Part 2
From this brother Jefferson Davis purchased "Briarfield," and arrangements were made by which they lived together and jointly managed the plantations. Owning a large number of slaves, they inaugurated a policy for their management which is no less interesting in itself than for the results attained. It was based upon the political maxim of the elder brother that the less people are governed, the better and stronger and more law-abiding they become. All rules that involved unnecessary supervision and espionage of any kind were abolished. The slaves were placed upon honor and were left free to go and come as they pleased. Corporal punishment was only inflicted in cases involving moral turpitude, and only then after the trial and conviction of the accused by a jury of his peers, during the process of which all of the rules governing the production and admission of evidence observed in a court of justice, were scrupulously adhered to. The pardoning power alone was retained by the masters, and that they frequently exercised. Whenever a slave felt his services were more valuable to himself than they were to his master, he was allowed by the payment of a very reasonable price for his time to embark in any enterprise he wished, the brothers counseling and advising him, frequently loaning him money and always patronizing him in preference to other tradesmen. A copy of a page from one of the books of a slave, bearing the date of Sept. 24, 1842, is before me, and upon it J. E. and J. Davis are credited with $1,893.50. Another slave usually purchased the entire fruit crop of the two plantations, and there were still others who conducted independent and successful business operations. Some of those slaves in after years became respected and substantial citizens, one of them purchasing the plantations for something less than $300,000, which had been offered by a white competitor.
In their intercourse with their slaves, the brothers observed the utmost courtesy. With the idea that it involved disrespect, they forbade the abbreviation of Christian or the application of nicknames to any of their servants. Jefferson Davis' manager, James Pemberton, was always received on his business calls in the drawing-room, and the dignified master met the equally dignified slave upon exactly the same plane that he would have met his broker or his lawyer. From the practice of this system two results followed: A large fortune was accumulated and the slaves became thoroughly loyal and devoted to their masters.
But, as great as must have been the influences of this life in forming the character of Jefferson Davis, still greater and of more importance, perhaps, must be regarded the rigorous mental training which he derived from it. During the period of their residence together, the time not required by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussions. Political economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith and Vattel divided honors with the Federalist, the Resolutions of Ninety-Eight and the Debates of the Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the three latter by memory, and it is certain that year after year, almost without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost every conceivable question that could arise under the Constitution of the United States.
IV. First Appearance in Politics
The first appearance of Jefferson Davis in politics would be hardly worthy of mention, if it were not for the fact that the event was used in after years to lend color to a baseless calumny. The Democratic party of Warren County nominated Mr. Davis for the Legislature in 1843, and although the normal Whig majority was a large one, he was defeated only by a few votes. Some years previous to that time the state had repudiated certain bank bonds which it had guaranteed, and in that canvass this question was an issue. Mr. Davis assumed the position that as the Constitution provided that the state might be sued in such cases, the question as to whether the bonds constituted a valid debt was one primarily for the courts rather than for the Legislature to decide. Referring to this controversy, General Scott in his autobiography says, "These bonds were repudiated mainly by Mr. Jefferson Davis;" and during the Civil War the same propaganda was urged in England by Robert J. Walker. The well-known imperfection of General Scott's knowledge on most matters political serves, in some measure, to palliate his error; but as General Walker was, at that time, a senator in Congress from Mississippi, it is difficult to believe that he erred through lack of information or that he was ignorant of the fact that when the Legislature finally refused to heed the mandate of the courts and provide for the payment of those obligations, Mr. Davis, as a private citizen, advocated a subscription to satisfy the debt, and that this very act was later used by the repudiators as their chief argument against his election to Congress.
Mr. Davis took a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known beyond his own county; but at its conclusion his popularity had become so great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he should become a candidate for Congress in the following year.
On February 26, 1845, he was united in marriage to Miss Anna Varina Howell, of Natchez, and in the following month entered upon the canvass which resulted in his election by a large majority. He took his seat in the Twenty-Ninth Congress, December 8, 1845.
In that body were many men whose lives were destined to exert an influence upon his own fate in no small degree. Among them was that ungainly captain of volunteers to whom we have seen him administering the oath of allegiance at Fort Snelling, and a strong rugged, wilful man, who, in his youth, had been the town tailor of the little village of Greenville, in Tennessee.
Practically the only question involved in the campaign of 1844 was the admission of the Republic of Texas as a state of the Union. Mexico had declared that she would regard that act as tantamount to a declaration of war, and all parties in the Twenty-Ninth Congress now recognized the conflict as inevitable. Nor was it long delayed. One of President Polk's first official acts was to order General Taylor to proceed to the Rio Grande and defend it as the western boundary of the United States. Proceeding to a point opposite Matamoras, he was there attacked by the Mexicans, whom he defeated, drove back across the river and shelled them out of their works on the opposite side.
In the war legislation that was now brought forward in Congress, Mr. Davis' military education enabled him to take a conspicuous part. His first speech seems to have left no doubt in the minds of the best judges that henceforward he was a power to be reckoned with. John Quincy Adams, it is said, paid the closest attention to this maiden effort, and at its conclusion shouted into the ear trumpet of old Joshua Giddings: "Mark my words, sir; we shall hear more of _that_ young man!" But this speech, which was a reply to an attack made by Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, on West Point, did something more than win the admiration of Mr. Adams. Contending for the necessity of a military education for those who conduct the operations of war, and ignorant that any member of either avocation was present, he asked Mr. Sawyer if he thought the results at Matamoras could have been achieved by a tailor or a blacksmith. Mr. Sawyer good-naturedly replied that, while he would not admit that some members of his craft might not have rivaled the exploits of General Taylor, that when it came to reducing things he himself preferred a horse shoe to a fort any day. Andrew Johnson, however, took the matter as a personal insult, and as long as he lived cherished the bitterest hatred for Mr. Davis.
V. Enters Mexican War
But as promising as Mr. Davis' congressional career began, it did not long continue. Soon after war was declared, he received notice of his election as colonel of the First Mississippi Regiment, and early in June resigned his seat in Congress and accepted that office. President Polk, learning of his resignation, sent for Mr. Davis and offered him an appointment as brigadier-general. There is no doubt that he greatly coveted that office, but such, even at that time, was his attachment to the doctrine of state rights, that, frankly informing the President of his conviction that such appointments were the prerogatives of the states, he declined the offer. Hastening to New Orleans, Colonel Davis joined his regiment, and at once inaugurated that course of training and discipline which, in a few months, made of it a model of efficiency.
In August he joined General Taylor's army just as it moved forward into Mexico. On Sept. 19, 1846, General Taylor with six thousand men reached the strongly-fortified city of Monterey, garrisoned by ten thousand Mexican regulars under command of the able and experienced General Ampudia. Two days later the attack began, and at the close of a sharp artillery duel, General Taylor gave the order to carry the city by storm. The Fourth Artillery, leading the advance, was caught in a terrific cross fire, and was speedily repulsed with heavy losses, producing the utmost confusion along the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amidst the wild cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape, canister and musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break.
Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge. With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the Mexicans pell mell back into the stone fort in the rear.
In vain the defeated Mexicans sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its capture insured victory. On the morning of the twenty-third, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans and Davis' Mississippians the latter again leading the assault, stormed and captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the city.
VI. The Hero of Buena Vista
Two months later, General Taylor again moved forward toward the City of Mexico, and on February 20 was before Saltilo. Santa Anna, the ablest of the Mexican generals, with the best army in the republic, numbering twenty thousand men, there appeared in front. Taylor could barely muster a fourth of that number, and for strategic purposes fell back to the narrow defile in front of the hacienda of Buena Vista, where, on the twenty-third, was fought the greatest battle of the war.
The conflict began early in the morning, and raged with varying fortunes over a line two miles long, until the middle of the afternoon when the furious roar of musketry from that quarter apprised General Wool that Santa Anna was making a desperate effort to break the American center. Colonel Davis was immediately ordered to support that point, and the Mississippians went forward at a double quick. As they came upon the field, the wildest disorder prevailed, and only Colonel Bowles' Indiana regiment held its ground. After trying in vain to rally the fugitives of a routed regiment, Colonel Davis speedily formed his own into line of battle and rapidly pushed forward across a deep ravine to the right of the Indianians just in time to meet the shock of a whole brigade, which the two commanders succeeded in repulsing with great gallantry.
But the battle was not over. Under cover of the smoke, Santa Anna's full brigade of lancers flanked the Americans, and now at the sound of their trumpets, the Mexican infantry advanced once more to the charge. Thus assailed on two sides by overwhelming numbers, the situation was truly critical, but Colonel Davis, forming the two regiments into the shape of a re-entering angle, awaited the assault.
With flying banners and sounding trumpets the gailey caparisoned lancers came down at a thundering gallop until a sheet of flame from the angle wrapped their front ranks and bore it down to destruction. Quickly recovering, the survivors, with the fury of madmen, threw themselves again and again upon those stubborn ranks, which, now assailed on two sides, refused to give an inch, and met every onslaught with a withering fire, which soon so cumbered the ground with the dead that it was with difficulty the living could move over it.
At last utterly demoralized by the awful carnage, the Mexican lines broke and fled from the field. The day was over. Buena Vista was won, and Colonel Davis had accomplished a feat which, when Sir Colin Campbell imitated it at Inkerman two years later, he was sent by England to retrieve her fallen fortunes in India.
Notwithstanding the fact that Colonel Davis' right foot had been shattered early in the morning, he had refused to leave the field for aid, but now at the close of the action he fell fainting from his horse. The wound was a dangerous one, and as the surgeons were of the opinion that more than a year must elapse before he could hope to walk, as soon as he was able to travel, General Taylor insisted on his going home, and thus closed his career in the Mexican War.
VII. Enters the Senate
This exploit at Buena Vista created the profoundest enthusiasm throughout the country, and the Legislatures of several states passed resolutions thanking him for his services. Governor Brown of his own state, in obedience to an overwhelming popular sentiment, a few weeks after his return, appointed Colonel Davis to fill a vacancy that had occurred in the Senate--an appointment which was speedily ratified by the Legislature.
When, in 1847, Mr. Davis took his seat in the Senate, that irrepressible conflict, inevitable from the hour that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 sanctioned slavery as an institution within the United States, had reached a crisis which was threatening the very existence of the Union. The Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30' had failed to sanction it in express terms south of that parallel, and while in 1820 probably no one would have denied that this was the logical and obvious meaning of that measure, such was not the case thirty years later. The Abolitionists had opposed the annexation of Texas, believing, as Mr. Adams declared, that such an event would justify the dissolution of the Union.
In finally accepting Texas with bad grace, they served notice that it was their last concession. Therefore when the application of the Missouri Compromise to the vast territory acquired from Mexico would have given over a large portion of it to slavery, they brought forward the Wilmot Proviso, a measure, the effect of which was to abrogate the Missouri Compromise in so far as it affected slavery south of that line, while leaving its prohibition as to the north side in full force.
Mr. Davis participated in the discussion of these questions and at once became the ablest and most consistent of those statesmen who, contending for the strict construction of the Constitution and the broadest principles of state sovereignty, sought to prevent Congress from violating the one by infringing on the prerogatives of the other. Holding that the Constitution sanctioned slavery, that Congress had specified its limits, that the territories belonged in common to the states, he contended that the South could not accept with honor anything less than that the Missouri Compromise extended to the Pacific Ocean.
Reasoning from these premises, his speeches were masterpieces of logic, and whatever one may think of their philosophy, all must agree that they were among the greatest ever delivered in any deliberative body. Had the leaders of his party stood with him in that great battle, they would have been able to force some definite legislation which would have postponed the Civil War for many years--possibly beyond a period when the operation of economic laws might have effected the abolition of slavery as the only salvation of the South--but Henry Clay's dread of a situation that endangered the Union prompted him to bring forward his last compromise measures, which he himself declared to be only a temporary expedient. Calhoun, equally strong in his love for the Union, anxious to preserve it at all costs, abandoned his former position, and against the warnings of Jefferson Davis, soon to become prophetic, his party accepted the measure which, as he declared, guaranteed no right that did not already exist, while abrogating to the South the benefits of the Compromise of 1820.
VIII. Becomes Secretary of War
With temporary tranquillity restored, Mr. Davis soon afterward resigned his seat in the Senate to become a candidate for governor of his state--a contest in which he was defeated by a small plurality. He retired once more to Briarfield, and there is little doubt that he at that time intended to abandon public life. However, in 1853, he yielded to the insistence of President Pierce, and reluctantly accepted the portfolio of war in his cabinet.
Only a brief summary is possible, but if we may judge by the reforms inaugurated, the work accomplished during the four following years, Jefferson Davis must be considered one of our greatest secretaries of war. The antiquated army regulations were revised and placed upon a modern basis, the medical corps was reorganized and made more efficient, tactics were modernized, the rifled musket and the minie ball were adopted, the army was increased and at every session he persistently urged upon Congress the wisdom of a pension system and a law for the retirement of officers, substantially as they exist at present.
But more enduring and farther reaching in beneficent results were those great public works originated or completed under his administration, prominently among which may be mentioned the magnificent aqueduct which still supplies Washington with an abundance of pure water; the completion of the work on the Capitol, which had dragged for years; and the founding of the Smithsonian Institute, of which he was, perhaps, the most zealous advocate and efficient regent.
Transcontinental railways appealed to him as a public necessity. He therefore had two surveys made and collected the facts concerning climate, topography and the natural resources of the country, which demonstrated the feasibility of the vast undertaking, which was subsequently completed along the lines and according to the plans that he recommended.
From his induction into office he set at naught the spoils system of Jackson, and may very justly be regarded as a pioneer of civil service reform, for he altogether disregarded politics in his appointments, and when remonstrated with by the leaders of his party, informed them that he was not appointing Whigs or Democrats, but servants of the government who, in his opinion, were best qualified for the duties to be performed. The same principle he adhered to in matters of the greatest moment, as he demonstrated in the Kansas troubles. A state of civil war prevailed between the advocates and opponents of slavery, and it could not be doubted where his own sympathies were in the controversy. From the nature of the case, the commander of federal troops in Kansas must be armed with practically dictatory powers. The selection remained altogether with himself, and he sent thither Colonel Sumner, an avowed abolitionist, but an officer whose honor, ability and judgment recommended him as the best man for the difficult duty.
How the absurd story ever originated that Mr. Davis used the power of his great office to weaken the North and prepare the South for warlike operations, is inconceivable to the honest investigator of even ordinary diligence. No arms or munitions of war could have been removed from one arsenal to another or from factory to fort without an order from the Secretary of War. Those orders are still on record, and not one of them lends color to a theory which seems to have been adopted as a fact by Dr. Draper, upon no better proof than that afforded by heresay evidence of the most biased kind. In fact, arsenals in the South were continuously drawn upon to supply the Western forts during his term of office, and at its close, while all defenses and stores were in better condition than ever before, those south of the Potomac were relatively weaker than in 1853.
Other less serious charges are equally baseless, and the historian who would try Mr. Davis upon the common rules of evidence must conclude that his administration was not only free from dishonor but was characterized by high ability and unquestioned patriotism--a verdict strengthened by the fact that contemporaneous partisan criticism furnished nothing to question such a conclusion.
IX. He Re-enters the Senate
When, in 1857, Mr. Davis was again elected to the Senate, the Compromise of 1850 had already become a dead letter, as he had predicted that it would. The anti-slavery sentiment had, like Aaron's rod, swallowed all rivals, and party leaders once noted for conservatism, had resolved to suppress the curse, despite the decision of the Supreme Court statute, of law, of even the Constitution itself. Those who have criticised Mr. Davis most bitterly for his attitude at that time have failed to appreciate the fact that he then occupied the exact ground where he had always stood.
Others had changed. He had remained consistent. He had never countenanced the doctrine of nullification; he had always affirmed the right of secession. Profoundly versed, as he was, in the constitutional law of the United States, familiar with every phase of the question debated by the Convention of 1787, his logical mind was unable to reach a conclusion adverse to the right of a sovereign state to withdraw from a voluntary compact, the violation of which endangered its interests. He believed that the compact was violated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; he felt that it was being violated now, but as in 1850 he had declared that nothing short of the necessity of self-protection would justify the dissolution of the Union, he now pleaded with the majority not to force that necessity upon the South. Secession he frankly declared to be a great evil, so great that the South would only adopt it as the last resort; but at the same time he warned the abolitionists that if the guarantees of the Constitution were not respected, that if the Northern states were to defy the decrees of the Supreme Court favorable to the South, as they had done in the Dred Scott decision, that if his section was to be ruled by a hostile majority without regard to the right, the protection thrown around the minority by the fundamental law of the land, that the Southern states could not in honor remain members of the Union, and would therefore certainly withdraw from it.