FEBRUARY 22, 1862:
Washington’s
Birthday, one of the two official Confederate holidays. Jefferson Davis is inaugurated to his anticipated single six year
term as the Confederacy’s first President. His Inaugural Address (technically
his second inaugural, as he had been Provisional President up to this point)
reads in part:
“…Fellow-citizens,
after the struggle of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to
constitutional representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to
vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned their efforts,
and they provided for the posterity a peaceful remedy against future
aggression.
The tyranny of an
unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism,
has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew
such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional
liberty. At the darkest hour of our struggle the Provisional gives place to the
Permanent Government. After a series of successes and victories, which covered
our arms with glory, we have recently met with serious disasters. But in the
heart of a people resolved to be free these disasters tend but to stimulate to
increased resistance.
To show ourselves
worthy of the inheritance bequeathed to us by the patriots of the Revolution,
we must emulate that heroic devotion which made reverse to them but the
crucible in which their patriotism was refined…”
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