He suffered for us.
We love and honor Mr. Davis, most of all, because he suffered with us and for us, and was our President; because, in the language of the eloquent Peyton Wise, of Virginia, ‘he was the type of that ineffable manhood which made the armies of the South.’ Time would fail me to picture the iron will, the persistency and loyalty of Mr. Davis during those four terrible years—of the travail of his soul; his people pitted against a people outnumbering them four to one in arms, bearing population, and incomparably better prepared for war, [375] having an organized government, an organized army and navy, with arsenals, dock yards and machine shops, and having free intercourse with the world, from which to get supplies and men, while every port was sealed against help from the outside world to the Confederacy, which had to organize its government and improvise everything for the unequal struggle from an agricultural population.With an army of 600,000 men and no navy, except a few river steamers and privateers, opposed by an army outnumbering it by 2,000,000 of soldiers, by a navy of 700 vessels of war, manned by 105,000 men; with a fleet of transports, steamers, barges, and coal floats almost innumerable, which in 1862, on the Mississippi river and its tributaries alone, numbered over 2,200 vessels. (It is not known what was the number of vessels chartered on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in moving the large armies.) The navy in its help was as decisive in results as the great armies in the field in blockading ports, in cutting up the Confederacy by her rivers, in establishing many depots and points of departure from the rivers and along the coast for armies to invade and overrun new territory, and in transporting armies around territory they could not cross, and in saving armies when defeated, as it Shiloh, on the Tennessee, and on the James river, near Richmond.
When we look back now at the mighty contest, we wonder how we ever held out so long—how we could have succeeded in driving the American merchantmen from the seas, and how we won so many signal victories, as many almost as were won by our enemies.
The record of Southern valor and manhood, where a people fought so long against such odds and resources, displayed such fortitude, and endured such sacrifices, will be a bright page in American history; and will show what the Anglo-Saxon race can and will do under a republican form of government in defence of a constitutional principle.
As President Mr. Davis may have made mistakes. He was a constitutional ruler, not a revolutionary chief. He could not work miracles. He summoned to his council the genius of a Benjamin, the profundity of Hunter, the intellect of Toombs. He placed at the head of his troops Lee, Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, Beauregard, Joseph E. Johnston, and other leaders, not surpassed in any army since the marshals of the Empire. And when the night of defeat was darkening, and the dismantled ship of the Confederacy was sinking beneath the waters, he stood at the helm to the last. There is something indescribably pathetic in the sight, when a brave [376] and gallant people stake everything upon the cast of battle, fight their armies to exhaustion, and almost to annihilation, in defending their homes and firesides against invading enemies, and at last are overpowered and overwhelmed, and behold everything that they love go down. The people of the South were a proud and sensitive race, and the world will never know the agonies they suffered in those desperate days. But none had so much to bear, and bore it so bravely, as their indomitable leader. He carried on his great heart the sufferings of his people; he shared their sorrow, and partook of their grief.
