The Life of Jefferson DavisAlfriend, Frank H. (Frank Heath)
History
The Life of Jefferson Davis
Alfriend, Frank H. (Frank Heath)
Confederate States of America; Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
With that force which usually enters into his addresses--with even more
than his usual eloquence--the Senator referred to the scene which awaited
him upon his return to Chicago, when, as represented, he met an infuriated
mob, who assailed him for having maintained the measures of 1850--those
compromises which, in the Northern section, it was urged had been passed
in the interest of the South. But, pray, what one of those measures was it
which excited the mob so described? Only one, I believe, was put in issue
at the North--the fugitive slave law; that one he did not vote for. But it
was the part of manliness to say that, though absent and not voting for
it, he approved of it. Such, I believe, was his commendable course on that
occasion. I give him, therefore, all due credit for not escaping from a
responsibility to which they might not have held him. Are we to give
perpetual thanks to any one because he did not yield to so senseless a
clamor, but conceded to us that small measure of constitutional
right--because he has complied with a requirement so plain that my regret
is that it ever required congressional intervention to enforce it? It
belonged to the honor of the States to execute that clause of the
Constitution. They should have executed it without congressional
intervention; congressional action should only have been useful to give
that uniformity of proceeding which State action could not have secured.
Concurring in the depicted evil of the destruction of the Democratic
organization, it must be admitted that such consequence is the inevitable
result of a radical difference of principle. The Senator laments the
disease, but instead of healing, aggravates it. While pleading the evils
of the disruption of the party, it is quite apparent that, in his mind,
there is another still greater calamity; for, through all his arraignment
of others, all his self-laudation, all his complaints of persecution, like
an air through its variations, appears and re-appears the action of the
Charleston Convention. That seemed to be the beginning and the end of his
solicitude. The oft-told tale of his removal from the chairmanship of the
Committee on Territories had to be renewed and connected with that
convention, and even assumed as the basis on which his strength was
founded in that convention. I think the Senator did himself injustice. I
think his long Career and distinguished labors, his admitted capacity for
good hereafter, constitute a better reason for the support which he
received, than the fact that his associates in the Senate had not chosen
to put him in a particular position in the organization of this body. It
is enough that that fact did not divert support from him; and I am aware
of none of his associates here who have forced it upon public attention
with a view to affect him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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