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Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings
Jefferson Davis is one of the most complex and controversial figures in American political history (and the man whom Oscar Wilde wanted to meet more than anyone when he made his tour of the United States). Elected president of the Confederacy and later accused of participating in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he is a source of ongoing dissension between northerners and southerners. This volume, the first of its kind, is a selected collection of his writings culled in large part from the authoritative Papers of Jefferson Davis , a multivolume edition of his letters and speeches published by the Louisiana State University Press, and includes thirteen documents from manuscript collections and one privately held document that have never before appeared in a modern scholarly edition. From letters as a college student to his sister, to major speeches on the Constitution, slavery, and sectional issues, to his farewell to the U.S. Senate, to his inaugural address as Confederate president, to letters from prison to his wife, these selected pieces present the many faces of the enigmatic Jefferson Davis.
As William J. Cooper, Jr., writes in his Introduction, “Davis’s notability does not come solely from his crucial role in the Civil War. Born on the Kentucky frontier in the first decade of the nineteenth century, he witnessed and participated in the epochal transformation of the United States from a fledgling country to a strong nation spanning the continent. In his earliest years his father moved farther south and west to Mississippi. As a young army officer just out of West Point, he served on the northwestern and southwestern frontiers in an army whose chief mission was to protect settlers surging westward. Then, in 1846 and 1847, as colonel of the First Mississippi Regiment, he fought in the Mexican War, which resulted in 1848 in the Mexican Cession, a massive addition to the United States of some 500,000 square miles, including California and the modern Southwest. As secretary of war and U.S. senator in the 1850s, he advocated government support for the building of a transcontinental railroad that he believed essential to bind the nation from ocean to ocean.”
As William J. Cooper, Jr., writes in his Introduction, “Davis’s notability does not come solely from his crucial role in the Civil War. Born on the Kentucky frontier in the first decade of the nineteenth century, he witnessed and participated in the epochal transformation of the United States from a fledgling country to a strong nation spanning the continent. In his earliest years his father moved farther south and west to Mississippi. As a young army officer just out of West Point, he served on the northwestern and southwestern frontiers in an army whose chief mission was to protect settlers surging westward. Then, in 1846 and 1847, as colonel of the First Mississippi Regiment, he fought in the Mexican War, which resulted in 1848 in the Mexican Cession, a massive addition to the United States of some 500,000 square miles, including California and the modern Southwest. As secretary of war and U.S. senator in the 1850s, he advocated government support for the building of a transcontinental railroad that he believed essential to bind the nation from ocean to ocean.”
496 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 2003
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Jefferson Davis
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Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American military officer, statesman, and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and was the United States Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce Administration, he served as a U.S. Senator representing the state of Mississippi. As a senator he argued against secession but believed each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after receiving word that Mississippi had seceded from the Union. The following month, he was provisionally appointed President of the Confederate States of America and was elected to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis was not able to find a strategy to defeat the more industrially developed Union, even though the south only lost roughly one soldier for every two union soldiers on the battlefield.
After Davis was captured May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason, though not tried, and stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This limitation was posthumously removed by order of Congress and President Jimmy Carter in 1978, 89 years after his death. While not disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by its leading general, Robert E. Lee.
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American military officer, statesman, and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and was the United States Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce Administration, he served as a U.S. Senator representing the state of Mississippi. As a senator he argued against secession but believed each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after receiving word that Mississippi had seceded from the Union. The following month, he was provisionally appointed President of the Confederate States of America and was elected to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis was not able to find a strategy to defeat the more industrially developed Union, even though the south only lost roughly one soldier for every two union soldiers on the battlefield.
After Davis was captured May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason, though not tried, and stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This limitation was posthumously removed by order of Congress and President Jimmy Carter in 1978, 89 years after his death. While not disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by its leading general, Robert E. Lee.
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October 7, 2021
A nice historical resource for anyone interested in the USA Civil War period. From whipping Mexicans in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) during the administration of U.S. President James K. Polk(D), to life as a prison inmate, this collection of Davis' writings from before, during, and after the Civil War will keep you reading onward, if only for the historicity and mindset of Davis and his historically misguided political party, though, Davis' Party's belief in a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean eventually did reach fruition.
As Davis has written: "...when you admit slavery into the territory, you do not exclude the white laborer. It is a great fallacy, which has been repeatedly here promulgated, to suppose so. No, sir; slave labor forma the substratum on which white labor is elevated...."
Davis' views on slavery and the taking and the possessing of human beings as slaves, stems from his abundance of secular ignorance. If Davis only knew that 'holding' a slave, kidnapped and trafficked by the Mohammedans in Africa and sold to the infamous Slave Coast castles for further sale throughout the developing world, would have led to his necessary execution: “He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death." -Exodus 21:16
President Davis championed that: "There are three major methods of financing a war: taxation, borrowing, and fiat money, with taxation the least inflationary." However, by 1863 the Confederate economy had become unmanageable and in January 1864, the inflation rate exploded past 600 percent. It is recorded that Davis never comprehended the dimensions of the disaster. These days he would have simply blamed others for this mess.
Fortunately, contrary to his Party, then-and-now, Davis stood firm in word concerning State rights and sovereignty (10th Amendment-Bill of Rights). "The harmony, the efficiency, the perpetuity of our Union require the States, whenever the grants of the Constitution are inadequate to the purposes for which it was ordained, to add from their sovereignty whatever may be needed, and the same motives urge us to seek no power by other means than application to the States."
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Other works that may be of interest:
-Speeches and Writings: 1832-1858 (Library of America) by Abraham Lincoln
-Speeches and Writings: 1859-1865 (Library of America) by Abraham Lincoln
-The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
-The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt 1949
As Davis has written: "...when you admit slavery into the territory, you do not exclude the white laborer. It is a great fallacy, which has been repeatedly here promulgated, to suppose so. No, sir; slave labor forma the substratum on which white labor is elevated...."
Davis' views on slavery and the taking and the possessing of human beings as slaves, stems from his abundance of secular ignorance. If Davis only knew that 'holding' a slave, kidnapped and trafficked by the Mohammedans in Africa and sold to the infamous Slave Coast castles for further sale throughout the developing world, would have led to his necessary execution: “He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death." -Exodus 21:16
President Davis championed that: "There are three major methods of financing a war: taxation, borrowing, and fiat money, with taxation the least inflationary." However, by 1863 the Confederate economy had become unmanageable and in January 1864, the inflation rate exploded past 600 percent. It is recorded that Davis never comprehended the dimensions of the disaster. These days he would have simply blamed others for this mess.
Fortunately, contrary to his Party, then-and-now, Davis stood firm in word concerning State rights and sovereignty (10th Amendment-Bill of Rights). "The harmony, the efficiency, the perpetuity of our Union require the States, whenever the grants of the Constitution are inadequate to the purposes for which it was ordained, to add from their sovereignty whatever may be needed, and the same motives urge us to seek no power by other means than application to the States."
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Other works that may be of interest:
-Speeches and Writings: 1832-1858 (Library of America) by Abraham Lincoln
-Speeches and Writings: 1859-1865 (Library of America) by Abraham Lincoln
-The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
-The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt 1949
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