The news of his election reached Mr. Davis while working in his garden, and is said to have caused him genuine disappointment and grief. That the convention was uncertain of his acceptance is indicated by the fact that with the notification was sent an earnest appeal to consider the public welfare, rather than his own preferences, in considering the offer of the presidency. Upon this ground he based his action in accepting the office and hastening to Jackson, he resigned his position in the state army, expressing the hope and belief that the service would be but temporary. All along the route to Montgomery, bands and bonfires, booming cannon and the peals of bells heralded his approach, and vast concourses greeted him at every station. What purported to be an account of this journey was printed in the leading papers of the North, which pictured Mr. Davis as invoking war, breathing defiance and threatening extermination of the Union. Nothing of the kind, however, occurred. The speeches actually delivered were moderate, conservative and conciliatory. So much so, in fact, that they were disappointing to his enthusiastic audiences, and there are yet living many witnesses to the frequent and repeated declaration of the fear that "Jeff. Davis has remained too long amongst the Yankees to make him exactly the kind of president the South needs." XII. His First Inaugural Monday, Feb. 18, 1861, there assembled around the state capitol at Montgomery such an audience as no state had ever witnessed--as perhaps none ever will witness. Statesmen, actual and prospective; jurists and senators; soldiers and sailors; officers and office-seekers, the latter, no doubt, predominating; clerks, farmers and artisans; fashionably attired women in fine equipages decorated with streamers and the tri-colored cockades; foreign correspondents--in fact, representatives from every sphere and condition of life, each eager to witness a ceremonial which could never occur again. At exactly one o'clock Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens appeared upon the platform in front of the capitol, and when the mighty wave of applause had subsided, Howell Cobb, President of the Constitutional Convention, administered to them the oath of office. Then in that peculiarly musical voice which had never failed to charm the Senate in other days, a voice audible in its minutest inflections to every one of the vast throng, Mr. Davis delivered his inaugural address. Strangely enough, both sections of the divided country then and thereafter attached a widely varying value to the address. It was so simple, clear and direct that it is amazing two interpretations should have been placed upon it. As an exposition of the causes leading to secession, it was a masterpiece. It is impossible to read it today without feeling that in every sentence it breathed a prayer for peace.