has lost its usual pleasantness,” wrote one reporter. Davis and other southerners believed they could count on their old personal and political friend President Buchanan standing by them in this crisis. Yet the hurried wire to Davis signaled that Buchanan might not stand so stalwartly as the southerners expected. And an even greater unknown confronted them—the Republican party. With the prospect that their bitter political enemy would take over the executive branch, southerners wanted some glimpse of what policies Republicans intended to follow. Their congressional leader, Senator Seward, had been bypassed for the presidential nomination in favor of Abraham Lincoln, who had not been in Washington since his single term in the House a decade and a half earlier. Few southerners knew him, and none had a clear sense of what he would do or how congressional Republicans would respond to his leadership.100

  Senator Jefferson Davis entered the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress as an acknowledged leader, not only of the South in Congress but also in national affairs. Harper’s Weekly termed him “emphatically ‘one of those born to command.’ ” Northerners on both sides of the partisan aisle recognized him as the most influential southerner. Senator Seward had no doubt about Davis’s stature.101

  Although what Davis hoped for from Congress is quite clear, precisely what he anticipated is murky. He desperately wanted a settlement on terms that would salvage southern rights and honor. And he thought the Republicans had to take the initiative, because it was their continued demand that Congress ban slavery from all territories in spite of the Dred Scott decision and their refusal to admit the constitutional equality of the South underlay the crisis. His knowledge of Seward, the Republican he knew best, and their mutual respect gave him reason to think a deal possible between the Republicans and the South. According to Varina, Seward had admitted to her husband and her that many of his utterances were chiefly for political effect. Thus, facing a real crisis like this one, Seward might temper his extreme declarations. Just before Congress began, a knowledgeable observer reported the Republicans would concede “what the South are justly entitled to demand and that thus the Union will be saved.”102

  No record survives of any Davis-Seward conversations during these weeks. Seward did not commit himself until he learned what Lincoln would and would not accept. His most intimate political confidant traveled to Illinois to meet with Lincoln, and Seward absented himself from Washington for some time. What Seward would have done had he been in charge is unknow
able, but in the immediate aftermath of the first Republican presidential triumph, he had no intention of breaking with the president-elect. In the end, Seward, like Lincoln, opposed any compromise acceptable to the Deep South.

  By the time Congress convened on December 3, hope among the southerners seemed to evaporate. From their point of view, President Buchanan was at best equivocal. He did take the position that the federal government possessed no power to hold the Union together, but he simultaneously denied the constitutionality of secession. He clearly would not be a sturdy champion for the South. On the other side, the Republicans seemed utterly intransigent, giving in on nothing consequential to the South. A pessimistic Davis was quoted as saying, “no human power can save the Union.” He even looked with disfavor upon a Mississippi congressman for agreeing to serve on a House committee created to search for a settlement. On December 14 he joined others in signing a statement “To Our Constituents,” proclaiming that “the argument is exhausted” because Republicans would grant nothing that “will or ought to satisfy the South.” “The honor, safety, and independence” of the South, these solons continued, required secession by each state.103

  The South was in motion. With no acceptable overture forthcoming from Republicans, with no compromise in sight, legislators and voters in the Deep South put their states on the road to secession. Congressional southerners knew full well the mood in their states. In Davis’s state “but one opinion existed,” according to a longtime Democratic operative. On December 20, Mississippians voted for delegates to a secession convention scheduled for January 7, 1861. A former congressman still in the state informed Davis that the pressure for immediate secession was “growing every day more intense.” Then, also on December 20, South Carolina seceded. As Davis saw it, the Union had cracked, but it was not yet broken.104