The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-09-26
Jefferson Davis in the Thirty Sixth
 Congress.

IS. s. Cox, in September Overland.
 In that congress. foremost in influence for peace or war, for Union or disunion
 IS Jefferson Davis; how then unlike that Davis, who, in Maine, but a few years be. fore, had spoken burning words for the perpctuity of the Union He had tough, gallantly in Mexico for it's extension and honor. Whatever of prejudice his name may have since aroused has been incl dent to recalling the memories of a beaten cause. At that congress he was far more potential in directing the fate- ful genius of southern statesmanship than any other man in the senate. His own memoirs have been published. There his character is andy zed and his motives questioned with pitiless and torturing in- quisition; still the great body of his counirymen south will cherish his mem- ory, despite all adverse criticism. Whether he ever renounced his sece sion doctrines. while acting as the chieftain of the Con- federacy, has not been proven. It has been surmised and inferred. The same presiding care which shielded him from rial for treason, and gave him peace ful retiracy in southern home, seems
 
 bering his personal courtesy, his urbane and dignified manners, his silvery oratory, his undaunted courage as soldier and honesty as a man, the historian of this eventful epoch-in which madness ruled in the most sedate counsels-cannot fail to recall much to the credit of this leader of the southern people. He may not have exercised the wisdom of some who acquiesced promptly and gracefully in the inevitable. Yet with many this trait of enduring consistency is a virtue. But it must be said that he was not forward in secession. His state was not among the foremost to secede. She waited until the 9th of January, 1861, before passing her ordinance, and her senators fingered until the 2Ist before they withdrew. It is gen. erally credited among those who were familiar with Mir. Davis inciinations. that even after the ordinance passed, he was anxious to remain. There is indubitable evidence that while in the Committee of Thirteen, he was willing to accept the compromise of Afr. Crittenden, and re- cede from secession. (This committee and a house committee of thirty-three memoers were then considering "the state of the Union.") The compromise failed because, as Senator Hale said, on the 18th of December, 1860, the day it was introduced, it was determined that the controversy should not be settled in congress- When it failed, the hero of Buena Vista became the Confederate leader.
 Much as he is underrated by some southern men who opposed him during the war, he was fitted to be the leader of just such revolt. Every revolution has a fabulous or actual hero contormable to the local situation, manners, and charac- ter of the people who rise. To rustic people like the Swiss, William Tell, with his cross-bow and the apple to an as- piring race like the Americans, Washing ton, with his sword and the law, are, as Lamartine once said, the symbols stand ing erect at the cradles of these two dis tinct liberties Jefferson Davis, naughty, self-willed, and persistent, full of martial ardor and defiant eloquence, was the symbol, both in his character and his sit- uation, of the proud, impulsive, but sup pressed ardors and hopes of the southern mind.