The Civil War: Jefferson Davis: Message to the Confederate Congress

April 29, 1861

With only a few weeks at the helm of the Confederate government, president Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress had cause for concern—but also cause for inspiration. The whole of the South (and the whole of the North) was animated: men and women were mobilizing; making their preparations to contribute to the cause they dearly held. For his message to Congress, Davis—as ever—explained why the Confederate cause was just and good; why legally and historically it was correct and noble; and why it must continue its fight for independence.

It began with the Confederacy’s truer understanding of how the federal Constitution should have operated. In Davis’ view, President Abraham Lincoln had displayed a flawed understanding of the Constitution. Lincoln had espoused the “theory of the Constitution . . . that in all cases the majority shall govern”—leaving the minority out of power. Then, Lincoln “did not hesitate to liken the relations between a State and the United States to those which exist between a county and the State in which it is situated and by which it was created.” This majority-centric, federal-favoring approach was anathema to Davis—and to those of a similar mind.

The fact was that southern states had delegated certain powers to the federal Congress, Davis wrote, but the latest actions—of states seceding—amounted to the southern states taking back those delegated powers. The legal basis for taking back those powers was far from clear, but neither Davis nor the recipients of his message were going to quibble with the legalities of their actions at this late stage of their de jure revolution. After all, they still needed to arm themselves to begin their de facto revolution, and only after achieving victory there—on the battlefields, yet to be known—could they be sure that they had secured, legally or not, their new country.

In any event, difficult though it may have been, it was a necessary revolution. It was coming after years of northern states having antagonized the South, and to Davis, that antagonism was not only unwelcome but unwarranted. He wrote:

“[U]nder the mild and genial climate of the Southern States and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000 . . . to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people . . . .”

At the time of his writing, many of the transpiring events heartened Davis. In every corner of the Confederacy, he saw “patriotic devotion to our common cause.” Railroad companies were freely tendering use of their lines to move soldiers and supplies, soldiers were assembling “with such alacrity that the numbers tendering their services have in every instance greatly exceeded the demand,” and men “of the highest official and social position are serving as volunteers in the ranks.”

All of these events were in support of the burgeoning Confederate cause. Their cause was “just and holy,” Davis wrote. “[W]e protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms,” he continued. That subjugation by arms was something that the Confederacy must resist “to the direst extremity,” Davis wrote.

In April 1861, Davis—or any other person with the Confederate cause at heart—could not then know how dire circumstances would become for mounting their resistance to the Union army’s invasion. But these were the early days of the fight: principles and beliefs, resolutions and promises—they had value for now. Soon, though, ammunition and men, arms and supplies—those would become more precious; without those, the fight would surely be lost.