Jefferson Davis:His Character, Leadership Style,And Race Relations

Jefferson Davis:His Character, Leadership Style,And Race Relations

Michael T. Griffith

2003

@All Rights Reserved

INTRODUCTION

Jefferson Davis was the one and only president of the Confederate States of America. In this paper I will examine Davis's character, his leadership style, and his relations with blacks.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Northern writers and leaders denounced and vilified Jefferson Davis in the harshest terms. Dr. Grady McWhiney explains:

Davis became, and remained to Northerners, the quintessential wrongdoer. Later generations of liberal progressives would consider him an American Hitler. Immediately after the War for Southern Independence Yankee authorities put Davis in jail and left him there for two years without a trial, while they tried to implicate him in the assassination of Lincoln, alleged cruelty to Federal prisoners, and treason itself. Though never brought to trial or convicted of any crime, Davis received abundant abuse in the Yankee press and on the podium. During and after the war the New York Times depicted him as a murderer, a cruel slaveowner whose servants ran away, a liar, a boaster, a fanatic, a confessed failure, a hater, a political adventurer, a supporter of outcasts and outlaws, a drunkard, an atrocious misrepresenter, an assassin, an incendiary, a criminal who was gratified by the assassination of Lincoln, a henpecked husband, a man so shameless that he would try to escape capture by disguising himself as a woman, a supporter of murder plots, an insubordinate soldier, an unwholesome sleeper, and a mean-spirited malingerer.

Anti-Davis sentiment was more than mere newspaper talk. Following the war the citizens of Sacramento, California, true to their vigilante tradition, hanged Davis in effigy. A few months later the Kansas Senate passed a resolution to hang him in person. More than ten years after the war ended, widespread opposition prevented him from speaking anywhere in the North. In 1876 a Yankee newspaper editor answered the question, should Davis be given amnesty, with a resounding "no," and in 1880 a man who cheered for Jefferson Davis in Madison, Indiana, was shot.1

But not all Northerners felt this way, especially before the war. As Jefferson Davis began his public career, the New York World said he was "intellectually . . . the best equipped man of his age in the United States . . . fluent in world history, economics, and political theory."2 In one of his debates with Abraham Lincoln, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois referred to Davis as an "able and eloquent statesman."3 Even after he had become a Union general, George B. McClellan said,

. . . Davis was a man of extraordinary ability. . . . He was the best Secretary of War--and I use best in its widest sense--I have ever had anything to do with.4

During the war, former President Franklin Pierce maintained his friendship with Jefferson Davis, and he criticized the North's invasion of the South as unjust and unnecessary. When federal authorities imprisoned Davis for two years after the war, Pierce came to visit him in prison. Once Davis was released from prison, Pierce offered him the use of one of his New Hampshire homes free of charge (Davis politely declined the offer).5 Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, who served with Davis in the U.S. Senate, said he was "clear-headed" and "practical." None other than Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts praised the way Jefferson Davis conducted himself as part of the Congressional panel that had been tasked with investigating charges against Webster. Before the panel began its investigation, some expressed the fear that Davis might use this an opportunity to destroy an arch political rival. But Davis did nothing of the sort. He examined the evidence and concluded Webster was innocent of all charges. Thanks in part to Davis's efforts, Webster was cleared of the charges. Webster was so grateful for Davis's principled, non-partisan handling of his case that he paid Davis a visit to express his gratitude in person.6

Nearly all textbooks claim that Davis was a leader who couldn't stand to have his views challenged, and that he was a compulsive meddler who ineffectively micromanaged his generals and the Confederate war effort.7 Davis's modern critics argue that he was also a petty tyrant and a virulent racist. Even a few pro-Confederate authors have painted Davis as an overbearing, hot-tempered micromanager who insisted on having everything his way.8

In this paper I will argue that these characterizations are inaccurate. I have concluded that Jefferson Davis was a good, noble Christian man, that he was neither a dictator nor a micromanager, and that he treated blacks with respect and received their respect in return.

One charge against Davis that will not be discussed in the body of this paper is the well-known accusation that Davis was a traitor because he supported secession and then became the leader of the central government that the seceded states established. I will now comment briefly on this accusation. First of all, it needs to be pointed out that Davis was not enthusiastic about secession; he strove mightily to avoid secession and came under fire from secessionist hardliners for doing so. Although Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate and cast his lot with the South once his state of Mississippi seceded, prior to that point he sought some kind of compromise that would hold the Union together. I am not a modern-day secessionist; I do not advocate or support secession in our day. With this understood, I will say that I believe one can make a strong case that the Southern states had the legal right to peacefully separate from the Union, and that therefore Jefferson Davis was not guilty of treason in eventually supporting secession and in agreeing to serve as the president of the Confederacy.

For example, Thomas Jefferson said he would permit a state that wanted to leave the Union to do so in peace, even if he didn't agree with the state's reasons for leaving. The right of peaceful separation was also recognized by Presidents John Quincy Adams and John Tyler. In fact, at one point President Adams himself advocated the secession of the New England states at one point. Adams wasn't the only Northern leader who at one time or another advocated Northern secession. George Washington's Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, and U.S. Representative and Senator James Hillhouse of Connecticut, likewise advocated Northern secession for a time. Even the Federalist Hartford Convention concluded a state had the right to secede under certain circumstances. None other than Northern abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Lysander Spooner believed the Southern states should be allowed to go in peace. Garrison believed, with some justification, that the isolation of the South by secession would hasten slavery's demise. Spooner believed the natural right of self-determination demanded that the Southern states be allowed to separate peacefully.

The U.S. Constitution is simply silent on whether or not a state can leave the Union. Therefore, to carry the 10th Amendment to its logical conclusion, the right to secede remains with the states. Seven of the original thirteen states specified in their ratification ordinances that they were only granting to the federal government certain specific powers, and that they reserved all other powers to themselves; three of those states even said they reserved the right to resume those delegated powers if they felt the need to do so. America herself was founded on the principle of secession--that is, separation from England. Virginia began the formal secession process by issuing a secession declaration in June 1776, one month before the Declaration of Independence was published.9