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Article: The voice of the victorious Confederate States.(Jefferson Davis)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 25, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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LEXINGTON
1870?
PRESIDENT Jefferson Davis is angry. A thin, dyspeptic man faultlessly dressed in black broadcloth, he leans over his desk, and brushes slavery impatiently aside. "No subject", he insists, "has been more generally misunderstood or more persistently misrepresented." The war of southern independence, which has left him president of one of the richest countries in the world, "was not the consequence of any difference on the abstract question of slavery." It was merely the southern states' successful "defence of an inherent, inalienable right to withdraw from a union into which they had, as sovereign states, voluntarily entered." The war, he ...