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
while Toomb's quick utterance and restless head bespoke his nervous
temperament and activity of mind. But, though each is different from
either of the others, the three have several attributes in common.
They are equally eminent as statesmen and debaters; they are devoted
to the same cause; they are equals in rank, and rivals in ambition;
and they are about the same age, and none of them--let young America
take notice--wears either beard or mustache. I come again to the
traits which distinguish them from each other. In face and form, Davis
represents the Norman type with singular fidelity, if my conception of
that type be correct. He is tall and sinewy, with fair hair, gray
eyes, which are clear rather than bright, high forehead, straight
nose, thin, compressed lips, and pointed chin. His cheek bones are
hollow, and the vicinity of his mouth is deeply furrowed with
intersecting lines. Leanness of face, length and sharpness of feature,
and length of limb, and intensity of expression, rendered acute by
angular, facial outline, are the general characteristics of his
appearance."
The controversy, excited by the question of the admission of Kansas, can
not be viewed as having terminated with the mere practical decision of her
status, as a State tolerating or prohibiting slavery. Southern men had
freely admitted the improbability of the permanent abiding of the
institution in that Territory, or elsewhere, north of the line of 36° 30',
and their defeat had a far more alarming significance than the exclusion
of slavery from soil where the laws of nature opposed its location.
Important conclusions were deducible from the lesson of Kansas, which the
South must have been smitten with voluntary blindness not to have
accepted. Of the purpose of the Republican party, never to consent to the
admission of additional slave States, there was added to constantly
accumulating proof from other sources, the bold declarations of Abolition
members of Congress. Recent experience clearly demonstrated that the South
could no longer rely upon the Northern Democracy in support of the
plainest guarantees of the Constitution, for the protection of her
property, when they were in conflict with the dominant fanaticism of that
section. Accordingly, the Southern Democracy, wisely and bravely resolved,
and the unfortunate issue should not prejudge their action, to require of
their Northern associates, as the condition of continued coöperation, a
pledge of better faith in the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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