President of the Confederate States

“ Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America to A. Dudley Mann, greeting. ”

“ That fiery and impulsive people, looking always for a hero to worship, found one in Jefferson Davis, and he soon gained an immense prestige among them. On January 9, 1861, his state seceded from the Union, and he withdrew from the Senate. Before he reached home, he was elected commander-in-chief of the Army of the Mississippi, and a few days later, he was chosen President of the Confederate States. ”

“ The pressing need for men in the army made the Confederate Congress utterly unable to withstand the growth of Confederate Congress and President. executive power. Its bills were prepared by the cabinet, and the action of Congress was quite perfunctory. The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the vast powers granted to President Davis, or assumed by him under the plea of military necessity, with the absence of a watchful and well-informed public opinion, made the Confederate government by degrees almost a despotism. ”

“ He says if our Congress should follow the example of the Northern Congress, and invest our President with dictatorial powers, a reconstruction of the Union might be a practicable thing; for our people would choose to belong to a strong despotism rather than a weak one—the strong one being of course the United States with 20,000,000, rather than the Confederate States with 8,000,000. ”

“ This proclamation begins by setting forth four propositions as the basis of his authority: First, the Constitution declares that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and protect each against invasion and domestic violence. Second, the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, as well as chief civil executive officer, and bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Third, the rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, deprived the people of all civil government. ”

“ The plan of the President left the negroes to the care of the States alone after the establishment of their emancipation. Congress desired them to be made American citizens, secure in all the rights of freemen and voters. The refusal to admit Senators and Representatives to Congress from the Confederate States served to arrest the operation of the President's plans to hold these States in abeyance.
No compromise could be made between the two. Each appealed to the Constitution, forgetful that each had sustained all its ruthless violations during the last four years. ”

“ When told by a prominent gentleman, who was speaking for the President, that he could have the command of the Army, he replied that, "though opposed to secession and deprecating war, he would take no part in the invasion of the Southern States." Promptly — that is, within three days — after his State, Virginia, passed her ordinance of secession, he resigned his commission in the Army, as he said he felt conscientiously bound by the act of his State. In a letter to his sister, written then, he said: "We are now in a state of war which will yield to nothing. ”

“ Do we want a new Government that is to overthrow the old? Do we wish to erect a central Colossus, wielding at discretion the military arm, and exercising military force over the people and the States? This is not the Union to which we were invited; and so carefully was this guarded that, when our fathers provided for using force to put down insurrection, they required that the fact of the insurrection should be communicated by the authorities of the State before the President could interpose. ”

“ The captured battle flags of Confederate States have been restored to the States by a Republican Congress. The Federal government volunteers to take care of Confederate soldiers’ graves. President, and Congress and Army and Navy follow General Wheeler’s coffin to an honored grave. A Republican President publicly avows his attachment to Confederate veterans and shows his faith by his appointments. Thank God, our Union to-day is again the Union of equal States. ”

“ Compelled, by a long series of oppressive and tyrannical acts, culminating at last in the selection of a President and Vice-President, by a party confessedly sectional and hostile to the South and her institutions, these States withdrew from the former Union and formed a new confederate alliance as an independent Government, based on the proper relations of labor and capital. ”

“ It can but surprise any one in the least degree conversant with the history of the Union, to find States referred to as "persons composing combinations," [pg 298] and that the sovereign creators of the Federal Government, the States of the Union, should be commanded by their agent to disperse. The levy of so large an army could only mean war; but the power to declare war did not reside in the President—it was delegated to the Congress only. If, however, it had been a riotous combination or an insurrection, it must have been, according to the Constitution, against the State ”

“ It was because on the 4th day of March next we shall have six majority in this body; and if, as some apprehended, the incoming Administration shall show any disposition to make encroachments upon the institution of slavery, encroachments upon the rights of the States, or any other violation of the Constitution, we, by remaining in the Union, and standing at our places, will have the power to resist all these encroachments. How? We have the power even to reject the appointment of the Cabinet officers of the incoming President. ”

“ It will be conceded that no man more fully appreciated and understood the motives and principles which actuated the Southern States and their people in their conduct in withdrawing from the Union than the man they chose to be their President, and it is equally true that but few men ever lived in our land who were so happy in finding language to give adequate and forcible expression to these motives and principles. ”

“ There is not one such precinct where the right of a Confederate soldier freely to cast the ballot of his choice would not be defended by the Union veterans of the war. [Applause and cries of "That's true!"] Our party is tolerant of political differences. It has always yielded to others all that it demanded for itself. It has been intolerant of but one thing: disloyalty to the flag and to the Union [92] of States. [Great applause.] It has had the good fortune to set in the Constitution and in the permanent laws of our country many of the great principles for which it has contended. ”