The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 21

"I beg your pardon, Miss Barton," he said, with sudden swing to the polite tones of society. "I'm annoying you with my foreign speculations--"

A sudden murmur swept the galleries and all eyes were turned on the tall slender figure of Jefferson Davis as he slowly entered the Senate Chamber.

"Who is it?" Socola asked.

"Senator Davis--you don't know him?"

"I have never seen him before. He has been quite ill I hear."

"Yes. He's been in bed for the past week suffering agonies from neuralgia. He lost the sight of one of his eyes from chronic pain caused by exposure in the service of his country in the northwest."

"Really--I didn't know that."

"He was compelled to remain in a darkened room for months the past year to save the sight of his remaining eye."

"That accounts for my not having seen him before."

Socola followed the straight military figure with painful interest as he slowly moved toward his seat greeting with evident weakness his colleagues as he pa.s.sed. He was astonished beyond measure at the personality of the famous leader of the "Southern Conspirators" of whom he had heard so much. He was the last man in all the crowd he would have singled out for such a role. The face was too refined, too spiritual, too purely intellectual for the man of revolution. His high forehead, straight nose, thin compressed lips and pointed chin belonged to the poet and dreamer rather than the man of action. The hollow cheek bones and deeply furrowed mouth told of suffering so acute the sympathy of every observer was instantly won.

In spite of evident suffering his carriage was erect, dignified, and graceful. The one trait which fastened the attention from the first and held it was the remarkable intensity of expression which clothed his thin muscular face.

"You like him?" Jennie ventured at last.

"I can't say, Miss Barton," was the slowly measured answer. "He is a remarkably interesting man. I'm surprised and puzzled--"

"Surprised and puzzled at what?"

"Well, you see I know his history. The diplomatist makes it his business to know the facts in the lives of the leaders of a nation to whose Government he is accredited. Mr. Davis spent four years at West Point.

He gave seven years of his life to the service of the army in the West.

He carried your flag to victory in Mexico and hobbled home on crutches.

He was one of your greatest Secretaries of War. He sent George B.

McClellan and Robert E. Lee to the Crimea to master European warfare, organized and developed your army, changed the model of your arms, introduced the rifled musket and the minie ball. He explored your Western Empire and surveyed the lines of the great continental railways you are going to build to the Pacific Ocean. He planned and built your system of waterworks in the city of Washington and superintends now the extension of the Capitol building which will make it the most imposing public structure in the world. He has never stooped to play the part of a demagogue. He has never sought an office higher than the role of Senator which fits his character and temperament. His mind has always been busy dreaming of the imperial future of your widening Republic. His eye has seen the vision of its extension to the Arctic on the north and the jungles of Panama on the south. Why should such a man deliberately come into this chamber to-day before this a.s.sembled crowd and commit hari-kari?"

"He's a true son of the South!" Jennie Barton proudly answered.

"Even so, how can he do the astounding thing he proposes to carry out to-day? His record shows that pa.s.sionate devotion to the Union has been the very breath of his life. I've memorized one of his outbursts as a model of your English language--"

Jennie laughed.

"I never heard of his Union speeches, I'm sure!"

"Strange that your people have forgotten them. Listen: 'From sire to son has descended the love of the Union in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the names of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga, of New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Together they form a monument to the common glory of our common country. Where is the Southern man who would wish that monument less by one Northern name that const.i.tutes the ma.s.s? Who, standing on the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, could allow sectional feeling to curb his enthusiasm as he looks upon that obelisk which rises a monument to freedom's and his country's triumph, and stands a type of the time, the men and the event it commemorates; built of material that mocks the waves of time, without niche or molding for parasite or creeping thing to rest upon, pointing like a finger to the sky to raise man's thoughts to high and n.o.ble deeds!'"

Socola paused and turned his dark eyes on Jennie's upturned face.

"How can the man who made that speech in Boston do this mad deed to-day?"

"Senator Clay has given the answer," was the girl's quick reply.

"For Senator Clay, yes--the fiery, impulsive, pa.s.sionate child of emotion. But this thin hollow-cheeked student, thinker and philosopher, who spoke the thrilling words I quote--he should belong to the order of the Prophet and the Seer--the greatest leaders and teachers of history."

"We believe he does, Signor!" was the quick answer. "Look--he's going to speak--you'll hear him now."

Jennie leaned forward, her thoughtful little chin in both hands, as a silence so intense it was pain fell suddenly on the hushed a.s.sembly.

The face of the Southern leader was chalk white in its pallor. His first sentences were weak and scarcely reached beyond the circle of his immediate hearers. His physician had forbidden him to leave his room.

The iron will had risen to perform a solemn duty. The Senators leaned forward in their arm-chairs fearful of losing a word.

He paused as if for breath and gazed a moment on the upturned faces with the look of lingering tenderness which the dying cast on those upon whom they gaze for the last time.

His figure suddenly rose to its full height, as if the soul within had thrust the feeble body aside to speak its message. His words, full, clear and musical rang to the furthest listener craning his neck through the jammed doorways of the galleries. Never was the music of the human voice more profoundly appealing. Unshed tears were in its throbbing tones.

There was no straining for effect--no outburst of emotion. The impression which reached the audience was the sense of restraint and the consciousness of his unlimited reserve power. Back of the simple clean-cut words which fell in musical cadence from his white lips was the certainty that he was only speaking a small part of what he felt, saw and knew. He neither stormed nor raved and yet he filled the hearts of his hearers with unspeakable pa.s.sion.

He turned suddenly and bent his piercing single eye on the Northern Senators:

"I hope none who hear me will confound my position with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the Union and disregard its Const.i.tutional obligations by the nullification of the law--"

A sudden cheer swept the tense galleries. The sergeant-at-arms called for order. The cheer rose again. The Vice-President rapped for silence and threatened to close the galleries. The speaker lifted his hand and commanded silence.

"It was because of his deep attachment to the Union--his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States--that John C. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification which he proclaimed to be peaceful and within the limits of State power.

"Secession belongs to a different cla.s.s of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. The phrase 'to execute the laws' General Jackson applied to a State refusing to obey the law while yet a member of the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the purpose of gentlemen--"

He paused and again his eagle eye swept the tiers of Northern Senators.

"You may make war against a State which has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State--"

Seward leaned forward in his seat and shook his head in grave dissent.

The speaker bent his gaze directly upon his great antagonist and spoke with strange regretful tenderness.

"A State finding herself in a condition in which Mississippi has judged she is--in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union--surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of all the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affections (and they are close and enduring) which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit--taking upon herself every burden--she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.

"When Ma.s.sachusetts was arraigned before the bar of the Senate for her refusal to permit the execution of the laws of the United States within her borders, my opinion was the same then as now. Her State is sovereign. She never delegated to the Federal Government the power to drive her by force. And when she chooses to take the last step which separates her from the Union, it is her right to go!--"

Another electric wave swept the crowd that burst into applause. The speaker lifted his long arm with an impatient gesture.

"And I would not vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back into unwilling submission. I would say to her--'G.o.d speed in the memory of the kind a.s.sociations which once existed between her and her sister States.'

"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity--a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed us--which has brought Mississippi to her present decision.

"You have invoked the sacred Declaration of Independence as the basis of an attack upon her social order. The Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circ.u.mstances and purposes for which it was made. It was written by a Southern planter and slave owner. The Colonies were declaring their independence from foreign tyranny--were a.s.serting in the language of Jefferson, 'that no man was born booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal'--meaning the men of their American political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man could inherit the right to govern; that there were no cla.s.ses by which power and place descended from father to son; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the principles they announced.

"They had no reference to a slave. The same doc.u.ment denounced George III for the crime of attempting to stir their slaves to insurrection, as John Brown attempted at Harper's Ferry. If their Declaration of Independence announced that negroes were free and the equals of English citizens how could the Prince be arraigned for daring to raise servile insurrection among them? And how should this be named among the high crimes of George III which caused the Colonies to sever their connection with the Mother country?

"If slaves were declared our equals how did it happen that in the organic law of the Union they were given a lower caste and their population allowed (and that only through the dominant race) a basis of three-fifths representation in Congress? So stands the compact of Union which binds us together.

"We stand upon the principles on which our Government was founded!--"