Jefferson Davis Quotes
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It would grant me much relief to learn your sons were engaged matrimonially to other white men if I was previously faced with the spectre of those same sons wedding negro women, slave or free, and siring negro sons that could presume to claim inheritance of your namesakes and property, or worse, equality with your purer grandchildren.
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Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.
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We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority.
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Never be haughty to the humble or humble to the haughty.
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To increase the power, develop the resources and promote the happiness of a Confederacy, it is requisite there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion would be the aim of the whole.
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I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.
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A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain.
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Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.
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I will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or not they do agree, and find that they differ – radically, essentially, irreconcilably differ – what belongs to an honorable position except to part? They cannot consistently act together any longer.
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Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctioned by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people.
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Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished.
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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.
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Are we, in this age of civilization and political progress... to roll back the whole current of human thought, and again return to the mere brute force which prevails between beasts of prey, as the only method of settling questions between men?
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We feel that our cause is just and holy... We seek no conquest... All we ask is to be left alone.
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We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence - and that, or extermination, we will have.
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To one who loves his country in all its parts, it is natural to rejoice in whatever contributes to the prosperity and honor and marks the stability and progress of any portion of its people.
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A people morally and intellectually equal to self-government must also be equal in self-defence.
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God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the Union.
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All we ask is to be let alone.
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The past is dead; let it bury its dead. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling. Make your place in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished – a reunited country.
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...How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.
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Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.
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If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.
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It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States.