Another Perspective
How Would Jefferson Davis Vote?
It’s a much more interesting question than politically correct history would have you think.
“Who cares?” might be your first reaction; after that, sarcasm might take over: “We know how he would vote — and it wouldn’t be for someone named Barack Obama.”
First let’s establish why you should care; then maybe we can knock away some of that sarcasm too.
We venerate Lincoln, but in many ways Jefferson Davis was far the more interesting statesman. Both men were born in Kentucky, but while Lincoln was largely self-taught Davis received a classical education that led to graduation from both Transylvania University (a school of future statesmen in Kentucky) and West Point.
While Lincoln’s early years were nondescript and his only military experience was ninety days’ uneventful service in the militia during the Black Hawk War, Jefferson Davis served as a professional soldier for seven years (and in fact, befriended Chief Black Hawk as he led him into captivity). He later resigned his seat in the United States Congress to lead the Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War, a war that Lincoln, as a young Congressman from Illinois, opposed as one of the most vocal members of the anti-war faction in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Before he became president of the Confederacy, Davis had been a United States congressman, a U.S. senator (the New York Times called him “the Cicero of the Senate”), and Secretary of War; he had also been a planter; and when his first wife (Zachary Taylor’s daughter) died of fever early in their marriage, he spent long hours in his library, not only in mourning, but eventually in study — of literature, politics, and constitutional debates. Davis was a very well-read man.
Lincoln eventually found a career as a lawyer. Some thought he had a lawyer’s (and a politician’s) slipperiness; some even thought him coarse. But no one ever said that Jefferson Davis was coarse. He was seen as stern, unbending, dignified, and a man of principle — indeed, to a fault. He certainly compromised, as all politicians must do, but he was not what we’d call a trimmer.
NOR WERE HIS principles unworthy. It is true that Davis thought slavery in the South was a positive good — that the “peculiar institution” uplifted and Christianized blacks from heathen savagery. His own roseate view of slavery was determined by his experience — he and his brother were kindly, high-minded masters: educating their slaves, providing them with religious instruction, forbidding harsh treatment of them (the whip was forbidden), caring for their health, and treating them with respect (in Davis’s case, he regarded his black manservant James Pemberton as a trustworthy friend and confidant, and made him overseer of his plantation).
Lincoln certainly opposed slavery, but on grounds that might make us uncomfortable today. He wanted to keep the Free States (or newly created Free States) the domain of white labor. He said he wanted new territories “to be homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted with them. Slave states are the places for poor white people to move from.”
Lincoln reassured nervous voters during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that he had he had never been “in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality…. I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Lincoln’s solution to the problem of slavery was expatriating black Americans to Africa or Central America or the Caribbean.
Today, though the Republican Party is “the Party of Lincoln,” few people, I wager, would claim that race would determine Lincoln’s support for his party’s nominee. There is even less reason to think that race would determine Jefferson Davis’s vote. Unlike Lincoln, Davis did not envision an all-white future. He saw — and approved of — blacks and whites living and working in close proximity, their children playing together. He believed that the ultimate end of slavery might be “the preparation of that race for civil liberty and social enjoyment”; he said, “it is quite within the range of possibility that the masters” would eventually, of their own volition, desire to free the slaves “when their slaves [themselves] would object.” If that day came, Davis, like Lincoln did not believe that black and white could exist on equal terms. But he doubted because, in his experience, they never had been equal — and if he worried that uneducated free blacks would be taken advantage of by unscrupulous whites, Reconstruction only confirmed his fears.
But if we give Lincoln the benefit of the doubt of one hundred years’ experience, we should do the same for Davis. Though few call the Democrats “the Party of Jefferson Davis,” there seems little doubt that he would have no more qualms about casting a vote for Barack Obama than Lincoln would, should he deem him the better candidate.
THAT LEAVES the final question: how would Jefferson Davis vote? Davis’s principles were those of free trade; strict constitutionalism; a limited federal government and expansive state’s rights; outspoken opposition to federal spending on “internal improvements,” which were the proper province of the states or better still private enterprise, unless they could be justified on grounds of national security (he was a proponent of federal support for a transcontinental railroad running along a Southern route); and an imperialist foreign policy.
Davis favored not only the war with Mexico, but American “filibusters” in Central America, and the annexation of Cuba. It is ironic, perhaps, that Davis, a man devoted to his sectional interest, was also a man determined to advance America’s imperial interests while Lincoln, who opposed the conquest of a great Western empire for the United States (one of the prizes being John McCain’s state of Arizona), found himself full of belligerence when it came to bloodletting on an almost unimaginably larger scale against his fellow Americans.
Davis did indeed put his country first. Before the war, he believed that his country was his state, the state that had elected him to high office and where he farmed, Mississippi. After the war, he proved to his own satisfaction, in a massive treatise, that secession had been constitutional. He wanted to show also that the South had fought with honor and courage. But now that the great cataclysm of war had proved secession “impracticable” he accepted the verdict so that “on the basis of fraternity and faithful regard for the rights of the States, there may be written on the arch of the Union, Esto perpetua.”
Davis’s support for limited government, federalism, and an expansionist foreign policy makes it all but certain that he would cast his vote for John McCain (Davis would have considered Arizona an honorary Southern state).
You won’t see anyone seeking the mantle of Jefferson Davis, but he was a worthier man than politically correct history would have you think.
About the Author
H. W. Crocker, III is a bestselling author. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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james f. csank| 10.20.08 @ 6:44AM
Mr. Crocker appears to be a die-hard "good ole boy" who can't quite believe the South lost the war. Since he can't revise the outcome, he's bound and determined to canonize the leading traitors of the South and wants the rest of us to genuflect to their memory. He should find something more constructive to do with his time.
Wil Schuemann | 10.20.08 @ 9:37AM
james f. csank seems to be attacking the messenger, rather than discussing the message.
james wilson| 10.20.08 @ 9:52AM
All very worthy, Mr.Crocker. But the fact is, slavery made white culture stupid, and it was not even able to maintain its level of stupidity. There was nothing good that was capable of evolving out of this, for the south was incapable of evolving. Lincoln was. One meeting with Frederick Douglass changed his thinking. That was the difference between the North and the South.
Charles A. Noyes| 10.20.08 @ 11:27AM
I do not defend slavery, nor the South's secession from the Union that prompted the horrendously bloody Civil War. However, one difference between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis that would ring particularly cogent in today's political climate was their disparate attitudes toward the parameters of military service during a time of war for their own sons. While Mr. Lincoln called for, conscripted, and sent hundreds of thousands of other's sons to fight and die, he arranged for his own to serve in a non-combatant role on Grant's staff as he surrounded and besieged Petersburg and Richmond. Davis, on the other hand, allowed his to serve in combat roles throughout the war. All other factors aside, if such men were running against one another for the Presidency today, whom do you suppose would have the advantage?
Jeff| 10.20.08 @ 12:15PM
Substitue the practice of abortion for slavery. What would the outcome be then?
Jim| 10.20.08 @ 12:54PM
Excellent article Mr. Crocker. I haved learned something today.
Ark Ashamed of Bill| 10.20.08 @ 1:12PM
Daniel J. Flynn’s “A Conservative History of the American Left” makes it perfectly clear that the Abolitionists who provided the ideology for Lincoln’s War were leftists, some of whom crossed the line and became traitors, such as the terrorist John Brown, John Brown’s “secret six,” and Frederick Douglass, who knew about Brown’s Harpers Ferry action before the fact. Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, who considered himself to the the true leader of the Republican Party, also had prior knowledge of the Harpers Ferry terrorist action. It is absurdly hypocritical for Yankees who revere the terrorist traitor John Brown to accuse the secessionists of treason, particularly when the plain language of the Bill of Rights, which has ten amendments, implicitly allows it. Secession is the ultimate check and balance on a federal government that exceeds the powers granted to it by the Constitution. The justification for Lincoln’s aggression has been raised on a foundation of leftist myth. There was a union after Lincoln’s War was over, but it wasn’t the same union that was established by the Founders. The American Left moved from this triumph to the disastrous Progressive Era, New Deal, Great Society, and whatever socialist scheme Obama has in store for us. Lincoln was the first president of socialist blue America; Jefferson Davis wanted to preserve the Constitution as the Founders conceived it. Obama is the natural consequence of Lincoln’s victory, and there’s a good chance that when he’s done we will no longer have government by the people, of the people, and for the people. That will be Lincoln’s true legacy.
burt| 10.20.08 @ 1:47PM
Jefferson Davis like, the rest of the confederacy was 100% Democrat. He would have voted for anyone with a 'D' beside their name. That would have included Barrack Obama. Even an old KKK man such as Senator Byrd is for Obama. Everything is driven by the desire for power.
Jeremy Jester| 10.20.08 @ 4:34PM
Lest we not forget that history is generally written by the victors. In the case of our civil war the victorious Union point of view has traditionally dominated. The Confederate point of view from that era was (and continues to be) suppressed, as well as, over-shadowed by the question of slavery. The question of state's rights and a state's own self determination was as valid then as it is today. Abortion, affirmative action, civil unions and gun control represent a sampling of today's hot button issues connected to state's rights.
John Spencer Yantiss| 10.20.08 @ 5:04PM
For the most part, good article, but your comments about Lincoln show a fairly standard ignorance of the true man. In order to fully understand the character of a person, it is necessary, if at all possible, to read their own writings, not merely those intended for public consumption, but their private correspondence and journals. If one does so, in the case of Lincoln, your appraisal of his position of slavery will not hold water. The "politically correct history" of which you speak is pretty hard to escape, regardless of the subject.
kwerekwere | 10.20.08 @ 6:20PM
i think davis would have flipped a coin, actually. he would have picked the person who he deemed to be better suited to help lead us out of this financial crisis. that wouldn't have been mccain.
mnotaro| 10.20.08 @ 6:56PM
The guys in congress that we want to fix this problem are the same people who started this problem. Do we really think that these rich CEO's of banks really care that I owe more on my house than it's worth? Do the lefty illuminati politicians in DC care? I don't think so! Remember McCain is the one who saw this problem coming ages ago and tried to warn our politicians--to deaf ears it fell.
Richard M| 10.20.08 @ 9:48PM
I think a fair case can be made that Jefferson Davis gets a raw shake from history, or at least popular history, when it thinks of him at all any more. He led and tried to maintain the slaveocracy - let us call it, bluntly, what it was - but there was a nobility to his spirit, even if it was principled to a fault. As his wife Varina once observed of him: ""If anyone disagrees with Mr. Davis, he resents it and ascribes the difference to the perversity of his opponent," and therein lies an observation pregnant with at least a few of the seeds of the Confederacy's defeat (fortunately for us). It was his misfortune to be matched against a much rawer, less educated or experienced talent who however possessed genius in a way which Davis simply did not, as Shelby Foote once observed of his fellow Mississippian. And Lincoln grew tremendously on the racial question during the war, as Frederick Douglass observed of him after meeting with him in his final months. Nathan Bedford made a similar journey in his final years, which is why I have always found him one of the war's most intriguing figures. But too much of Mr. Crocker's essay is neo-Confederate apologetics, and as such, poison to conservatism's future. We can deplore the consequences of the war; dig for and identify Davis's virtues and Lincoln's flaws; take note of Northern complicity in the "peculiar institution's" origin and success; maintain some space for respectful memory of what was good in the South and the sacrifices of its people by their descendants; but we can never lose sight of the evil which lay at its heart and without which no war would have been possible: chattel slavery. I fear Mr. Crocker has done just that.
Kentuckian| 10.21.08 @ 3:26PM
Some of us hillbillies can read - as both Lincoln and Davis help prove.
As a fellow Kentuckian, as the above mentioned, I can understand how easy it would be to support either man as being the greater. If you attempt to understand society during their time, it's understandable that both mean were equally racist and sexist - as in neither of them thought of non-whites or women to be equals of white men.
Lincoln only signed the Emancipation Proclamation in an attempt to enlist more soldiers for the North, not because he had a change of heart for slaves. He also caved to the private central banks to finance the war. So it would seem as though Lincoln didn't really resist pressure from any angle. Against popular history, if Lincoln were truly a great American president - why then did he allow so many Americans to kill one another? Our bloodiest war in history was amungst ourselves, what true American leader would allow that to happen?
Rightfully, as bound by the Constitution, the South had every right to start a new government. Davis, as well as a very large portion of slave owners, realized that the better the treatment of their slaves translated into more productive labor. You've all heard that saying about happy workers - and it's true. Some masters even went as far as to share beds and bloodlines with their slaves, as being that marriage between races was prohibited by law at that time. Popular history has highlighted a few bad apples, and thus ruined the way the entire crop is viewed. I'm not defending slavery or racism by any means, I'm simply applying the mindset of their time. As mentioned in the article, slavery was on the way out in the South - as it would have been rejected by Southerners eventually without need for war.
So then, if the North was still as racist as the South - then how could the Civil War have been about ending slavery as we've all been told all these years? The fact is it wasn't, it was about money. And slavery isn't dead - it's simply evolved. 4% of our population holds 95% of our wealth. The other 96% of us work directly or indirectly for the 4%. What little wages we do make, the government takes a hefty share. I once read somewhere that slaves before the Civil War actually had it better than we do today. Now that may sound racist, but notice I said "than WE do today". Just as I described earlier, slave owners took care to provide food, shelter, water, medicine, and even education for their slaves in return for their labor. Weak, sick, or dumb slaves were lousy workers.
Who foots the bill for food, shelter, water, medicine, and education for the workforce today? - The workforce! The only thing that the Civil War accomplished besides slaughtering untold thousands of Americans was to put the burden of caring for the worker on the worker instead of on the owner/employer. It's a fact that those who flocked to factory jobs in the North lived in far worse conditions than their counterparts in the South. Even after the Civil War, many factory owners didn't pay their workers. And still today many employers pay so little that their employees can't make ends meet.
So I leave you with this thought. If we have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - why then is there a price attached? Wouldn't the term "right" imply something you don't have to pay for? If you have to pay for it, doesn't it make it a priviledge instead of a right? Life requires food, water, shelter, and occassionally medicine - doesn't it? A simple, no frills existence. Why then is there a price associated with each of those items ESSENTIAL for life? Soon enough, we'll also have to pay for the air we breath if the climate change alarmists get their way. So if our right to life is undermined, so then is our liberty and there is no hope of pursuing happiness. So then how did this happen? What killed the true American Dream? - Money, and by association greed. We've allowed greed to enslave us, and we can't be freed until we rid ourselves of the temptations of greed.
Gary| 10.21.08 @ 10:30PM
Excellent article that penetrates beyond the public school-promoted view of this period of history that is so well illustrated in that old episode of The Simpsons when Homer helps Apu with his citizenship test.
Ms. Know| 10.30.08 @ 12:33AM
We all know he wouldn't vote for the left-wing illuminati who are voting to cut funding off for our troops risking their lives everyday for our freedom and safety
Interloper| 2.7.09 @ 9:16PM
I read this late, but think it important to reiterate the most important point lucid commenters made: President Lincoln grew enormously as a person. By the middle of the war he had come to respect blacks because of the bravery and intelligent performance of black soldiers. By the end of the war he was opposed to repatriation of blacks to Africa and supported full citizenship. (The author is too much an apologist for the South to admit this. He is purposely misleading people about Lincoln.)
I also want to debunk Kentuckian's neo-Confederate foolishness:
• Slavery had been outlawed in most states. It flourished in the deep South. The Civil War occurred when it did because of efforts to carry the peculiar institution westward. There were about five million black people in the U.S. at the time of the war. Four million of them were slaves in the South.
• Racial mixing during slavery was not about love or equality. It was a way for slave owners to increase the numbers of their chattel since children born to slave women were slaves.
• The wealthiest individuals in the U.S. at the time of the war were slave holders. It was a very lucrative practice for those who could afford more than a score of slaves. Some planters owned thousands.
• The Confederate constitutions guaranteed slavery in perpetuity. If it had been left up to Jefferson Davis and his ilk, there would still be a slave nation in North America today.
• There is no way to put a positive gloss on slavery. It deprived people of all control over their own lives and those of their children. Simply, a person was not a person if he or she was a slave.
It is ironic that neo-Confederate apologists are still with us as we head into a new era with an history making president.
Terry Shelton | 2.20.09 @ 4:58PM
Interloper your understanding of the Confederacy is sparse at best and displays that you have read too many books titled "THE CIVIL WAR".
I don't believe that anyone is putting a positive spin on Slavery, I think people have a varying level of understanding about the South and its' war aims. In the waining months of the war, the Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of black soldiers, officially authorized, sources reveal there were already black soldiers in southern ranks. Now, someone, with the view you describe would say, yes but they were desperate and only did it to try and win the war. That is so full of holes when you believe the South fought to keep slavery. First, slavery was not illegal and was protected under US law. Second, if the South was WILLING to free any slave that fought, that simply says they wanted independence above all else, up to and including freeing of slaves.
There is an enormous amount of information out there, but people only want to read the general histories.
As far as I am concerned the south left the union with the for principles that the colonies seperate from England. And it had every right to do so. That's called freedom, which God grants not the Union.
Jefferson Davis was an extremely intelligent man and far more advance than people give him credit for, becuase they don't read.
Jonathan | 3.13.09 @ 12:22AM
You're cherry-picking Lincoln's words in order to twist his motives. True, there were certain things Lincoln said in order to get elected and to appease the more moderate White population - he was a politician, after all. But his private correspondence was much, much more anti-slavery, and he truly felt the plight of Blacks. He wasn't perfect, but he wasn't the racist you make him out to be.
JRC| 11.11.11 @ 6:55PM
It gets to the point that the Southern apologists need to fabricate evidence to support any other conclusion than the only one: the Confederacy came into existence solely for the preservation of New World slavery. The Southern bills of secession make that quite clear.