His life’s work was done with the completion of his book, and trusting to impartial posterity for that vindication of his motives which he realized must come some day, he turned away from the scenes of controversy and contentions, seeking in books, the converse of his friends, in long rambles with his children across wood and field, for oblivion of all painful memories. Defeat and persecution never embittered him. Cruel and false accusations found their way to his sylvan retreat. That they grievously wounded can be doubted by no one who knew his proud spirit, supersensitive to every insinuation of dishonor, but with the gentle smile of a philosopher he passed them by, fully realizing that his beloved people of the South, at least, would understand the stainless purity of all his motives.

A harsh or an unkind word never passed his lips concerning any of his personal or political enemies. In fact, it would be no more than the truth to say that this gentle old man cherished no sentiment of enmity toward any of God’s creatures. The storm and stress of life were over, its hopes and its passions were dead, and grandly, majestically this man, who at once embodied the highest type of American manhood and all of the virtues of the perfect Christian gentleman, calmly awaited the end. It came on the 6th of December, 1889, in New Orleans, at the home of Judge Fenner, his life-long friend. When the news of his death went forth, even the voice of malice was subdued, and many of those who had sought to fix everlasting infamy upon his name ceased for a time to be unjust and agreed that a majestic soul had passed. Over the bier of the dead chieftain the whole South wept and nine of its governors bore him to the grave.

The Davis Monument at Richmond

No proper estimate of the life and character of Jefferson Davis is possible in the restricted scope of this work, but lest I should be accused of partiality I shall here append the conclusion of Ridpath, the historian, written after a residence of almost a year under the same roof with Mr. Davis, which I heartily endorse as a correct estimate of the man.

“Before I had been with Mr. Davis three days every preconceived idea utterly and forever disappeared. Nobody doubted Mr. Davis’ intellectual capacity, but it was not his mental power that most impressed me. It was his goodness, first of all, and then his intellectual integrity. I never saw an old man whose face bore more emphatic evidences of a gentle, refined and benignant character. He seemed to me the ideal embodiment of ‘sweetness and light.’ His conversation showed that he had ‘charity for all and malice toward none.’ I never heard him utter an unkind word of any man and he spoke of nearly all of his famous opponents. His manner may be best described as gracious, so exquisitely refined, so courtly, yet heart warm. Mr. Davis’ dignity was as natural and charming as the perfume of the rose—the fitting expression of a serene, benign and comely moral nature. However handsome he may have been when excited in battle or debate, it surely was in his own home, with his family and friends around him, that he was seen at his best; and that best was the highest point of grace and refinement that the Southern character has reached.”

Lest any foreigner should read this statement, let me say for his benefit that there are two Jefferson Davises in American history—one is a conspirator, a rebel, a traitor and “the Fiend of Andersonville”—he is a myth evolved from the hell-smoke of cruel war—as purely an imaginary a personage as Mephistopheles or the Hebrew Devil; the other was a statesman with clean hands and pure heart, who served his people faithfully from budding manhood to hoary age, without thought of self, with unbending integrity, and to the best of his great ability—he was a man of whom all his countrymen who knew him personally, without distinction of creed political, are proud, and proud that he was their countryman.

This is a conclusion by no means extravagant, a conclusion which, despite the fact of some mental faults that prevented him from quite attaining to the first rank of the greatest statesman, nevertheless leaves him pre-eminent as one of the purest and best of the men who has played a conspicuous part in the world’s history.

FINIS.