Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1886-05-07
rRIDAY MORNING. MAY. Z. 1873


A. s. MORTON.
FRIDAY MORNING. MAY. Z. 1885
THE CIVILIAN. RESURRECIION.
The Hon. Jefferson Davis of Biloxi.
La who was last week unwittingly fur
nishing campaign material to the Republi-
e2n party, is an old man. The old have
few pleasures and those few are chiefly
found in the successes of the past. Mr..
Davis past was made by Fate the figure
head of the bloodiest disaster that has oc-
sensitive, sincere, and in some respects
great mind as Mr.. Davis's, ouch a. past can
present little for the pleasant contempla-
tion Of age. Twenty-Five years ago he was
the idol Of the Cotton States. To them he
was always their troubadour away to the
wars. In Virginia he was not so much
beloved. He was with us here. He was
rlgiGiy criticised both as campsigner-a
role that he essayed by fits and starts, and
SIS statesman. His mistakes were exa-
mined with the indignant resentment of a
people who had the war at their own doors
and who suffered more in few days
march OF corps, than Cotton State
could in the whole war. To Virginia,
Davis, the civilian, was always the repre-
sentative of the Cotton States, while In
her eyes the Confederate cause found its
true representative in Lee. the soldier.
Even at this day, the dead Lee Ii the same
TO Virginia, and Davis, the civilian,
though alive can hardly be said to claim
prominent place In her glories of the
war. Virginia, too, has her views OF Mr..
Davis as statesman. She does not, at this
day. think much Of that statesmanship
which would with eleven millions of peo-
pie, of whom four million were slaves bring
on fight with nineteen million free white
people, backed with three times az much
railroad, unlimited arsenals for making
arms, and the great grain fields of the
Northwest as their storehouse. So, upon
the whole, Virginia cannot be put down
ss an extravagant admirer OF Mr.. Davis.
But for all that her people are not dispos-
cd to censure other localities-for they
gere local celebrations-when they decree
in his old age to do him honor, however
enthusiastically they may 60 about it. AS
long as he lives, there will always be found
lager or smaller gathering of people en-
3aged on the same side that he was, in the
civil war of quarter Of century ago,
who will feel that 1t is the right thing to
give their old comrade hearty welcome
Ii vill not be for bis sufferlngs for the
Lost Cause" for thousands Of Confed-
crate soldiers have endured more suffer-
ng since the war, even to hunger, while
be mas lived in comparative afauence; but
1t Yill be because in certain sense he was
their comrade through period Of great
events and in another certain sense their
le9der therein. We think we can appre-
oiste the feeling in the Cotton States in
ME Davis public receptions, but we are
not yery anxious to have Virginia credit
cd with either the enthusiasm or the un-
pr0Gtableness Of them.
The citizens Of Alabama. a State which
FINISHED to the Confederate side in the
vii war as brave soldiers as appeared in
ranks Or either q eae af ths - GGia.
fict, lately projected monument to those
OF her gallant men who fell. Last week
the corner stone was laid. The surround
iugs of the event were peculiar. Mont
g0nery, the city in which the ceremony
YVES 10 take place, was the Grst capital o f
the III starred Confederacy. It was there
that it's first President took the oath Of
cf5ea, and it was there that his cabinet
was formed. 1t was from there that in a
few weeks the civil government went to
Riehm ond, from which four years later it
was so dispense as fugitives over the face
0l ne earth. But few hours ride from
tgomery was the old chief, now q
grey headed and broken old man. What
more natural than that he should
have been invited What was there in it
so cause the indignation of anybody II
zaE Davis could stand the scene We
aa2ald think the country could. If a
pi0ad, ambitious man, who once hoped be
md created nation" could undergo the
ordeal of returning for few hours to the
scene of his feeting power and even lay
59u corner stone Of the victims of the
Great Mistake of the Nineteenth Century,
OF " aich an i'll Fortune had made him the
head; If the man who left Montgomery
twenty five years ago in the flush of the
success of an idea he had cherished for
years and amid the huzxas OF soldiers his
&c hud hrn ar1f Nf ho RI
aagTy it to victory; If the man who had
gone forth in the vigor of life with the
B9es Of the world upon him, to what he
believed was march to triumph, could re-
sarn Did, broken, feeble, helpless and with
TIE dreary memories of defeat upon him,
s. lag at once the corner stone of the dead
&n3 Che capstone of his failure-what but
viadietive captiousness could find fault
gith aim. To our mind there is touch of
greatness In the very ability to undergo
it, and what did he say to offend? Like
falstaff, when he came to die, be ''babbled
OF ggeen fields" He spoke OF other days
AMI other scenes and said no more than
msng another old soldier says at the re-
unions and decoration days. 1t was the old,
old story, even down to the used up and
battered French Sergeant who has been
regularly reported ''dead on the field of
homer" at the reunion roll calls of ex-
Confederate and ex-Union veterans for
the iast twenty years. He repeated that
old and narrow view of our civil war
whici, holds that the South fought for
cons EitutionaI lihertY-a view which no