Jefferson Davis's Inaugural Address: Legitimacy and Statecraft

Introduction: Davis as Statesman, Not Orator

Despite the emotional circumstances under which he became president — and under which the Confederacy was founded — Jefferson Davis strikes the modern reader not as an orator but 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," focusing on institutional gravity rather than 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 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." This becomes a rhetorical defense of the new nation as a true extension of the right of sovereignty, which Davis argues has been thwarted by the existing Union.

Invoking the Founding Fathers and States' Rights

Davis clearly saw the Confederate states' mission and existence as consistent with the original intent of the founders of the Union. He draws an analogy between the break of the American colonies with Britain and the break of the Confederate states with the federal Union of the nineteenth century. He argues that the current federal system is incompatible with the liberties of the states and represents a subversion of the true intentions of the American Founding Fathers. As he states, "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 claimed, the original intent of the founders and had therefore lost its original legitimacy and right to rule.

Davis stresses that states' rights were always central 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." In making this argument, Davis positions the Confederacy not as a revolution but as a restoration of the founders' true design.

International Relations and Free Trade

Davis speaks not only to the states 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." The address thus emphasizes the political and economic rationale for secession: Davis is keenly concerned that the Confederacy remain 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." This appeal to free trade reflected the Confederacy's economic dependence on cotton exports to European manufacturing nations, particularly Britain and France.