Jefferson Davis > Quotes

“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.”
― Jefferson Davis

“All we ask is to be let alone.”
― Jefferson Davis

“If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1

“I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.”
― Jefferson Davis

“The war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination, we will have.”
― Jefferson Davis

“Garfield's assassination attempt made "the whole nation care".”
― Jefferson Davis

“Not mine, oh, Lord, but thine.”
― Jefferson Davis

“The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished--a reunited country.”
― Jefferson Davis

“It early became manifest that great reliance must be placed on the introduction of articles of prime necessity through the blockaded ports. A vessel, capable of stowing six hundred and fifty bales of cotton, was purchased by the agent in England, and kept running between Bermuda and Wilmington. Some fifteen to eighteen successive trips were made before she was captured. Another was added, which was equally successful. These vessels were long, low, rather narrow, and built for speed. They were mostly of pale sky-color, and, with their lights out and with fuel that made little smoke, they ran to and from Wilmington with considerable regularity.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“And among the things most odious to my mind is to find a man who enters upon a public office, under the sanction of the Constitution, and taking an oath to support the Constitution—the compact between the States binding each for the common defense and general welfare of the other—and retaining to himself a mental reservation that he will war upon the institutions and the property of any of the States of the Union. It is a crime too low to characterize as it deserves before this assembly. It is one which would disgrace a gentleman—one which a man with self-respect would never commit. To swear that he will support the Constitution, to take an office which belongs in many of its relations to all the States, and to use it as a means of injuring a portion of the States of whom he is thus an agent, is treason to everything that is honorable in man.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“For the ammunition and equipment required for the infantry and artillery, a good laboratory and workshop had been established at Richmond. The arsenals were making preparations for furnishing ammunition and knapsacks; but generally, what little was done in this regard was for local purposes. Such was the general condition of ordnance and ordnance stores in May, 1861.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“I thought myself better adapted to command in the field; and Mississippi had given me the position which I preferred to any other—the highest rank in her army. It was, therefore, that I afterward said, in an address delivered in the Capitol, before the Legislature of the State, with reference to my election to the Presidency of the Confederacy, that the duty to which I was thus called was temporary, and that I expected soon to be with the Army of Mississippi again.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“How can the Union be saved?" He answered his question thus: "There is but one way by which it can be [saved] with any certainty; and that is by a full and final settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue between the sections. The South asks for justice—simple justice—and less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the Constitution, and no concession or surrender to make.... "Can this be done? Yes, easily! Not by the weaker party; for it can of itself do nothing—not even protect itself—but by the stronger.... But will the North agree to do this? It is for her to answer this question. But, I will say, she can not refuse if she has half the love of the Union which she professes to have, nor without exposing herself to the charge that her love of power and aggrandizement is far greater than her love of the Union.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“For a State or union of States to attack with military force another State, is to make war. By the Constitution, the power to make war is given solely to Congress. "Congress shall have power to declare war," says the Constitution. 171 And, again, "to raise and support armies." 172 Thus, under a perverted use of language, the Executive at Washington did that which he undeniably had no power to do, under a faithful observance of the Constitution”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“It is a noteworthy fact that the three highest officers in rank, and whose fame stands unchallenged either for efficiency or zeal, were all so indifferent to any question of personal interest, that they had received their appointment before they were aware it was to be conferred. Each brought from the Army of the United States an enviable reputation, such as would have secured to him, had he chosen to remain in it, after the war commenced, any position his ambition could have coveted.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“Even Mr. Horace Greeley, with all his extreme partisan feeling, is obliged to admit that, "whether the bombardment and reduction of Fort Sumter shall or shall not be justified by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy had no alternative but its own dissolution.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The question was merely whether the slaveholder should be permitted to go, with his slaves, into territory (the common property of all) into which the non-slaveholder could go with his property of any sort. There was no proposal nor desire on the part of the Southern States to reopen the slave-trade, which they had been foremost in suppressing, or to add to the number of slaves. It was a question of the distribution, or dispersion, of the slaves, rather than of the "extension of slavery.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The Constitution expressly forbade any interference by Congress with the slave-trade—or,”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“On the day after the victory, the Congress, then sitting in Richmond, upon receiving the dispatch of the President from the field of Manassas, adopted resolutions expressive of their thanks to the most high God, and inviting the people of the Confederate States to offer up their united thanksgiving and praise for the mighty deliverance. The resolutions also deplored the necessity which had caused the soil of our country to be stained with the blood of its sons, and to their families and friends offered the most cordial sympathy; assuring them that in the hearts of our people would be enshrined "the names of the gallant dead as the champions of free and constitutional liberty.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“There was before the war little powder or ammunition of any kind stored in the Southern States, and this was a relic of the war with Mexico.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“It is evident, therefore, that the people of the South, in the crisis which confronted them in 1860, had no lack either of precept or of precedent for their instruction and guidance in the teaching and the example of our brethren of the North and East. The only practical difference was, that the North threatened and the South acted.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“Mr. Seward, of New York, as we have seen, was a member of that Committee—the man who, in 1858, had announced the "irrepressible conflict," and who, in the same year, speaking of and for abolitionism, had said: "It has driven you back in California and in Kansas; it will invade your soil." He was to be the Secretary of State in the incoming Administration, and was very generally regarded as the "power behind the throne," greater than the throne itself.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The first efforts made to obtain powder were by orders sent to the North, which had been early done both by the Confederate Government and by some of the States. These were being rapidly filled when the attack was made on Fort Sumter. The shipments then ceased. Niter was contemporaneously sought for in north Alabama and Tennessee. Between four and five hundred tons of sulphur were obtained in New Orleans, at which place it had been imported for use in the manufacture of sugar.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“One of the results of the battle, which is at least significant, is the fact that General Grant, who had superciliously refused to recognize General Polk as one with whom he could exchange prisoners, did, after the battle, send a flag of truce to get such privileges as are recognized between armies acknowledging each other to be "foemen worthy of their steel." General Polk reported as follows: "We pursued them to their boats, seven miles, and then drove their boats before us. The road was strewed with their dead and wounded, guns, ammunition, and equipments. The number of prisoners taken by the enemy, as shown by their list furnished, was one hundred and six, all of whom have been returned by exchange. After making a liberal allowance to the enemy, a hundred of their prisoners still remain in my hands, one stand of colors, and a fraction over one thousand stand of arms, with knapsacks, ammunition, and other military stores. Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was six hundred and forty one; that of the enemy was probably not less than twelve hundred.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The Declaration of Independence was made by the colonies, each for itself. The recognition of their independence was not for the colonies united, but for each of the colonies which had maintained its independence; and so, when the Constitution was formed, the delegates were not elected by the people en masse, but they came from each one of the States; and when the Constitution was formed it was referred, not to the people en masse, but to the States severally, and severally by them ratified and approved.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The Missourians who fought at Vicksburg, and who, after that long, trying, and disastrous siege, asked, when in the camp of parolled prisoners, not if they could get a furlough, not if they might go home when released, but how soon they might hope to be exchanged and resume their places in the line of battle, show of what metal the Missouri troops were made, and of what they were capable when tempered in the fiery furnace of war. I can recall few scenes during the war which impressed me more deeply than the spirit of those worn prisoners waiting for the exchange that would again permit them to take the hazards of battle for the cause of their country.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“Notable among such was the "New York Tribune," which had been the organ of the abolitionists, and which now declared that, "if the cotton States wished to withdraw from the Union, they should be allowed to do so"; that "any attempt to compel them to remain, by force, would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and to the fundamental ideas upon which human liberty is based"; and that, "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Union in 1861.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“Now, I ask, where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a State; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and, if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States?”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“To Brigadier-General G. T. Beauregard, "Commanding Provisional Army, C. S. A." "Montgomery, April 11th. "General Beauregard, Charleston. "We do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter, if Major Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree that, in the mean time, he will not use his guns against us, unless ours should be employed against Fort Sumter. You are thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable. (Signed) "L. P. Walker, Secretary of War.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

“The troops were, however, still very poorly armed and equipped. The old smooth-bore musket was the principal weapon of the infantry; the artillery had mostly the six-pounder gun and the twelve-pounder howitzer; and the cavalry were armed with such various weapons as they could get—sabers, horse-pistols, revolvers, Sharp's carbines, musketoons, short Enfield rifles, Holt's carbines, muskets cut off, etc.”
― Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government