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
Our government is an agency of delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind these States together was one of love and mutual good offices ...
Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.
A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.
Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.
African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.
Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.
Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.
Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southerner apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance.
Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.
The war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.
Truthfulness is a cornerstone in character, and if it be not firmly laid in youth, there will ever after be a weak spot in the foundation.
All we ask is to be let alone.
Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.
The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.