enthusiasm or animosity of mankind, at a time when very many of his contemporaries, friends and enemies, are still living and he, himself so long the center of absorbing interest, has been but for a few hours locked in that sleep which closes for good or ill all the records of his life?

The eyes that will read the dispassionate history of Jefferson Davis are as yet unborn. As for us, we live too near the thrilling events, the tremendous concussions, the strife, the passion, the crash and the conflict of the period in which he played a principal part. Time was when the ancient Egyptians had a constituted tribunal, whose solemn function it was to pass on the merits of the dead before they were committed to sepulture. At a period when there were fewer written memorials, when oblivion more quickly trampled under foot the memories of men, when all the elements of life were simpler, this speedy method of adjudication may have been deemed appropriate; but we cannot but suspect that beneath the stern aspect of the judges who were to pass on those who were insensible to rewards and beyond the reach of punishment, there was latent that aggregation of human infirmities that more or less affected the decision, which was still liable to be reversed at some later time by a more enlightened public opinion. Not Talleyrand, not Bertrand, or Bourrienne, knew half as much about Napoleon, though they sat at the same table, and were deep in his counsels, as we who never saw him know to-day; and so of Jefferson Davis, many memorials as yet unwritten, and existing only in the minds of his contemporaries, many documents as yet unpublished, must be collated, before a fairly just estimate can be taken of his extraordinary character. The labor and the duty of making up that discriminating appreciation which is called the verdict of history, must rest for a later generation, made up of men and women who

will be strangers to that vast political convulsion that has darkened the process of many of our years, for a generation that will be far removed from that scene of strife and collision which have left their deep impress on everything that we see around us to-day. Few are the names that are called before that august and solemn tribunal which gives the final verdict on the unreturning past; for it deals not with the deeds or memory of common men; and its impressive adjudications are so supreme and decisive that, overriding all temporary passion and prejudice, displacing all the illusive devices of deceitful men, it has stripped the ermine from the backs of unjust and wicked judges, has removed the mask of hypocrisy from the face of the pretended saint, it has deprived kings and emperors of robe and scepter, has explored all the recesses of baseness and cupidity in high places, and has distributed the world's honors anew, lifting into fame the worthy and obscure, and fixing its indelible mark of condemnation on the unworthy and the vile of whatever rank or station.

Before that tribunal, in its high session, shall be called in due time the name of him that died but yesterday; and few names more imposing; for, however its verdict may be, none will deny that the investigation is fraught with that interest that is everywhere attracted by a great and unusual career. We may also foretell that if posthumous criticism shall number and define many mistakes that he may have made in the most embarrassing, difficult and dangerous emergenciesthose terrible straits that most try the strength, the hearts and the souls of men-that that later and more mature expression of justice, long deferred, will give him credit for having acted from motives as high, and as pure, and as free from all taint of sordid ambition as any patriot that ever wore the crown of victory acquired on a more successful field of battle; and that

in personal and moral courage to sustain his convictions, he has had no superior among the children of men.

The exact measure of praise or censure that should be meted out to Mr. Davis it is not for us to assert; but as the world believes in the principle of representation in punishments as well as in honors, we know that he has been made the scape-goat for many sins that should be laid at the doors of others; and that as for us in the South who participated in the measures of the war, early or late, there is no reprobation that can be visited on him that will not also fall upon ourselves.

I know that the war, like all other great social wars, had long roots in the past, reaching back to the time when the good Spanish priest Las Casas advised that negro slaves might be imported into America, so as to relieve the native Indians from enforced labor; to the time when the good Puritan brethren of New England, with many a prayer, and never a misgiving, fitted out their ships for the African coast, expecting profitable returns of ivory and slaves.

I am far from thinking that slavery was the direct cause of the war; for Mr. Lincoln and those who acted with him announced at the beginning of the conflict that they had no purpose to overturn that institution; but slavery had made a very visible line of distinction between the Northern and Southern parts of our country. Its extension was deprecated, its existence deplored, and there was a growing moral and religious sentiment that was hostile to its continuance.

When Mr. Davis was born into the world, which he was destined to find so full of trouble, less than ten years had elapsed since Washington, the great first President, had been consigned to rest at Mt. Vernon amidst the mourning of the people; and yet even then differences were beginning to be felt, that grew out of the unharmonious development of the North and the South. That

sectional feeling which has been the bane of our National existence, and which may yet prove to be our ruin, was a part of his sad inheritance as it has been of ours. It seemed at that time to be but a little flame that might be easily extinguished; but it is with nations as it is with men, their wisdom generally comes too late for practical and successful application.

Later on, Calhoun did indeed foresee the threatened catastrophe, which he thought to guard against by artificial balances of power that should have the effect to tie up forever the hands of both contending parties. Equally clear was the mental vision of Henry Clay; and he sought to provide a remedy of compromise and conciliation. Afterwards, when his life was drawing to an honored close, he saw that temporary expedients could not be relied on for permanent relief; and for the removal of the principal cause of dissension, he recommended a system of gradual emancipation. Unfortunately his plan was not adopted; and the state of the country grew year by year more gloomy and threatening.

One deeply-seated ground for apprehension was found in the fact that no definite remedy had been provided by the founders of the Republic if any State, or any number of States, should attempt, in their sovereign capacity, to withdraw from the Federal Union—a circumstance which the founders of our Government hoped might never occur. No resort to arms was ever contemplated by them; for civil war is not a part of the scheme of any organic government, and no peaceable remedy was suggested for an emergency that patriotism deemed improbable.

It is not to be imagined that any ideal harmony ever existed among the States. A condition of peace may be foreshadowed in another world; but it has no place in this. There were bickerings, old and new, and some of them had their origin far back in the Colonial days; so

that when Washington presided over the convention that formed the Constitution of the United States, he listened to the diverse and discordant utterances of which our civil war was a late and violent echo; and when the Constitution was presented to the people and to the States for adoption, it was done in an ambiguous way that was intended to obviate objections, and which actually had that effect, though it was thereby made afterwards wellnigh impossible to say whether the ratification of that instrument was due to the action of the people directly, or to the corporate assent of the States. Moreover, the instrument itself, dealing as it did, with great subjects briefly expressed, and being a result of a series of compromises between men of opposing views, was susceptible of a great variety of interpretations; so that every man reading it in the light of his preconceived opinions, saw in it a reflection of his own individual views, and Alexander Hamilton took it to be a warrant for a strongly centralized Government, while Thomas Jefferson emphasized in his own mind the guarantees of individual rights which it contains. In the light of history, it is perfectly just to say that the framers of that Constitution had not been educated to believe in the continuance of any form of government by mere physical force. They had revolted from the British Crown, and had achieved their independence by force of arms; and they had entered into the articles of confederation, which had established a government based on patriotic sentiment and moral suasion alone. Though it was intended that the Government of the United States should be much more efficient than that which it superseded, yet there was no hint that the Constitution conferred any power of coercion over any State that should grow weary of the Federal yoke; and it is hardly to be doubted that if a clause importing a right to coerce an unwilling State had been proposed, it would have been almost or quite unani