Best 40 quotes of Jefferson Davis on MyQuotes

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

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.

All we ask is to be let alone.

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.

A restitution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible.

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

At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution.

For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the South.

God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the Union.

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.

How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.

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.

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

If you will not have it thus: if in the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and reliance upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, then, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen.

It is a duty we owe to posterity to see that our children shall know the virtues, and rise worthy of their sires.

It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States.

I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.

Lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished—a reunited country.

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.

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

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

Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people .

Our armies were in as much chaos in victory as theirs in defeat.

Pray excuse me. I cannot take it.

Sir, it is true that republics have often been cradled in war, but more often they have met with a grave in that cradle. Peace is the interest, the policy, the nature of a popular Government. War may bring benefits to a few, but privation and loss are the lot of the many. An appeal to arms should be the last resort, and only by national rights or national honor can it be justified.

Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.

The authors of all our misfortune.

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.

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

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.

The troops of other states have their reputation to gain, the sons of the Alamo have theirs to maintain.

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.

To one who loves his country in all its parts, it is natural to rejoice in whatever contributes to the prosperity and honor and marks the stability and progress of any portion of its people.

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

Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable.

Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.

We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor.

Without doing injustice to the living, it may safely be asserted that our loss is irreparable; and that among the shining hosts of the great and good who now cluster around the banner of the country, there exists no purer spirit, no more heroic soul, than that of the illustrious man whose death I join you in lamenting.

Your little army, derided for its want of arms, derided for its lack of all the essential material of war, has met the grand army of the enemy, routed it at every point, and now it flies, inglorious in retreat before our victorious columns. We have taught them a lesson in their invasion of the sacred soil of Virginia.

Garfield's assassination attempt made "the whole nation care".