The people of the States now confederated.....believed that to remain longer in the Union would subject them to continuance of a disparaging discrimination, submission to which would be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a proud people. They therefore determined to sever its bounds and established a new Confederacy for themselves.

Jefferson Davis

The war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.

Jefferson Davis

fighting war fall

I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.

Jefferson Davis

fighting night war

African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.

Jefferson Davis

united-states political blessing

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

Jefferson Davis

strong law book

Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.

Jefferson Davis

sadness men country

The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.

Jefferson Davis

form principles may

Truthfulness is a cornerstone in character, and if it be not firmly laid in youth, there will ever after be a weak spot in the foundation.

Jefferson Davis

weak-spots foundation character

Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.

Jefferson Davis

crushed stills earth

Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.

Jefferson Davis

government ends people

It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green. Yet they belong to the whole country; they belong to America.

Jefferson Davis

hero memories country

The time for compromise has now passed, and the South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel.

Jefferson Davis

smell southern war

Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.

Jefferson Davis

gentleman people religion

All we ask is to be let alone.

Jefferson Davis

being-alone revolution loneliness

If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

Jefferson Davis

law doe men

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

Jefferson Davis

government rights class

Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southerner apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance.

Jefferson Davis

sadness defense war

A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.

Jefferson Davis

civil-war law forever

The Slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline, and thus made unfit for slavery. And as soon as he becomes unfit for slavery, the master will no longer desire to hold him as a slave.

Jefferson Davis

slavery discipline desire

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise.

Jefferson Davis

war lying past

Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

Jefferson Davis

liars men history