The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath
ambition; and they are about the same age, and none of them – let young America take notice – wears either beard or mustache. I come again to the traits which distinguish them from each other. In face and form, Davis represents the Norman type with singular fidelity, if my conception of that type be correct. He is tall and sinewy, with fair hair, gray eyes, which are clear rather than bright, high forehead, straight nose, thin, compressed lips, and pointed chin. His cheek bones are hollow, and the vicinity of his mouth is deeply furrowed with intersecting lines. Leanness of face, length and sharpness of feature, and length of limb, and intensity of expression, rendered acute by angular, facial outline, are the general characteristics of his appearance.”
The controversy, excited by the question of the admission of Kansas, can not be viewed as having terminated with the mere practical decision of her status, as a State tolerating or prohibiting slavery. Southern men had freely admitted the improbability of the permanent abiding of the institution in that Territory, or elsewhere, north of the line of 36° 30', and their defeat had a far more alarming significance than the exclusion of slavery from soil where the laws of nature opposed its location. Important conclusions were deducible from the lesson of Kansas, which the South must have been smitten with voluntary blindness not to have accepted. Of the purpose of the Republican party, never to consent to the admission of additional slave States, there was added to constantly accumulating proof from other sources, the bold declarations of Abolition members of Congress. Recent experience clearly demonstrated that the South could no longer rely upon the Northern Democracy in support of the plainest guarantees of the Constitution, for the protection of her property, when they were in conflict with the dominant fanaticism of that section. Accordingly, the Southern Democracy, wisely and bravely resolved, and the unfortunate issue should not prejudge their action, to require of their Northern associates, as the condition of continued coöperation, a pledge of better faith in the future.
It was in the progress of events, which may be justly called the sequel of the Kansas controversy, that Mr. Davis was most conspicuous during his second service in the Senate. His course was such as might have been anticipated from his zealous and vigilant regard for constitutional principles, and the rights and interests of his section. His feeble health had prevented his frequent participation in the struggles incidental to the Kansas question, but in those subsequent struggles, which marked the dissolution of the Democratic party, he was the constant, bold, and able adversary of Douglas. The ingenious sophistries of the latter were subjected to no more searching and scathing refutations than those with which Davis met his every attempt at their illustration.
At this period the position of Mr. Davis was no less prominent than in 1850, though his speeches were less frequent and voluminous. Upon both occasions his elevation was an ample reward to honorable ambition, but would have been perilous in the extreme had he been deficient in those great and rare qualities which were necessary to its maintenance. Among his numerous contests with the distinguished exponents of the sentiment in opposition to the South, none are more memorable than his collisions with Douglas.
Of these the most striking occurred on the 23d of February, 1859, and on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860. To have matched Douglas with an ordinary contestant, must always have resulted in disaster; it would have been to renew the contest of Athelstane against Ivanhoe. Douglas was accustomed to testify, cheerfully, to the power of Davis, as evinced in their senatorial struggles; and it is very certain that at no other hands did he fare so badly, unless an exception be made in favor of the remarkable speech of Senator Benjamin, of Louisiana. The latter was an adept in the strategy of debate, a parliamentary Suchet.
The 23d of February, 1859, was the occasion of a protracted battle between Davis and Douglas, lasting from midday until nearly night. This speech of Mr. Davis is, in many respects, inferior to his higher oratorical efforts, realizing less of the forms of oratory which he usually illustrated so happily, and is wanting somewhat in that symmetry, harmony, and comeliness in all its features, with which his senatorial efforts are generally wrought to the perfection of expression. The circumstances under which it was delivered, however, fully meet this criticism, and show a most remarkable readiness for the instantaneous and hurried grapple of debate, and this latter quality was the strong point of Douglas’ oratory. The latter had replied at great length, and with evident preparation, to a speech made by Mr. Davis’ colleague (Mr. Brown), who was not present during Douglas’ rejoinder. Without hesitation Mr. Davis assumed the place of his absent colleague, and the result was a running debate, lasting several hours, and exhibiting on both sides all the vivacious readiness of a gladiatorial combat.
In their ordinary and characteristic speeches there was an antithesis, no less marked than in their characters as men. Douglas was peculiarly American in his style of speaking. He dealt largely in the argumentum ad hominem; was very adroit in pointing out immaterial inconsistencies in his antagonists; he rarely discussed general principles; always avoided questions of abstract political science, and struggled to force the entire question into juxtaposition with the practical considerations of the immediate present.
In nearly all of Davis’ speeches is recognized the pervasion of intellect, which is preserved even in his most impassioned passages. He goes to the very “foundations of jurisprudence,” illustrates by historical example, and throws upon his subject the full radiance of that noble light which is shed by diligent inquiry into the abstract truths of political and moral science. Strength, animation, energy without vehemence, classical elegance, and a luminous simplicity, are features in Mr. Davis’ oratory which rendered him one of the most finished, logical, and effective of contemporary parliamentary speakers.
During the Thirty-sixth Congress, which assembled in December, 1859, Mr. Davis was the recognized leader of the Democratic majority of the Senate. His efforts, during this session, were probably the ablest of his life, and never did his great powers of analysis and generalization appear to greater advantage. On the second of February, 1860, Mr. Davis presented a series of seven resolves, which embodied the views of the administration, of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic members of the Senate, and of the Southern Democracy, and were opposed by Mr. Douglas (though absent from the Senate by sickness), Mr. Pugh, and by the Abolition Senators. They are important as the substantial expression of the doctrines upon which the Southern Democracy were already prepared to insist at the approaching National Convention.
The first resolution affirms the sovereignty of the States and their delegation of authority to the Federal Government, to secure each State against domestic no less than foreign dangers. This resolution was designed with special reference to the recent outrages of John Brown and his associate conspirators, several of whom had expiated their crimes upon the gallows, at the hands of the authorities of Virginia.
Resolution second affirms the recognition of slavery as property by the Constitution, and that all efforts to injure it by citizens of non-slaveholding States are violations of faith.
Third insists upon the absolute equality of the States.
The fourth resolution of the series, which embodied the material point of difference between Mr. Douglas and the majority of Democratic Senators, was modified, as stated by Mr. Davis, “after conference with friends,” and finally made to read thus:
“Resolved, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition remains.”
Fifth declares it the duty of Congress to supply any needed protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, provided the executive and judicial authority has not the adequate means.
The sixth resolution was an emphatic repudiation of what Mr. Douglas, by an ingenious perversion of terms, and a bold array of sophisms, was pleased to designate “popular sovereignty” – reading thus:
“Resolved, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained