Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era

9. JEFFERSON DAVIS AND TWO MONTGOMERY INAUGURALS, 1861 AND 1886

101 9 Jefferson Davis anD tWo montgomery inaugurals, 1861 anD 1886 The first inauguration of Jefferson Davis in Montgomery,Alabama,occurred in February 1861. That event is well known and its importance indisputable.The second,as I term it,took place twenty-five years later in April 1886.That occurrence is little known and its importance largely unrecognized. Yet the initial ceremony was essential for the one that followed a quarter century later,which overmatched in significance its predecessor. Basic similarities linked the two inaugurals. In each instance Davis received an invitation to travel to Montgomery. Each time he made the trip by train. On both journeys an enthusiastic public cheered him as he made his way toward Montgomery. In the city, in 1886 as well as in 1861, a massive turnout and an adoring welcome awaited him. But he never stayed long in the Alabama capital, just over three months in 1861 and but a few days in 1886. At the same time, sharp contrasts differentiated the two occasions. In 1861 Davis, a political figure of national importance, had been summoned to Montgomery to lead a new southern republic, the Confederate States of America, in its quest for independence. In 1886 Davis, an old man of seventy-eight and in poor health, had been invited as an honoree to attend a celebration—the dedication of a monument to Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era 102 Confederate soldiers.This second time in Montgomery,Davis himself became a living monument. White citizens anointed him as the symbol of a revered, albeit selective, Confederate memory. In 1861 Davis had resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate following Mississippi’s secession and returned to his riverfront plantation just south of Vicksburg. On February 9 he received a telegram informing him that he had been chosen provisional president of the Confederate States of America and calling him to Montgomery. On the eleventh a slave rowed Davis out into the Mississippi River, where he boarded a steamboat for Vicksburg.When the vessel reached that river port, a gala throng, complete with bands and militia units, celebrated the president-elect. From there he took a train some fifty miles east to Jackson, the state capital, where more citizens praised the native son. To reach Montgomery from Jackson by rail, Davis had to go north to Grand Junction in Tennessee (a state still in the Union), then east to Chattanooga, south to Atlanta (within Confederate borders), and finally southwestward to Montgomery, the Alabama capital that served as the Confederate capital. “One continuous ovation,” as a reporter put it,characterized the five-day journey.Along this route of applause, Davis spoke at almost every stop, except in Tennessee.1 The president-elect’s train pulled into Montgomery at 10:00 p.m. on the sixteenth. A large, excited crowd and salvos of artillery noted its arrival. Davis spoke briefly to the gathered listeners, then headed for his hotel. But the clamor for more from the new chieftain did not subside. At 10:45 he appeared on the hotel balcony to emphasize his sense of the moment: “Fellow Citizens and Brethren of the Confederate States of America . . . we have henceforth, I trust, a prospect of living together in peace, with our institutions a subject of protection and not of defamation.”He stressed what he called the “homogeneity” of Confederates. And he made clear the centrality of its slavery in the young country and its citizenry’s commitment to the institution. Davis’s inauguration was set for Monday the eighteenth,which gave him Sunday to rest and work on his address.Inauguration day dawned cloudy and cold, with frost on the ground. At 10:00 a.m. a parade 103 Jefferson Davis and Two Montgomery Inaugurals, 1861 and 1886 formed in front of his hotel, headed by a brass band and followed by militia companies in sky blue pants and bright red coats.Davis and Vice President Alexander H. Stephen of Georgia followed in a barouche lined with saffron and white, mounted with silver, and drawn by six magnificent gray horses.Carriages with other dignitaries and ordinary citizens along with people on foot completed the lineup.As the procession moved toward the Alabama statehouse, perched on a commanding hill, the sun broke through the overcast. Thousands of cheering spectators filled the streets and sidewalks. Some five thousand more waited on the capitol grounds. There the official...