COLLOQUY XXII. DISCUSSION TAKES NEW AND VARIOUS TURNS-DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MR. men. MR. STEPHENS. We have a cool, bright morning, gentleThe thunder-shower of last night has produced a pleasant change in the atmosphere, and I trust you are quite refreshed by it, and that we all are in better condition for the continuation of the subjects we were discussing yesterday evening. I am now ready, Professor Norton, for the question which you expressed a wish to propound. In Parliamentary language, that is the first thing in order. Let us, if you please, hear what it is? PROF. NORTON. The question which I wish to ask does 498 not relate so much to the general subjects which you are discussing as to a particular matter, which your manner of treating them, and some views presented by you upon them, have suggested to my mind. What I wish to inquire about has more of a personal than general bearing. It is not my desire or intention to divert you from the course you are pursuing, but just at this point, as Major Heister said, I wish a little information for my own satisfaction, and the gratification of my individual curiosity, have no objection to giving it. if you This curiosity was particularly excited by the extract which you read from a speech made by you in 1862, and which our friend the Judge here considered so "rebellious." That speech I never heard of before. It presented your position during the war in a new light to me. I never so understood it before. I had always understood you to have been opposed to the war-to have been in favor of peace, upon the basis of a Reconstruction of the Union. On these points, as well as on the subject of the treatment of prisoners, my understanding, and I believe the understanding generally at the North, which was received through the medium of the Southern press, was, that there existed a direct and decided opposition between you and Mr. Davis; and that on account of these and other matters of disagreement between you and him, you not only withdrew from Richmond, but withdrew your support from the Administration, and headed a Peace Party movement in Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina, with a view to the abandonment of the war, and a restoration of the Union. This speech you read, whether "rebellious" or not, certainly had nothing indicating any such line of policy as that which I supposed you favored. Now, what I want to know is: what was the difference between you and Mr. Davis? What was the cause or nature of the feud between you and him, about which so much was said in the papers? As far as you have gone, I see no difference between you and him. The sentiments uttered by you, and those uttered by him, do not seem to me to be dissimilar at all, in respect to the prosecution of the war. This is a matter upon which I wish light, at this point, if you do not consider my question as obtrusive or impertinent. MR. STEPHENS. Not in the least. I have no objection to give you as full an exposition of the matter you inquire about, as it is in my power to do. This, I the more readily do, because of the general misapprehension growing out of misrepresentations upon the subject. In the first place, then, I must state most explicitly, that there never was any feud, properly speaking, between Mr. Davis and myself. We differed, it is true, very widely upon several matters of policy, as well as upon some principles of Constitutional law. We had differed, as before stated, upon the policy of introducing the new feature into the Democratic Platform in 1860, which caused a disruption of that Party, and led to the election of Mr. Lincoln. He was, as we have seen, the distinguished leader on that line of policy in the Senate.* We differed also upon the policy of Secession, when that course was adopted. After the rejection of the Crittenden proposition, he advised Secession, as we have seen. I did not concur with him in the expediency of that course. But on these and other points of difference there was nothing like a feud between us, nor were our personal relations, or free interchange of views upon public questions, interrupted at all by them. On the same points I differed as widely with Mr. Toombs, and two-thirds, perhaps, of the Montgomery Congress. * Ante, vol. i, p. 408. So, likewise, I differed with Mr. Davis after the organization of the new Confederacy, and the war was waged to overthrow it, upon several matters connected with the proper administration of our affairs. These related to the internal as well as the external policy of the Government to wielding most efficiently our internal resources, of men and money, as well as proper external agencies, for the success of the great cause involved in the Conflict-the Sovereignty of the several States-to which no one could be more devoted than I was. These differences, however wide and thorough as they were, as we shall see, caused no personal breach between us. None of them, moreover, related to the general treatment of prisoners. On that point there was no disagreement between us. This whole subject of the treatment of prisoners which has become so prominent a feature in considering the conduct of the war on both sides, from the turn which has been given to it, I may as well dispose of here, at once and finally. This I do by stating broadly that the charge of cruelty and inhumanity towards prisoners, which has been so extensively made at the North, against Mr. Davis and the Confederate authorities, is utterly without foundation in fact. From the commencement and throughout the war, the whole course of Mr. Davis towards prisoners shows conclusively the perfect recklessness of the charge. His position on this subject, in the beginning, clearly appears from what we have seen, and that fully sustains this statement. The efforts which have been so industriously made to fix the odium of cruelty and barbarity upon him, and other high officials under the Confederate Government, in the matter of prisoners, in the face of all the facts, constitute one of the boldest and baldest attempted outrages upon the truth of history, which has ever been essayed: not less so than the infamous attempt to fix upon him and other high officials on the Confederate side, the guilt of Mr. Lincoln's assassination! Whatever unnecessary privations and sufferings prisoners on both sides were subjected to, the responsibility of the whole rested not upon Mr. Davis or the Confederate authorities. It is not my purpose to go into a full history of the subject. This would take more time than is at all necessary. few leading facts will settle the matter. A Let it be borne in mind, then, that the Confederates were ever anxious for a speedy exchange, and that after the interruption of the exchange under the Cartel first agreed upon, as before stated, another arrangement was entered into by the Federals, under pressure of public sentiment at the North, when the excess was against them. This was, afterwards, likewise broken. It was broken, not by the Confederates, but by the Federals upon some pretext or other. Throughout the struggle, Mr. Davis's conduct and bearing upon this point, not only challenges the severest scrutiny of the fair minded of this day, but will command the admiration of the just and generous for all time to come. In addition to what has been shown heretofore, what higher evidence on this point could be desired than that furnished by his Congratulatory Address to the Army of General Lee, for the successes achieved in the battles around Richmond, when McClellan, with his newly organized hosts of at least one hundred and twenty thousand men, made the second unsuccessful attempt to take the Confederate Capital in 1862, and when over ten thousand Federal prisoners had fallen into their hands? In this hour of triumph, mark the significant, as well as magnanimous, and even chivalrous language, which came spontaneously from his heart on that occasion: |