Jefferson Davis’s Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate (1861)
Jefferson Davis's Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate was delivered on January 21, 1861, less than two weeks after the Mississippi legislature voted to secede from the Union. Davis, the Mississippi Senator who would become president of the Confederacy, received notice of the act of secession while he was on his sickbed suffering from dyspepsia and neuralgia. His condition was so serious that doctors thought that he would be unable to speak. On his final walk to the Senate, Davis knew that he was entering for the last time the chamber that he loved and had worked in for more than a decade. With the effects of his illness clearly visible to the crowded Senate gallery, Davis delivered his Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate.
Holding back tears, Davis made it clear that he was not hostile or bitter. In choosing to be loyal to his state, he recognized that his desire to preserve the Union was no longer viable, that reconciliation between North and South was impossible. With...
