Jefferson Davis Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

All we ask is to be let alone.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green. Yet they belong to the whole country; they belong to America.

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.

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

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise.