The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-29

I not confidence in the secretaries and ad- visers about him. They were all of his own selection-men with whom he had been associated more or less intimately for years-and some were far more com petent to execute their work than he was to do Il for them. This was especially the case with the army movements: vet it is no longer even "an open secret that Mr Davis assumed direction of the plans of campaigns II not indeed, of their minor movements. Surely this was not from remotest lack of confidence in such lead CTS as Lee, Jackson and others-however he may have misjudged and underrated one at least of their peers. Rather will those who knew the first and last Con- federate chief best. attribute his off ciousness to nervous dread ofs failure that overmastered him. He was fighting one stronger nation physically; he was fighting morally the criticisms of the world. Failure was damnationl This morbid sense of responsibility was the handspring of hls pernicious ubiqultY and the motor of that waste of energy on details, which has been harped upon as a littleness of soul in the least selfish of modern historical characters
 Driving all about him to their limit, he never spared himself. From Montgomery to Atlanta his was one unrelieved ten sion of terrible suspense, unremittng la Dor and resisted doubt. The flashes or triumph that lit the deepest gloom for others were not for him. He was too cognizant of facts. too busy with need of action, to play with hope. In this the man dominated the publcst, coloring his official life and making 1t seem, to the thoughtless. petty or even spiteful In this was his seeming desire, as noted to make himself the Confederacy or the Confectionery himself.
 Knowing him from early boyhood; in- innate in his household then, and in hls office a little later, the writer nad sus- peeted no such development in the pub licist Senator, or Secretary, Davis had ever been a grave, self-contained and strong willed worker in public aHairs, rarely talking, seldom brooking' ana never asking advice. His memory WAS wonderful, especially for faces anu names, and his grasp on subject was as rapid as his decision upon It was ien- acious. He was ever slow to admiration but was as loyal to friendship as he was to inveterate enmity. Like all other men, he was liable to error In either regard.
 In private life, and notably in his own home. MT. Davis was polished cofdlai and affable. He was always easy or ap- proach. and patient to the woes or con sttuents and subordinates. He was ! thoughtful and free talker, and strangely
  as well as to hold, their opinions
 Such, in brief and imperfect retrospect Jefferson Davis appears to the thinker l today: such he may appear to that iu- ] ture Macaulay. Not a popular man III ms 1 traits, nor in any sense magnetic, the feeling of his own people for him has un- l dergone immense change since his deatn' The south resented the treatment or her | representative man just after the war; but 1t is doubtful If much tenderness tempered her wrath. Gradually respect for the dead chiefs high traits passes into mellowed feeling, and the thought | of the many is perhaps best stated by the poets suggestion for his statue; Write on its base: We love him." All these years
 Since that torn flag folded. we've been
 true;
 The love that bound us, now revealed in tears.
 Like webs. unseen till heavy with the
 dew.
 T. c. DE LEON.