February 9, 1861 (Saturday)



"On February 10th, he and Mrs. Davis
were out in the garden,
cutting rose bushes
in the early blue spring weather..." 
----Shelby Foote

Today, Jefferson Davis was elected Provisional President of the Southern Confederacy. 

From C-SPAN:  A Video of Abrahan Lincoln and Jefferson Davis:  similarities and differences...excellent insights of both men.

(Following below are a couple excerpts from the Civil War Narrative:  Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote.)

"In Alabama, now in early February, a convention was founding a Southern Confederacy, electing political leaders and formulating a new government.  He was content, however, to leave such matters to those who were there.  He considered his highest talents to be military, and he had the position he wanted, commander of the Mississippi army, with advancement to come along with glory when the issue swung to war.

Then history beckoned again.  On February 10th, he and Mrs. Davis were out in the garden, cutting a rose bush in the early blue spring weather, when a messenger approached with a telegram in his hand.    Davis read it.  In that moment of painful silence he seemed stricken; his face took on a look of calamity.  Then he read the message to his wife.  It was headed:  'Montgomery, Alabama' and dated the day before:

'Sir:

We are directed to inform you that you are this day unanimously elected  President of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of American, and to request you to come to Montgomery immediately.  We send also a special messenger.  Do not wait for him. 

R. Toombs

R. Barnwell Rhett....

He spoke of it, Mrs. Davis said, 'as a man might speak of a sentence of death.'  Yet he wasted no time.  He packed and left next day.

The train made many stops along the line and the people were out to meet him, in sunlight and by the glare of torches.  They wanted a look at his face, the thin lips and determined jaw, the hollow checks with their jutting bones, the long skull behind the aquiline nose; 'a wizard physiognomy,' one called it.  He brought forth cheers with confident words, but he had something else to say as well -- something no one had told them before.  He advised them to prepare for the long war that lay ahead.  They did not believe him, apparently.  Or if the did, they went on cheering anyhow.

He reached Montgomery Sunday night, February 17th, and was driven from the station in a carriage, down the long torch-lit avenue to the old Exchange Hotel.  The crowd followed through the streets that had been decked as for a fair; they flowed until they were packed in a mass about the gallery of the hotel in time to see Davis dismount from the carriage and climb the steps; they cheered as he turned and looked at the carriage and climb the steps; they cheered as he turned and looked at them. 

Then suddenly they fell silent.  William Lowndes Yancey, short and rather seedy-looking alongside the erect and well-groomed Davis, had raised one hand.  They cheered again when he brought it down, gesturing toward the tall man beside him, and said in a voice that rang above the expectant, torch-paled faces of the crowd:  'The man and hour have met.' "