The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath

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СКАЧАТЬ in the conquered country until the objects of the war could be consummated, created considerable embarrassment. Upon this subject Mr. Davis spoke frequently and intelligently. His sagacity indicated a policy equally protective of the advantages which the valor of the army had achieved, and humane to the conquered. In a debate with Mr. John Bell, in February, 1848, he defined himself as favoring such a military occupation as would “prevent the General Government of Mexico, against which this war had been directed, from reëstablishing its power and again concentrating the scattered fragments of its army to renew active hostilities against us.” He disclaimed the motive, in this policy, of territorial acquisition, and earnestly deprecated interference with the political institutions of the Mexicans. The estimate entertained by the Senate, of his judgment and information upon military subjects, was indicated by his almost unanimous election, (thirty-two for Mr. Davis, and five for all others,) during the session of the Thirty-first Congress, as Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. His speeches on the subject of offering congratulations to the French people upon their recent successful political revolution, resulting in the establishment of a republican form of government, the proposed organization of the territorial government of Oregon, upon various subjects of practical and scientific interest, and his incidental discussions of the subject of slavery, were able, eloquent, and characteristic.

      The session of Congress in 1849 and 1850 brought with it a most angry and menacing renewal of sectional agitation. Previous events and innumerable indications of popular sentiment had clearly revealed to candid minds, every-where, that the increasing sectional preponderance of the North, and its growing hostility to slavery, portended results utterly ruinous to the rights and institutions of the South. To the South it was literally a question of vitality, to secure some competent check upon the aggressive strength of the North. To maintain any thing like a sectional balance, the South must necessarily secure to her institutions, at least, a fair share of the common domain to be hereafter created into States. The immense territorial acquisitions resulting from the Mexican war were now the subjects of controversy. After a contest, protracted through several months, and eliciting the most violent exhibitions of sectional feeling, a plan of adjustment, under the auspices chiefly of Henry Clay, whose fatal gift was to preserve, for a time, the peace of the country by the concession of the most precious and vital rights of his section to an insolent and insatiate fanaticism, was finally reached. This settlement, known, by way of distinction, as the “Compromise of 1850,” averting for the time the dangers of disunion and civil war, met the approval of the advocates of expediency, but was opposed, with heroic pertinacity, by Mr. Davis and his associates of the States’ Rights party. They saw the hollowness of its pretended justice, its utter worthlessness as a guarantee to the South, and sought to defeat it – first in Congress, and afterwards by the popular voice. But the sentiment of attachment to the Union triumphed over every consideration of interest, principle, even security, and the snare succeeded. Again the South receded, again received the stone instead of the asked-for loaf, and again did she compromise her most sacred rights and dearest interests, receiving, in return, the reluctant and insincere guarantee of the recovery of her stolen slaves.

      The folly of the South in assenting to this adjustment is now obvious to the dullest understanding, and subsequent events were swift to vindicate the wisdom, patriotism, and foresight of Mr. Davis and those who sustained him in opposition to the much-vaunted Union-saving compromise. Yet, they were no more disunionists in 1850 than rebels and traitors in 1861. The charge of disunionism was freely iterated against them, and not without effect, even in their own section, where the sentimental attachment to the Union was stronger, just as its sacrifices in behalf of the Union were greater, than those of the North. Jefferson Davis never was a disunionist, not even in his subsequent approval of secession, in the sense of a wanton and treasonable disposition to sever the bonds of that association of co-equal sovereignties which the founders of the Federal Government bequeathed to their posterity.

      His action, at all times, has been thoroughly consistent with his declared opinions, and with the earnest attachment to the Union, avowed in his congressional speeches and in his public addresses every-where. In 1850 and in 1861 his course was the logical sequence of his opinions, maintained and asserted from his introduction to public life. To save the Union, upon the only basis upon which it could rest as a guarantee of liberty, – the basis of absolute equality among the States; to blend Federal power and States’ Rights, was the grand, paramount object to which all his aspirations and all his investigations of political science were directed. Repudiating the power of a State to nullify an act of Congress, and yet not surrender its normal relations as a member of the Union, he always asserted the right of secession, in the last resort, as an original, inherent, and vital attribute of State Sovereignty. The Federal Government, to his mind, was a mere agent of the States, created by them for a few general and intestate purposes, but having in it no principle subversive of the paramount sovereignty of the States. Rapidly extending its power by enactments of Congress and judicial constructions, he foresaw, and sought to counteract, its tendency to obliterate all State individuality, and ultimately absorb into its own keeping the liberties of the people. With dread and indignation, he contemplated its progress towards that monstrum horrendum, a consolidated democracy – the Union of to-day, in which we see that the will of the majority is the sole measure of its powers.

      Such was his consistency, and such his sagacity, as vindicated in the light of subsequent events, and patent to the eyes of the world to-day. Who can now doubt which was the better and more logical theory? Clay said: “I owe allegiance to two sovereignties, and only two: one is to the sovereignty of this Union, and the other is to the sovereignty of the State of Kentucky.” Thus he held to the paradox of an imperium in imperio, that obvious absurdity in our system of government, a divided sovereignty. In his ardent Unionism, the great exponent of expediency disavowed allegiance to the South, though still holding to his allegiance to Kentucky. But suppose Kentucky asserts her sovereignty, and chooses to unite with the South, what, then, becomes of State Sovereignty and State allegiance? Just here was the hiatus in Clay’s logic, and, closely pressed by Davis, he emphatically declared his first allegiance to the Union as the supreme authority; and the State Sovereignty of Clay’s conception was seen to be as intangible and unreal as the “baseless fabric of a vision.”

      Far more fair in its semblance, noble in its proportions, and beautiful in its harmonies, was the ideal of Davis. In his speech on the compromise measures, July 31, 1850, he said:

      “Give to each section of the Union justice; give to every citizen of the United States his rights as guaranteed by the Constitution; leave this Confederacy to rest upon that basis from which it arose – the fraternal feelings of the people – and I, for one, have no fear of its perpetuity; none that it will not survive beyond the limits of human speculation, expanding and hardening with the lapse of time, to extend its blessings to ages unnumbered, and a people innumerable; to include within its empire all the useful products of the earth, and exemplify the capacity of a confederacy, with general, well-defined powers, to extend illimitably without impairing its harmony or its strength.”

      The grounds of Mr. Davis’ opposition to the so-called “Compromise” programme of Mr. Clay were far otherwise than a factious and impracticable hostility to an amicable adjustment of sectional differences. He conscientiously doubted the disposition of the North to abstain from all future interference with Southern institutions, and he detected and exposed the utter want of efficacy of the compromise measures as an assurance of protection against future aggression. He abhorred the substitution of expediency for principle; could see no compromise where one side simply surrendered what the other had no right to demand, and correctly estimated this settlement, like those which had preceded it, as but an invitation to still more intolerable exactions by an implacable sectional majority. While discussing, in private conversation with Mr. Clay, the merits of Mr. Webster’s memorable speech of the 7th of March, 1850, a few days after its delivery, he briefly, but sufficiently defined his position. “Come,” said Mr. Clay, “my young friend; join us in these measures of pacification. Let us rally Congress and the people to their support, and they will assure to the country thirty years of peace. By that time” (turning to John M. Berrien, who was a party to the conversation) “you СКАЧАТЬ