The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath
have secured the same results. He trusted the gentleman would be convinced that arms, like every occupation, requires to be studied before it can be understood; and from these things to which he had called his attention, he will learn the power and advantage of military science. He would make but one other allusion to the remarks of the gentleman he had noticed, who said nine-tenths of the graduates of the Military Academy abandoned the service of the United States. If he would take the trouble to examine the records upon this point, he doubted not he would be surprised at the extent of his mistake. There he would learn that a majority of all the graduates are still in service; and if he would push his inquiry a little further, he would find that a large majority of the commissioned officers who bled in the action of the 8th and 9th were graduates of that academy.
“He would not enter into a discussion on the military at this time. His pride, his gratification arose from the success of our arms. Much was due to the courage which Americans have displayed on many battle-fields in former times; but this courage, characteristic of our people, and pervading all sections and all classes, could never have availed so much had it not been combined with military science. And the occasion seemed suited to enforce this lesson on the minds of those who have been accustomed, in season and out of season, to rail at the scientific attainments of our officers.
“The influence of military skill – the advantage of discipline in the troops – the power derived from the science of war, increases with the increased size of the contending armies. With two thousand we had beaten six thousand; with twenty thousand we would far more easily beat sixty thousand, because the general must be an educated soldier who wields large bodies of men, and the troops, to act efficiently, must be disciplined and commanded by able officers. He but said what he had long thought and often said, when he expressed his confidence in the ability of our officers to meet those of any service – favorably to compare, in all that constitutes the soldier, with any army in the world; and as the field widened for the exhibition, so would their merits shine more brightly still.
“With many of the officers now serving on the Rio Grande he had enjoyed a personal acquaintance, and hesitated not to say that all which skill, and courage, and patriotism could perform, might be expected from them. He had forborne to speak of the general commanding on the Rio Grande on any former occasion; but he would now say to those who had expressed distrust, that the world held not a soldier better qualified for the service he was engaged in than General Taylor. Trained from his youth to arms, having spent the greater portion of his life on our frontier, his experience peculiarly fits him for the command he holds. Such as his conduct was in Fort Harrison, on the Upper Mississippi, in Florida, and on the Rio Grande, will it be wherever he meets the enemy of his country.
“Those soldiers, to whom so many have applied depreciatory epithets, upon whom it has been so often said no reliance could be placed, they too will be found, in every emergency renewing such feats as have recently graced our arms, bearing the American flag to honorable triumphs, or falling beneath its folds, as devotees to our common cause, to die a soldier’s death.
“He rejoiced that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Black) had shown himself so ready to pay this tribute to our army. He hoped not a voice would be raised in opposition to it – that nothing but the stern regret which is prompted by remembrance of those who bravely fought and nobly died will break the joy, the pride, the patriotic gratulation with which we hail this triumph of our brethren on the Rio Grande.”
A striking feature of these two speeches, as, indeed, of all Mr. Davis’ Congressional speeches, is the strong and outspoken national feeling which pervades them. It is a part of the history of these times, that while Jefferson Davis eloquently avowed a noble and generous sympathy with his heroic compatriots in Mexico, a prominent Northern politician bespoke for the American army, “a welcome with bloody hands to hospitable graves.” When, a few months afterwards, the names of Jefferson Davis and his Mississippi Rifles were baptized in blood amid those frowning redoubts at Monterey, and when, upon the ensanguined plain of Buena Vista, he fell stricken in the very moment of victory, just as his genius and the valor of his comrades had broken that last, furious onset of the Mexican lancers, New England and her leaders stood indifferent spectators of the scene.5 Yet the same New England bounded eagerly to the conquest and spoliation of their countrymen, and the same leaders clamored valiantly for the humiliation, for the blood even, of Jefferson Davis, as a traitor and a rebel. Quosque tandem.
An interesting sequel of this speech was the debate, which it occasioned two days afterwards, between Mr. Davis and Andrew Johnson, now President of the United States. Mr. Johnson, who boasts so proudly of his plebeian origin, and is yet said to be morbidly sensitive of the slightest allusion to it by others, excepted to Mr. Davis’ reference to the “tailor and blacksmith,” warmly eulogized those callings and mechanical avocations in general, and took occasion to expatiate extensively upon the virtue and intelligence of the masses. Mr. Davis, whose language is clearly not susceptible of any interpretation disparaging to “blacksmiths and tailors,” disclaimed the imputation, saying that he had designed merely to illustrate his argument, that the profession of arms, to be understood, must be studied, and that a mechanic could no more fill the place of an educated soldier, than could the latter supply the qualifications of the former. Mr. Johnson, however, was resolved to seize the opportunity for a panegyric upon the populace, and no explanations could avail. The Globe reports this debate as, “in all its stages, not being of an entirely pleasant nature.”
As an appropriate conclusion to this sketch of Mr. Davis’ career in the House of Representatives, we quote the following extract from an interesting work,6 published some years since: “John Quincy Adams had a habit of always observing new members. He would sit near them on the occasion of their Congressional debut, closely eyeing and attentively listening if the speech pleased him, but quickly departing if it did not. When Davis first arose in the House, the Ex-President took a seat close by. Davis proceeded, and Adams did not move. The one continued speaking and the other listening; and those who knew Mr. Adams’ habits were fully aware that the new member had deeply impressed him. At the close of the speech the ‘Old Man Eloquent’ crossed over to some friends and said, ‘That young man, gentlemen, is no ordinary man. He will make his mark yet, mind me.’”
CHAPTER III
The name of Davis is inseparable from those lettered glories of the American Union, which were the brilliant trophies of the Mexican war. In those bright annals it was engraven with unfading lustre upon the conquering banners of the Republic, and his genius and valor were rewarded with a fame which rests securely upon the laurels of Monterey and Buena Vista.
Jefferson Davis is a born soldier. Even if we could forget the glories of the assault upon Teneria and El Diablo, and banish the thrilling recollection of that movement at Buena Vista, the genius, novelty, and intrepidity of which electrified the world of military science, and extorted the enthusiastic admiration of the victor of Waterloo, we must yet recognize the impress of those rare gifts and graces which are the titles to authority. The erect yet easy carriage, the true martial dignity of bearing, which is altogether removed from the supercilious hauteur of the mere martinet, the almost fascinating expression of suaviter in modo, which yet does not for an instant conceal the fortiter in re, constitute in him that imperial semblance, to which the mind involuntarily concedes the right to supreme command. It is impossible, in the presence of Mr. Davis, to deny this recognition of his intuitive soldiership. Not only is obvious to the eye the commanding mien of the soldier, but the order, the discipline of the educated soldier, whose nature, stern and unflinching, was yet plastic to receive the impressions of an art with which it felt an intuitive alliance. This military precision
Massachusetts even refused military honors to the remains of a gallant son of her own soil, (Captain Lincoln,) and a descendant of one of her most eminent families, who was killed at Buena Vista. Her fanatical intolerance would not forget that he had fallen in a war which she did not approve.
“Our Living Representative Men,” by Mr. John Savage.