Jefferson Davis Quotes

A people morally and intellectually equal to self-government must also be equal in self-defence.

God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the Union.

Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable.

Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South's two halves together.

I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.

How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.

Let men not ask what the law requires, but give whatever freedom demands.

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To
its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and
through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.

The war ... must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks ... unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.

If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.

It is not differences of opinion; it is geographical lines, rivers, and mountains which divide State from State, and make different nations of mankind.

Our government is an agency of delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind these States together was one of love and mutual good offices ...

Without doing injustice to the living, it may safely be asserted that our loss is irreparable; and that among the shining hosts of the great and good who now cluster around the banner of the country, there exists no purer spirit, no more heroic soul, than that of the illustrious man whose death I join you in lamenting.

I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.

Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.

Your little army, derided for its want of arms, derided for its lack of all the essential material of war, has met the grand army of the enemy, routed it at every point, and now it flies, inglorious in retreat before our victorious columns. We have taught them a lesson in their invasion of the sacred soil of Virginia.

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses ... We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude ... You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.

To one who loves his country in all its parts, it is natural to rejoice in whatever contributes to the prosperity and honor and marks the stability and progress of any portion of its people.

A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain.

If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise.

Never be haughty to the humble or humble to the haughty.

All we ask is to be let alone.

The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena.

It is a duty we owe to posterity to see that our children shall know the virtues, and rise worthy of their sires.

To increase the power, develop the resources and promote the happiness of a Confederacy, it is requisite there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion would be the aim of the whole.

Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.

For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the South.

At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution.

The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of the States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognizes in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of Government.

Butler is branded a felon, an outlaw, an enemy of Mankind, and so ordered that in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.

A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.

Garfield's assassination attempt made "the whole nation care".

Pray excuse me. I cannot take it.

Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.

The withdrawal of a State from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a Sovereign a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language.

Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctioned by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people.

The authors of all our misfortune.