Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the summer of 1858. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the summer of 1858..

Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the summer of 1858. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the summer of 1858..
not in this imitate the mischievous agitators who inflame the Northern mind against the Southern States.  He came among them, an invalid, advised by his physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of his health; as an American citizen, he had not expected that his right to come here would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rights of the South had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither his coming nor his going would attract attention.  But his anticipations had proved erroneous.  The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted above the barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had chosen, without political distinction, to welcome his coming, and by constant acts of generous hospitality to make his sojourn as pleasant as his physical condition would permit.

On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capital consists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, had erroneously judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as a political mission; wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that the scavengers of that party had been employed in the publication of falsehoods, both in relation to himself and his political friends at the South.

So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more than the barking of a cur, which, by its clamor, indicates the inhospitable character of the master who keeps him.  If his friends and himself were, as had been falsely charged, Disunionists and Nullifiers, they might naturally have looked for kinder considerations from a party which circulates petitions for a “prompt and peaceful dissolution of the Union” on account of the incompatibility of the sections—­from a party, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitution in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and void the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to enact.  The fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their honorable discharge of its obligations was their rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found the highest commendation in their power to bestow.

By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words into extracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his opinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his was the creed on which the people of Maine must vote next Monday.

It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their hands that he should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had not failed to remember the obligation; when republicans had introduced the subject of African slavery he had defended it, and answered pharisaical pretensions by citing the Bible, the constitution of the United States and the good of society in justification of the institutions of the State of which he was a citizen; in this he but

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Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the summer of 1858. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.