The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-06-04

he must be prepared to be its vietir The wise after thinkers always find n his deficiencies the cause of defeat. Taylor Defended Davis.
 | I believe that the first argumen ! ever made. made as boy in defenso of Jefferson Davis in little group o
 pessimists who were trying to fix on Il him the feilure of the Southern Con federacy. Wys defence resolved fl I into @ single question. I asked if any
 one present could suggest the nan o | any Southern leader of the day who l combined in bis person so many 'he necessary qualities as Jefferson g To that question, which I have f0, repeated since. have never heard thing like a convincing answer. Y think of General Lee, the suge 70 comes that heA had no experience liner | in politics or istatesmanship. ne
 think Of the mighty Toombs, ,oue, remember that heswes only a .Gu . tian orator. If we think of Al IT i H. Stephens. may say. with the
 slightest -disrespect to him, tn l is no need for argument at al sl I can be no doubt that the men ul ai7 l day were right in believing that Mir. l Davis was far better equipped for the perilous and difficult duties of Presi- | dent of the Confederacy than any other
 available man. So deeply were his con-
 temporaries imbued with that fact
 that when he arrived in Montgomery in February. 1861, to take the oath of
 office, William l.. Yancey gave express
 soin to the inarticulate thought of the whole South when he declared. in the | presence of many of you now living, | that "the man and the hour have met"
 | want you younger men of the State to understand that human as he was, MT. Davis was our chosen and anoint- ed one. When we make reflections up- I on him, we put a stigma upon our. | selves. t:t The failure of the Southern Confed- eracy resulted neither from the defl- l cfencies of Jefferson Davis, nor from the lack of heroism and fortitude upon
 the part of those splendid armies which | wrought immortal deeds under the | folds of the Conquered Banner. The failure of the Confederacy was woven into the wool of fate; 1t perished that the Union might live. African slavery
 was abolished in order that the white people of the South might be eman- cipated from the serfdom of an ecoHo-
 mic system purely agricultural.
 Results of the War. Not long ago was called upon to prepare for an important publication an epitome of the history of Alabama since 1870. In the statistics which I then threw together, l saw clearly for the first time what the abolition of slavery had really done for us. For the year 1SsS-99 Alabama produced 1.159. 900 bales of cotton against 9S9,s55 bales in 1860. In addition to the in- crease of f70,000 bales thus made in our staple product, we produced in the same year nearly s,00e,0o tons of coal, and about 1.300,0o0 tons of pig iron. We have. therefore. the comfort of knowing that the results of the civil war almost doubled the resources of Alabama as a wealth-producing com munity. And we also have the comfort the South bore herself nobly
 No chieftain could have been more patriotic. more self-sacrificing than Jef- ferson Davis. While the battle ragged he bore the heat aLd burden of the day, and when the end came, like the king of the Greeks in the Homeric story, he was ready to say to his conquerors: Let me be deemed the hateful cause of all. and suffer rather than my peo- pie fall.P In that lofty spirit he sub- mitted his patrician hands to the man.
 
 ter the prison doors had closed upon him. thank God that out of the dark ness of that hour there came a light revealing to the world the fact that ours is a government of liberty under law. Those who strove to prove that Jefferson Davis was a traitor were forced to abandon the prosecution, be- cause they knew that under the law of the land they could not touch a hair of fa NAl hxa kAA.. maintain the monstrous contention that the strictly organized and power full government at whose front he stood never had a de facto existence.
 As an American lawyer, I am proud to remember that in the midst of the storm of passion and hate that then broke upon our imprisoned chief, the leader of the New York bar, the peer of Erskine and Webster. the noble Charles O'Connor. stood forth and said I am ready to defend him. As as American citizen. am proud to remem- Der that grim. old Horace Greedy, born on the soil of New Hampshire, braved both social and political ostracism, in order to say, I am ready to be his bondsman. The world was thus given to understand that the brave, true heart of the American people is ever ready. under all circumstances, to re- spond to the music of fair play.
 Race Traits of Americans.
 The closing of the prison doors of Fortress Monroe on Jefferson Davis marked the end of the third and last great civil war in the history of the English people. I desire Q say a few words tonight in reference to some of the race-traits of that mighty people of which we are a part. The first glimpseS we catch of our forefathers, as they appeared upon the shores of
 the Northern Ocean when authentic history began. come to us through the pages of the great Roman historian Tacitus. who outlined in his day the
 customs and race-ur dts of the Teu- tonic peoples just as our own Bancroft outlined in his day. the customs and race-traits of the Indian tribes ssn our frontiers.
 In their primeval simplicity the fore fathers of the English people, eroup- ed together in small settlements at the neck of the Danish peniusular. were heroic God-feering men, who embodied in their earliest heathenism the hope of a resufrectiOn and of life beyond the grave. In the Eddas we possess a rec ord of their earliest thoughts and feelings, and in these we discover the sources Of their proud self conscious- ness. their love of liberty and strife, their heroisln, and their power. It has been said by a Danish Soet that Asa Faith unfolds in five acts the nest glorious drama of victory ever com- posed by mortal bard. Tn the old Gothic religion were embodied princi- | ,v,t morale that n d11a ,.O1;rsa of