Gone, but never forgotten

When Confederate President Jefferson Davis passed into Eternity on December 6th, 1889 he lie in State at New Orleans City Hall. Above the coffin a simple marquee spelled out the sentiments of millions of Southrons “He Suffered for Us”.
Yes, Jefferson Davis, a man who gave his all to a United States that betrayed himself and his people, and then gave his life, his honor and fortune to those same people, did not walk away quickly with a parole, nor was he included of any of the subsequent “pardons” offered other leaders of Dixie for the “crime” of having defended his people. Instead, for two agonizing years, Davis was held without trial as a prisoner at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. There, the frail, worn leader of his people, nearly blind in one eye from the neuralgia that became only more inflamed with the cold night air of the harbor, was a source of both torture and ridicule to his Yankee captors. Yet he bore it all with a grace and dignity that won the admiration and sympathies of the South-even among those who had not been friendly to his administration of the late Southern nation.

Thankfully before death struck him, the Statesman was released on bond by a Government that had become nationally embarrassed by his treatment at their hands-and was increasingly uncertain that they could convict him of treason.
Jefferson Davis never held public office again. While he urged young Southrons to be Americans, he fiercely defended the Southern course of actions in the 1860s, and stressed that it’s principles were timeless, likely to be revived again though “it may be in another time, in another form.”
Appalled at the groveling and apologies offered up by the scalawags of his day, Davis stated:

​"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."

Today, on the anniversary of the great man’s birth, we as Southern Nationalists should ask the question: What are we, the posterity that the Confederate President spoke of, doing to make the suffering of our chieftain and the multitudes of Southerners like him worth doing all over again?

Happy Birthday Mr. President. We won’t let you down.

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