A Tribute to Jefferson Davis page 2

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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.

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis page 3

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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."

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis page 4

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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.

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis page 5

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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.

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis page 6

A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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.

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A Tribute to Jefferson Davis

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.

Page 2

Jefferson and Slavery

The whole culture of Jefferson's youth was, of all things in the world, least likely to make him support slavery or apologize for it. The man who did most to work into his mind ideas of moral and political science was Dr. William Small, a liberal Scotchman; the man who did most to direct his studies in law, and his grappling with social problems, was George Wythe. To both of these Jefferson confessed the deepest debt for their efforts to strengthen his mind and make his footing firm. Now, of all men in this country at the time, these two were least likely to support pro-slavery theories or tolerate pro-slavery cant. For while to Small's soundness there is abundance of general testimony the most pointed. We have but to take the first volume of Jefferson's Works, published by order of Congress, and we find Jefferson's anti-slavery letter to Dr. Price, written in 1785, urging the Doctor to work against pro-slavery ideas in the young men, and to exhort the young men of Virginia to the "redress of the enormity." Incidentally he speaks of Mr. Wythe as already doing great good in this direction among these same young me, and declares him "one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the subject of slavery are unequivocal.

So much for the direct influences on Jefferson's early culture.

Studying, next, the indirect influences on his early culture, we see that the reform literature of that time was coming almost entirely from France. Active, earnest men everywhere were grasping the theories and phrases of Voltaire and Rousseau and Montesquieu, to wield them against every tyranny. Terrible weapons these,--often searing and scarring frightfully those who brandished them,--yet there was not one chance in a thousand that any man who had once made any considerable number of these ideas his won could ever support slavery. Whoever, at that time, studied the "Contract Social," or the defence of Jean Calas, whatever other sins he might commit, was no more likely to advocate systematic oppression than are they who now read with reverence Dr. Arnold and Charles Kingsley; and whoever, at that time, read earnestly "The Spirit of the Laws" was as sure to fight slavery as any man who to-day reveres Channing or Theodore Parker. Those French thinkers threw such heat and light into Jefferson's young mind, that every filthy weed of tyrannic quibble or pro-slavery paradox must have been shrivelled.

And the young statesman grew under this influence as we should expect. In his twenty-seventh year he sat in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and his first effort in legislation was, in his own words, "an effort for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected, and, indeed, during the regal government nothing liberal could expect success." His whole career in those years, whether as public man or private man, shows that his hatred of slavery was bitter. But there was such a press of other work during this founding period, that this hatred took shape not so much in a steady siege as in a series of pitched battles. The work to be done was immense, and Jefferson bore the bulk of it. He took upon himself one-third of the revising and codifying of the Virginia laws, and did even more than this. He undertook, in his own words, "a distinct series of labors which formed a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy." He effected the repeal of the laws of entail, and this prevented an aristocratic absorption of the soil; he effected the abolition of primogeniture, and this destroyed all chance of rebuilding feudal families; he effected a restoration of the rights of conscience, and this overthrew all hope of an Established Church; he forced on the bill for general education,--for thus, he said, would the people be "qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self government." In all this work his keen common sense always cut his way through questions at which other men stopped or stumbled. Thus, in the discussion on primogeniture, when Isaac Pendleton proposed, as a compromise, that they should adopt the Hebrew principle and give a double portion to the eldest son, Jefferson cut at once into the heart of the question. As he himself relates,--"I observed, that, if the eldest son could eat twice as much, or do double work, it might be a natural evidence of his right to a double portion; but being on a par in his powers and wants with his brothers and sisters, he should be on a par also in the partition of the patrimony. And such was the decision of the other members.

But such fierceness against the bulwarks of aristocracy, and such keenness in cutting through its heavy arguments, carried him farther. Logic forced him to pass from the attack on aristocracy to the attack on slavery, just as logic forces the Confederate oligarchs of to-day to pass from the defence of slavery to the defence of aristocracy. He was sure to fight this vilest of tyrannies, and he gave quick thrusts and heavy blows. In 1778 he brought in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves in Virginia. "This," he says, "passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication." Years afterward he wrote as follows:--"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is better for my having lived at all: I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things. Of these thing there were just ten. Just ten great worthy deeds in a life like Jefferson's!--and one of these he declares "the act prohibiting the importation of slaves."

Close upon this followed a fiercer grapple,--his third great legislative attack on slavery. In his revision of the Virginia laws he reported "a bill to emancipate all slaves born after the passing of the act." Attached to this was a plan for the instruction of the young negroes thus set free.

To follow Jefferson and understand him, we must bear in mind that the Virginia which educated him was not behind a dozen smaller States in fertility, enterprise, and republican feeling. Its best men were haters of slavery. The efforts of its leaders were directed to other things than plans for taxing oysters or filching the gains of free negroes. Forth from the Virginia of that time were hurled against negro slavery the thrilling invectives of Patrick Henry, the startling prophecies of Madison, and the declaration of Washington, "For the abolition of slavery by law my vote shall not be wanting."

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Jefferson and Slavery

For a mirror of that Virginia statesmanship, in its dealings with human rights, take the "Dissertation of Slavery with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia, written by St. George Tucker, Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, and one of the Judges of the General Court in Virginia," published in 1791. It proves, that, between the passage of the act of 1782 allowing manumission and the year 1791, more than then thousand slaves had been set free. One is tempted to believe that the new Massachusetts school caught its fire from this old Virginia school; for this friend of Jefferson speaks of "the inconsistency of invoking God for liberty in our Revolution and imposing on our fellow-men who differ from us in complexion a slavery then thousand times more cruel than the grievances and oppressions of which we complained." Such was the utterance of the Virginia school of statesmanship in which Jefferson was trained.

And his views progressed as we should expect. On the occasion of a call for instructions to the first Virginia delegates to Congress respecting an address to the King, Jefferson drew up a paper, which, though greatly admired, was thought too bold. In one passage he goes beyond his masters, and says,--"For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reasons at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated efforts to effect this, by prohibiting and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative,--thus preferring the advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice."

These words are hot and bright, but they are mere sparkles compared to the full flaming orb of freedom which our statesman gave afterward. For, take the Declaration of Independence, as it issued from Carpenter's Hall, after slavery-loving planters of the South and money-loving ship-owners of the North had, as they thought, made it neutral, and we all, North and South, recognize in it the boldest anti-slavery document extant. Why else do Northern demagogues ridicule it, and Southern demagogues revile it? Yet Jefferson made it far stronger and sharper against negro slavery than it is now. Look closely at the well-know facsimile:--

(He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel (underlined) powers, is the warfare of the Christian (underlined) king of Great Britain determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold ([crossed out] and) he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this ([crossed out] determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold) execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he (underlined) has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he (underlined) also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives (underlined) of another.)

There stands to this day that precious original,--hot first-thoughts and cold second-thoughts, all in Jefferson's own hand. Look for a moment at the rich current of internal evidence running through that rough draught, and through all its erasures, changes, and emphatic markings,--evidence of the deepest hatred not only of all tyranny, but of all slavery. Thus, after he had written the passage, "determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold," the idea continues hot in his mind; for, after smouldering a few moments, it flames forth again, is written again in the same phrasing, with the same show of emphasis, before he bethinks himself to erase it. Then, too, the words Christian and MEN are the only words emphasized by careful pen-printing in large letters;--and this labored movement of his pen marks the injury which he deemed the greater; for the largest letters and deepest emphasis are reserved for MEN. Evidently, that word points out the wrong which, as Jefferson thought, "a candid world" would forever regard as the supreme wrong.

We have now noted Jefferson's battle against slavery in the founding of the Republic: let us go on to his work in the building of the Republic.

In 1782 he gave forth the "Notes on Virginia." His opposition to slavery is as fierce here as of old, but it takes various phases,--sometimes sweeping against the hated system with a torrent of facts,--sometimes battering it with a hard, cold logic,- sometimes piercing it with deadly queries and suggestions,--and sometimes, with his blazing hate of all oppression, biting and burning through every pro-slavery theory.

But in taking up the "Notes," we must understand the relation of Jefferson's way of thinking to his way of working. In his thinking, the slave system was evidently a violation of the whole body of good principals, for he calls it an "evil";--a violation of morality, for he calls it an "enormity";--a violation of justice, for he calls it a "hideous blot";--a violation of the healthy action of our institutions, for he calls it a "disease"'--a violation of our whole public happiness, for he calls it a "curse." But his way of working was more calm and cool,--often displeasing those whose plans of action are formed far from any direct entanglement in the slave system.

This union of fervent thought and cool action has, of course, brought upon Jefferson the invectives of two great classes. One class have looked merely at his thinking, and have distrusted him as a dreamer. To these he is a dealer in oracles, at second-hand, from Voltaire and Diderot. The other class have studied his plans of practical philanthropy, with all his shrewd researches and homely discussions in agriculture, finance, mechanics, and architecture, and have ridiculed has as a tinker. To such Jefferson seems a grandmotherly sort of person,--riding about in a gig arranged to register the length of his rides,--walking about in boots arranged to register the length of his walks,--weatherwise, and profound in dealing with smoky chimneys and sheep-breeding.

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But whether men have cavilled at him for a dreamer or laughed at his for a tinker, they have been mainly foolish, for they have cavilled and laughed at the very combination which made him powerful. In no other American have been so happily blended highest skill in theory and highest strength in practice.

The remarks, in the "Notes on Virginia," on the colored race are clear and fair. He studied carefully and stated fully all that could be learned in his time. On the whole, his examination greatly encourages those who hope good things for that race. But one distinction must be made. As to those profound views of the character and destiny of the race which come only by observation of a long historic development, in a wide range of climate, in great variety of social position, Jefferson could, as he confesses, know almost nothing,--for the same reason that the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture. But, on the other hand, of all that comes by observation of the daily life of the black race, as it then was, he knew almost everything.

He declares that the black race is inferior to white in mind, but not in heart. The poems of black Phillis Wheatley seem to him to prove not much; but the letters of black Ignatius Sancho he praises for depth of feeling, happy turn of though, and ease of style, though he finds no depth of reasoning. He does not praise the mental capacity of the race, but, at last, as if conscious, that, if developed under a free system, it might be far better, he quotes the Homeric lines,--

"Jove fixed it certain that whatever day/ Makes man a slave takes half his worth away."

And shortly after, he declares it "a suspicion only that the blacks are inferior in the endowments of body or mind,"--that "in memory they are equal to the white,"- that "in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for time and tune."

But there is one statement which we especially commend to those in search of an effective military policy in the present crisis. Jefferson declares of the negroes, that they are "at least as brave as the whites, and more adventuresome." May not this truth account for the fact that one of the most daring deeds in the present war was done by a black man?

Still later, Jefferson says,--"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that Nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,--that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave,--and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him as he may slay one who would slay him. That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong is neither new, nor peculiar to the color of the blacks."
Here Jefferson puts forth that very idea for which Gerrit Smith, a few years ago, was threatened with the penalties of treason.

But to quote further from the same source:--

"Notwithstanding these considerations, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence."

The old hot though blazes forth again in the chapter on "Particular Manners and Customs." Can men speak against proclamations of Abolition Conventions after such fiery words from Jefferson?

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism, on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by its odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and moral undepraved by such circumstances." (Here fire begins to flicker up around his words.) "And with what execration should a statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens" (note the word) "to trample on the rights" (note the word "of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one and the amor patriae of the other! And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis,--a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the gifts of God, that why are not to be violated but with His wrath?" (Now bursts forth prophecy. The whole page flames in a moment.) "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of Fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
Well may Jefferson say, immediately after this, that "it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil." For no Abolitionist ever branded the slave-system with words more fiery.

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In 1784 Jefferson drew up the ordinance for the government of the Western Territory. One famous clause runs thus:--

"After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to be personally guilty."

In Randall's "Life of Jefferson," a work in many respects admirable, this clause is glossed with the declaration that Jefferson intended merely to prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling this curse flows from the idea of the "Notes" as hot metal flows from fiery furnace,--that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true metal drawn from those old glowing thoughts and words.

But Jefferson's hatred of slavery is not less fierce in his letters.

Dr. Price writes a pamphlet in England against slavery, and straightway Jefferson seizes his pen to urge him to write more, and more clearly for America, and more directly at American young men, saying, in encouragement,--"Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a murderer." He speaks hopefully of the disposition in Virginia to "redress this enormity,"--calls the fight against slavery "the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression,"--speaks of the side hostile to slavery as "the sacred side." The date is 1785.

This welcome to Dr. Price's onslaught will serve as antidote to Mr. Randall's poisonous declaration, that Jefferson was opposed to interference with slave institutions by those living outside of Slave States.

In 1786 Jefferson wrote to correct M. de Meusnier's statement of the efforts already made for emancipation; and, referring to the holding of slaves by a people who had clamored loudly and fought bravely for freedom, he says,--

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man,--who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, in the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose!"

Here, in Jefferson himself, then, is the source of that venom with which earnest men, throughout the land, are stinging to death the organization which stole his name to destroy his ideas.

In 1788, Jefferson, being Minister at Paris, receives a note from M. de Warville tendering him membership in the Society for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade. Jefferson is forced by his peculiar position to decline, but he takes pains to say,--"You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery."

Here is no non-committalism, no wistful casting about for loop-holes, no sly putting out of hooks to catch backers, not the feeblest germ of quibble or lie. The man answers more that he is asked. Is there not, in the present dearth, something refreshing in this old candor?

But some have though Jefferson's later expressions against slavery wanting in heartiness. Let us examine.

The whole world knows, that, when a wrong stings a man, making his fierce and loud, his direct expressions have often small value; but that his parenthetical expressions often have great value. This is one of the simplest principles in homely every-day-criticism, serving truth-seekers, wherever wordy war rages, whether among statesmen or hackmen.

Now, in Jefferson's letter to Dr. Gordon,--written in 1788,--he is greatly stirred by his own recital of the shameful ravages on his property by the British army. Just at the moment when his indignation was at the hottest, there shot out of his heart, and off his pen, one of these side-thoughts, one of these fragments of the man's ground-idea, which, at such moments, truth-seekers always watch for. Jefferson says of Cornwallis,--

"He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service,--of those too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences in the plantation, so as to make it an absolute waste. He carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right."

But we turn to a seeming discrepancy between these thousand earnest declarations of Jefferson the private citizen, and the cold, formal tone of Jefferson the Secretary of State. In this high office he reclaims slaves from the Spanish power in Florida, and demands compensation for slaves carried off by British at the evacuation of New York. For a moment that transition from personal warmth to diplomatic coolness is as the Russian plunge from steam-bath to snow-heap.

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Yet, if truth-seekers do not stop to moan, they may easily find a complete explanation. As private citizen, in a State, dealing with his home Government, Jefferson had the right to move heaven and earth against slavery, and bravely he did it; but, as public servant of the nation, dealing with foreign Governments, his rights and duties were different, and his tone must be different. As a private person, writing for man as man, Jefferson forgot readily enough all differences of nation. He wrote as readily and fully of the hideousness of slavery to Meusnier and Warville in France, or to Price and Priestley in England, as to any of his neighbors; but, as public servant of the nation, writing to Hammond or Viar, representatives of foreign powers, he made no apology for our miseries. England might be ready enough to act the part of Dives, but Jefferson was not the statesman to put America in the attitude of Lazarus,--begging, and showing sores.

But we have to note yet another change in Jefferson's modes of work and warfare.

As he wrought and fought in this second period, which, for easy reference, we call the building period, he was forced into new methods. In the former period we saw him thinking and speaking and working against every effort to found pro-slavery theories or practices. Eagerness was then the best quality for work, and quickness the best quality for fight. But now the case was different. An institution which Jefferson hated had, in spite of his struggles, been firmly founded. The land was full of the towers of the slave aristocracy. He saw that his mode of warfare must be changed. His old way did well in the earlier days, for tower-builders may be driven from their work by a sweeping charge or sudden volley; but towers, when built, must be treated with steady battering and skillful mining.

In 1797, Jefferson, writing to St. George Tucker, speaks of the only possible emancipation as "a compromise between the passions, prejudices, and real difficulties, which will each have their weight in the operation." Afterwards, in his letters to Monroe and Rufus King, he advocates a scheme of colonization to some point not too distant. But let no man, on this account, claim Jefferson as a supporter of the do-nothing school of the Northern demagogues, or of the mad school of the Southern fanatics who proclaim this ulcerous mass a beauty, and who howl at all who refuse its infection. For, note, in that same letter to St. George Tucker, the fervor of the Jeffersonian theory: bitter as Tucker's pamphlet against slavery was, he says,--"You know my subscription to its doctrines." Note also the vigor of the Jeffersonian practice: speaking of emancipation, he says,--"The sooner we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect." And now bursts forth prophecy again. "But if something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children." "If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves; but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation."

Here is no trace of the theory of inflicting a present certain evil on a great white population in order to do a future doubtful good to a smaller black population. And this has been nowhere better understood than among the slave oligarchs of his own time. Note one marked example.

In 1801, Jefferson was elected to the Presidency on the thirty-sixth ballot. Thirty five times Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina voted against him. The following year Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, feeling an itching to specify to Congress his interests in Buncombe and his relations to the universe, palavered in the usual style, but let out one truth, for which, as truth-searchers, we thank him. He said,--

"Permit me to state, that, beside the objections common to my friend from Delaware and myself, there was a strong one which I felt with peculiar force. It resulted from a firm belief that the gentleman in question [Jefferson] held opinions respecting a certain description of property in my State which, should they obtain generally, would endanger it."

We come now to Jefferson's Presidency. In this there was no great chance to deal an effective blow at slavery; but some have grown bitter over a story that he favored the schemes to break the slavery-limitation in Ohio. Such writers have not stopped to consider that it is more probable that a few Southern members, eager to drum in recruits, falsely claimed the favor of the President, than that Jefferson broke the slavery-limitation which he himself planned. Then, too, came the petitions of the abolition societies against slavery in Louisiana; and Hildreth blames Jefferson for his slowness to assist; but ought we not here to take some account of the difficulties of the situation? Ought not some weight to be given to Jefferson's declaration to Kerchival, that in his administration his "efforts in relation to peace, slavery, and religious freedom were all in accordance with Quakerism"?

We pass now to the third great period in which, as thinker and writer, he did so much to brace the Republic.

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First of all, in this period we see him revising the translation and arranging the publication of De Tracy's "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des Lois." He takes endless pains to make its hold firm on America; engages his old companion in abolitionism, St. George Tucker, to circulate it; makes it a text-book in the University of Virginia; tells his friend Cabell to read it, for it is "the best book on government in the world." Now this "best book on government" is killing to every form of tyranny or slavery; its arguments pierce all their fallacies and crush all their sophistries. That famous plea which makes Alison love Austria and Palmer love Louisiana--the plea that a people can be best educated for freedom and religion by dwarfing their minds and tying their hands--is, in this book, shivered by argument and burnt by invective.

As we approach the last years of Jefferson's life we find several letters of his on slavery. Some have thought them mere heaps of ashes,--poor remains of the flaming thoughts and words of earlier years. This mistake is great. Touch the seeming heaps of ashes, and those thoughts and words dart forth, fiery as of old.

In 1814, Edward Coles attacks slavery vigorously, and calls on the great Democrat to destroy it. Jefferson's approving reply is the complete summary of his matured views on slavery. Take a few declarations as specimens.

"The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor both to the head and heart of the writer. Mine, on the subject of the slavery of negroes, have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger proof. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a mortal reproach to us that they should have pleaded so long in vain."

"The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, and whether brought on by generous energy of our own minds or by the bloody process of St. Domingo... is a leaf of our history not yet turned over."

"As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition so expedient, on the whole, as that of emancipation of those born after a given day."

"This enterprise is for the young,--for those who can follow it up and bear it through its consummation. It shall have all my prayers."

No wonder that this letter of Jefferson to Coles seems to have been carefully suppressed by Southern editors of the Jeffersonian writings.

Take also the letters to Mr. Barrows and to Dr. Humphreys of 1815-17. Disappointment is expressed at the want of a more general anti-slavery feeling among the young men; hope is expressed that "time will soften down the master and educate the slave"; faith is expressed that slavery will yield, "because we are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and power of a Supreme Agent."

Entering now the stormy period of the Missouri Debate, we have one declaration from Jefferson which, at first, surprises and pains us,--the opinion given in a letter to Lafayette, that spreading slavery will "dilute the evil everywhere and facilitate the means of getting rid of it." The mistake is gross indeed. To all of us, with the political knowledge forced upon us by events since Jefferson's death, it seems atrocious. But unpardonable as such a theory is now, was it so then?

Jefferson had not before him the experience of these last forty years of weakness and poverty and barbarism in our new Slave States,--and of that tenacity of life which slavery shares with so many other noxious growths. Hastily, then, he broached this opinion. Let it stand; and let the remark on "geographical lines," and the two or three severe criticisms of Northern men, wrested from him in the excitement of the Missouri struggle, be tied to it and given to the Oligarchs. These expressions were drawn from him in his old age,--in his vexation at unfair attacks,- in his depression at the approach of poverty,--in his suffering under the encroachments of disease. Any one of those bold declarations in the vigor of his manhood will forever efface all memory of them.

The opinion expressed by Jefferson, at the same period, that "the General Government cannot interfere with slavery in the States," all our parties now accept -as a peace policy; but if we are forced into an opposite war policy, let our generals remember Jefferson's declaration as to the taking of his slaves by Cornwallis "Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right."

But there is one letter which all Northern statesmen should ponder. It warns them solemnly, for it was written a very short time before Jefferson's death;--it warn them sharply, for it struck one whom the North has especially honored. This son of the North had made a well-known unfortunate speech in Congress, and had sent it to Jefferson. In his answer the old statesman declares,--

"On the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is, of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of another without his consent, I certainly retain my early opinions On that, however, of third persons to interfere between the parties, and the effect of Constitutional modifications of that pretension, we are probably nearer together."

There was a blow well dealt,--through at one now greatly honored. We may refuse the subordinate idea in the letter, but we will glory in that main confession of political faith, in the last year of Jefferson's life; and we will not forget that the last of his letters on slavery chastised the worst sin of Northern statesmanship.

Jefferson, the, in dealing with slavery, was a real political seer and giver of oracles,--always sure to say something; whereas the "leading men" who in these latter days have usurped his name are neither political seers nor givers of oracles, but mere political fakirs,--striving, their lives long, to enter political blessedness by solemnly doing and seeing and saying--nothing.

Jefferson was a true political warrior, and his battle for human rights compares with the Oligarchist battle against them as the warfare of Cortes compares with Aztec warfare. He is the man full of strong thought backed by civilization: they, the men trying to keep up their faith in idols, trying to scare with warpaint, trying to startle with war-whoop, trying to vex with showers of poor Aztec arrows.

Jefferson was an orator,--not in that he fed petty assemblages with narcotic words to stupefy conscience, or corrosive words to fill conscience, but in that he gave the world those decisive, true words which shall pierce all tyranny and slavery.

Jefferson was the founder of a democratic system, strong and full-orbed: "leading men" have fastened his name to an aristocratic system with mobocratic cries.

This great tree of Liberty which we are all trying to plant will, of course, not grow as we sill, but as God and Nature will. Some branches will be exuberant through too great wealth of sunshine,--others gnarled and awry through too great fury of storms. We need find no fault with any growth, but we may admire some branches and prize some fruits more than others. Some grafts set by noblest hands have often blossomed in bad temper and borne fruit bitter and sour. Some fruitage has been of that poor Dead-Sea sort,--splendid in coating, but inwardly ashes,--wretched "protective" schemes and the like. The world may yet see that the limbs of toughest fibre and fruit of richest flavor have come from grafts set by just such strong men in theory and in practice as Thomas Jefferson.

"Jefferson and Slavery" by A. D. White, The Atlantic Monthly; January 1862.