Morning journal and courier., 1881-04-14
Sournal allo Courier
Thursday Morning. April IA, 1881.
JEEE DAVIS, ROOK.

Thursday Morning. April IA. 1881. JEFF DAVIS BOOK.
 There is yet remaining considerable curios- l ity to know what Jeff Davis has to say about I by inheritance as well as sustained by con- | viction, " and his history of the rebellion,
 soon to be published by the Appletons, will | doubtless be widely read. Some extracts from advance sheets of the work give an idea
 of it's tone and quality.
 The preface announces that the work was 1 undertaken as duty to his countrymen; to l the memory of those who died in defence of
 a cause consecrated by inheritance, as well as
 sustained by conviction and to those who, perhaps less fortunate, staked all and lost all, save life and honor in it's behalf It
 seems to him proper, lat time when the
 minds of men are straying far from the les
 sons our fathers taught, to recur to the orig inal principles on which the system of gov
 ernment they devised was founded" And
 he declares s'The eternal truths which they announced, the rights which they declared inalienable,' are the foundation stone on which rests tie vindication of the Confederate l cause" To the parents, the widows and the orphans of the Confederate dead he offers the consolation ''that those for whom they mourn died for the right-a willing sacrifice
 on the altar of their country, where their
 memories. enshrined in the hearts of their
 people, will go down in tradition to posterity,
 immortalized by valor in defence of home
 and martyrdom for liberty" And in anoth-
 CT part of the book he says: Sad as have
 been the consequences of the war which fol-
 lowed secession-disastrous in it's moral ma
 terial and political relations-stil we have
 good cause to feel proud that the course of
 the southern States has left no blot nor stain
 upon the honor and chivalry of their people.
 And if our children must obey,
 They must but-thinking on our day
 'Twillless debase them to O. ey.'"
 There is much more of this which will per
 haps be popular in some parts of the South,
 but is not very entertaining for general read ing The author gives his views on slavery,
 the Missouri compromise, nullifcation, and
 the right to secede, quoting in support of the last named right against coercion the ut terances of northern men, like Horace Greeley and Horatio Seymour. This part of the book will also not be intensely and gen orally interesting at this time.
 When Mir. Davis comes to speak of the early operations of the Confederates his work is more readable. He says, for instance:
 On the third day after my inauguration at Montgomery an officer of extensive lnforma- ton and high capacity sent to the North to make purchases of arms, ammunition and machinery; and soon afterward another of fcer was sent to Europe to buy in the market as far as possible, and, furthermore, to make contracts for arms and munitions to be man. ufactured. Captain (afterward AdmiraD Semmes, the officer who sent to the North, would have been quite successful but for the intervention of the civil authorities preventing the delivery of the various art1- 1 cles contracted for. The officer who was sent to Europe Major Huse, found few ser viceable arms upon the market. He, how ever, succeeded in making contracts for the | of large quantities, being ln | advance of the agents sent from the north l ern government for the same purpose. For | further and more detailed information refer 1 ence is made to the monograph of the chief | of ordnance. Captain Semmes had also been | directed to seek for vessels which would | serve for naval purposes and, after his re- | turn, reported that he could not find any ves- sells which, in his judgment, were, or could be made available for our uses. The southern officers of the navy who were in command of United States vessels abroad, under an idea more creditable to their sentiment than to their knowledge of the nature of our Consti tutional Union, brought the vessels they into the ports of the North, and, having delivered them to the authorities of the United States government generally rendered their resignations and repaired to the States from which they had been com in the navy, to serve where they ] Il I..s. IT. hoI I,,a Fhn | that they owed allegiance to their respective States was founded on the fact that the Fed eral government was of the States the se- 1uence was that the navy belonged to the States, not to their agent, the Federal gov and, when the States ceased to be united, the naval vessels and armament should have been divided among the owners. 1 While we honor the sentiment which caused them to surrender their heartbound associa lions and the profession to which they were bred, on which they relied for subsistence, to go, with nothing save their swords and faithful hearts, to fight, to bleed, and to die if need be, in the defence of their homes and l righteous cause, we can but remember how much was lost by their view of what their honor and duty demanded.
 One of the extracts published indicates that in his book Mir. Davis will pay his re- spects to some of the prominent Confederate leaders with whom he was not in harmony. He thus raps General Joe Johnston
 It was, as stated, with deep regret and bit ter disappointment that I found, notwith- standing our diligent efforts to reinforce this army before and after the battle of Manas- sas, that its strength had been but little in- creased, and that the arms of absentees and discharged men were represented by only 3 ,5OO on hand. I cannot suppose that Gene ral Johnston could have noticed the state ment that his request for conference had set forth the object of 1t to be to discuss the uuestion of reinforcement He would have known that in Richmond, where all the re- turns were to be found, any consideration of by the withdrawal of troops from existing garrisons, could best be deci- led. Very little experience or a fair amount of modesty without any experience would serve to prevent one from announcing his conclusion that troops could be withdrawn from a place or places without knowing how many were there, and what was the necessity for their presence. I was at the conference by request the confidence felt in those off ,ers is shown by the fact that I met them alone, and did not require any minutes to be made of the meeting. About four months paper was prepared to make record of the conversation the fact was concealed from me, whereas, both for accu- -acy and frankness, it should have been sub nitted to me, even if there had bean nothing Hue to our official relations Twenty years after the event I learned of this secret re- port, by one party, without notice having been given to the other, of conversation said to have lasted two hours. After the ex- olosion of the fallacy that I had prevented he pursuit of the enemy from Manassas in July, 1861, my assailants have sought to GOV ,r their exposure by change of time and place, locating their story at Fairfax Court House. and dating it in the autumn of 1861.
 It is well to have MT. Davis contribution 70 the history of the rebellion, but if it is air to judge of it by the extracts thus far published it is not an exceedingly valuable or Ieenlv interesting work Still as we said