In addition to the army, the Confederacy also had a government. Yet through the ages, the civilian side attracts little attention from the public as well as historians. This story will say very little of the military leaders of the army of the Confederacy. Most will claim that the Confederate hero of the Civil War is General Robert E. Lee and not the president, Jefferson Davis. Similarly, some would consider the hero of the North as Abraham Lincoln and not Ulysses Grant or William Sherman. In fact, very few can name more than two or three of the seventeen Southerners who served in the Confederate cabinet with Jefferson Davis, while names such as Seward, Stanton, Chase, Welles, and other political leaders of the Union are among the most familiar names of the Union.

So what is the reason for the collapse of the Confederacy? The general agreement is that the Southern cause was doomed from the start. The Union's superiority in population and wealth is the most commonly accepted reason for its success. But, is there another? No one will ever know just how many men actually fought in the Civil War. For the Confederacy kept few records of value, and those of the Union had many inaccuracies. Reliable figures on the population of the two sides at this time do exist, yet these usually do unwarranted service in any attempt to arrive at a respective military strength for both sides. In 1860, the states that formed the Confederacy had roughly 9,000,000 people. Those that remained loyal to the Union and contributed to its man power such as Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, are eliminated from this number.

The figures for the South also comprised 4,000,000 slaves. Although slaves did not serve in the southern military, they were used to support its military power for they could provide a service as laborers, cooks, and workers on entrenchments and fortifications. Slaves also gave the South its supply of laborers and farmers at home, thus freeing the white population for military service. Moreover, there was the possibility of slaves comprising a reserve for possible soldiers at the front. As the war went on, the idea of using them for this purpose, appealed to many farseeing leaders. During the last two years, Confederate General Robert E. Lee favored the enlistment of colored troops. In the last month of the war in March of 1865, President Jefferson Davis himself advocated a bill for such enlistments and the Confederate Congress ultimately passed this measure just weeks before General Robert E. Lee's surrender.

The proportion of Northern to Southern men available for war service stood at about two to one. In view of the military problems confronting both sides, the Southern Government under Jefferson Davis had an advantage. The North was fighting on the offensive, the South on the defensive. The North was seen as the invader and the South attempted to repel its invasion. Abraham Lincoln was waging a war of conquest and Jefferson Davis was struggling to counter its aim. One side was encroaching on an unfamiliar country, comprising a vast territorial of a hostile people. The other was standing firmly on its own friendly soil, could fight on its own selected position, and was engaged in no real effort to subdue the enemy, but merely to defend its place.

The story of a weaker body fending off a much larger opponent is not new. Such exploits have existed thoughout the ages. Examples include the Greeks against the Persians, Queen Elizabeth against the mighty realm of Philip II, and Frederick the Great in the eighteenth century against the combined powers of Europe. Another great case was that of 1792, when the ragamuffin soldiers of the French Revolution defeating the forces of Prussia and Austria. Most importantly, let’s not forget the American colonies in 1776 against Great Britain.

During the war, the courage and ability of the Southern armies aroused the admiration of their foes. In the first two years, military leadership surpassed that of the North. However, civil issues began to play a role in the Confederate failure. Had statesmen of the South ruled its domestic and foreign policies with the same skill that Lee and other generals guided armies, the end result may have easily been very different.

Statesmanship was a quality on which the South had always prided itself for its political leaders and thinkers had played a leading role in framing the Constitution. For nearly forty years following 1789 it gave the Union its Presidents and for most of the thirty years preceding the Civil War the South had governed the nation in all three branches of government. Yet during the supreme test from 1861-1865 the South disastrously failed in its statesmanship capability. The South which birthed the Confederacy was not the South that wrote the Declaration of Independence, that played such an important role in framing the Constitution, and provided leadership for the United States in its earliest days.

The Confederate States of America arose in a region similar in character to the Wild West. Of the seven states that formed the Confederate government in Montgomery, only two, South Carolina and Georgia, had existed during the framing of the Constitution. The soil of Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and a considerable section of Mississippi at that time were still parts of the Spanish empire. The Southern commonwealth of Virginia, chiefly famous for statesmen, had no hand in the original organization of the Confederacy. Neither had North Carolina or Tennessee. These states joined three months afterward and for various reasons. They had no part in framing the Confederate constitution, in organizing the government, and had little to do with the civil department during the four years of war.

Old fashion "Southern chivalry" and old time "Southern aristocrats" were scarcely represented in the Jefferson Davis government at the outset. The new South hardly resembled the South of history and legend. The new rich Southwest contributed the political leaders, while the old traditional South contributed the leaders for the military. Of the reknowned Confederate generals, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Joseph E Johnston, and Longstreet, four were sons of Virginia. Longstreet came from Georgia, also a state of the old South. It can be said that leaders who gave the Confederacy prestige were mostly Virginians of superior breed. The cotton belt region provided the politicians who failed.

Family, tradition, and insistence on the right of certain well-born classes typically led to service to state. The Southern leadership that had gained the upper hand by 1861 hardly resembled that of Virginia and the Carolinas. It was a land of newly acquired wealth, not particularly well mannered or cultured, but assertive, pushy and arrogant. This new country was no longer exclusively Southern either. Hordes of people rushed into King Cotton of the Southwest and were composed of adventurers from the New England states. These were the elements that gave rise to the Confederacy and provided its civic leaders.

The President of the Confederate States of America was born in a log cabin. The Vice President spent his early days as a "corn dropper" on his father's slaveless farm and a boy in charge of tasks ordinarily assigned to slaves. The Secretary of State who served for most of the war was the son of a dried fish shop keeper in London. The Secretary of the Treasury, born in Germany, spent his childhood in a Charleston orphanage. The Secretary of the Navy, son of a Connecticut Yankee, started life as assistant to his widowed mother in running a sailor's boarding house in Key West, Florida. The Postmaster General, son of a tanner, was a plantation overseer, a social outcast occupation in the South. In fact, the Confederacy's most ablest diplomat was not even Southern at all, having been born in New York City. In all fairness, a generation should not look upon beginnings of this kind as disqualifying men for eminent careers of serving the state. The purpose is to show that a new South displaced the old in political dominance.

State Sovereignty and the Right of Secession were the foundation stones on which the Confederate nation was built. They had provided the theme of impassioned argument for years. Now at last Southern statesmen had before them the opportunity of testing the worth of these principles in the practical conduct of a government. Ultimately, the Confederacy failed for two reasons. It produced no statesmen such as the South had produced in the revolutionary crisis of 1776 and afterward. It was also founded on a principle that made impossible the orderly conduct of public affairs. This is the story of the leader of that new government and the characters, statesmanship and diplomacy of the new Southern generation that reigned during the time of America's most tragic crisis.

It is another frigid day in Washington. Jefferson Davis, 52 years old and gaunt, sits at his desk in the Senate chamber and begins to look around the room. He is about to make a speech to officially resign his position. Although he is prepared, as always, with notes and such, he tries to collect himself for the occasion for he has been sick and had been confined to a bed just the day before. In his mind, he wonders what the future will hold for him and his fellow constituents. The cause for action to resign, to him, for the most part, is nothing but desirable.

The chamber is especially crowded with spectators who have arrived early in the morning, way before the commencement of proceedings.  The lobby and nearby rooms are also equally crowded with reporters and spectators. The dramatic cause for attendance is due to the recent announcement of the states of Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi to secede from the United States. Today, it is expected that five senators will provide their farewell addresses, each representing the three departing states to join with South Carolina, the first state to secede roughly a month ago. In the chamber, the mood is gloomily dark as rumors of additional states are to follow suit.

At noon, a chaplain completes the delivery of a prayer which is followed by an announcement to postpone a vote on the admittance of Kansas as a free state by the President of the Senate, John Breckenridge, also Vice President of the United States. “The chamber will recognize the senators from Florida,” announces the President. He later goes on to announce, “The chamber will recognize the senators from Alabama!” All in all, four senators provide their own dramatic version of a farewell address as Davis listens and contemplates his own words to come while trying to cope with the pain from his illness.

Before the Senate President can make the announcement, all eyes are already on Davis. “The chamber will recognize the senator from Mississippi!” Davis stands and begins to speak in a low voice. “I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people, in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion does not invite me to go into argument; and my physical condition would not permit me to do so, if it were otherwise; and yet it seems to become me to say something on the part of the State I here represent on an occasion so solemn as this.”

Davis’ voice begins to increase in volume, “It is known to Senators who have served with me here that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause, if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her people before that act was taken, counseled them then that, if the state of things which they apprehended should exist when their Convention met, they should take the action which they have now adopted.”

“I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of mine with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the Union, and to disregard its constitutional obligations by the nullification of the law. Such is not my theory. Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are, indeed, antagonistic principles. Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply within the Union, and against the agent of the States. It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligations, and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other States of the Union for a decision; but, when the States themselves and when the people of the States have so acted as to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical application.”

“A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has often been arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine of nullification because it preserved the Union. It was because of his deep-seated attachment to the Union—his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States—that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States for their judgment.”

“Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent anyone from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.”

“I, therefore, say I concur in the action of the people of Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and should have been bound by their action if my belief had been otherwise; and this brings me to the important point which I wish, on this last occasion, to present to the Senate. It is by this confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a great man whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth has been evoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase, 'to execute the laws,' was an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms—at least, it is a great misapprehension of the case—which cites that expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the purpose of gentlemen, they may make war against a State which has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State. A State, finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is—in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union—surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit—taking upon herself every burden—she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.”

“I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was arraigned before the bar of the Senate, and when the doctrine of coercion was rife, and to be applied against her, because of the rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the same that it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show that I am not influenced in my opinions because the case is my own, I refer to that time and that occasion as containing the opinion which I then entertained, and on which my present conduct is based. I then said that if Massachusetts—following her purpose through a stated line of conduct—chose to take the last step, which separates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and I will neither vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back; but I will say to her, Godspeed, in memory of the kind associations which once existed between her and the other States.”

“It has been a conviction of pressing necessity—it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us—which has brought Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born—to use the language of Mr. Jefferson—booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal, meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do, to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for raising up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother-country? When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable; for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men—not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths. So stands the compact which binds us together.”

“Then, Senators, we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which, thus perverted, threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard. This is done, not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.”

“I find in myself perhaps a type of the general feeling of my constituents toward yours. I am sure I feel no hostility toward you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent toward those whom you represent. I, therefore, feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceable relations with you, though we must part. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country, and, if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.”

“In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom I have served long; there have been points of collision, but, whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave here. I carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in the heat of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered by the remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury offered.”

“Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu.”

Davis observes absolute silence as he scans the room once more before an eruption of applause ensues. He then sits down for a time, covering his face with his hands. He weeps for a time and then stands to join the other four departing senators. They gather and begin to walk down to the center aisle toward the door to the lobby. All throughout the chamber, every senator and spectator arise to their feet. The applause continues along with bouts of various weeping.

A day has passed since the resignation. Rumors begin to spread throughout Washington that Davis and the other departing senators are to be arrested. Whether it is attributed to his illness or lack of motivation, the arrest has yet to come. “What is your predisposition today?” asks Davis’ wife, Varina. “I feel as though I am improving,” Davis replies. In reality, he is still ill and attempts to disguise his true condition. He has suffered most every day since contracting malaria in 1836. A chronic eye inflammatory condition has continued to haunt him ever since.

“I fear, the longer we dwell here in the city, we will eventually be held against our will” Varina remarks. “Now, now, as I stated before, no recourse exists for any detainment of sorts,” Davis replies. Though she is concerned about the family predicament, he is set on maintaining political and professional matters as it relates to Davis’ future lineage. “What word do you have from the others?” asks Varina. “Only hearsay, I suppose, not to worry, whatever may come our way will surely be more talk than action” says Davis. Nevertheless, the Davis’ will depart Washington after a few days of necessary preparations.

A few days later, a train departs Washington with Davis and his family aboard. Although the family is somewhat prepared for the journey ahead, Davis can’t help but to feel extremely sorrowful. One of the several paradoxes in the career of Jefferson Davis is that he should have passed into history as the typical "Southern aristocrat." The truth is that in birth and early environment Davis was as much of a frontiersman as Abraham Lincoln. In 1861 the Davis family had been Americans for four generations. Jefferson Davis was the grandson of a Welshman that migrated to Philadelphia in the first year of the eighteenth century. Although the family began its American existence that extended over a century and a half in the North, they eventually set up domiciles in the new state of Kentucky. The Davis family started in Pennsylvania, paused for a generation in Georgia, then passed on to Christian County and built a log cabin at Fairview in which Davis was born June 3, 1808.

Despite the recent events, it is the troubles that lie ahead that concern him the most. As they make the long trip back to Mississippi, they make various stops through Virginia, east Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Davis communicates his concerns at the gravity of the situation with local citizens at every stop along the way.  “What is to become of the South?” asks the townsfolk. “You need to prepare yourselves for a long and bloody war,” Davis says. He is one who feels that truth should be revealed at the outset to avoid any waste of time and emotion.

As time goes on, Davis’ condition would get the best of him and he would be too exhausted to make any more speeches. It wasn’t necessarily the speeches that would plague him but the effects of the long travel. His condition becomes obvious to Varina from the beginning and is observed later by other bystanders on the train. When the train conductor learns of his condition, he reacts by saying, “Never mind, when we stop at the next few stations, I will blow off steam and go off at once.” As determined as he is to visit and communicate with the citizens of the South, Davis is relieved that he now has the ability to recover somewhat. For the citizens affected, this did nothing to relieve their growing anxieties.

Upon arrival in Chattanooga in the late afternoon hours, Davis and his family get off and slowly proceed to the Crutchfield House. Townsfolk gather to greet the Davis’ and attempt to bombard them with questions and speech requests to no avail. As the Davis arrives at the house, supper is being prepared. Davis decides to go ahead and use this time to talk with the townspeople. No sooner did he get to the second sentence when a man, obviously drunk, begins to shout obscenities. Backing the man and his Union sentiment is a group of about twelve.

As the situation becomes intense, Davis, standing near a desk in the corner of a room inside the Crutchfield House, defends his position. It is soon learned that the man is Mr. Crutchfield’s brother, an obvious stern supporter for the Union. When Verina hears the altercation, she tries to enter the room. A spectator near the situation, noticing the concerned wife, relays to one of the servants, “Tell the lady she need not be uneasy, Jeff Davis ain’t afraid. He will make his speech.” Davis, trying his best to ignore the drunk, proceeds to make his speech for which the crowd affectionately awaits.  For the most part, the rest of the crowd is not only receptive but respectful. As Davis completes his speech, the drunken Union man is escorted from the premises. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Crutchfield, the homeowner, apologizes for his siblings behavior.

Davis took up life in Washington in 1853 to remain a national figure until his "adieu" in 1861. His latest public life in the political arena was something different from the more impetuous life of a senator of the earlier period. In a sense he was somewhat chastened as an elderly statesman in comparison to his earlier political exploits. The collapse of his Secession plans of 1850 had taught its lesson. Davis had learned prudence. An element of expediency now affected his style. Contrary to opinion held by Horace Greeley and other Northern rhetoricians, Davis was not, at this time in his life, a die-hard for separation from the Union. The erection of a great Southern republic, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and incorporating a large part of Mexico, was an idea he had at one time in his life but now ceased to trouble his mind. Instead he became an orator of "Southern rights," although extreme in nature, but to be achieved within the Union. His object of worship was now the Federal Constitution, and this he revered above all, because, he insisted, it guaranteed all the rights which the most aggressive Southern point of view demanded. The foremost was the constitutional right of the Southerner to go into any part of the national territory and take his slaves with him. All that new country lying west of the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, so long as it remained in the territorial state, was to be made accessible to slavery. The old Davis imperialism was not dead. He still aspired to add large slices of Mexico and Central America to the United States all to be made sacred to slavery. A great, powerful new South, protected by all the safeguards which Davis perceived in the Constitution, resting upon slavery as its economic background, strengthened, if necessary, by reviving the slave trade, but a South within the Union this was the end Davis worked for from this time forward. No man, indeed, was more fervent in affirming his love for the Union than Davis. Its praises were constantly on his lips. But it was only by giving the South assurance of a great future on these lines, he declared, that the blessed work of the fathers could be preserved.

Though Jefferson Davis in the decade from 1850 to 1860 ceased to be the protagonist of secession, he was the champion of the idea that inevitably meant the possibility of civil war. This was the extension of the slave system of the South into the new territory beyond the Mississippi. That was the one thing, and the only thing, that made inescapable the eventual clash of arms. Except by a minority of Abolitionists, who were as unpopular in the North as in the South, there was no intention of disturbing slavery in the states where it existed. Davis stood immovably for this very thing.

Upon the final arrival in Mississippi, Davis and his family were greeted on the train by the boarding of man after man. Davis again reiterated his “You need to prepare yourselves for a long and bloody war,” speech. Although in certain section of the southern country this rhetoric was met with variations of hostility, this doctrine is widely accepted in his home state. Of chief importance, in its influence on Davis's life, was the varying picture which the early days gave him of the South. Significantly, during the young man's Southern pilgrimages. Davis' father had lived in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Jefferson became as familiar with Tennessee and Kentucky as with Mississippi. Thus it was the South as a region rather than any particular state that formed his Southern background. Jefferson Davis, indeed, reached his thirtieth year before he became identified with any one community. The man who prided himself on being the most conspicuous spokesman of State rights had well advanced into manhood before he could claim any single state as his own. Quite different this, from the experience of the typical Virginian or Carolinian, to both of whom concentration on a definite commonwealth, or "country," as they call it, was the rule of being.

Davis as a young man was never a definitely placed resident of a particular state. For his first twenty-seven years had led a wandering existence as had his father and grandfather. Practically every region of the South and a considerable part of the North and West had provided abiding places. Thus that loyalty to a particular region which is supposed to be the birthright of the traditional Southerner had not been his. No influences had surrounded the young days of Jefferson Davis. He was not a Georgian, a Kentuckian, a South Carolinian or really even a Mississippian. In his thirtieth year, Davis finally set up his tent in a particular state, but it was too late to really acquire a sense of local patriotism.

And there was another reason why Davis was never really devoted to any one locality. The truth is that Mississippi had no special character of its own. It was itself, in population and social and political attitude, a composite of the South as a whole. At the time Davis selected it as his home, Mississippi had been in existence as a state only eighteen years. A generation before a good part of it had been Spanish territory. Its population, in 1835, was composed of recent immigrants from Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and other Southern states. Practically all of these regarded themselves as sons of older communities, not of the new section into which they had rushed in the pursuit of rapid fortune. Thus, Jefferson Davis was a new phenomenon in American progress. He was a Southerner, a citizen of the great region south of the Potomac and the Ohio, not primarily a denizen of any one commonwealth. In the growth of Southern nationalism his position may be compared to that of Alexander Hamilton in the development of the American Union. Just as Hamilton, born in the West Indies, and thus destitute of local patriotism, felt no allegiance except to the nation as a whole.

This Southern type differed materially from the familiar figure of colonial and Revolutionary times. Mississippi was a new country. Its settlers were for the most part "new men" displaying many of the qualities of "new rich." Indeed they had many of those traits which many commentators have found odious in the industrialists of recent times. They were plutocrats, exploiters of natural resources, not so much agriculturists as the producers of the raw materials of manufacture. Their labors were tributary, not to the granaries of the nation, but to the textile mills of Great Britain and Europe. And the country they opened was as much virgin soil as were the forests, the oil wells, and the mineral fields into which the industrial adventurers of a later period found their precipitate way. The cotton barons of Georgia and the Mississippi delta exploited their land just as ruthlessly as did their successors in the West three decades afterward. The most important of these natural resources was a belt of black loamy soil, extending from South Carolina across central Georgia and Alabama, and bordering both banks of the Mississippi River from the Gulf to Tennessee. This area made the agricultural wealth of the new antebellum South. It made also its politics as well as the politics of the nation as a whole. It will ultimately produce the Confederacy and the Civil War. It maintained, in this critical period, that ascendency, both political and economic, which Virginia had upheld in the colonial period and the fifty years following the Declaration of Independence.

Davis left the train and soon after met with the governor and other important state authorities. Anxious to find a place to stay, these figures accompanied him and his family to the Dixon house. Lady Dixon's husband had been a member of Congress and so she was familiar with a variety of men of influence in the region. So the setting is most appropriate to the occasion. Worried about her husbands ongoing condition, Varina exclaims, "Sir, you need to rest some before you fall ill again!" Davis assures her that he is strong enough to go on with the current matters. The family will have over a hundred visitors during the week and most of them will be without warning. The great number of visitors will pressure the resources available at the home as well as the physical stamina of Davis himself.

Davis states in writing, "On my arrival in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, I found the Convention of the State had made provision for a State army, and had appointed me to the command of the rank of Major-General. Four brigadier-generals, appointed in like manner by the Convention, were awaiting my arrival for assignment to duty. After the preparation of the necessary rules and regulations, the division of the State into districts, the apportionment among them of the troops to be raised, and the appointment of officers of the general staff, as authorized by the ordinance of the Convention, such measures as were practicable were taken to obtain necessary arms. The State had few weapons that worked, and no establishment for their manufacture of repair. This fact (which is as true of other Southern States as of Mississippi) is a clear proof of the absence of any desire or expectation of war. If the purpose of the Northern States to make war upon us because of secession had been foreseen, preparations to meet the consequences would have been contemporaneous with the adoption of a resort to that remedy - a remedy the possibility of which had for many years been contemplated. Had the Southern States possessed arsenals and collected in them the requisite supplies of arms and ammunition, such preparations would not only have placed them more nearly on an equality with the North in the beginning of the war, but might, perhaps, have been the best conservator of peace. Let us, the survivors, however, not fail to do credit to the generous credulity which could not understand how, in violation of the compact of Union, a war could be waged against the States, or why they should be invaded because their people had deemed it necessary to withdraw from an association which had failed to fulfil the ends for which they had entered into it, and which, having been broken to their injury by the other parties, had ceased to be binding upon them."

Davis finds his commission from Governor I.I. Pettus of Mississippi, dated January 25, 1861. He spends most of his days provisioning arms for the organization and discipline of the forces of the state. One particular day, Governor Pettus came to Davis to consult about the purchase of arms. "I believe 75,000 arms should be sufficient for the cause," stated the governor. "Governor, the limit of our purchase for arms should be the power that we have to pay. We shall need all and many more than we can get, I fear," replied Davis. "General, you overrate the risk." remarked Pettus.

Time and again, when visitors would leave, Davis would be deeply distressed. "God help us, war is a dreadful calamity even when it is made against aliens and strangers. They know not what they do." remarked Davis.  Varina would do her best to console him, "Sir, you must not take matters so personally. I'm afraid it will result in more harm than good." Davis would again do his best to assure her that he was fine, "I know, and you are right, but it's necessary for me to recite these issues verbally."