President Jefferson Davis, Died 6 December 1889

Jefferson Davis Funeral Richmond, Virginia - May 31, 1893
Richmonders lined the streets to watch the procession and over twenty thousand gathered at Hollywood Cemetery to witness the burial
=========
“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 6^th 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 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 Times-Democrat of the 10^th 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.”

(The Memorial Volume of Jefferson Davis, J.W. Jones, 1889, pp.473-509)

Via Bernhard

You Ain't Justa Whistlin' Dixie

You Ain't Justa Whistlin' Dixie

Confederate Ladies And Shades Of Gray

Oleg Volk
Confederate Ladies

Shades of Gray

VMI Museum May Take Over Stonewall Jackson House

If approved, the Lexington sites would join forces in 2011.

Via Sister Anne

Sixth Annual Confederate Heritage Youth Day

The sixth annual Confederate Heritage Youth Day will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Rick's Fun Farm, 615 Woodland Park Road, Smyrna. The event is sponsored by several local camps of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and is free and open to the public. Presentations regarding the history of the War for Southern Independence will be discussed. The event will include demonstrations of calvary, infantry and artillery of the CSA. Participants interested in overnight camping may arrive at 4 p.m. Friday. Free breakfast and lunch will be served to overnight guests. Free T-shirts and prizes will be awarded. For details, call Kirk Carter at 704-806-2941, Joe Fore at 803-222-1928 or Brett Boyd at 803-222-3020.

Lincoln's Great Calamity

Lincoln’s reluctance to openly discuss the secession crisis and treat with Southern commissioners deepened the divide between the sections and assured that war would result. By putting his party unity above the interests of the country, Lincoln intentionally drifted or unknowingly blundered into a war against Americans that shattered the Founders republic.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net

Lincoln’s Great Calamity:

“The scene now shifted to Washington, where opportunism, indecision, chicanery, confusion, and Machiavellian deception of the worst sort were inextricably combined – never, it seems, to be certainly unraveled. The age of Lincoln settled down upon the country with his inauguration on March 4 – in fact, his shadow had fallen heavily over the land and upon [President James] Buchanan since the election in the preceding November. During these four months and until the firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln showed less understanding of conditions in the South and gave less evidence of broad statesmanship than was ever again to characterize him.

When he might have made some clear unequivocal statement following his election which could have reassured the South of his real intentions toward that region – a statement that was frequently called for and many hungered for – he dismissed the subject by advising inquirers to read what he had already said. Having said nothing to head off secession, when it came he failed to realize its strength and widespread support. A modern authority on the secession movement has declared, “Had the Republicans, therefore, deliberately sought the most efficient method of furthering the secession movement they could have found none better than their refusal to listen to methods of conciliation.”

The conglomerate composition of the Republican party was also another important element in forming the attitude Lincoln held toward the secession movement. As various groups of Republicans stood for various things…it was not as bald a decision in Lincoln’s mind to say that he was willing to see his country disintegrate, but never his party.

The question which has troubled subsequent generations is whether Lincoln was the marplot and bungler or the cunning villain and provocateur; whether he stumbled into war at Sumter or whether he planned it. If Lincoln wanted to successfully relieve the fort, why did he tell the Confederates of the expedition which had set out? Some would answer by saying that Lincoln thus deliberately provoked the Confederates to fire on Sumter. Others say that Lincoln got caught in his own web of confusion and blundered into a war that he by no means planned or wanted. And if war must come, how much more valuable would it be to have the enemy strike the first blow! It would unite all diverging factions.

[Judge John A.] Campbell believed the “equivocating conduct of the [Lincoln] Administration” was “the proximate cause of the great calamity,” and [Jefferson] Davis bitterly commented: “The crooked paths of diplomacy can scarcely furnish an example so wanting in courtesy, in candor, and directness as was the course of the United States Government toward our commissioners in Washington”; and in the light of the fact that a Federal fleet was off the bar, it was an “unfounded pretense that the Confederate States…[were] the assailants.”

(A History of the South, Volume VII, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865, E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1950, pp. 35-38)

Duo Wants To Establish Third Palmetto Republic

"In March of 1776, Colonists living in South Carolina decided they were fed up with British rule and seceded from the empire.That was the first "Palmetto Republic."
A little less than a century later, in 1860, there was another secession, which lasted until South Carolina joined the Confederate States of America two months later.
That was the second Palmetto Republic. Read about the proposed third HERE.

Kindness of T