Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, 1858

Speeches of the Honorable
Jefferson Davis, 1858

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Title: Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858
Author: Hon. Jefferson Davis
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5205] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 5, 2002]

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Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
Delivered During the Summer of 1858:

On Fourth of July, 1858, at Sea. At Serenade, at Portland, Maine. At
Portland Convention, Maine. At Belfast Encampment, Maine. At
Belfast Banquet, Maine. At Portland Meeting, Maine. At Fair at
Augusta, Maine. At Faneuil Hall, Boston. At New York Meeting.
Before Mississippi Legislature. &c. &c.
To the People of Mississippi.
I have been induced by the persistent misrepresentation of popular
Addresses made by me at the North and the South during the year 1858,
to collect them, and with extracts from speeches made by me in the
Senate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected form; to the end
that the case may be fairly before those by whose judgment I am
willing to stand or fall.
Jefferson Davis.

Extracts From Speeches in U.S. Senate.
In the Senate of the United States, May 8, 1850, in presenting the
Resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi:
It is my opinion that justice will not be done to the South, unless from
other promptings than are about us here--that we shall have no
substantial consideration offered to us for the surrender of an equal

claim to California. No security against future harassment by Congress
will probably be given. The rain-bow which some have seen, I fear was
set before the termination of the storm. If this be so, those who have
been first to hope, to relax their energies, to trust in compromise
promises, will often be the first to sound the alarm when danger again
approaches. Therefore I say, if a reckless and self-sustaining majority
shall trample upon her rights, if the Constitutional equality of the States
is to be overthrown by force, private and political rights to be borne
down by force of numbers, then, sir, when that victory over
Constitutional rights is achieved, the shout of triumph which announces
it, before it is half uttered, will be checked by the united, the
determined action of the South, and every breeze will bring to the
marauding destroyers of those rights, the warning: woe, woe to the
riders who trample them down! I submit the report and resolutions, and
ask that they may be read and printed for the use of the
Senate.--(_Cong. Globe_, p. 943-4.)

In the Senate of the United States, June 27, 1850, on the Compromise
Bill:
If I have a superstition, sir, which governs my mind and holds it captive,
it is a superstitious reverence for the Union. If one can inherit a
sentiment, I may be said to have inherited this from my revolutionary
father. And if education can develop a sentiment in the heart and mind
of man, surely mine has been such as would most develop feelings of
attachment for the Union. But, sir, I have an allegiance to the State
which I represent here. I have an allegiance to those who have entrusted
their interests to me, which every consideration of faith and of duty,
which every feeling of honor, tells me is above all other political
considerations. I trust I shall never find my allegiance there and here in
conflict. God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to
my constituents is to be hostile to the Union. If, sir, we have reached
that hour in the progress of our institutions, it is