A British opinion of the Confederate President — a contrast.
The London Standard contains a long review of the conduct of President Davis since he became the head of the Confederate Government. I think he is "the first man beyond all comparison in American, and one of the foremost men in the world" It thus contrasts the heads of the two American Republics:The South, always controlled by the men of property and education, always anxious to send its best men to Congress, and to keep them there, selected at once the best man it had as its first President"a soldier, a statesman, and a gentleman, a man of moderate views and sober judgment — as as any man could be to the brawling demagogues and rough back woodsmen, who are the hope of the Northern States. Abraham Lincoln would hardly find in England a constituency to send him to Parliament. Seward would rank far below the Brights and O'Connells, would hardly be listened to by the House, and would obtain but a few brief lines from the reporters; and not one of his colleagues would ever be heard of at all, save as Mr. Cox and Mr. Peter Taylor are heard of — to be treated with universal ridicule and contempt.
The leaders of the Southern Confederacy are men who would rank high in any country; and Mr. Jefferson Davis, if he had been born a British subject might fairly have aspired to the highest place that a subject can hold. Well might such men as those, and such a nation as that which they worthily represent, revolt from their degrading connection with his vulgar and demoralized Democracy of the North, and refuse to be ruled by the Seawards and the Butlers, the Chases and Cameron, the Sumners and the Lovejoys, for the profit of a people which can choose such governors and such representatives. Well might the chivalry of the Palmetto State, the proud, true hearted gentlemen of the Old Dominion, the high spirited planters of the Gulf States, prefer the worst extremities of war to the humiliation of submitting themselves to the rule of a rabble which can applaud a Turchin and obey a Lincoln!
Speaking of his speech in Mississippi, it says:
‘ Throughout the speech, as throughout every paper and every speech that has emanated from the Confederate President, runs a current of thoroughly English thought and feeling. His own duty to the country and that of the country to herself, is evidently the one idea that is ever present to his mind. He does not talk, like a Frenchman, of conquests and of glory; he does not boast, like a Northerner, of victories that were defeats, and successes that are yet to be achieved by armies which have still to be created. He speaks as Wellington or Prince Albert might have spoken, of confidence to be placed in the Government for the sake of the national cause, and of services to be rendered and sacrifices to be made by every citizen in the name of duty and patriotism. The contrast between the feelings to which he appeals and the passions that are invoked by Northern craters reflects the contrast between the character of the two nations, and the nature of the claims for which each is in arms. Sober, sad and resolute, where the North is fanatical, curious and vacillating; fighting for the grave reality of independence, while the North fights for the phantasm of union and the dream of empire, the South, on all occasions and in every place, approves herself manfully, calmly, terribly in earnest.
To her people, from the President and the Commander-in-Chief down to the poorest citizen on Southern soil, and the lowest soldier in the Southern army, the war is too serious and the cause too sacred for extravagance of language, for bombastic menaces, for wild rhapsodies, and frantic denunciations. They know their own strength, and do not care to boast of it; they know the magnitude of the task before them, and neither shrink from it nor make light of it. They are behaving in fact, as we believe and trust that Englishmen would be have, if so fearful a calamity as that against which the South is now struggling were ever brought home to our own shores. Is it not a sad and humbling thought that to such a people England, as represented by Government, gives neither aid nor sympathy nor even-handed justice; that President Davis is compelled to draw a distinction between the two great European Powers disadvantageous to that country to which the blood and feelings of the Southern people led them first to look with hope and affection; that it is the hand of France and not of England which is expected to extend assistance or recognition to a people of English race and speech, fighting for those rights which they learned from their English ancestors to hold sacred, against an enemy who is also the enemy of England, of civilization, and of humanity?
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