The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-06
JEFFERSON DIV


From the Wheeling Inteligncer.
JEFF. Davis, as everybody knows. has re-
turned to the United States, and has for the
present taken up his residence in Memphis.
Some demonstrations of respect for his char
acter were made on his arrival in that city,
and some of commiseration over his blighted
hopes and his reversed prospects in life. The
sensation produced by his arrival, however,
scarcely survived the day on which he
came, and the chief of the Rebellion, the
foremost of the men who denounced their
country as unfit for people of spirit to live in,
finds himself once more on his native soil, a
sadder and perhaps q wiser man for all that
he has done and suffered both at home and
abroad. There is point beyond which no
applause or adulation will sustain man. One
soon wearies of the mere sympathy of others,
and a high-minded man is seldom willing to
accept it at all.
We cannot be surprised, however, that the
chief of the late Rebellion finds some solace
in the sympathies of the Southern people.
They kindled together the torches of the civil
war; They endured together it's unequalled
privations, and they have shared together the
bitter memories of its lost cause. A common
brooding over the past is all they have left to
bind them to each other. But an occupation
like this, as is said, ''butters no mans bread "
and jeff. Davis will not be long in discover
ing, what the Southern people have generally
found out already, that politics will not yield
him a support, and that he must take his
| place among the working millions whom he
has all his life disparaged and despised
| The generals who led the Rebel armies
have fallen, in considerable proportion, into
agencies of express companies or become
superintendent of railroads, in the South,
and they have shown their good sense in re-
sorting to such occupations for a livelihood.
Here and there they are at the head or in
some other Office of institutions of education,
and are teaching to the young the sciences
which they acquiredat West Point long before
the war. We wait to see what particular
place in Southern life has been reserved for
the man who SO long held Southern destinies
in his hand. Is he to be the president of q
college, or the agent of an insurance COM
pany, the treasurer of railroad, or the head
of a railroad, or the head of a military insti-
tute?
The indulgence of the American people
towards the Confederate President has been
the greatest punishment he could have received
Had he been executed for treason he would
have ranked among the heroes of history
his fate, have if not his achieve
ments, would have secured him 9
fame forever. No such distinction can now
ever belong to him. He can never be any.
thing in the estimation of mankind but the
leader of an unsuccessful rebellion and the
last champion of American slavery. The lost
cause, with which he is identified, is the
cause of human oppression and wrong, as
well as treason and rebellion. His very life
even, is punishment. He is indebted for il
to the Government he attempted to over
throw, and he is to spend it among the ruins
of the slavery he sought to perpetuate, and il
the midst of the people whose interests hC
has helped to blight, and whose hopes he hal
aided in running! In sparing his life, ant
permitting him to return from exile, th'
Government annihilated his only hold upor
the interest of the world, and took away hi
last chance of being ranked among eithe
heroes or martyrs