Speeches of Confederate President Jefferson Davis

Thursday, Oct 6, 1864.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Metropolis of South Carolina -

. . . South Carolina has struggled nobly in the war and suffered many sacrifices. There is, indeed, no portion of our land where the pall of mourning has not been spread; but I thank the Giver of all Good that our people still remain firm there, above all other places. I am told there have been none to waver and none to doubt. It often happens that at a distance from a scene of action, men, who if present would easily measure it, magnify danger, until at last those become despondent whose hearts, if actually stirred by perils, would no sooner think of shrinking from the prompt performance of duty, than the gallant sons of Carolina, whose blood has so generously flowed on the many battle fields of this war. But if there be any who feel that our cause is in danger; that final success may not crown our efforts; that we are not stronger to-day than when we began this struggle; that we are not able to continue the supplies to our armies and to our people, let all such read a contradiction in the smiling face of our land, and the teeming evidences of plenty which everywhere greet the eye; let them go to those places where brave men are standing in front of the foe, and there receive the assurance that we shall have final success, and that every man who does not live to see his country free, will see a freeman's grave.

There are those who, like the Israelites of old, are longing to turn back to the fleshpots they have left; who have thought there may still be some feasible mode of reconciliation and would even be willing to rush into a reconstruction of the Union. Such, I am glad to know, do not flourish on the soil of South Carolina. Such cannot be the sentiment of any man in the Confederate States, if he will only recollect that from the beginning down to the present hour, your Government has made every effort within its power, to avoid a collision of arms in the first instance; and since then to obtain every possible means of settlement honorable to ourselves, based on a recognition of our independence. First, we sent commissioners to ask on what terms the quarrel could be adjusted, and since that time we have proclaimed in every public place our desire for peace. Insolently our every effort has been met. The Vice-President of the Confederate States was refused a passport to the North, when his object was negotiation - that means by which all wars must be terminated. The door was rudely shut in our faces. Intervention and recognition by foreign States, so long anticipated, has proved an ignus fatuus. There is, then, but one means by which you can hope to gain independence and an honorable peace, and that is by uniting with harmony, energy and determination in fighting those great battles and achieving those great victories, which will teach the world that we can defend our rights, and the Yankee nation that it is death to invade them.

With every Confederate victory our stocks rise in the foreign market - that touchstone of European sentiment. With every noble achievement that influences the public mind abroad, you are taking one step forward, and bringing foreign nations one step nearer your aid in recognizing and lending you friendly intervention, whenever they are satisfied that, intervention or no intervention, the Confederacy can sustain itself.

Does any one believe that Yankees are to be conciliated by terms of concession? Does any man imagine that we can conquer the Yankees by retreating before them, or do you not all know that the only way to make spaniels civil is to whip them? And you can whip them, if all the men capable of bearing arms will do their duty by taking their places under the standard of their country, before the veteran troops of the North receive the fresh increment which is being gathered in the Northern States. Now is the good and accepted time for every man to rally to the standard of his country and crush the invader upon her soil; and this, I believe, is in your power. If every man fit to bear arms will place himself in the ranks with those who are already there, we shall not battle in vain, and our achievement will be grand, final and complete. Is this a time to ask what the law demands of you - to inquire whether or not you are exempt under the law, or to ask if the magistrate will take you out of the enrolling office by a writ of habeas corpus? Rather is it not the time for every man capable of bearing arms to say: "My country needs my services, and my country shall have them!" When your heroic fathers, the Whigs of the Revolution, fought in that war which secured your birthright, their armies were not gathered by asking who can be forced into the field? but "who are able to fight?" No man was too old and no boy too young, if he had the physical capacity to enter the ranks of the army. In the days of the Revolution, the boy left his paternal roof only to return to its blackened ruins. He grew to manhood among its struggles; and may not your country claim similar services from the youth of the present day? Like them, you must emulate the glory of your sires. Say not that you are unequal to the task, for I believe that our people are even better than were our honored ancestors. They have fought more and bloodier battles, and there are fewer who are luke-warm in the cause now, than existed in the days of the Revolution. What a glorious reflection it is, that wherever the tide of war has rolled its devastating wave over the land, just then do you find every heart beating true to the Confederacy, strengthened, as it were, by vicissitudes, and every woman ready to share her last loaf with the soldier who is fighting for our rights. . . .

It is scarcely necessary for me, at a time like this, to argue grave questions, respecting policy, past, present or prospective. I only ask you to have faith and confidence, and to believe that every faculty of my head and my heart is devoted to your cause, and to that I shall, if necessary, give my life. Let every one in his own sphere and according to his own capacity, devote himself to the single purpose of filling up and sustaining our armies in the field. If required to stay at home, let him devote himself not to the acquisition of wealth, but to the advancement of the common cause. If there is to be any aristocracy in the land after this war, I hope that it will be an aristocracy of those men who have become poor while bleeding to secure liberty. If there are to be any peculiarly favored by public opinion hereafter, I trust it will be those men who have longest borne a musket and oftenest bled upon the battle fields. If there is to be any man shunned by the young ladies when he seeks their favor, I trust it will be the man who has grown rich by skulking.

And with all sincerity, I say to my young friends here, if you want the right man for a husband, take him whose armless sleeve and noble heart betoken the duties that he has rendered to his country, rather than he who has never shared the toils, or borne the dangers of the field. If there still be left any of those military critics who have never spoken of our generals but to show how much better things could have been managed, or of our Government, but to find fault with it, because it never took their advice - in mercy's name let these wise men go to the front and aid us in achieving our independence. With their wisdom and strength swelling our armies, I should have some hopes that I will not be a corpse before our cause is secured, and that our flag would never trail in dishonor, but would wave victoriously above the roar and smoke of battle. . . .

From: Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, edited by Dunbar Rowland (Jackson, Miss., 1923).