By Miss Louisa B. Poppenheim, 1896
An able and entertaining paper written and read by an old soldier's daughter, Miss Louisa B. Poppenheim, one of the Maids of Honor of the South Carolina Division, United Confederate Veterans, at the Richmond, Va., Reunion, 1896, before the Daughters of the Confederacy of Charleston, S. C., and published by request of that organization:
The human soul always finds language a weak mode of expressing great love, high admiration and deep veneration, and it naturally shrinks from attempting to put into any form whatever its thoughts on its noblest ideals. Still, to think or speak of a great soul at all is a means of elevating even ordinary men, and "great men taken up in any way are profitable company." "We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man without gaining something. He is the living light fountain which it is good and pleasant to be near." In the skies of the Southern hemisphere there is a constellation, sending its dazzling beams out into the silent night, which is known as the Southern Cross. We of the South have our constellation of heroes, the light of whose great names shines out over the whole world and makes men of all nations better and purer when they contemplate such heroic souls dominated by a devotion to duty which could have been developed only in a Christian civilization.
Today we will try to get nearer to one of these great men, and in an imperfect, though loving way, attempt to do honor to a man whom we should look upon, not as an unsuccessful leader of a "wrong" cause, but as a stainless, incomparable patriot, whose conduct was such that the people whom he represented can face the whole world with pride in the name, as a man of blameless integrity and of spotless character. Jefferson Davis, a statesman and patriot, conspicuous in American history, was born in Christian County, Kentucky, June 3, 1808, of a Georgian father who had served as a Revolutionary Captain of Infantry at the siege of Savannah. At the age of sixteen, through the influence of Mr. Calhoun, he entered West Point and graduated in 1828.
Entering active service with the rank of Lieutenant of Infantry, he served on the Northwestern frontier until 1833, when he was transferred to a regiment of dragoons.
In 1835 he married the daughter of Col. Zachary Taylor, from her aunt's house, near Louisville, Ky. After his marriage he moved to Warren County, Mississippi, where he occupied himself in cotton planting until 1846.
When hostilities with Mexico commenced a Regiment of Mississippi volunteers was organized at Vicksburg and Mr. Davis was elected its Colonel.
On accepting this command he requested from the General Government one thousand percussion rifles for his regiment. These arms, as yet, had not been introduced into the United States Army and Gen. Scott is said to have preferred the old flint lock, and even advised that six of Davis' companies be supplied with them. This Col. Davis refused to agree to, the percussion rifles were given his troops, and thus the well-known "Mississippi Rifles" was introduced into the United States service.
While waiting for transportation for his troops up the Rio Grande, Col. Davis wrote a manual of tactics suitable for his new rifle, and even taught his Officers personally the use of this manual. It was the usual joke of the regiment to call out at these lessons: “There goes the Colonel with the awkward squad."
Davis and his Mississippians took an active part in the memorable siege of Monterey, and he was appointed by Gen. Taylor as one of the three commissioners to arrange for its capitulation.
The United States Government being dissatisfied with the terms of this capitulation, most of the troops then in Mexico were sent to Gen. Scott at Vera Cruz, leaving Taylor in a hostile country with only one battery of light artillery, a squadron of dragoons and Davis' Regiment of Mississippians.
It was with this handful of men under Bragg, Geo. H. Thomas and Davis that Taylor won the celebrated battle of Buena Vista and forced Santa Anna to retire from the field.
The news of this brilliant victory was received with the greatest enthusiasm in the United States, and Taylor's political success was secured by this military glory In this battle Davis, though severely wounded, remained in the saddle all day and as a result of this enthusiasm was sent home on crutches. His riflemen stood nobly by their intrepid Colonel all through this trying fight, and it was here that they executed that celebrated "V" movement which was afterwards imitated at the battle of Inkerman by Sir Colin Campbell and his troops.
Before Col. Davis returned to Mississippi, President Polk appointed him Brigadier General of volunteers of Mississippi, an honor which he at once declined, as he maintained that volunteers were militia, and as such their officers must be appointed by the State. Here he showed, as in all his subsequent acts, his consistent adherence to the principle of State's sovereignty.
In 1847, on his return to his home, the Governor of Mississippi appointed him to fill out the unexpired term of Speights in the United States Senate.
After serving this term he was elected to represent Mississippi in the National Assembly from 1851 to his resignation, on the secession of that State, in 1861.
At this time orators and oratory ruled the hour. The United States Senate in 1850 was at the acme of its glory. It was in its calmiest days. Never before at one time did so many illustrious men sit in the highest council of the nation. In that body of giants as it was then, with Webster, Clay and Calhoun leading its debates, we find with Mr. Davis, Chase, of Ohio; Houston, of Texas; Bell, of Tennessee; Douglas, of Illinois; Sumner, of Massachusetts; anti Toombs, of Georgia.
John Savage gives in his "Living Representative Men" the following incident which occurred during Mr. Davis' first speech in the Senate, and which shows what men of another generation thought of this remarkable man. John Quincy Adams had a habit of always observing new members. He would sit near them on the occasion of their Congressional debut, eyeing and attentively listening if the speech pleased him, but quickly departing if it did not.
When Davis arose in the House, the ax-President took a seat near by. Davis proceeded; Adams did not move. The one continued speaking, the other listening. At the close of the speech the "Old Man Eloquent" crossed over to some friends and said: “That young man, gentlemen, will make his mark yet, mind me!" Prescott, the historian, in his letters. in which he presented some reminiscences of the Senate of 1850, says: "He (Davis) impressed me more by dignity of manner and speech with what a model Senator should be than any other I have heard address the Senate."
The entire period of his connection with the Senate, from 1847-61, was pregnant with the fate of a nation, and during this time he stood in that august body the equal of giant intellects and grappled with the power and skill of a master the great ideas and events of those momentous times.
It has been remarked of Mr. Davis' style as a speaker that it was orderly rather than ornate. This is true, for Mr. Davis' speeches afford poor examples of rhetorical brilliancy. But for clear logic and convincing argument, apt illustration, bold and original imagery and genuine pathos, they are unsurpassed by any delivered in the American Senate.
As a writer of terse, chaste, vigorous, classic English he had few equals and his reports, letters, messages, proclamations, and last his great book, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," all show a clearness and beauty of style which proclaim him a cultured and broadly endowed scholar, ripe in experience and knowledge. After the death of Mr. Calhoun he was incomparably the ablest exponent of States' rights, and even during the life time of that great publicist, Mr. Davis shared the labors and responsibilities of leadership with him. Like Mr. Calhoun, Davis gave little evidence of capacity or taste for mere party tactics. His was a broader and more philosophical mind, and the great principles at stake were the questions which entirely absorbed his attention.
His reputation as a soldier gave special weight to his opinion in the Senate on questions relating to the army, and at once he was made chairman of the committee on military affairs. In contrast with Mr. Douglas, he bitterly opposed the Clay compromise of 1850. In 1853 he was induced, after having been offered the position twice, to become Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce.
“Men who are characterized as theorists or abstractionists when entrusted with public office are often the most practical and judicious administrators. It was so with Hamilton in matters of finance, and it was eminently so with Calhoun and Davis, both abstractionists and both by general admission among the most successful administrators that ever presided over the War Department.
The American Cyclopedia says of Mr. Davis: "His administration of the War Department was marked by energy and ability and was highly popular with the army. He proposed or carried into effect the following: A revision of the army regulations; the introduction of camels into America; the introduction of light infantry or rifle tactics; the manufacture of rifled muskets and pistols, and the use of the minie ball; the addition of four regiments to the army; the augmentation of the seacoast and frontier defences, a system of exploration in the Western part of the continent for geographical purposes, and the determination of the best route for a railroad to the Pacific. This railroad he advocated as a military necessity for means of transportation of troops to preserve the Pacific slope as apart of the Union."
President Pierce's Cabinet is remarkable as being the only Cabinet in the history of the country that remained intact throughout the entire Presidential term. Ex-Judge Campbell, of Philadelphia, Postmaster General under Pierce, says: "Jefferson Davis was one of the best educated men whom I ever came in contact with; and Caleb Cushing, who was in the Cabinet with him, was the most highly cultured man of his time."
When Mr. Davis' term of office as Secretary of War expired, in 1857, he was at once returned to the Senate from his State.
On October 10, 1858, introduced by Caleb Cushing, Mr. Davis, in behalf of the Democratic party, addressed an audience in Faneuil Hall, Boston.
In 1860 he introduced his States' Rights Resolutions, which provoked a debate of great bitterness on the part of Mr. Douglas.
Mr. Davis was frequently spoken of for the Presidency, and at the meeting of the Democratic Convention at Charleston, in 1860, he received a large vote for the nomination. Benjamin Butler, of Massachusetts, voting for him on one hundred and eighty-nine ballots. He did not wish the nomination, and so anxious was he for harmony in the Democratic party that he persuaded, by his own personal influence, both Breckinridge and Bell to agree to withdraw from the canvass provided Douglas would do the same.
By this means he hoped to get the three elements to unite on one man, but unfortunately Mr. Douglas refused to withdraw. The four candidates entered the field and Mr. Davis' fears were realized. He then tried to effect a compromise to permit the State to remain in the Union, and as a member of the committee of the Senate to whom was referred the famous Crittenden Compromise, he avowed himself willing to accept that or any other plan that the opposing factions could agree upon. This compromise failed because the Northern Republicans opposed every effort that was made for peace. In speaking of the transactions of Stephen Douglas, he always referred to Jefferson Davis as one who sought means for conciliation. After this failure to agree, Mississippi seceded from the Union. Mr. Davis did not hesitate to obey her mandate or to follow her lead. and on the 21st of January, 1861, he delivered his famous “Farewell to the Senate."
The theory of the right of a State to secede had almost universally been accepted up to the year 1861. Even at that time the New York Tribune says: "If the cotton States wish to withdraw from the Union, they should be allowed to do so," and that Any attempt to compel them to remain by force would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and to the fundamental ideas upon which human liberty is based. If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three million subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it should not justify the secession of five million Southerners from the Union in 1861." Again: Sooner than compromise with the South and abandon the Chicago platform" they would "let the Union slide." Now on the other side, Mr. Davis has been accused by some writers of having been anxious to dismember the Union. Although he always believed in the right of secession, he considered it an extreme measure, one to be resorted to only where all else had failed.
We have seen how he struggled for a compromise, and so modest were his views that in the conference in which the Governor, the Legislature of Mississippi, her Senators and Representatives in Congress took part. Mr. Davis stood alone in opposing any separate State action. At that time people thought him "too slow," if not really opposed to secession altogether.
He, on his part, did not think the issue should be precipitated as long as there was any chance for a peaceable settlement of the question. The majority of this State Convention, however, opposed him, and he then said he would abide by whatever action the Convention representing the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi might think proper to take. In a letter to Franklin Pierce, January 20,1861, Mr. Davis says: "Civil war has only horror for me, but whatever circumstances may demand shall be met as a duty and I trust be so discharged that you will not be ashamed of our former connection or cease to be my friend."
In his "Farewell to the Senate," he said, in speaking of the secession of Mississippi: “I do think she has justifiable cause and I approve of her act." Also he remarks: "Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are indeed antagonistic principles. Mr. Calhoun advocated nullification because it preserved the Union. Secession belongs to a different class of remedies and is justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. You may make war on a foreign State, but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State." He closes his address by saying: "I am sure I feel no hostility toward you, Senators from the North, and I hope for peaceable relations with you though we must part."
On January 24th, after delivering his "Farewell," Mr. Davis returned to Mississippi as Major General and Commander-in-chief of the volunteer forces of that State, and while organizing these forces the Provisional Congress at Montgomery unanimously elected him President of the Confederate States. He had expressed himself as preferring to serve in the army, but he at once sacrificed his own personal preference and took the helm of State. He was inaugurated at Montgomery on February 18, 1861. In his inaugural address he said: "You will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate, but you shall not find in me either a want of zeal or fidelity to the cause that is to me highest in hope and of most enduring affection."
After his inauguration he proceeded at once to form his Cabinet. This, he said, was an easy matter for him, as he was bound only by a consideration for the public welfare, having no political rivalries to satisfy. The result was that no member of his Cabinet bore any close personal relationship to him, and, in fact, two of them he had never known previous to this official connection.
No one not intimately acquainted with the history of the several executive departments of the Confederate Government can ever appreciate the Herculean task that these men had undertaken. It was certainly a case of making bricks without straw.
The magnitude of the undertaking was unprecedented in history, and the spirit and ability with which its directors entered upon their duty is nothing short of marvelous. In the organization of the army, too, there were many obstacles to be overcome.
The Southern people are characteristically an individual people. It was a hard lesson to teach them that a disciplined army must not be made of men who had surrendered their freedom of will. Then again our soldiers were citizens, and as such exerted a powerful political influence by their communication with their respective homes.
At the beginning of hostilities arms were the greatest need felt. Men volunteered in large numbers, but the Government could not properly equip them for service, and finally there were State rivalries and jealousies to be propitiated in the organizations of brigades and the assignment of officers.
When we consider these difficulties, together with the wonderful energy and ingenuity displayed in the construction of powder mills, the building of arsenals and the boring and changing of guns, we stand back abashed at the temerity of these men. Each one grows more heroic, and we begin to understand how deep and strong must have been their love for constitutional liberty when they dared grapple with such difficulties for its sake. This building up of a nation in a day reads like a fairy tale, and we realize with justifiable pride that this fair South of ours held in her midst sons who would have been a glory to any nation and any time. Thrice happy are we, Daughters of the Confederacy, in being able to claim them for our own.
And the leader of all these vast enterprises, the man to whom they all turned for guidance and support, never once shirked the responsibility that fell to him. Weighed down by care, distressed by adverse criticism and dissatisfaction at home, he still adhered to the guiding principle of his life and duty always found him responding to her call.
In November, 1861, Mr. Davis was elected President of the permanent Government of the Confederate States, and was inaugurated at Richmond, Va., February 22, 1862. His Cabinet was the same under the permanent Government as under the provisional.
Mr. Davis has been blamed for many of his official acts, but no man has ever been able to face him with any charge of unfaithfulness to the cause or his State, or one which would reflect on him. As a pure-minded, stainless patriot, the Hon. B. H. Hill says: "I would be ashamed of my own unworthiness if I did not venerate Lee; I would scorn my own nature if I did not love Dixie; I would question my own integrity and patriotism if I did not honor and admire both. There are some who affect to praise Lee and condemn Davis, but of all such Lee himself would be ashamed."
Though Mr. Davis has been most severely criticized for his determined upholding of Albert Sidney Johnston, his attitude towards that great soldier was ably vindicated by the battle of Shiloh, and his judgment in the selection of a soldier was indisputably upheld by his unswerving friendship for Gen. R. E. Lee after his West Virginia campaign. At this time Gen. Lee was severely censured by the newspapers, and nearly all of the officers on the South Carolina and Georgia coast signed a protest against his being placed in that important command. Mr. Davis, however, knew the man he was dealing with and stood firm to his own judgment in the matter.
When, after the battle of Gettysburg, Lee asked ro be removed from command on account of the adverse criticism of the press, Davis said, in a letter replying to him: "Were you capable of stooping to it you could easily surround yourself with those who would fill the press with your laudations and seek to exalt you for what you have not done, rather than detract from the achievements which wild make vou and your army the subject of history and the object of the world's admiration for generations to come. To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command or who would possess more of the confidence of the army or of the reflecting men of the country, is to demand an impossibility."
Mr. Davis has also been accused of having been responsible for the sufferings at Andersonville. It has been proven, however, by indisputable authority, both Confederate and Federal, "that the mortality in Southern prisons was over three per cent. Less than the mortality in Northern prisons; that after medicine had been declared contraband of war the Federal Government refused the proposition of Judge Ould that each Government should send its own surgeons with medicines and hospital stores for soldiers in prison; that the Federal Government also declined a proposition to send medicine to its own men in Southern prisons without being required to allow the Confederates the same privilege; that it refused to allow the Confederate Government to buy medicine for gold, cotton or tobacco, although it offered to pledge its honor that these medical stores should be used for Federal prisoners only; that it refused to exchange sick and wounded, and neglected, from August to December, 1864, to agree to Judge Ould's proposition to send transports to Savannah and receive, without equivalent, from ten to fifteen thousand Federal prisoners, and finally that when Judge Ould did agree upon an exchange with Gen. Butler, Gen. Grant refused to approve it and Mr. Stanton, United States Secretary of War, repudiated it.
Mr. Davis' courage in the face of disaster was wonderful. Note the ring of hopefulness even in his last message to Congress, March, 1865:
"While stating to you that our country is in danger, I desire also to state my deliberate conviction that it is within our power to avert the calamities which menace us, and to secure the triumph of the sacred cause for which so much sacrifice has been made, so much suffering endured and so many precious lives lost. This result is to be obtained through fortitude, by courage, by constancy in enduring the sacrifices still needed; in a word, by the prompt and resolute devotion of the whole resources of men and money, in the Confederacy to the achievement of our liberties and independence."
After this message, events hurried the life of the Confederacy to its close. On April and the Confederate Cabinet moved from Richmond to Danville, Va., and then to Greensboro, N. C., where it consulted with Gens. Joseph E Johnston and Beam regard. After this conference the Cabinet moved farther South, and finally disbanded at Washington, Ga. Mr. Davis now determined to join his family, who were traveling in Georgia, and he was eventually captured while with them by the Fourth Michigan Cavalry early on the morning of May 10, 1865. at Irwinsville, Ga.
At this time the indignities to Mr. Davis began. The party was robbed and the President treated with such uncalled for insolence that Governor Lubbock, of Texas, one of the party, says in a personal letter: "I became so indignant and so completely unstrung and exasperated that I called upon the officers to protect him from insult, threatening to kill the parties engaged in such conduct."
As a prisoner he was conducted to Fortress Monroe and there imprisoned for two years.
Whatever may have been the animosities that Mr. Davis incited as Chief Magistrate of the Confederacy, whatever may have been the criticism of his executive acts, these were all blotted out by the noble. dignified and uncomplaining attitude which he preserved during this cruel test. Adversity showed him as he really was, a wise, considerate, conscientious man, one who could suffer for conscience sake, and who, when he believed a thing to be right, followed it to the bitter end even if it took him through a dark valley and over a toilsome road.
When first incarcerated he was put in irons (an indignity unheard of in the history of the treatment of State prisoners). The details of this early prison life are simply and plainly told by Lieut. Col. John Craven, post surgeon at Fortress Monroe. This Federal surgeon speaks of Mr. Davis during this fearful ordeal in terms of the highest respect, and it was through his intervention that the distinguished prisoner was relieved of his shackles and received such creature comforts as were the means of preserving his life and reason. In his book published in 1866, he writes: "Before history takes up the pen to record her final judgment, the world will be willing to conclude that the man who was our most prominent foe was not utterly bad—had, in fact, great redeeming virtues—and that no movement so vast and eliciting such intense devotion on the part of its partisans as the late Southern rebellion could have grown up into such gigantic proportions without containing many elements of truth and good which it may profit future ages to study attentively."
Mr. Davis was always anxious and willing to be brought to trial. In fact, the chief aim of his life while in prison was to preserve himself so as to be able to go before the Courts and to vindicate his own cause and that of his people before the whole world. When eventually an attempt was made to bring him to trial, no trained perjurer, could implicate him.
There were three charges brought against him. The first attempted was, "Complicity in the Assassination of President Lincoln." This failed. The next charge was, "Cruelty to prisoners. " This, too, failed. The third charge was "Treason."
In this last charge the first grand jury of whites and blacks ever empaneled in this country found an indictment of treason against Jefferson Davis and R. E. Lee. Gen. Grant "squashed" the indictment against Gen. Lee by maintaining that his parole protected him. In the case of Mr. Davis the authorities at Washington and Chief Justice Chase himself decided that the charge of "treason" could not be maintained. Mr. Davis, still anxious for trial, was finally admitted to bail and was never afterwards brought before the Court.
In 1867, after having made an arrangement by which he was to have sixty days notice whenever the United States Courts required his presence, he went to Europe to live. After a year's residence abroad, during which time he was offered an interview with Louis Napoleon, (an honor which he declined), he returned to Memphis to accept the presidency of a life insurance company in that City.
About this time he bought Beauvoir from his old friend, Mrs. Dorsey, and before he had fully paid for it she died, leaving him her sole legatee. From 1876-79 he devoted his life to the preparation of his classic defense of the South, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government."
He was seldom seen in public life during his latter days. He presided at the Lee memorial meeting in Richmond in November, 1870, and spoke at the Convention held at Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, Va., in August, 1874, to organize the Southern Historical Society. Again, he spoke at the unveiling of the monument to "Stonewall" Jackson in New Orleans, at tbe meeting of the Southern Historical Society in New Orleans, at the unveiling of the monument to Albert Sidney Johnston in New Orleans, and at the laying of the corner-stone of the Confederate Monument in Montgomery. Mr. Davis' health had always been uncertain and the sufferings and trials of his latter days would have completely overcome a man of less stubborn will or weaker character. His was a clear case of the power of the spiritual over the material. He was spared, however, to a ripe odd age and was able to outlive envy, silence calmly and to advocate with his pen the people he so dearly loved.
This great work done, he was laid to rest, followed by the love and admiration of a nation who looked upon him as their great and noble "leader," a man who had preserved for them a stainless and honorable name.
He died disfanchised, denied the simplest political privileges of a man, but the principles for which he suffered defeat and clung to till death still live and are today strong in the hearts of all men who believe in and consider what constitutional liberty is. It has been an extremely interesting task to me to find out what the wise and good of our own times have said of this soldier of three wars, this statesman who wore the mantle that Calhoun laid down, and this brilliant member of a notoriously brilliant Cabinet of the United States.
In 1886, Mr. Benj. Williams, of Massachusetts, wrote in the Lowell Sun: "When Mr. Davis was a prisoner, subjected to the grossest indignities, his proud spirit remained unbroken and never since the subjugation of his people has he abated in the least his assertion of the cause for which they struggled. The seduction of power or interest may move lesser men; that matters not to him; the cause of the Confederacy as a fixed moral and constitutional principle, unaffected by the triumph of physical force, he asserts today as unequivocally as when he was seated in its executive chair at Richmond. Now, when we consider all this—what Mr. Davis has been and, most of all, what he is today, in the moral greatness of his position—can we wonder that his people turn aside from time-servers and self-seekers and from the common-place chaff of life and render to him that spontaneous and grateful homage which is his due? The Confederacy fell, but not until she had achieved immortal fame. Few great established nations in all time have ever exhibited capacity and direction in government equal to hers, sustained, as she was, by the iron will and fixed persistence of the extraordinary man who was her chief."
On January 25, 1890, in an address before the Virginia Legislature, Senator Daniels said of him: “No public man was ever subject to sterner ordeals of character or closer scrutiny of conduct. He was in the public gaze for nearly half a century. Proud, high-minded, sensitive, self-willed, but not self-centered; self-assertive for his cause, but never for his own advancement; aggressive and imperious as are nearly all men fit for leadership; with the sturdy virtues that command respect, but without the same diplomacies that conciliate hostility, he was one of those characters that naturally makes warm friends and bitter enemies; a veritable man, terribly in earnest, such as Carlyle loved to count among the heroes.
“I can recall no public man who, in the midst of such shifting and perplexing scenes of strife, maintained so firmly the constancy of his principles and who, despite the shower of darts that hurtled around his head, triumphed so completely over every dishonorable imputation.
"It was fortunate for the South, for America and for humanity, that at the head of the South in war was a true type of its honor, character and history; a man whose clear rectitude preserved every complication from impeachment of bad faith, a patriot whose love of law and liberty were paramount to all expediencies. A publicist whose intellectual power and attainments made him the peer of any statesman who has ever championed the rights of commonwealths in debate or stood at the helm when the ship of State encountered the tempest of civil commotion. Had a less sober-minded and less strong than he been in his place, the Confederacy would not only have gone down in material ruin; it would have been buried in disgrace."
History will do justice to the man, and it only remains for us who now stand at the end of his century to fully appreciate the grandeur and nobility of his character; to honor his unswerving devotion to principle and to venerate his dignity in adversity.
Then we will show ourselves able to discriminate between him who enjoys and him who deserves success, and will be true to our duty as lovers of all those virtues which make up the patriot and hero.
“The world does not to-day think less of Warren because he fell at Bunker Hill a red-handed colonial rebel, fighting the old flag of his sovereign even before his people became secessionists from the Crown; not because his yeomen were beaten in the battle.
“Oliver Cromwell is a proud name in English history, though the English Republic which he founded was almost as short-lived as the Confederacy and was soon buried under the re-established throne of the Stuarts. And we but forecast the judgment of years to come when we pronounce that Jefferson Davis was great and pure as a statesman, man and patriot."
This article is from the Confederate Veteran, Vol. IV, No. 10, Nashville, Tenn., October, 1896.