Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Jefferson Davis, Last of the Senate Giants
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
Jefferson Davis was a Unionist and struggled to his last days as a Mississippi Senator to push Congress toward a solution to the sectional crisis. He belonged to the Calhoun school that saw preserving the rights of the South in the federal Union as paramount; he saw secession as a last resort of the States in order to preserve their sovereignty, if the Constitution they had ratified voluntarily in 1787, and its federal agent, became destructive of those rights. Davis was born on this day in 1808.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Jefferson Davis Last of the Senate Giants
"The theory of State Rights and the belief in secession had been understood in both sections equally, when advantage dictated understanding: as late as 1846 the State government of Massachusetts had been willing to secede, had passed resolutions to that end, in opposition to the Mexican War.
The North alone now repudiated State sovereignty because it had no interest to serve with its support. After the Republican senators had rejected the Crittenden Compromise, which gave to them every eventual advantage and to the South nothing in the end, they would not listen to a proposal of a convention of the States; they were then challenged for a compromise proposal of their own, but not a Republican replied.
At this distance it is certain that the deadlock exactly suited the North, for its purpose was to subdue the South at all costs; in a policy that conceded nothing and demanded everything, the North meant to "ride over the South rough-shod."
The South was willing at this time to accept any measure that guaranteed it even less than its Constitutional rights in the territories; but the north no longer desired equality of sectional power; the North was bent on domination.
By refusing to budge from this position, the North forced the South to act for its preservation, and by means of the slavery issue the shrewdness of the Yankee succeeded, as always, of putting his enemy in the wrong.
There was probably not a single phase of the conflict that Mr. Davis failed, in a sense, to understand; and yet, in the end, he could not see why men would not follow the law, or why the inflamed sections would not abide by compromises. Men sometimes act reasonably, but never logically; this was a distinction that Mr. Davis, being logical, could not grasp.
[After his final speech and resignation from the United States Senate after Mississippi had seceded, Davis] painfully moved through the crowded Senate chamber out into the street, [and for him] the old Constitutional republic came . . . to a dramatic end. There would no longer be a Union in the exact sense of that word; there would be a uniformity; for one of the two types of American civilization must absolutely prevail. Davis left the Senate smaller; it would never be so large again; he was the last of the Senate giants.
All the night of January 21 he suffered, sleepless; the nervous strain of the last six months had broken him down. His neuralgia had spread film over one iris; he was almost blind in that eye. Mrs. Davis, anxious in the next room, heard him say, again and again, in a tone of agony:
"May God have us in His Holy keeping, and grant that before it is too late peaceful councils may prevail."
(Jefferson Davis, His Rise and Fall, Allen Tate, Minton, Balch & Company, 1929, pp. 12-13)
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
South Carolina Events Spread to Missouri
Gentlemen,
In light of all that has taken place in South Carolina recently, and the memorial service we conducted to honor 5 Missouri Partisan Rangers this past weekend, we the SCV here in Missouri just came under attack again. At the memorial service this past weekend, as we do at just about all of our events, the Salute to the Confederate flag was said by those SCV members in attendance. Well... the Columbia, MO newspapers got wind of this and I have been inundated with contacts from various media outlets. If your camp is contacted, please attempt to route those contacts to and through me. By doing this, we are giving one, consistent message to the press. I ask you for your prayers as I deal with these people, that God might give me the right words to say. Please also pray for all of us in the SCV and for the organization itself. We are NOT what they say we are. We MUST stand firm in our beliefs and our knowledge of the truth. Please share with your camp memberships.
Darrell L. Maples - Commander
Missouri Division - SCV
Jefferson Davis: "Let Us Alone and Peace Will Come."
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
As many as six peace initiatives occurred before and during the war, nearly all coming from the South and ending in failure due to Northern Republican intransigence. "[Lincoln] offered us nothing but unconditional surrender," said Vice President Alexander Stephens on his return from the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 3 February 1865, calling the meeting "fruitless and inadequate." Today is the birth date of President Jefferson Davis, Born 3 June 1808.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
"Let Us Alone and Peace Will Come of Itself"
"Lincoln was quietly sponsoring a peace initiative of his own [in July 1864]. He sent Col. James F. Jaquess, a Methodist minister [of an Illinois Regiment] . . . and [writer] James R. Gilmore . . . on a mission to Richmond. Gilmore and Jaquess had a political motive to help Lincoln's faltering bid for reelection.
They wanted to prove that the Confederate's peace overtures were really concocted to embarrass Lincoln's government, to throw upon it the odium of continuing the war and thus secure the triumph of the "peace-traitors" in the November election.
With a personal note from Lincoln to General Grant, the two travelers crossed the battles lines at City Point, Virginia and entered Richmond . . . On Sunday evening, July 17, Jaquess and Gilmore encountered President [Jefferson] Davis, "a spare, thin featured man with iron gray hair and beard and a clear gray eye full of life and vigor," as Gilmore later described him.
"Our people want peace," Jaquess told Davis. "We have come to ask how it can be brought about."
In a very simple way," responded Davis. "Withdraw your armies from our territory, and peace will come of itself. We do not seek to subjugate you. We are not waging an offensive war . . . Let us alone and peace will come at once."
"But we cannot let you alone as long as you repudiate the Union. That is one thing the Northern people will not surrender."
"I know. You would deny to us the one thing you exact for yourselves – the right of self- government," Davis retorted. "You have sown so much bitterness at the South, you have put such an ocean of blood between the two sections, that I despair of seeing nay harmony in my time. Our children may forget this war, but we cannot."
"We are both Christian men," the minister said, "Can you, as a Christian man, leave untried any means that may lead to peace?"
"No, I cannot," said Davis. "I desire peace as much as you do. I deplore bloodshed as much as you do; but I feel that no one drop of the blood shed in this war is upon my hands – I can look up to my God and say this."
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it but could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came . . . It is with your own people you should labor [to end the war]. It is they who desolate our homes, burn our wheat fields, break the wheels of our wagons carrying away our women and children and destroy supplies meant for our sick and wounded. At your door lies all the misery and crime of this war – and it is a fearful, fearful account."
"And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest?" Gilmore asked.
"No, it is not," Davis replied. " . . . You have already emancipated two million of our slaves – and if you will take care of them, you may emancipate the rest . . . you many emancipate every Negro in the Confederacy but we will be free! We will govern ourselves. We will do it if we have to see every Southern plantation sacked, and every Southern city in flames."
As the interview ended, [Davis] said: "Say to Mr. Lincoln from me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other."
(The Dark Intrigue, The True Story of a Civil War Conspiracy, Frank van der Linden, Fulcrum Publishing, 2007, pp. 145-148)
Monday, June 22, 2015
Halfway to our Goal at Champion Hill
 Halfway to our Goal at Champion Hill
$90,000 to go to save 66 acres at this pivotal battlefield!
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From Our President 
June 2015
Dear Fellow Dedicated Preservationist,
I wrote to you last month about the 66 historic acres on Champion Hill that needs to be preserved. I am pleased to send you an update today that we have raised half ($90,000) of the $180,000 needed to save this land!
The May 16, 1863 Battle of Champion Hill was the largest, bloodiest and most significant action of Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg Campaign. Located in the absolute heart of the battlefield, these 66 historic acres deserve our protection.
The purchase price is $640,000, and we are currently applying for a federal matching grant for $260,000. Thanks to the generosity of a fellow Civil War Trust member who wishes to remain anonymous, we have received a generous commitment of $200,000 for the preservation of Champion Hill. This brought our goal to $180,000. Now, we need just $90,000 more to make sure this land will never fall victim to development!
Together, you and I have already saved 406 acres at Champion Hill. Permanently preserving another 66 acres will enhance this battlefield as a memorial to the brave soldiers who gave their lives on that land 152 years ago. Let us honor those 5,400 soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured that day and save these crucial 66 historic acres at Champion Hill!
- Jim Lighthizer, Civil War Trust President
Congressman Hal Rogers and Civil War Trust at Mill Springs U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers joined the Civil War Trust and local preservationists on May 23 to announce protection of 118 acres at Mill Springs. War Department: Making History at Champion Hill In the most recent episode of our video series, War Department™, Historian Terry Winschel discusses the fighting on our target 66-acre tract at the Champion Hill battlefield. "We are fighting the battle for Vicksburg" In this article by Sam Smith, learn about the seesaw Battle of Champion as Union and Confederate forces struggle for control of the Jackson Road—the very land that the Civil War Trust is working to preserve! Fortifications In4 Video In this In4 segment, Historian Garry Adelman explains the various types of fortifications used by both sides during the Civil War! Vicksburg Animated Map Watch our animated map of the Battle of Vicksburg and learn more about this important Civil War campaign and battle, sometimes called the turning point in the war. June Civil War Battles Expand your knowledge of the Civil War by learning more about some of the Civil War battles that occurred in the month of June. Access our history articles, photos, maps, and links for the battles listed below. Dispatches from the Front Lines
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Sunday, June 21, 2015
Passing of Georgia's Last "Real" Son
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Saturday, June 20, 2015
SCV Telegraph - Charleston Shooting Incident
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Wednesday, June 3, 2015
President Jefferson Davis - Born 3 June 1808
From: bernhard1848@gmail.com
Jefferson Davis: American Statesman, Soldier, Senator, Secretary of War, President.
A West Point graduate, Davis distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of the Mississippi Rifles volunteer regiment, and as United States Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce Administration, he served as a US Senator from Mississippi. As senator he argued against secession but believed each State was sovereign and had an unquestionable and constitutional right to secede from the voluntary Union of the Founders, just as they had seceded from England seeking political liberty. Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861 after receiving word that his State of Mississippi had voted to leave the voluntary Union. Davis explained his actions saying:
"[T]o me the sovereignty of the State was paramount to the sovereignty of the Union. And I held my seat in the Senate until Mississippi seceded and called upon me to follow and defend her. Then I sorrowfully resigned the position in which my State had placed me and in which I could no longer represent her, and accepted the new work. I was on my way to Montgomery when I received, much to my regret, the message that I had been elected provisional President of the Confederate States of America."
Davis was a patriotic American who tried to save the Founders' republic from Northern revolutionaries, and who reluctantly departed the Union with the old constitution intact to form a "more perfect Union." He contended that he would rather be out of the Union with the Constitution than to be in the Union without the Constitution. The Southern States seceded in order to save the Constitution of the Founders. Davis remarked in July 1864:
"I tried in all my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for 12 years, I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination, we will have . . . Slavery never was an essential element. It was the only means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations."
Reminded during the war of the destruction of his Mississippi plantations by occupying Northern troops, he dismissed it as the cost of war, yet confessed that he pitied his poor Negroes, who had been driven off by those troops and abandoned to misery or ruin. He resisted arming the slaves as they were not trained as soldiers, were needed to raise food for the armies in the field, and he would not use them as mercenaries and cannon-fodder as Lincoln had done to avoid conscripting unwilling white Northerners.
At the end of the War, when a fellow traveler remarked that the cause of the Confederates was lost, Davis 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." In 1881, Davis was critical of the Gilded Age corruption and political ignorance of the United States Constitution and remarked: "Of what value then are paper constitutions and oaths binding officers to their preservation, if there is not intelligence enough in the people to discern the violations; and virtue enough to resist the violators?"
President Davis was never indicted for treason and demanded a fair trial in order to argue the constitutionality of the South's actions in 1860-1861. This was denied by his Jacobin tormenters, and the reason was revealed by Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, in 1867. Chase admitted that:
"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not a rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."
President Davis died on December 6, 1889
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