Jefferson Davis: Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate

Glossary

• adieu French for “farewell”
• arraignmen t formal or legal accusation
• a great man who now reposes with his fathers a reference to John C. Calhoun, vice president and senator, who had died in 1860
• John C. Breckenridge vice president to James Buchanan, southern Democratic candidate for the presidency (1860), general and later secretary of war under the Confederacy
• lion … bear a reference to the British and the U.S. government, respectively
• nullification refusal by a U.S. state to enforce the laws of the federal government
• ordinance of her people in convention assembled a formal and legal statement by the people of Mississippi, speaking through their elected representatives
• unshorn without being reduced
• a want of fealty a lack of loyalty