Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, Delivered During the

Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
228K words
Chapters
23

Tags

English Originals World HistoryPolitics Public DebateNorth-South DivisionPolitical AllegoryUnion CrisisSlavery DebatePrimary SourcesPolitical SpeechesEloquent Prose19th CenturyAmerican South

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during theAuthor: Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889,Language: English, Class: E300: History: America: Revolution to the Civil War (1783-1861), Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

This volume collects speeches Jefferson Davis delivered while serving Mississippi, primary source material for pre-Civil War American politics. Davis later became president of the Confederate States of America, and these speeches set out his positions on states' rights, slavery, and federal relations, making the book an important text for understanding political discourse on the eve of the North-South conflict. Its value lies in the documents themselves: the structure of argument, rhetorical strategy, and period vocabulary give a direct sense of how nineteenth-century Southern politicians thought. A caveat: the views expressed are bound to their time and standpoint, and today they should be read with critical distance, as historical sources rather than a guide to opinion. The public-domain electronic edition suits supplementary reading for American history courses, study of speeches, or excerpting primary documents, but it lacks a modern introduction and background notes, so beginners should use it alongside general histories.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a general history of the antebellum period first to establish a timeline and party context
  2. For each speech, first clarify the occasion, audience, and issue, then analyze its argument and rhetoric
  3. Read Davis's positions against contemporary opposing views to avoid a single perspective
  4. Note the source and date when excerpting key passages for later verification and citation

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

What are these speeches about? Mainly nineteenth-century Southern political issues, including states' rights, federal relations, and the controversy over slavery. Speaking as a Mississippi politician, Davis reflects the typical positions and argumentative style of antebellum Southern political elites, making these primary documents for understanding the background of the North-South conflict.
What historical background do I need to read them? It helps to know about states' rights debates after American independence, Mississippi's economic and social structure, and the causes of the Civil War. Without this background, many of the references and targets of argument in the speeches will be hard to follow. Reading alongside an American history textbook or general history is recommended.
Can the views in the book be taken directly as historical conclusions? No. These speeches are political expressions of a particular time and standpoint, including defenses of slavery, and carry clear historical limitations. Read them as historical sources to analyze their positions and rhetoric rather than accepting their judgments, and compare them with later historiography and opposing views.

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About the author

Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889 Author

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) was an American political figure; his dates of birth and death and his nationality are not clearly recorded in the library's data, and publicly available information is likewise limited. The library holds three of his works, including volumes one and two of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government and a collection of speeches delivered by the Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. These writings center on the political and constitutional issues surrounding the American Civil War and are marked by the author's first-person account and defense, making them important primary sources for understanding the political stance of the nineteenth-century American South. Davis's writing is argumentative in character, devoted to setting out political views and responding to controversy, with a solemn tone and a strong element of self-justification. His works have long been cited as first-hand material for the study of Civil War history and Confederate politics, and they retain considerable value as historical sources.