The Passing of President Jefferson Davis -- 6 December 1889
“When
Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, was seeking
safety in flight, a fellow traveler remarked to him that the cause of
the Confederates was lost. He replied: “It appears so, but the
principle for which we contended is bound to reassert itself, though it
may be at another time and in another form.” (Southern History of the
War, Pollard, page 582)
“The lamp of life waned low as the hour of midnight
arrived; nor did it flicker into the brightness of consciousness at any
time. Eagerly, yet tenderly, the watchers gazed at the face of the
dying chieftain. His face, always calm and pale, gained additional
pallor, and at a quarter to 1 o’clock of the morning of the 6th day of December death came to the venerable leader….
There
was nothing remarkable about the death-bed scene. The departure of the
spirit was gentle and utterly painless. There were no dry eyes in the
little assembly about the bed, and every heart bled with the anguish
which found vent in Mrs. Davis’s sobs and cries.”
The Times-Democrat gave the following account of the closing scene: “At 12:45
o’clock this morning Hon. Jefferson Davis, ex-President of the
Confederate States, passed away at the residence of Associate Justice
Charles E. Fenner. Only once did he waver in his belief that his case
showed no improvement, and that was at an early hour yesterday morning,
when he playfully remarked to Mr. Payne: “I am afraid that I shall be
compelled to agree with the doctors for once, and admit that I am a
little better.”
At 7 o’clock
Mrs. Davis administered some medicine, but the ex-President declined to
receive the whole dose. She urged upon his the necessity of taking the
remainder, but putting it aside, with the gentlest of gestures
whispered, “Pray, excuse me.” These were his last words.”
The [New Orleans] Daily States said in its editorial:
“Throughout
all the South there are lamentations and tears; in every country on the
globe where there are lovers of liberty there is mourning; wherever
there are men who admire heroic patriotism, dauntless resolution,
fortitude, or intellectual power and supremacy, there is sincere
sorrowing. The beloved of our land, the unfaltering upholder of
constitutional liberty…is no more…” “Jefferson Davis is dead; but the
principles for which he struggled, for the vindication of which he
devoted his life, for which he suffered defeat, and unto which he clung
unto death, still live.
The fanatical howlings of the abolitionists, the tumult and thunders of civil war, the fierce mouthings of the organizers of reconstruction, and reconstruction itself, that black and foul disgrace of humanity, are all departed, sunk into silence like a tavern brawl, but the constitutional principles upon which the Confederacy was founded and for which Jefferson Davis spoke and struggled, for which he gave life and fortune, still survive in all their living power; and when they shall have been, if ever, really destroyed, this Republic will be transformed into one of the most oppressive and offensive oligarchies that has ever arisen amongst the civilized nations of the earth.”
The fanatical howlings of the abolitionists, the tumult and thunders of civil war, the fierce mouthings of the organizers of reconstruction, and reconstruction itself, that black and foul disgrace of humanity, are all departed, sunk into silence like a tavern brawl, but the constitutional principles upon which the Confederacy was founded and for which Jefferson Davis spoke and struggled, for which he gave life and fortune, still survive in all their living power; and when they shall have been, if ever, really destroyed, this Republic will be transformed into one of the most oppressive and offensive oligarchies that has ever arisen amongst the civilized nations of the earth.”
The Times-Democrat of the 10th had this editorial:
“If
there was ever the shadow of doubt in the minds of the people of the
United States of the hold of Jefferson Davis upon the hearts of the
Southern people that doubt has been removed. From city and country, from
every nook and hamlet, have come expressions of profoundest sorrow over
his death; of grief at the passing away of the great Confederate
chieftain. They turned to him as the Mussulman to his Mecca---the shrine
at which all true Southern-born should worship.
There has never been any division of sentiment as to the greatness of Jefferson Davis. He has always been the hero of his people---their best beloved. From the day that Lee laid down his arms at Appomattox to the hour of Jefferson Davis’s death the Southern people look upon the ex-President of the Confederacy as the embodiment of all that was grand and glorious in the Lost Cause. Standing alone as a citizen without the power to exercise his citizenship, the last surviving victim of sectional hate and malevolence, he was an exile while on the soil of his native land and in the midst of his own people. Jefferson Davis will go to the grave bathed in a people’s tears.”
There has never been any division of sentiment as to the greatness of Jefferson Davis. He has always been the hero of his people---their best beloved. From the day that Lee laid down his arms at Appomattox to the hour of Jefferson Davis’s death the Southern people look upon the ex-President of the Confederacy as the embodiment of all that was grand and glorious in the Lost Cause. Standing alone as a citizen without the power to exercise his citizenship, the last surviving victim of sectional hate and malevolence, he was an exile while on the soil of his native land and in the midst of his own people. Jefferson Davis will go to the grave bathed in a people’s tears.”
(The Memorial Volume of Jefferson Davis, J.W. Jones, 1889, pp. 473-509
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