Part 7

Immediately after Mr. Davis' release on bond, he went with his family to New York, and a few weeks later to Montreal, where he continued to reside until May of the following year when he again appeared before the Circuit Court in Richmond for trial. But despite the efforts of his counsel to force a trial of the case, it was dismissed by the government and thus ended ingloriously the boast of the government that it intended "in the arch traitor Davis to make treason odious."

XXXIV. Freedom, Reverses, Beauvoir

Impaired in health and longing for rest far away from the tragic scenes of the past few years, Mr. Davis accepted the invitation of English friends to visit them. But it was soon discovered that his visit was to be a continuous ovation. Everywhere he was greeted as though he had been the conqueror instead of the vanquished. The spirit that prompted those manifestations he appreciated, but it revived sad memories of the cause for which he had staked all and lost, and to avoid this lionizing he took up his residence in Paris.

The cordiality of the Frenchmen, however, surpassed that of their English brethren, and Mr. Davis soon found himself so much in the public eye that he decided to return to England. Before quitting Paris, the emperor conveyed his desire for an audience, which Mr. Davis courteously refused. Napoleon, he conceived, had acted in bad faith with the South and such was the moral rectitude of the man that he could never disguise his contempt for any one, of however exalted station, whom he believed to be guilty of double dealing of any kind.

As the guest of Lord Leigh and the Duke of Shrewsbury in Wales, Mr. Davis' health gradually improved until he felt himself once more able to enter an active business of life. The war had left him a poor man, and when a life insurance company of Memphis offered him its presidency with a fair salary he accepted, and with his family returned to America. The people of Memphis soon after his arrival presented him a fine residence, but this he refused.

Mr. Davis was probably a very poor business man and his associates of the insurance company were in no way superior, for its affairs soon became anything but prosperous. All of his available capital was invested in it, but this he gladly sacrificed in order to sell his own company to a stronger one which could protect the policies of the former.

The people of Texas, learning of Mr. Davis' losses offered to give him an extensive stock farm in that state, but this he also refused.

Upon the Gulf of Mexico, near the little station of Beauvoir, Mr. Davis owned a tract of land which he conceived would support his family, and there, far from the strife of the busy world, he resolved to spend the declining years of his life. However, retirement at best could only be partial, for a man loved and venerated as Mr. Davis was throughout the South, and Beauvoir accordingly became the shrine of the public men who sought the counsel of its sage. But with the modesty characteristic of the man he refused to advise any one upon measures of national import, since by the action of Congress he was forever disfranchised.

He would not ask pardon, sincerely believing that he had done no wrong, and when the people of Mississippi would have elected him to the United States Senate he declined the honor in words which should be perused by all who know the man as he was, during this period of his life: "The franchise is yours here, and Congress can but refuse you admission and your exclusion will be a test question," ran the invitation to which Mr. Davis replied: "I remained in prison two years and hoped in vain for a trial, and now scenes of insult and violence, producing alienation between the sections, would be the only result of another test. I am too old to serve you as I once did and too enfeebled by suffering to maintain your cause."

Any word that might serve to still further increase that alienation never passed the lips of the gentle, kindly old man, who still the idol of his people, preferred to all honors the quiet life there among the pines, where amidst his flowers he played with his children and their little friends, and far into the night, surrounded by his books, he worked assiduously upon his only defense, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate States of America." The concluding paragraph of that book, written in the gray dawn of a summer morning after a night of continuous labor, should be read by every one who would understand the motives that actuated Jefferson Davis in the great part that he played in the world's history.

"In asserting the right of secession it has not been my wish to incite to its exercise. I recognize the fact that the war showed it to be impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong; and now that it may not be again attempted, and the Union may promote the general welfare, it is needful that the truth, the whole truth, should be known so that crimination and recrimination may forever cease, and then on the basis of fraternity and faithful regard for the rights of the states there may be written on the arch of the Union 'Esto perpetua.'"

It is the voice of the soul in defeat, yet strong and conscious of its own integrity, recognizing the inevitable and praying for peace and the perpetuation of that Union which Jefferson Davis still loved.

XXXV. Death of Mr. Davis

His life's work was done with the completion of his book, and trusting to impartial posterity for that vindication of his motives which he realized must come some day, he turned away from the scenes of controversy and contentions, seeking in books, the converse of his friends, in long rambles with his children across wood and field, for oblivion of all painful memories. Defeat and persecution never embittered him. Cruel and false accusations found their way to his sylvan retreat. That they grievously wounded can be doubted by no one who knew his proud spirit, supersensitive to every insinuation of dishonor, but with the gentle smile of a philosopher he passed them by, fully realizing that his beloved people of the South, at least, would understand the stainless purity of all his motives.

A harsh or an unkind word never passed his lips concerning any of his personal or political enemies. In fact, it would be no more than the truth to say that this gentle old man cherished no sentiment of enmity toward any of God's creatures. The storm and stress of life were over, its hopes and its passions were dead, and grandly, majestically this man, who at once embodied the highest type of American manhood and all of the virtues of the perfect Christian gentleman, calmly awaited the end. It came on the 6th of December, 1889, in New Orleans, at the home of Judge Fenner, his life-long friend. When the news of his death went forth, even the voice of malice was subdued, and many of those who had sought to fix everlasting infamy upon his name ceased for a time to be unjust and agreed that a majestic soul had passed. Over the bier of the dead chieftain the whole South wept and nine of its governors bore him to the grave.

No proper estimate of the life and character of Jefferson Davis is possible in the restricted scope of this work, but lest I should be accused of partiality I shall here append the conclusion of Ridpath, the historian, written after a residence of almost a year under the same roof with Mr. Davis, which I heartily endorse as a correct estimate of the man.

"Before I had been with Mr. Davis three days every preconceived idea utterly and forever disappeared. Nobody doubted Mr. Davis' intellectual capacity, but it was not his mental power that most impressed me. It was his goodness, first of all, and then his intellectual integrity. I never saw an old man whose face bore more emphatic evidences of a gentle, refined and benignant character. He seemed to me the ideal embodiment of 'sweetness and light.' His conversation showed that he had 'charity for all and malice toward none.' I never heard him utter an unkind word of any man and he spoke of nearly all of his famous opponents. His manner may be best described as gracious, so exquisitely refined, so courtly, yet heart warm. Mr. Davis' dignity was as natural and charming as the perfume of the rose--the fitting expression of a serene, benign and comely moral nature. However handsome he may have been when excited in battle or debate, it surely was in his own home, with his family and friends around him, that he was seen at his best; and that best was the highest point of grace and refinement that the Southern character has reached."

Lest any foreigner should read this statement, let me say for his benefit that there are two Jefferson Davises in American history--one is a conspirator, a rebel, a traitor and "the Fiend of Andersonville"--he is a myth evolved from the hell-smoke of cruel war--as purely an imaginary a personage as Mephistopheles or the Hebrew Devil; the other was a statesman with clean hands and pure heart, who served his people faithfully from budding manhood to hoary age, without thought of self, with unbending integrity, and to the best of his great ability--he was a man of whom all his countrymen who knew him personally, without distinction of creed political, are proud, and proud that he was their countryman.

This is a conclusion by no means extravagant, a conclusion which, despite the fact of some mental faults that prevented him from quite attaining to the first rank of the greatest statesman, nevertheless leaves him pre-eminent as one of the purest and best of the men who has played a conspicuous part in the world's history.

FINIS.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Real Jefferson Davis, by Landon Knight