After
the fall of his government, Jefferson Davis only asked of his captors a
fair trial on the merits of his case. This he was denied after being
held in close confinement and torture for two years, his tormentors
“vaunted their clemency in not executing their victim.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
No Sacrificing Convictions to Expediency
“The
policy of Reconstruction devised by the victors of the North, was that
the men of the Confederacy should pursue no vocation until a pardon had
been asked of the President of the United States and granted by him.
Our men considered it a form instituted merely for their humiliation,
and as such complied with it as the means of feeding their helpless
families, already spent with hardships they had endured.
Necessitas
non habet legem is a maxim acceded to by mankind, and [Jefferson Davis]
felt that the men who asked pardon did it for a holy and legitimate
end. My husband, even in his letters from prison, combated the idea of
our people expatriating themselves, and since they could not en masse
move out of the country . . . they must do the only thing left for them,
try to forget in toil and the care of their families the misery which
had settled over them and their people.
Throughout
this period Mr. Davis had endeavored to preserve silence about
everything political, though letters came by hundreds asking his opinion
on all political subjects. As he had not asked pardon for an offence he
had not committed, he was disenfranchised, and as he could not be held
responsible for acts in which he was forbidden by law to participate,
his opinion, if given, was perfunctory. So far, however, from being
wounded by his disenfranchisement, he felt rather proud that Congress
had testified to the steady faith he had kept with his own people.
He
had not changed his beliefs in the least degree . . . So to the end, he
who had served his country in tented field, and in the halls of
legislation, and merited and received the acclaim of soldiers and the
esteem of statesmen and legislators throughout the United States, kept
the dignified tenor of his way, unheeding the sectional clamor when his
own conscience approved.
His
asking for pardon as the leader of the Confederacy would have been more
significant than the petition of one who had held a less high position,
and he would not sacrifice his convictions to expediency, even in
seeming.
The
people of Mississippi, kind and trusting as of old to the man they had
honored with their confidence, wished Mr. Davis to allow his name to be
used for the Senate. They said: “The franchise is yours here, and the
Congress can but refuse you admission, and your exclusion will be a test
question.”
Mr.
Davis responded: “I remained in prison two years and hoped in vain for a
trial, and now scenes of insult and violence, producing alienation
between the sections, would be the only result of attempting another
test. I am too old to serve you as I once did, and too much enfeebled by
suffering to maintain your cause.”
(Jefferson Davis, A Memoir by His Wife, Varina, Volume II, N&A Company, 1990, (original 1890), pp. 816-818)
6th Amendment: Right to a Speedy Trial....
ReplyDeleteYes, Ma'am.
Delete