Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, 1858 | Page 7

from the heat of a southern summer. Here waving elms offer
him shared walks, and magnificent residences surrounded by flowers,
fill the mind with ideas of comfort and of rest. If weary of constant
contact with his fellow men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the
back ground of this grand amphitheatre, lie the eternal mountains,
frowning with brow of rock and cap of snow upon the smiling fields
beneath, and there in its recesses may be found as much of wildness,
and as much of solitude, as the pilgrim weary of the cares of life can
desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious harbor, studded with green
islands of ever varying light and shade, and enlivened by all the stirring
evidences of commercial activity, offer him the mingled charms of
busy life and nature's calm repose. A few miles further, and he may site
upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring wave until the troubled
spirit sinks to rest, and in the little sail that vanishes on the illimitable
sea, we may find the type of the voyage which he is so soon to take,
when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that better state
which lies beyond the grave.
Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes to
pleasure and to usefulness, the stranger cannot pass without paying a
tribute to the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves.
Where else will one find a more happy union of magnificence and
comfort, where better arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where so
much of industry, with so little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase, so
much effected in proportion to the means employed? We hear the puff
of the engine, the roll of the wheel, the ring of the axe, and the saw, but
the stormy, passionate exclamations so often mingled with the sounds,
are no where heard. Yet, neither these nor other things which I have
mentioned; attractive though they be, have been to me the chief charm

which I have found among you. For above all these I place the gentle
kindness, the cordial welcome, the hearty grasp, which made me feel
truly and at once, though wandering far, that I was still at home.
My friends, I thank you for this additional manifestation of your good
will.

Speech at the Portland Convention.
On Thursday, August 24th, 1858, when the Democratic Convention
had nearly concluded its business, a committee was appointed to wait
on Mr. Davis, and request him to gratify them by his presence in the
Convention. He expressed his willingness to comply with the wishes of
his countrymen, and accordingly repaired to the City Hall. On entering
he was greeted in the most cordial and enthusiastic manner. After
business was finished, he proceeded to the rostrum, and, addressing the
Convention, said:
Friends, fellow-citizens, and brethren in Democracy, he thanked them
for the honor conferred by their invitation to be present at their
deliberations, and expressed the pleasure he felt in standing in the midst
of the Democracy of Maine--amidst so many manifestations of the
important and gratifying fact that the Democratic is, in truth, a national
party. He did not fail to remember that the principles of the party
declaring for the largest amount of personal liberty consistent with
good government, and to the greatest possible extent of community and
municipal independence, would render it in their view, as in his own,
improper for him to speak of those subjects which were local in their
character, and he would endeavor not so far to trespass upon their
kindness as to refer to anything which bore such connection, direct or
indirect--and he hoped that those of their opponents who, having the
control of type, fancied themselves licensed to manufacture facts,
would not hold them responsible for what he did not say. He said he
should carry with him, as one of the pleasant memories of his brief
sojourn in Maine, the additional assurance, which intercourse with the
people had given him, that there still lives a National Party, struggling
and resolved bravely to struggle for the maintenance of the Constitution,
the abatement of sectional hostility, and the preservation of the fraternal
compact made by the Fathers of the Republic. He said, rocked in the
cradle of Democracy, having learned its precepts from his father,--who

was a Revolutionary Soldier--and in later years having been led
forward in the same doctrine by the patriot statesman--of whom such
honorable mention was made in their resolutions--Andrew Jackson, he
had always felt that he had in his own heart a standard by which to
measure the sentiments of a Democrat. When, therefore, he had seen
evidences of a narrow sectionalism, which sought not the good of the
whole, not even the benefit