Jefferson Davis Quotes

Quotes about:

• I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Fighting, Night

  163 Copy quote

• African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.

  Jefferson Davis

  Blessing, Political, United States

  142 Copy quote

• Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.

  Jefferson Davis

  Earth, Crushed, Stills

  114 Copy quote
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  The war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Fall, Fighting

  110 Copy quote

• My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...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...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

  Jefferson Davis

  Strong, Book, Law

  108 Copy quote

• The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.

  Jefferson Davis

  Principles, May, Form

  125 Copy quote
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  Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.

  Jefferson Davis

  Government, People, Ends

  Jefferson Davis (1963). “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Complete)”, p.272, Library of Alexandria

  92 Copy quote

• Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.

  Jefferson Davis

  Country, Sadness, Men

  137 Copy quote

• Truthfulness is a cornerstone in character, and if it be not firmly laid in youth, there will ever after be a weak spot in the foundation.

  Jefferson Davis

  Character, Foundation, Weak Spots

  120 Copy quote
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  A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.

  Jefferson Davis

  Law, Forever, Civil War

  John Joseph Craven, Jefferson Davis, Edward K. Eckert (1987). “"Fiction Distorting Fact": The Prison Life, Annotated by Jefferson Davis”, p.29, Mercer University Press

  68 Copy quote

• Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.

  Jefferson Davis

  People, Religion, Gentleman

  87 Copy quote

• The time for compromise has now passed, and the South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Smell, Southern

  94 Copy quote

• All we ask is to be let alone.

  Jefferson Davis

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Revolution

  1861 Inaugural address, 18 Feb.

  82 Copy quote

• Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

  Jefferson Davis

  Rights, Government, Class

  Jefferson Davis (1963). “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Complete)”, p.260, Library of Alexandria

  80 Copy quote

• If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

  Jefferson Davis

  Men, Law, Doe

  65 Copy quote

• Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southerner apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Sadness, Defense

  73 Copy quote

• The Slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline, and thus made unfit for slavery. And as soon as he becomes unfit for slavery, the master will no longer desire to hold him as a slave.

  Jefferson Davis

  Discipline, Desire, Slavery

  33 Copy quote

• Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

  Jefferson Davis

  Liars, Men, History

  Jefferson Davis (1876). “Scotland & the Scottish People: An Address Delivered in the City of Memphis, Tennessee, on St. Andrew's-Day, 1875”

  55 Copy quote

• Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.

  Jefferson Davis

  Majority Rule, Political, Events

  81 Copy quote

• The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered on a new and enlarged arena.

  Jefferson Davis

  Civil War, Arena, Strife

  "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government".

  45 Copy quote

• Let men not ask what the law requires, but give whatever freedom demands.

  Jefferson Davis

  Men, Law, Giving

  57 Copy quote

• If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.

  Jefferson Davis

  Tombstone, Organization, Political

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jefferson Davis

  Evil, Slavery, Masters

  16 Copy quote

• The withdrawal of a State from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a Sovereign a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language.

  Jefferson Davis

  Government, League, Abuse

  Jefferson Davis (1971). “The rise and fall of the Confederate Government”, Peter Smith Pub Inc

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jefferson Davis

  Exercise, Race, Government

  Jefferson Davis (1963). “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Complete)”, p.5, Library of Alexandria

  32 Copy quote

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