It always jolts me a bit to be driving here in Richmond and to realize that I’m on the Jefferson Davis Highway, named after the first and last president of the Confederate States of America (who had previously served as a congressman and a senator from Mississippi and as United States Secretary of War). He’s buried here, in Hollywood Cemetery.
His views on the American Civil War are a little bit different than our usual perspective today:
“I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.”
“All we ask is to be let alone.”
“It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States.”
Ugh.
But I like this one:
“Never be haughty to the humble or humble to the haughty.”
Posted from Richmond, Virginia
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