President Davis’s Inaugural
Boston
Daily Advertiser, February 20, 1861
If we had no other evidence, the inaugural address of the
new President of the “Confederate States” is proof of the unusual
wisdom with which the secessionists acted when they elected Jefferson Davis
to that office. Few positions could be more difficult than that which Mr.
Davis has assumed, but he has undertaken his ill-omened task with the assistance
of as marked a combination of the qualities most needed for his work, as any
revolutionary leader ever exhibited. He has such firmness and tenacity of
purpose as have enabled him to hold fast to his cherished ideas through twelve
years of bitter struggle, opened by defeat even in his own State. He cherishes
his favorite scheme of a southern confederacy with an intensity of devotion,
which shows itself in every word that he utters, and has quenched the last
spark of patriotism in a heart, where we believe it once shone as brightly
as in any. He knows how to give the appearance of dignity to a cause which
stands before the world in an attitude which is neither imposing nor respectable.
He has the art of veiling the true issues of the moment, and of representing
a movement inspired by an imperious resolution to rule, as an escape from
intolerable tyranny. He can make the most solemn appeal to the sympathy and
the justice of mankind and to the final judgment of Providence, in favor of
a cause which is condemned by the sentiment and the enlightened conscience
of the world. We shall not inquire as to the sincerity with which Mr. Davis
can do all this. It is enough that as the chosen leader he presents the cause
of secession with dignity, with seeming candor, with apparent reliance on
its justice, with full determination to uphold it at all hazards, and with
the aid of intellectual resources of a very high order.
As the leader of the cotton States in their movement against
the general government, whether the controversy is to be carried on by civil
measures only, or by sterner methods, to which he professes himself prepared
though unwilling to resort, this government could have no more dangerous enemy
than Mr. Davis, and this fact, we believe, needs to be more widely recognized
than it is among our people. Because Mr. Davis has led the extreme South,
many have come to regard him as possessing the personal qualities and weaknesses
of the “fire-eaters.” But Mr. Davis is on the contrary cool-headed,
far-sighted and not hasty. What he says or does, is not the result of crazy
impulse but of cool determination, and is supported not by the temporary strength
of frenzy, but by real intellectual and moral power. In short, he is an antagonist
who challenges respect as well as the utmost vigor and caution in opposition,
and one whom any statesman might rejoice to encounter in a high national contest,
were he of any country save our own, and were the matter in debate anything
except the Union.
As we have before hinted, there is another view in which
the election of Mr. Davis is a cause for satisfaction with the friends of
the Constitution. If peace is to be preserved, the reins of the government
which the cotton States seek to establish should fall into no weak or incompetent
hands. The seceding States have to reap the whirlwind, and it is well for
others as well as themselves that they should be under the strongest and wisest
guidance which they can command. It is also fortunate that their people should
be led,—if indeed they are led at all and do not drive,—by some
one who does not show the fanatical hatred for the North which leading secessionists
have shown. It is well that no Rhett or Toombs is to shape the policy of the
revolutionists. Mr. Davis we believe to be sincerely anxious for peace, and
while he will probably abate nothing of his resolute courage, he will use
his influence and his best powers in the effort to secure for his favorite
scheme a peaceful Success.
It is worth while to notice that Mr. Davis, in accepting
the position to which he has long aspired, studiously excludes the idea of
a return to their proper allegiance on the part of the cotton States. The
doctrine of “the irrepressible conflict” he announces in terms
more distinct and significant than were dreamed of by those to whom it has
been falsely ascribed. He felicitates himself with the belief, that all the
slave States will enter the projected confederacy where they will be “freed
from sectional conflicts.” But for the growth, development and happiness
of the confederacy he declares that “it is requisite that there should
be so much of homogeneousness that the welfare of every portion would be the
aim of the whole. Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered which
must and should result in separation.” The plain meaning of this carefully
phrased passage unquestionably is, that the slaveholding States can have no
permanent union with free States. In this Mr. Davis
is at variance with Mr. Stephens, his Vice-President,—who is also a
statesman whom the whole country has in other days learned to admire and respect.
But the declaration of Mr. Davis must be taken as the true indication of the
policy of the new confederacy. As such, it commends itself to the careful
attention of the border States, before they seek to make themselves the frontier
of the projected slaveholding republic; for if the effect of that movement
upon slave property in those States should be such as is anticipated, and
such as they themselves confess, it may be wise for them to consider, what
will then be their position in a confederacy which recognizes political separation
as the only result of such a separation of interest.
