Jefferson Davis\' Inaugural Address Despite

Jefferson Davis' Inaugural Address

Despite the emotional circumstances under which he became president, and under which the American Confederacy was founded, Jefferson Davis strikes the modern day reader as no orator, rather as a statesman who wished to create a sense of legitimacy for the Confederate regime, rather than stir up conflict between the emerging Confederate states and the pre-existing Union. Davis begins his speech with a reference to the "difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted," of the new Confederacy, rather than to the emotional issues that sparked the Confederacy's founding. In his address, Davis diplomatically but firmly echoes the rhetoric of the 1776 Declaration of Independence that founded the American nation when he notes, that the true "American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed," is reflected in the founding of the Confederacy, "and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established," a rhetorical defense of the new nation as a true extension of the right of sovereignty, which he states has been thwarted.

Clearly Davis saw the Confederate state's mission and existence as keeping with the original intent of the founders of the original states of the Union. In other words, he makes an analogy between the break of the American colonies with Britain, with the break of the Confederate states with the federal, American union of the 19th century. He states that the current federal system of the union is incommensurate with the liberties of the states and is a subversion of the true intentions of the American Founding Fathers, as it currently exists. "The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of these Confederate States, in their exposition of it, and in the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning." The union had perverted, he stated, the original intent of the founders and thus had lost its original legitimacy and right to rule. Davis stresses that states rights were always key to the original construction of the American union and this is why "the sovereign States here represented proceeded to form this Confederacy...They formed a new alliance, but within each State its government has remained."

Davis speaks not only to the states, however but to the world when he states that the "agent through whom they [the states] communicated with foreign nations" may have "changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their international relations." Thus, the address stresses in its intentions, the political and economic reasons for secession, as Davis is concerned that the Confederacy is still able to trade with other nations and conduct diplomatic relations. "An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit."

The implications are as thus -- Davis clearly wished to create and maintain trade relations for the confederacy with the nations of the world, for vital economic reasons and also to create legitimacy for the new regime. He did not wish the Southern states' traditional trading powers to consider them mere upstart revolutionary powers in their new formations. Davis' was in the uncomfortable position, however, of justifying a regime based upon states rights, and yet having to govern this regime as a unifying, chief executive. He needed to provide a unifying history for the new Confederacy. He justified the Confederacy's existence based upon the history of the American past, stating that states rights and the Confederate philosophy were the true legacy of the Founding Father's Declaration of Independence from the control of Great Britain, despite the fact that the Constitution rather than the Articles of Confederation had stressed the need for a stronger rather than a weaker central government.