The responsibilities and difficulties of the trust, did not suggest to Mr. Davis hesitation as to its acceptance. If this, the highest distinction which public appreciation had yet tendered him should prove a forlorn hope, his sense of duty would no more permit hesitation than in the assumption of more cheaply-earned honors. Entertaining no purpose of inglorious ease, amid the trials and perils, which, with a prevision, rare, indeed, at that period, he already anticipated, his own preference was for a different station of public service. Months subsequently he indicated the post of danger as the post of duty to which he had aspired in that gigantic struggle through which his country must pass to the assurance of independence. "I then imagined," said he, "that it might be my fortune again to lead Mississippians in the field, and to be with them where danger was to be braved and glory won. I thought to find that place which I believed to be suited to my capacity--that of an officer in the service of the State of Mississippi."[21] Of the public conviction as to his preëminent fitness, there could not be a question. His character, his abilities, his military education and experience, had long been recognized throughout the Union, and his exalted reputation was a source of just pride to the South. No Southern statesman presented so admirable a combination of purity, dignity, firmness, devotion, and skill--qualities for which there is an inexorable demand in revolutionary periods. William Tell, with his cross-bow and apple, to the rustic simplicity of the Swiss, was the very embodiment of the genius of liberty. Far beyond any influence of fiction was the magic potency of the red shirt and felt hat of Garibaldi to imaginative Italy; and Washington, as Lamartine said, with his sword and the law, was the symbol standing erect at the cradle of American liberty. Equally with the greatest of these prototypes was Jefferson Davis, the symbol of the noble aspirations of the proud, impulsive, chivalrous race which confided to him the conduct of its destinies through the wilderness of revolution to the goal of independence and nationality beyond. He did not seek the position; had not been conspicuous in flaming exhortations to popular assemblies; had not employed any of the arts of the demagogue--of flattery or cajolery of the masses into a false and extravagant estimate of his qualities; but before the world were his character, fame, and services, in unadorned simplicity, painted only in the severe colors of truth. It was the tribute to virtue, most to be valued when unsought; the award of honor, only appropriate when merited and becomingly worn.