Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Daviswas an American politician who was a U.S. Representative and Senator from Mississippi, the 23rd U.S. Secretary of War, and the President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He took personal charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to defeat the more populous and industrialized Union. His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country, and at home, the collapsing Confederate economy forced his government...
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth3 June 1808
CityFairview, KY
Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.
The Slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline, and thus made unfit for slavery. And as soon as he becomes unfit for slavery, the master will no longer desire to hold him as a slave.
Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people .
It is not differences of opinion; it is geographical lines, rivers, and mountains which divide State from State, and make different nations of mankind.
God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the Union.
Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable.
My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.
A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain.
Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.
Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.
It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States.
Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished.
How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.
Never be haughty to the humble or humble to the haughty.