A War of Words: The Rhetorical Leadership of Jefferson Davis
160
A War of Words: The Rhetorical Leadership of Jefferson Davis
160eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Numerous biographies of Jefferson Davis have been penned; however, until now, there had been no substantive analysis of his public discourse as president of the Confederacy. R. Jarrod Atchison’s A War of Words uses concepts from rhetorical theory and public address to help answer a question that has intrigued scholars from a variety of disciplines since the collapse of the Confederacy: what role, if any, did Davis play in the collapse of Confederate nationalism?
Most discussions of Davis and nationalism focus on the military outcomes of his controversial wartime decisions. A War of Words focuses less on military outcomes and argues instead that, in the context of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’s rhetorical leadership should have been responsible for articulating a vision for the nation—including the core tenets of its identity, the values the nation should hold dear, the principles it should never compromise, and the goals it should set for its future. Undoubtedly, Davis possessed the skills necessary to make a persuasive public argument. It is precisely because Davis’s oratory skills were so powerful that there is room to judge how he used them. In short, being a great orator is not synonymous with successful rhetorical leadership.
Atchison posits that Davis’s initial successes constrained his rhetorical options later in the war. A War of Words concludes that, in the end, Davis’s rhetorical leadership was a failure because he was unable to articulate a coherent Confederate identity in light of the sacrifices endured by the populace in order to sustain the war effort.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817391164 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 994 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A War of Words
The Rhetorical Leadership of Jefferson Davis
By R. Jarrod Atchison
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1940-3
CHAPTER 1
Decorum in Davis's Resignation from the Senate
"They recognized in him (Lincoln) the representative of a party professing principles destructive to 'their peace, their prosperity, and their domestic tranquility.' The long-suppressed fire burst into frequent flame."
— Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
With the flames of secession fanning throughout the South, Jefferson Davis found himself in a troubling situation. He was a senator from Mississippi who had risen to national prominence to become one of the central spokespersons for the South, but he was also an outspoken critic of the rash and unorganized manner in which secession was unfolding. Despite his initial objections, Mississippi had seceded and left Davis with little opportunity to continue his role in the Senate. Davis was, however, given one last opportunity to capture the attention of his colleagues through his resignation speech.
In twelve paragraphs, Jefferson Davis officially resigned from the Senate in what Hudson Strode considers "one of the most moving and eloquent speeches in American history." Davis was courteous, succinct, and passionate. As James G. Blaine remarked, "no man gave up more than Mr. Davis," because "for several years he had been growing in favor with a powerful element in the Democracy of the free States, and, but for the exasperating quarrel of 1860, he might have been selected as the Presidential candidate of his party." Given the scope of his national prominence and influence, Davis's resignation was a topic of conversation throughout the nation, which made his speech more complicated than a simple goodbye. The speech was delivered with a simple topical construction: an introduction that announced his resignation, a description of his obligation to the state of Mississippi, a concise explanation of the theory and legal arguments for secession, an elucidation of the complete and total sovereignty of Mississippi, and a plea for peaceful relations. The initial simplicity of the speech vanishes with a closer inspection of Davis's rhetorical struggle to thwart the justifications for a military response to secession through an early articulation of his vision for a peaceful separation. That separation, according to Davis, was not only justified, legal, and timely but should be peaceful because of the shared history between North and South and the character of the people of the South.
The End of Equivocation
By 1860, Davis had bolstered his position as a spokesperson for the South by attacking Stephen Douglas's theory of popular sovereignty. He had adopted the uncompromising position that the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford had secured Southerners' rights to take slaves into the Western territories. Douglas's theory of popular sovereignty allowed for the possibility that the people in the Western territories would vote to ban slavery, a position that was intolerable for Davis and other senators from the cotton South. In the buildup to the election of 1860, these attacks played a crucial role in the sectional divide within the Democratic Party. Davis hoped to present a unified Democratic front in the election of 1860, but the uncompromising nature of the attacks meant that he could not support Douglas as the sole nominee of the party. Davis, therefore, stumped for the Southern nominee for the Democratic Party, John Breckinridge, who was the vice president under James Buchanan. Like Davis, Breckinridge defended a proslavery platform in direct opposition to Douglas.
Throughout the fall of 1860, Davis continued his attacks on Douglas in the name of helping elect Breckinridge to the presidency. Despite his efforts to focus the conversation on Breckinridge, Davis was increasingly confronted with the question of secession. The uncompromising nature of Davis's position on slavery made it difficult for him to dismiss secession as an option of last resort. Rather than answering the question, Davis chose to invest his rhetorical resources in supporting Breckinridge while equivocating on secession.
The election of 1860 forced Davis to reconcile his theoretical position with the realistic prospect of secession. While Douglas's theory of popular sovereignty may have resulted in slavery being outlawed in the territories, Abraham Lincoln's Republican platform supported the complete prohibition of slavery in the Western territories. In the wake of Lincoln's victory, the South looked to Davis for guidance and the North looked to him to assess the likelihood of secession. Both audiences turned to Davis as one of the spokespersons for the South.
Between Lincoln's election in November and Davis's resignation in January, Davis continued to vacillate in his support for secession. In the period immediately following the election, Davis argued for reconciliation and compromise. He told a leading secessionist from South Carolina, Robert Barnwell Rhett Jr., that he doubted that his home state of Mississippi would even consider secession much less follow South Carolina's lead in actually departing from the Union. Davis was surprised when he found out how much support for secession actually existed within Mississippi and how fast secession conventions were being called throughout the South. He was even more surprised at the attitude of his fellow representatives at a special meeting called by the governor of Mississippi, John Pettus, to discuss the prospect of Mississippi's secession. According to William Davis, "For the first time ever, he found himself consistently in the minority and consistently outvoted." Davis opposed the governor's recommendation for an immediate special legislative session. Not only did the governor ignore Davis and call the session but he also asked Davis to act as his envoy and represent his position in support for immediate secession. Davis declined the governor's request, but the message was clear — secession was coming to Mississippi whether Davis supported it or not.
Davis was not present for Mississippi's special legislative session. President James Buchanan had asked Davis to return to Washington to help him construct his last annual message to Congress. Before he left, Davis reiterated his objections but stated that he would follow the decision of the Mississippi legislature. Buchanan's address, meanwhile, failed to satisfy the North or the South. The ensuing Senate debate over its publication generated a more aggressive response from Davis, who found himself increasingly upset at the provocations of his Northern counterparts. William Davis argues that he "abandoned the ... cautious role he had been playing for the past few months and stepped forward at least into the second rank of the fire-eaters." In the heat of the argument, Davis declared, "Before a declaration of war is made against the State of which I am a citizen, I expect to be out of the Chamber; that when that declaration of war is made, the State of which I am a citizen will be found ready and quite willing to meet it." Additionally, he publicly signed and supported a statement that declared that all hope for the Union was lost and that the Southern states should act in their own interests.
Despite the heated remarks, Davis had not completely converted to supporting secession. Within a week of the debate, there was a proposal to create the Senate Committee of Thirteen, which would be charged with creating a compromise that would avert civil war. During discussion of the proposal, Davis opined that there had been too much anger in the chamber and admitted that he had contributed to the hostile atmosphere. He called on his fellow Senators to rise above the partisan debate. He argued passionately that "men must look more deeply, must rise to a higher altitude; like patriots, they must confront the danger face to face, if they hope to relieve the evils which now disturb the peace of the land, and threaten the destruction of our political existence." Despite his calls for restraint, he was more pessimistic than ever about the possibility of reconciliation. When the Committee of Thirteen was approved, he initially asked to be removed from consideration, but later agreed to serve, stating, "If I could see any means by which I could avert the catastrophe of a struggle between the sections of the Union, my past life, I hope, gives evidence of the readiness with which I would make the effort."
Despite Davis's participation and the public call for compromise, the committee failed to reach any substantive agreement. News that South Carolina had passed an ordinance of secession complicated the committee's task, but South Carolina's actions did not deter the committee from meeting and arguing over a variety of proposals including constitutional amendments and a restoration of the Missouri Compromise. However, after ten days of intense debate, Davis voted for a resolution to adjourn the committee — they had failed to reach compromise.
The failure of the Committee of Thirteen contributed to Davis's growing assessment that compromise was impossible. At the outset of the committee meetings, Davis sponsored a procedural rule stating that the committee would only report items to the full Senate that had both a Democratic and Republican majority in spite of the fact that his Democratic Party held a seven to five majority on the committee. This early olive branch did little to curry favor with the stalwart Republicans. According to William Cooper, despite a variety of proposals from Democrats Crittenden, Davis, Douglas, and Toombs, the Republicans "declined to move at all from their platform declaration against slavery in any territory." Davis would later write, "With the failure of the Senate Committee of Thirteen to come to any agreement, the last reasonable hope of a pacific settlement of difficulties within the Union was extinguished."
By January 4, 1861, Davis's indecisiveness had come to an end. He wrote to Governor Pettus and made him aware of a bill to be introduced in the Senate that would empower the Federal Government to act against any state that seceded. The bill signaled an end to any thoughts Davis had for reconciliation. On January 8, Davis wrote to his friend Edwin De Leon and predicted, "We are advancing rapidly to the end of 'the Union.' The cotton states may now be regarded as having decided for secession. South Carolina is in a quasi war and the probabilities are that events will hasten her and her associates into general conflict with the forces of the federal government." With no hope left, Davis joined a caucus of Southern senators who declared that their states should secede immediately. He would later write, "I was behind the general opinion of the people of the State as to the propriety of prompt secession."
On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the first state to follow South Carolina's lead in secession. Mississippi adopted its ordinance of secession while Davis was still in Washington, DC. He heard the news but waited in Washington until he received communication from Governor Pettus. Davis had recommended to the Governor that he should remain in the Senate as long as possible to vote against hostile legislation but made clear that he would follow Pettus's orders. The Governor's instructions arrived on January 19: Davis was to return to Mississippi immediately. That left Davis with one final task in Washington — his resignation from the Senate.
Despite the order to leave, Davis could not travel because of his lifelong struggle with trigeminal neuralgia — an extremely painful facial nerve disorder. He had planned to deliver his resignation on January 20, 1861, but was forced to delay a day, because he was too sick to leave his bed. When he did deliver his address, he wore a patch over his left eye because it was so sensitive to light. Despite Davis's delay, his resignation was met with great fervor. Davis's wife, Varina, described the scene in the Senate chamber: "On the morning of the day he was to address his colleagues, the crowd began to move toward the Senate Chamber as early as seven o'clock. By nine there was hardly standing room within the galleries or in the passway behind the forum. ... Ladies sat on the floor against the wall where they could not find seats."
With the stage set, she wrote that "Mr. Davis, graceful, grave, and deliberate, amid profound silence, arose to address the Senate for the last time as a member of that body. Every eye was turned upon him, fearful of missing one word."
On January 21, 1861, the crowded Senate chamber listened to Davis and four other senators resign their positions. In contrast to Davis's somber farewell, the other resignations included virulent attacks on Northern colleagues and detailed descriptions of the oppression that Southern states had suffered at the hands of Northern senators. For example, according to Alabama's Clement Clay, the Northern antislavery spirit had "murdered southern men ... invaded the borders of southern States, poisoned their wells, burnt their dwellings, and murdered their people. ... It exerted all the moral and physical agencies that human ingenuity can devise or diabolical malice can employ to heap odium and infamy upon us." Clay dedicated the majority of his speech to this condemnation based on his perception of a Northern conspiracy to destroy the institution of slavery in the South.
Georgia's Robert Toombs deployed similar venomous language in his final address in the Senate on February 4, 1861. He began his resignation with the pronouncement that "the Union, sir, is dissolved." He then continued, "While the perfidious authors of this mischief are showering down denunciations upon a large portion of the patriotic men of this country, those brave men are coolly and calmly voting what you call revolution — aye, sir, doing better than that: arming to defend it." He declared that "now you see the glittering bayonet, and you hear the tramp of armed men from your capitol to the Rio Grande. It is a sight that gladdens the eyes and cheers the hearts of other millions ready to second them."
Toombs's declaration that the "glittering bayonet ... gladdens the eyes" stands in stark contrast to Davis's resignation. The crowded Senate chamber had suffered through a string of Southern senators who used the occasion to attack their Northern counterparts and set the stage for war. Perhaps it is not a surprise that Davis would deliver a resignation more sensitive to the legislative body to which he had dedicated so much of his life. After all, the New York Times had declared him "the Cicero of the Senate"; as James Jasinski notes, most studies into decorum begin with Cicero's Orator, which contains the critical lines, "In an oration, as in life, nothing is harder than to determine what is appropriate. ... Let us call it decorum or 'propriety.' ... The universal rule, in oratory as in life, is to consider propriety."
The Rhetorical Power of the Occasion
The stark contrast between Davis's resignation and the speeches of his colleagues invites a deeper investigation into decorum to determine if Davis's address was simply a more moderate version of the same arguments or if his address actually accomplished something more or less for the foundation of Confederate nationalism. Decorum offers concepts that enable critics to grapple with the specific demands of an occasion and in turn the situated nature of rhetoric. As the earlier quote from Cicero demonstrates, decorum's most basic definition is speaking appropriately for a particular occasion. As Michael Leff notes, traditional understandings of decorum trace back to Cicero and focus strictly on the stylistic features of a speech resulting in the subversion of the concept as a purely aesthetic consideration.
More recently, scholars have begun to revive the utility of decorum through deeper investigations into the related concepts of to prepon (appropriateness) and kairos (opportune moments). By connecting these concepts, scholars have begun to move away from a strictly stylistic and technical understanding of decorum to a broader function that has opened up space for investigations into how rhetors react to particular situations beyond surface examinations into stylistic choices. Leff argues that the nontechnical understanding of decorum "represents the goal of rhetorical culture — the adaptation of all the available resources to encompass concrete situations. Since this goal must change in the face of changing situations, it cannot suffer reduction to formal rules." The contemporary understanding of decorum requires sensitivity to the uniqueness of occasions, a theme that is echoed by many modern scholars of decorum.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A War of Words by R. Jarrod Atchison. Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Decorum in Davis’s Resignation from the Senate
Chapter 2. Civic Republicanism in Davis’s Inaugural Address
Chapter 3. Amplification in Davis’s Defense of Conscription
Chapter 4. Conspiracy Rhetoric in Davis’s Response to the Emancipation Proclamation
Chapter 5. Pragmatism and Desperation in Davis’s Push for Conditional Emancipation
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index