CHAP. XIII. tively studious, introspective, self-contained. Both rose to distinction through the advocacy of an abstract political idea. Both became the chiefs of opposing sections in a great civil war.

These are the only points of resemblance, and the contrasts running through their lives are bold and radical. It is unnecessary to present them in detail; they are comprehended and expressed in their opposing leaderships. If chance or fate had guided their parents to exchange their routes of emigration from Kentucky; if Lincoln had grown up on a Southern cotton plantation, and Davis had split rails to fence a Northern farm; if the tall Illinois pioneer had studied trigonometry at West Point, and the pale Mississippi student had steered a flat-boat to New Orleans, education might have modified but would not have essentially changed either. Lincoln would never have become a political dogmatist, an apostle of slavery, a leader of rebellion; Davis could never have become the champion of universal humanity, the author of a decree of emancipation, the martyr to liberty. Their natures were antipodal, and it is perhaps by contemplating the contrast that the character of Davis may be best understood.

His dominant mental traits were subtlety and will. His nature was one of reserve and pride. His biographers give us no glimpse of his private life. They show us little sympathy of companionship, or sunshine of genial humor. Houston is reported to have said of him that he was "as ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard." His fancy lived in a world of masters and slaves. His education taught him nothing but the law of sub

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ordination and the authority of command. Democrat by party name, he was an aristocrat in feeling and practice. He was a type of the highest Southern culture and most exclusive Southern easte. In political theory he was a sophist, and not a logician. With him, "consent of the governed" in a State was truth; "consent of the governed” in a Territory was error. "Rebellion ” in a State must be obeyed; "rebellion" in a Territory

must be crushed." Constitutional forms in Kansas in the interest of slavery were sacred law; constitutional forms in the Union in the interest of freedom were flagrant usurpation. A majority in a State was enthroned freedom; a majority in the nation was insufferable despotism. But even his central dogma became pliant before considerations of self-interest. In his own State, a majority of seven thousand against Quitman in September he treated as a dangerous political heresy to be overthrown by his personal championship. A majority of one thousand against himself in November he affected to regard as a command to stultify his own opinions. His beliefs were at war with the most essential principles of American government. He denied the truth of the Declaration of Independence, denied the right of the majority to rule, denied the supremacy of the national Constitution. His narrowness was of that type which craved the exclusion of Northern teachers and the official censorship of school-books to keep out "Abolition poison." It was in perfect keeping with his character, and in perfect illustration of the paradoxical theories of his followers, that, holding the lash over fifty or a hundred slaves, or exercising an inflexible VOL. III.-14

CHAP. XIII. military dictatorship over nine millions of "his people," he could declaim in fervid oratory against the despotism of a majority.

One of his most salient traits was the endeavor to maintain a double position on the question of disunion. His leadership of the "resistance" party in Mississippi in 1850-51 gave him a conspicuous starting-point as an instigator of sedition, and while laboring then and afterwards to unite the South in extreme political demands, and in armed preparation for war against the Union if those demands were not complied with, he as constantly declared that he was no disunionist. Of course he could do this only by setting at defiance the plainest meaning of words and the clearest significance of acts. As the slavery contest drew to its culmination, his recklessness of assertion and antagonism of declaration on these points reached an extreme entitling them to be classed among the curiosities of abnormal mental phenomena. As a blind man may not be held responsible for his description of a painting, or a deaf-mute be expected to repeat accurately the airs of an opera, so we can only explain Jefferson Davis's vehement denial of the charge of hypocrisy and conspiracy through a whole decade, by the supposition that he was incapable of understanding the accepted meaning of such words as "patriotism," "loyalty," "allegiance," "faith," "honor," and "duty." On no other hypothesis can we credit the honesty of convictions and sincerity of expression of sentiments so diametrically opposed as the following, which occur in the same speech:

Neither in that year [1852], nor in any other, have I ever advocated a dissolution of the Union, or a separa