The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-09-04


Generations would weep over any man of
whom it could be said or written, ''Died of
back pay" Let them all make their wills,
those who voted for the bill particularly, for
The only way back pay to cover"
TO hide sham from ev'ry eye,
To prove yourself your country's lover
And touch its heart Is but TO de-
ssThe Lost Cause''-Ndr. Jefferson Davis
Rises 20 Explain.
The unhappy Jefferson Davis is the Prophet
Jeremiah of the 'lost cause" His lamenta-
tons are not so vivid in their colorings of the
sufferlngs and sorrows Of his unfortunate
people as are those of the heart broken and elo-
quent Israelite, but the intractable MISSISSIPPI
plan sticks to his text with the same tenacity.
The uncomfortable Southern rights man of
Arkansas precisely defines the position of the
fallen chief of his fallen confederacy in the
emphatic declaration that
Aregular, straight-out rebel
was and still au,
And won't be reconstructed,
And don't care a-heml
We fear nevertheless that in the public
Judgment the character in which Mr.. Davis
lately presented himself before the Southern
Historical Convention, and in which he makes
the explanation that we publish to-day, will be
held as less heroic than the rifle Of the maid Of
all work in which he appeared ''once upon
time" in shutdown and calico wrapper,
bearing from crystal spring away down
in Georgia pail of sparkling water. There
he tried as fair trick Of ~arlike strategy
as that of King Alfred in the cowherd's cabin;
but in his unreasonable rigmaroles on the
Southern Confederacy and what ''might have
BEEN" had Mr.. Davis only known what to
do, we have the senseless and purposeless
vaperings of a weak and foolish old man.
What does he mean in his declarations
that he has hope in the future founded ON
the fact that he has not yet seen recon-
structed Southern woman, and that while
the men Of the present day might yield
the principles for which they struggled.
vet he hopes the children who succeed
them will grow up to maintain and per-
petuate those principles and redeem all that
we have lost? He must mean that his 'lost
cause is to be
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son
by the unreconstructed women of the South,
and that at. some time in the dim future we
shall have another Southern rebellion. So
we interpret his incendary White Sulphur
speech, and such is substantially his explana-
ton of that wild harangue. We appre-
bend that silence, instead of such fire.
brands as these from Mr.. Davis at this time,
would have been cheaply purchased by the
Southern people in the outlay OF million of
money and we entirely concur in the opinion
of Charleston contemporary, which is to the
effect that if MIR. Davis cannot open his mouth
without putting his foot in it he will best serve
the cause and the interests of the South by
keeping it shut. During the war his zeal too
often outran his discretion in his public
appeals but since the war he has been
nothing but dead weight upon the South,
and a decisive argument in favor of the
Northern radical policy of coercion when all
other arguments have failed. In this view,
then, bride upon the tongue of Jefferson
Davis would be better for the South than the
extinction of all the Ku-Klux Klans.
| In the War Office at Washington there is q
valuable collection of historical papers and
official documents relating to the war between
the United States and the 'so-called Confed-
crate States" as defined by Lord John Rus
sell, and among these papers, we believe, ara
the precious Southern archives Of those five
black trunks sent up to Canada for safe keep
| ing when clouds and darkness were settling
over the Southern Confederacy, but which
were brought back some twelve months since
or more and turned over to cur War Office for
the pitiful sum of seventy-fve thousand dol
lars, or at the rate of fifteen thousand dollars
per trunk Doubtless more than fifty trunks
| Of Confederate archives, with many wagon
loads Of scrip, we're destroyed in the Rich
mond fire, which lighted Mr.. Breckenridge.
the Confederate Secretary of War, in his hur-
ried departure en- route for Appomattox Court
House. But still there must be rich maya
zine of historical materials in the possession
and within reach of Mr.. jefferson Davis,
which, for the enlightenment of the future
historian, should be collected, compiled and
published to the world
Here is field in which Mr.. Davis, if he
can divest himself of his personal grievances,
may still appear in commanding position
among the patriots and heroes Of the South.
At present, with his vain tears, signs and
groans and sedihous nonsense, he stands
before the people of the South as stumbling
block in the way of their restoration to politi-
cal harmony, union, law, order and pros
perity, and the best thing that his immediate
friends can now do for him, for themselves
and the South, is to keep him quiet.
YACHTING NOTES
Sloop yacht Genia, Bye, Mr. Haight from the