When, in 1857, Mr. Davis was again elected to the Senate, the Compromise of 1850 had already become a dead letter, as he had predicted that it would. The anti-slavery sentiment had, like Aaron’s rod, swallowed all rivals, and party leaders once noted for conservatism, had resolved to suppress the curse, despite the decision of the Supreme Court statute, of law, of even the Constitution itself. Those who have criticised Mr. Davis most bitterly for his attitude at that time have failed to appreciate the fact that he then occupied the exact ground where he had always stood.

Others had changed. He had remained consistent. He had never countenanced the doctrine of nullification; he had always affirmed the right of secession. Profoundly versed, as he was, in the constitutional law of the United States, familiar with every phase of the question debated by the Convention of 1787, his logical mind was unable to reach a conclusion adverse to the right of a sovereign state to withdraw from a voluntary compact, the violation of which endangered its interests. He believed that the compact was violated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; he felt that it was being violated now, but as in 1850 he had declared that nothing short of the necessity of self-protection would justify the dissolution of the Union, he now pleaded with the majority not to force that necessity upon the South. Secession he frankly declared to be a great evil, so great that the South would only adopt it as the last resort; but at the same time he warned the abolitionists that if the guarantees of the Constitution were not respected, that if the Northern states were to defy the decrees of the Supreme Court favorable to the South, as they had done in the Dred Scott decision, that if his section was to be ruled by a hostile majority without regard to the right, the protection thrown around the minority by the fundamental law of the land, that the Southern states could not in honor remain members of the Union, and would therefore certainly withdraw from it.

He undoubtedly saw the chasm daily growing wider, and had he possessed that sagacious foresight, that profound knowledge of human nature, in which alone he was lacking as a statesman of the first order, he would have realized then, as Abraham Lincoln had before, that the die was cast and that the Union could not longer endure upon the compromises of the Constitution which had implanted slavery among a free, self-governing people, a majority of whom were opposed to it. But there is no recorded utterance of Jefferson Davis, no act of his, that would lead one to believe that he had despaired of some adjustment of matters, or that secession was wise or desirable, until after the nomination of Mr. Lincoln. Then, for the first time, he declared before a state convention at Jackson, Miss., that the Chicago platform would justify the South in dissolving the Union if the Republican party should triumph at the coming election. But he did not expect that triumph. Shortly previous to that speech, he had introduced resolutions in the Senate embodying the principles of the constitutional pro-slavery party.

They affirmed the sovereignty of the separate states, asserted that slavery formed an essential part of the political institutions of various members of the Union, that the union of the states rested upon equality of rights, that it was the duty of Congress to protect slave property in the territories, and that a territory when forming a constitution, and not before, must either sanction or abolish slavery. The resolution passed the Senate, and Mr. Davis hoped to see it become the platform of a reunited party, which would have meant the defeat of the Republican ticket and a consequent postponement of the war.

The foregoing facts alone make ridiculous the assertions of Mr. Pollard that during this Congress Jefferson Davis, with thirteen other senators, met one night in a room at the Capitol, and perfected a plan whereby the Southern states were forced into secession against the will of the people thereof.

What the plan was, how it was put into operation so as to circumvent the will of the people of eleven states who more than a year later decided the question of secession by popular vote, why Mr. Davis later introduced the above resolution and why he worked so zealously thereafter to prevent the threatened disruption and why he sought to induce the Charleston Convention to adopt his resolution as the principles of the party, Mr. Pollard does not attempt to explain. In fact, any rational explanation would be impossible, for at every point the evidence refutes the allegation.

Then, again, those who, like Mr. Pollard, have sought to saddle the chief responsibility of secession upon Jefferson Davis have overlooked the fact that while not an avowed candidate, he nevertheless hoped to be the nominee of his party in 1860 for the presidency, and that much of his strength lay in Northern states, as Massachusetts demonstrated by sending him a solid delegation to the Charleston Convention. His conduct during his last year in the Senate is consistent with this ambition, but the ambition is wholly inconsistent with the theory that he had long planned the destruction of the Union. The truth is that the impartial historian must conclude from all of his utterances, from his acts, from the circumstances of the case, that in so far from being the genius and advocate of disunion, he deprecated it and sought to prevent it, until political events rendered certain the election of Mr. Lincoln. Then, sincerely believing the peculiar institutions of the South to be imperiled, and never doubting the right of secession, he advocated it as the only remedy left for a situation which had become intolerable to the people of his section.

His advocacy, however, was in striking contrast to that of many of his colleagues. Always free from any suggestion of demagoguery, always conservative, his utterances on this subject were marked with candor and moderation. Nor did the ominous shadows that descended upon the next Congress disturb his equanimity or unsettle his resolution to perform his duty as he saw it. For days the impassioned storm of invective and denunciation raged around him, but he remained silent. At last the news came that his state had seceded. He announced the event to the Senate in a speech, which in nobility of conception has probably never been surpassed. He defined his own position and that of his state, and as he bade farewell to his colleagues, even among his bitterest opponents there was scarcely an eye undimmed with tears, and whatever others thought in after years, there was no one in that august assemblage who did not accord to Jefferson Davis the meed of perfect sincerity and unblemished faith in the cause which he had espoused.