Franklin County: "Speech of Jefferson Davis," by unknown, June 7, 1871
Summary: The Valley Spirit prints excerpts of a Jefferson Davis speech decrying Reconstruction to challenge "lost cause" characterizations of his address.
Mr. Davis made a speech at Atlanta, Georgia, last week, which Radical journals are denouncing as an attempt to recuscitate "the lost cause." They charge that he is still rebellious and intends "to fire the Southern heart" again. We can not so construe his speech. On the contrary, he makes a distinct disclaimer of any such intention. We quote the following extract from his address:
There are many things which I might say to you to-night, but which I feel it would be imprudent for me to utter. If I should speak to you of the past I should speak of memories that are sad. If I should speak to you of the present it would be to recount a tale of tyranny and wrong that we have not the power to redress, and under which, therefore, it is more manly and noble for us to fold our arms and suffer with quite and patient dignity. If I speak of the future, then, I am liable to be misrepresented, and you held responsible for every speculation that I may choose to utter. But, my friends, as I stand here to-night and look upon your kindly, honest faces I feel that there are a few plain words that may be received by you as the expression of my opinion in regard to the future. Then, I say, I despair not of your liberty. I despair not of the triumph of liberty. I believe that truth will live eternally, and that wrong cannot always endure. When Galileo was bound to the torture rack for asserting his theory that the world was a globe and turned upon its axis and was there forced to recant, as soon as the screw was relaxed he cried out of the deep and irresistible convictions of his soul, "But it still moves." And so the great truths uttered by your fathers still live, and the principles they enunciated and for which they contended still move, and will once more be felt, if you will but be true to the right. Let no one say that I counsel a recovery and an enjoyment of these principles by the red hand of battle. I trust that I may not be misrepresented upon this point. I shall die in the firm faith and belief that the era of true liberty will ere long dawn upon the South. If they who carried the victorious banner and exulted in the strength of their triumph could have known, when you came forward and said that you had given up your arms and were now ready to submit to the laws of the land, and could have understood how true your word was, how high were your principles of honor, it would not have been necessary to exact harsh pledges and to pass oppressive laws to bind you. (Applause.) Force should never have been exerted when the unimpeachable word of a Georgian was pledged, for the world cannot furnish bayonets enough to make a Georgian prove more faithful to his obligations than his oath could do. (Applause.) Peaceful, then, you are desirous of being to-day; peaceful you have been, peaceful you are ever. When human patience has sometimes given way there are those who sometimes take the law into their own hands, because there is no justice to be served in any other way; but these are mere accidental occasions. There is no organization in the South-there never was-whose purpose is resistance to the Government. (A Voice-"That's so.") Though we are compelled to submit to the presence of power, yet our manhood and our self-respect can be preserved. Peace is what we hope for, peace we desire, and peace we will have. I have nothing to say to you to-night of politics, and, my friends, I hope you have nothing to do with them. You have political power, and its exercise is only postponed until the coming of that event which I certainly anticipate-the restoration of your constitutional rights. (Applause.) Let us, then, stand still and quietly await developments. The men of the North, like yourselves, love their government and understand their rights, and men of the north have no idea of surrendering in their own country those great bulwarks of constitutional liberty, the right of trial by jury, the right to elect their own officers and the right to determine their own internal policy, and as soon as their prejudice and hatred against the South are removed and they see that by the unlawful action of those in power toward the South these sacred rights of theirs are in danger of being invaded, they will become your adjuncts and you will hold the balance of power and in that hour your power will be great and your success will be great. (Applause.)
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: The Valley Spirit (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania), June 7, 1871, p. 2
