JEFFERSON DAVIS'S CHARACTER

JEFFERSON DAVIS'S CHARACTER

Michael T. Griffith

2003

@All Rights Reserved

Nearly everyone who knew Jefferson Davis considered him to be a decent, honorable man. His closest friends all held him in the highest regard.

Honesty and Integrity

None other than noted Civil War historian James McPherson has said that Jefferson Davis was "incorruptible to a fault."10

As a fellow Mississippian, Bishop Charles Galloway publicly sparred with Jefferson Davis over prohibition. Bishop Galloway strongly favored prohibition, while Davis believed banning alcoholic drinks was too intrusive and impossible to enforce. Galloway and Davis exchanged several sharp letters on the subject. Nevertheless, when asked to comment on Davis as a man, Galloway praised him as a pure, decent person:

Mr. Davis had his limitations, and was not without his measure of human faults and frailties, but he also had extraordinary gifts and radiant virtues and a brilliant genius that rank him among the mightiest men of the centuries. He made mistakes, because he was mortal, and he excited antagonisms because his convictions were stronger than his tactful graces; but no one who knew him, and no dispassionate student of history, ever doubted the sincerity of his great soul or the absolute integrity of his imperial purpose. . . .

Jefferson Davis began life well. He had a clean boyhood, with no tendency to vice or immorality. That was the universal testimony of neighbors, teachers and fellow students. He grew up a stranger to deceit and a lover of the truth. He formed no evil habits that he had to correct, and forged upon himself no chains that he had to break. His nature was as transparent as the light that shone about him; his heart was as open as the soft skies that bent in benediction over his country home. . . .11

Some of Davis's fiercest political opponents became his friends once they got to know him. One such person was Senator William Seward, who regularly gave speeches in which he harshly condemned the South over slavery, and whose famous speech "The Irrepressible Conflict," caused considerable alarm in the South. In early 1858, Davis was confined to his bed for several weeks with a severe cold and with inflammation in his left eye. During this time, Seward came to visit Davis every day and showed "earnest, tender interest" in Davis's condition.12

When former Texas governor and Confederate presidential aide Francis Lubbock first heard of the federal claim (later proven false) that Davis had been involved in the plot that killed Abraham Lincoln, he said the charge was,

. . . so preposterous to those of us who knew him that we were at a loss to account for its having been made until we became more fully acquainted with the blind rage that possessed the Northern people.13

Reference has already been made to Jefferson Davis's conduct in the investigation of Daniel Webster, a leading Whig politician from Massachusetts. This topic bears closer scrutiny. In April 1846 the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs accused Webster of wrongdoing. Davis, then a member of the House, was appointed to a committee to investigate the charges. The night before the committee's report was to be released, a Northern Democrat visited Davis and urged him not to waste this opportunity to discredit Webster and his Whig allies. Davis biographer Felicity Allen describes what happened next:

Nothing fired Davis's temper more quickly than an underhanded appeal to selfishness. "Mr. Davis told him with much heat that if Mr. Webster was to be entailed upon the country for life, 'and no one could deprecate his policy more than I do, I would not make a false and partisan report or parley with my sense of justice and honor. . . .'"14

The next day the committee released its report, which completely exonerated Webster. Davis was the one who drafted the report. Webster later called on Davis and expressed his tremendous gratitude for the "manly manner in which he had defended him."15 In later years the Websters invited Davis and his wife Varina to their home in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Davis remarked that Webster "was very kind to me, and though some of our political views were thoroughly antagonistic, we always met as friends."16

During the Mexican War, Davis was a colonel and commanded a regiment. Davis became aware that his men were stealing ears of corn from a cornfield. He gathered his men together and sternly rebuked them. He told them that "private rights must and should be respected."17 Davis then found the owner of the cornfield and paid him for the crop.18