Mr. Davis. {...} the Senator in his zeal depicts the negro slave of the South as a human being reduced to the condition of a mere chattel. Is it possible that the Senator did not know that the negro slave in every southern State was still a person, protected by all the laws which punish crime in other persons? Could the Senator have failed to know that no master could take the life of or maim his slave without being held responsible under the criminal laws of any southern State, and held to a responsibility as rigid as though that negro had been a white man? How, then, is it asserted that these are not persons in the eye of the law, not protected by the law as persons. The venerable Senator from Kentucky [John J. Crittenden] knows very well that this is not law in any State of the Union where slaves are held, but that everywhere they are protected; that the criminal law covers them as perfectly as it covers the white men. Save in the respect of credibility as a witness, there is nothing----
Mr. Crittenden. Will the gentleman allow me a word?
Mr. Davis. Certainly.
Mr. Crittenden. I have not made any particular examination as to the laws of all the slave States; but I believe they all contain the provisions for the protection of slaves that are alluded to. In my own State of Kentucky, I am glad to say, they go much further; and the slave there, who is cruelly treated by his master, may make an appeal to the court of the county in which he lives, and upon proof of the cruelty with which he has been treated the court may take him from his master and sell him to a more merciful one. That is the law of my State.
Mr. Davis. Several southern Senators around have spoken to me to the effect that in each of their States the protection is secured, and a suit may be instituted at common law for assault and battery, to protect a negro as well as a white man. The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, Mr. President, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts, its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves. We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority. In their subject and dependent state, they are not the objects of cruelty as they would be if left to the commission of crime, for which they should be incarcerated in penitentiaries and work-houses, and put under hired overseers, having no interest in them and no relation to them, no affiliation, growing out of the associations of childhood and the tender care of age. Is there nothing of the balm needed in the Senator's own State, that he must needs go abroad to seek objects for his charity and philanthropy? What will be say of those masses in New York now memorializing for something very like an agrarian law? What will he say to the throngs of beggars who crowd the streets of his great commercial emporium? What will he say to the multitudes collected in the penitentiaries and prisons of his own State?
Jefferson Davis' reply in the Senate to William H. Seward{then there was war}
Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol, February 29, 1860
from the papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University
Elizabeth Meriwether was banished in October 1862, when she was given 24-hour notice that she must leave Memphis. She had children ages three and five and was pregnant with a third. Her appeal to Gen. William T. Sherman was denied.
"I seemed all of a sudden to realize the desolateness of my position, alone in the world with two children, driven from pillar to post, my husband off in the army, I knew not where - surely it was a pitiable situation. I became filled with self-pity and cried as if my heart would break."
Elizabeth Avery MerriwetherForced on the road, she delivered her third child in a stranger's house on Christmas night, 1862. At first, she attempted to follow her husband's unit, but eventually ended up in Tuscaloosa, AL. She resorted to stealing corn for food for her children, selling clothing and even sneaking back into Memphis on a dangerous mission to pay taxes so her property would not be sold at auction.
October 1862
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Diarist Sarah Morgan described the mayhem of the flight from Baton Rouge.
Overloaded refugee wagons clogged the roadways and overburdened animals added to the confusion:
"Three miles from town we began to overtake the fugitives. Hundreds of women and children were walking along, some bareheaded and in all costumes. Little girls of twelve and fourteen were wandering on alone. I called to one I knew and asked her where her mother was; she didn't know; she would walk on until she found out...it was a heart-rending scene. Women searching for their babies along the road, where they had been lost; others sitting in the dust crying and wringing their hands."
Sarah Morgan
May 28, 1862
Baton Rouge, LA
Unhappiness Abroad: Civil War Refugees
at the City of Alexandria, Virginia, Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site
Varina Anne Davis was born in 1864 in the Confederate White House.
Her life was as tragic as that portended.
