JEFFERSON DA VIS BORN JUNE 3. 1808

ADDRESS
BY CHARLES 0. JONES, D. D. BIRTHDAY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, JUNE 3, 1913
ATLANTA, GEORGTA

ADDRESS
From the settlement at Jamestown in 1607 to 1860, over 250 years, the South sat in the chair of statesmanship and rode in the forefront of battle. Washington, wise in counsel, dauntless in war; Patrick Henry, the peerless orator; Jefferson, the author of the Declaration; Madi son, the father of the Constitution; Monroe, the author of the Doctrine that has preserved this continent from European entanglements; Marshall and Taney, the wise interpreters of the Constitution were all Southerners. Washington, Andrew Jackson, Scott, Taylor, Joe Wheeler and Schley, the victorious leaders in our four foreign wars to the present, were Southerners. Of the 28 presidents, 9 were furnished by the South, 3 others were Southern born, including the present distinguished executive, and two others were of Southern ancestry, including Theodore Roosevelt, half Southern, who owes many of his distin guishing traits to his Georgia mother. Since 1789, when Washington was inaugurated, the 9 Southern presidents have been at the he.sid of the government 53 years out of 124.
If Kentucky had no other title to fame, she would be historically great for giving birth to the two outstanding figures of the most gigantic war in the annals of time Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America, and Abraham Lincoln, the war pres ident of the United States. Born about 100 miles and only eight months apart, they were destined to greatness in opposing spheres.
Lincoln's paternal ancestors came from England in 1638, but none showed peculiar traits, and Thomas, the father of the future president, was entirely shiftless and migratory. Nothing is known of Nancy Hanks his mother, except that Lincoln spoke of her in most endear ing terms.

Davis' aneestrj- was likewise unliistorical. His grand father came from Wales in the early part of the 18th century, moved southward with the tide of emigration, and settled in Georgia, marrying a woman of Georgia. Only one child, Samuel, was born of this union. He raised a company and fought in the Revolution. A grant of 1,000 acres by South Carolina after the war suggests that he may have served under Marion or Sumter. Samuel married Jane Cook of South Carolina, moved near Augusta, and became clerk of the county court. He also was migratory; moved to Kentucky where Jefferson was bora, the youngest of 9 children, then to Louisiana, and finally to Mississippi. The oldest son, Joseph Emory, remained in Kentucky, studied and practiced law success fully, and then settled in Mississippi, becoming the wealthiest and most influential man in the state.
A contrast between these two Kentucky-born leaders may be interesting. Lincoln never went to school more than (T months. He was a river flatboatman, a railsplitter, a village wrestler and joker, a clerk in a grocery store, a captain in the Black Hawk .war, a lawyer and politician in Illinois but a student of books such as he could secure; the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Weems' Life of "Washington; a student of human nature; a marvellous mind that open ed to instruction from any source as flowers to the dew.
Davis had the best educational advantages. For some unexplained reason, his family seemed determined to push him to the front; perhaps, because he was the youngest, or because he showed precocity, or because of an instinctive feeling that he was predestined to a career far beyond the ordinary. His rich brother, Joseph, was ever an adviser, helper, and guardian. When only 7 years old, Jefferson rode horseback with friends over 1,000 miles to an academy in Kentucky. Then he went to other preparatory schools, then to Transylvania Uni versity, Lexington, Ky., then to West Point. He was never a very diligent student in the academic sense, and graduated 20 in a class of 33. Better than books was his association with such students as Lee, Albert .Sidney Johnston, Joe Johnston, and others with whom he asso ciated in the trying days to come. He remained in the army for 7 years, was stationed at frontier forts, where

he suffered much hardship, took part in the Black Hawk war, where he might have met Captain Abraham Lincoln, wedded the daughter of Colonel Zaehry Taylor in a run away marriage, resigned from the army, and settled on a large plantation near that of his brother, Joseph's.
For 10 years he was in retirement as a successful cotton planter. He employed his leisure in careful and assiduous reading and study; and grounded himself in history and the principles of government, thus making full prepara tion for the time when he should be called to exalted station and high responsibility. He made an unsuccess ful race for the legislature, was elected a Polk and Dallas elector and canvassed the state making a strong impres sion, and was elected a congressman in 1845. He resign ed to become colonel of the Mississippi Ri9es for the Mexican war, fought at Monterey, Vera Cruz, and Bnena Vista. He saved the day in this last battle, was severely wounded but continued in the saddle to the end, and of his conduct General Taylor said: "His distinguished coolness and gallantry and the heavy loss of his regiment entitle him to the particular notice of the government."
Lincoln studied and practiced law, was elected to the Illinois legislature, became an elector on the William Henry Harrison ticket, and again in 1844 on the Henry Clay ticket, was mentioned as a candidate for governor, and was elected to Congress just a year after Da vis, having defeated Peter Cartwright the famous frontier preacher whom the Democrats put up to beat the Whigs.
He was defeated as a candidate for the United States Senate, became famous for his debates with the "Little Giant," Stephen A.Douglass, was mentioned for the vicepresidency at the first Republican national convention in
1856, and loomed up as a formidable Western man for the presidential nomination in 1860, although nobody re-ally believed that the ex-flatboatman, rail-splitter, and frontier lawyer and politician would ever be president of the United States. On the other hand, Davis was a social favorite, a natural aristocrat, a statesman rather than politician, and marked out for high position in state and nation.
If Samuel Davis had moved westward instead of southward, and if Thomas Lincoln had become a citizen

of Mississippi instead of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln might have become president of the Southern Confederacy, and Jefferson Davis war president of the United States. How wonderful it is that circumstances, environment, and op portunity, decide under Providence our destiny and life work. This fact should make us broad and sympathetic in judgment, and accord the same honesty and sincerity to those on the opposite side as we demand of them for
ourselves. Mr. Davis was a union man, but a believer in states,
rights. He thought that the union was a confederation rather than a federation, a partnership of states, which could be dissolved at pleasure.
In the Charleston convention of 1860, he was promi nent for the presidential nomination. Ben Butler, after wards of unsavory name, voted for him 57 times. At the Montgomery convention Davis was elected president of the Confederacy. Eobert Toombs expected the nomi nation, and was never sympathetic with Davis after that.. Then came the awful conflict. The qualities that had been developing in Davis since he left West Point, came to the front in full flower. He was a man thoroughly pre pared for the position to which his countrymen had called him. He undertook his high office to magnify it. He fully realized that war must come, fratricidal, hand-tohand, long-continued. His qualities as war-president. may be summarized:
1. He showed decision. This quality was manifested throughout his life. He did not believe in nullification,, but while in the army, such was his conviction on states rights, that he said: "Much as I valued my commission,, much as I desired to remain in the army, and disapprov ing as much as I did the remedy resorted to, that com mission would have been torn to tatters before it would have been used in civil war with the state of South Car olina." When he returned from the Mexican war, thecountry ringing with his praises, and President Polk of fered him a commission as brigadier-general of volun teers, he declined it on the ground that the President had no authority to make the. appointment, that powerinhering in the states alone.
2. He manifested persistence. When it appeared!

to almost every one else that the Confederacy was doom ed, he continued to believe that in some way fortune would change.
3. Patience was not inherent in him, but he developed it under misfortune and opposition. For some reason the Confederates, especially among the ruling classes, were never absolutely united, as they should have been. It is the fact of history that Governor Brown, Stephens, Toombs and others, never gave unqualified support to the President. There were cabals in the army also. There was talk of impeachment. A dictatorship was of fered to General Lee, and indignantly refused by that peerless soldier, who was not only true to his chief, but said that if we could not win with Davis, we could not win at all. Under these unhappy conditions, he set his face toward the conflict, and did all he could, and used every person and every agency possible toward the ac complishment of the impossible task of Southern inde pendence.
4. He was a man of courage. At West Point he came near expulsion because he would not witness against his roommate who was charged with infraction of dis cipline. At another time, when the fuse in an explosive in the classroom was accidently fired, the instructor and students fled the room, but young Davis seized the missile and hurled it out of the window. During his frontier ex periences in the army, in the Mexican war, in his political battles, and all through the civil war, he exhibited this same equipoise of nerve, from which dauntless courage rises. When he resigned from the Senate, lie expected war service in the Confederacy, and not civic. I have no doubt he would have preferred to lead the troops in the thick of battle, than to be a stoi-m center in the tur moil of politics.
5. He showed patriotism of the broadest character. In his congressional and senatorial service, he studied problems of statesmanship, and considered questions that affected not one part but all parts of the country. As the most successful secretary of war, he had many surveys made of the country westward to the Pacific, and de clared that a national roadway should be built across the continent, before Senator Benton advocated the same

gigantic enterprise, declaring, "There is the East, there is India."
He had this same national broadmindedness as Pres ident. He hoped that when the Confederate States se cured their independence and permanent peace "should scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,"-the freest, best and greatest republic should be developed under our South ern skies; that a government should be created where every man should be protected in his rights, and have the largest liberty and opportunity for personal happi ness and success; that we should be an example to all the world, whose countries should be illuminated by the streaming rays of our great national sun.
Appomattox was not so much a personal disappoint ment to him, as it was the death of his hopes, the crash ing down of those lofty ideals that he had erected in his imaginings for the betterment of his own people and the instruction of .even those who live beyond the seas.
6. Da vis was never greater than in irremediable de feat. Events rushed to their culmination. Lee's flaw less strategy, the blows constantly lessening of the great est army that ever marched and fought against measure less odds, the daunitlessness of our women who would never yield all these were unavailing; and the curtain fell on the tragedy of war.
Then it was rolled up to show the greater tragedies of reconstruction. Davis was to be the vicarious suffer.er. The entire South was symbolized in him. He was to the victors the incarnation of rebellion, and he must receive the blows deserved by the entire South. Then, indeed, all the qualities of the man showed themselves. Arrested, ill-treated, shackled, locked in a damp, dark dungeon, the eyes of sentinels forbidding privacy, the fate of Lincoln slain.by the assassin's bullet was pre ferable to the sick body, tortured nerves, and broken hearted man of the South. But his unconquerable will, dauntless courage, persistency of character, and con sciousness of right, made him endure martyrdom; find out of it he emerged, worn and scarred, but the hero and idol of his people, the admired even of his enemies, who were afraid to execute him under the charge of treason, and who finally threw the case against him out of court, releasing him under bond signed by Northern men.
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After the war he remained in private life. He was urged to ask that his civic disabilities be removed, but declined, saying that a pardon from the President would be an acknowledgement of wrong, and that he had done no wrong. His retirement was from time to time in vaded by gusts of obloquy and shafts of envy; but he retained his calm, gave himself to study and the prep aration of his Memoirs; accepted invitations to various towns and cities, and all through the Southland was re ceived as a conquerer.
So strong a character and so public a life could not fail to make many mistakes and to develop fierce enemies; but none fail to credit him with purity of life, honesty of purpose, and genuine greatness of character.
He was serene in his own conscience and conscious ness ; secure in history as to the sincerity of his motives and patriotism; and happy in the reverence and love of his countrymen. Thus in a tranquil old age he passed with the dignity and majestic simplicity of Arthur, king of the knights of the table round, knowing that
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways. "When the news of his departure was throbbed over the land, the South put on mourning; even the North respectfully lifted its hat; and the New York World said, 'A great soul has passed away.' He sleeps on the banks of the James at Richmond, where he lived through the trying years, and in whose capitol he did his best to create his ideal of what his great protagonist called 'a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.' He will live in history forever."
This splendid address ordered printed by Atlanta Camp No. 159, that it may be preserved as a valuable contribution to the history of the South's great struggle for liberty.
W. H. HABBISOX, Adjutant.