| Show BLUNDERS JEFFERSON DAVIS president of the defunct southern confederacy 14 the only conspicuous reminder in daily life that there ever were two governments upon this soil there is more said about him now one way and another than in the palmy days of 1859 60 when he be commanded the applause of a listening senate and through it the administration of the cultured world he was simply a statesman then among the foremost in the land and in some respects more brilliant than any but in that sphere his own bright light caone saone a longside alongside that of a number of his immediate predecessors such as webster clay and calhoun and numerous co temporaries in the persons of seward douglas breckenridge and foote all of whom as well as all the others of that day have gone hence leaving davis thel solitary figure whose prominence is emphasized by his connection with the lost cause always dignified to the verge of haughtiness with scholastic and natural intellectuality and as eloquent as herodotus Huro dotus he was fitter to counsel and advise than to be p placed laced in supreme command of any cause mote moie particularly one in which the arts of the atie politician pure and simple were less required than the keen penetration of the man of the day and the elements so wanting in the ex president preside n t ani animal mal magnetism he had courage in abundance but was in a place during the whole of the struggle where the cowardice would have served him lust just as well he was not destitute ot of firmness but this quality took on too often and too abundantly the characteristics of stubbornness born ness and petulancy nor was wa he be lacking in knowledge ol 01 ot the art of war but even in this where the counsel of the principal ci pal warriors in the fi field eld should have e been sought and heeded he be was arrogant and exhibited dav favoritism 0 in almost every movement that was ordered during the latter stages of the struggle tile the trouble seems to have been that while well supplied with the mate materials out of which great men are made the sudden elevation to what he conceived to be the loftiest loft iest position on earth the very pinnacle of renown made him giddy and thoughtless of the more material and indispensable things he had below and from his pedestal he be gave directions to his subordinates with the air of an imperious sovereign the people liked this kind of 0 thing for a while just as soldiers liked him the more for his refusal to receive a communication from the british commander addressed to plain george washington not opening it until finally it came with the words commander in chief of the american forces attached to the name t they bey looked upon it as becoming dignity in the presence of an enemy bent upon conquest and humiliation and rallied around their leader the more enthusiastically because of it causing him in turn to become more fixed in his methods and habits but the glamour of adventurous knighthood soon drifted away from his presence when the federal forces tell fell upon the valorous va 1 brou 8 hosts h 0 st 8 of the confederacy like a wolf on the fold and rained showers of death and disaster wherever they went the carpet warrior period was past fast and now deeds of valor with man booking looking into the eye of man and streaming up against floods of fire and billows ot of steel were all that could avail the cause which mr davis sat serenely v at the head of on came the invading hosts turned back now and then in dire disaster by efforts of the men in gray that deserve to rank with the greatest warlike deeds of his bis tory but such disasters were but in clients in the onward march of the ini one stronghold after another fell the enemy was so near the citadel that his colors could be seen and were only held back by the narrow line of men determined to hold bold out to the last and still the president of the confederacy quibbled with liis his cabinet and quarreled with his generals general still unwilling to become a citizen or a soldier president but determined to fall all it if fall he must from the lofty plane upon which he had been given the abe opportunity to place himself and when the end came and all was lost his dignity and imperiousness imperious aesa seemed to nave gone too at the time when these qualities were needed and would have stood him in better stead than all things else they were thrown aside after having accompanied him unswervingly during the four previous dark and disastrous years of course his disposition has undergone something of a revolution now he be no longer attacks his appo rents with flashes of wit and rhetorical flourishes the epigrams of the sane sage or the keen logic of the statesman instead we hear of criminations crimi nations and aspersions against all who criticise criticism critic ise or c contributed on tributes tri buted in any way toward his overthrow ile he is not great enough to forget nor grand enough to forgive he be lives only in the past and it would have been a gener ous thing to him and to those woo who today cherish a feeling of respect and aad admiration tor for what be was if the past had bad buried its past and ana he had forever preserved a discreet silence as to public affairs |
