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Title:	RIFLE -  JEFFERSON DAVIS' FRENCH RIFLE SPORTING .74 SN# 10973
Maker/Manufacturer:	DEVISME, F.P.
Date of Manufacture:	1850-1860
Eminent Figure:	DAVIS, JEFFERSON
Catalog Number:	SPAR 5570
Measurements:	OL:107.9CM 42 1/2" BL: 67.4CM 26 3/4"

Object Description:

JEFFERSON DAVIS' FRENCH RIFLE SPORTING .74 SN# 10973
Manufactured by F.P. Devisme of Paris, France, c. 1855 - French percussion half-stocked big game rifle designed to fire explosive projectiles and reputed to have been taken from Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the time of his capture; possibly the "infernal machine" mentioned at that time. Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, just outside of Irwinsville, Georgia.* The rifle has a 26 3/4" barrel and is 42 1/2" overall. The barrel is .74 caliber and is rifled with 10 grooves with a fairly rapid twist. There is a small diameter Delvigne chamber at the bottom of the bore. The barrel has a patent hook breech and is held by a single sliding wedge. The barrel is octagonal for 10" at the breech, then round to the muzzle. There is a double Brunswick-style bayonet lug on right side of barrel at muzzle. Barrel is either Damascus or fake damascus, but has a highly visible Damascus design and nice coloring. Weapon is equipped with a 3-leaf rear sight, graduated for 100, 150 and 200 meters. The rifle is completely iron mounted with no brass or white metal. There is a lower sling swivel screwed into the stock near the butt and an upper one on the barrel rib. The steel ramrod has a large ramming end which is deeply recessed to fit over the nose of the shell. The lock is a normal side action lock held by a single side screw and a hook internally at the front end. The exterior of the lock, as with all other furniture, is engraved with a light floral design.

Markings:
Lock: (GL.)
Breech: F.P. DEVISME A PARIS.
Barrel: Bottom of barrel has assorted Liege and Belgium proofs.
Stock: 10973 stamped into wood just behind the trigger guard. 71 in white paint right side of stock, which is possibly old Ordnance Department Museum number.

1909 Catalog #0827 - "Rifle. Muzzle Loading Percussion Rifle. Cal. 56. Taken from Jefferson Davis at the time of his capture. Received from Ordnance Museum, Dec. 13, 1887."

Army #1975 - "This rifle is of a type similar to those used by English and French sportsman for the hunting of the big game of Africa and India about 1860 to 1875. It is almost exactly like the 'Fletcher' English Rifle carried by Sir Samuel Baker on his expeditions to discover the source of the Nile."

Exhibit label: "JEFFERSON DAVIS RIFLE - Confederate President Jefferson Davis, an officer in the Mexican War and former U.S. Secretary of War, showed a keen interest in small arms. When Davis was captured after fleeing the fallen capital at Richmond, Virginia, he had in his possession the gun displayed here. An experimental model of French manufacture, it was designed to fire explosive projectiles similar to the artillery projectiles that had come into use in the 1850s. However acceptable in artillery, explosive small arms projectiles were considered unethical, which perhaps explains a contemporary report that Davis was captured with an 'infernal machine' in his possession."

Notes: In Series I, Vol. XLVII, part III, page 653 of the Official Records, Captain O.E. Bryant states in his report, "I have also to deliver a French rifle-musket, a most murderous weapon, which I received from Mrs. Yulee as the private property of Jefferson Davis."

F.P. Devisme was a well known maker of firearms and swords in Paris from 1815 to 1867. He exhibited swords at London in 1851 and swords and firearms in Paris in 1867. Devisme was evidently connected to someone in the Confederate government. He not only supplied the South with revolvers, but made swords for Robert E. Lee and John B. Hood.

The catalog folder contains additional information on the history of this weapon and its peculiar projectile. Mr. Thomas Dickey has a projectile to which is attached an old faded tag stating that it, too, had been found in the luggage of Jefferson Davis at the time of his capture. Tag reads: "Explosive Bullet Found Among Effects of Jefferson Davis by Capt. E.W. Denny, presented by F.B. Denny 1885." Mr. Dickey brought the projectile, made of brass, steel and lead, to the museum and its tThe projectile is referenced in "Des Armes De Guerre Rayees," by H. Mangeot, Paris, 1860, Plate 7, Figure 77. The caption for that particular illustration refers to it as "balle foudroyante de M. Devisme." A rough translation follows: "(In 1855) M. Devisme, noted Parisian marksman, made trials with a new explosive bullet for hunting wild animals such as lions and elephants, and also for whales. The results are frightening."

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889). Born in Kentucky. Graduated from USMA in 1828 ranking 23rd in a class of 33.
After fleeing Richmond, Davis presided over the Confederacy for the last time on 24 April 1865 at Charlotte, N.C., and was captured 10 May at Irwinsville, Georgia. He was held for two years at Fort Monroe. Never brought to trial, he was finally released on bail, and a nolle prosequi was ordered by the Federal government. He wrote, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" in 1881. In the work, Davis stated that he was never prosecuted due to the "contractual" nature of the U.S. Constitution which gave the individual, "sovereign" states the right to secede. This view was shared by many "Yankees," including many abolitionists.
James Freeman Clarke stated in 1861 that "according to the fundamental principles of our government, the secessionists are right in their main principle."
Horace Greeley maintained that that the South was merely applying the "great principle" of the Declaration of Independence that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it...." If this doctrine, Greeley asserted, could justify our tearing away from the British Empire, then he could "not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861."

"The greatest weakness of the Federalist was that their power was based upon a coalition of northern businessmen and southern planters. In all probability, this uneasy alliance would have succumbed sooner or later to the strains and stresses generated by the divergent economic interests and social and political attitudes of Northerners and Southerners. As might be expected, victory - in this case, the adoption of the Constitution - hastened the dissolution of the coalition, but the event was not ensured until 1970 when Hamilton launched his fiscal and economic programs." - Miller.

"The Hampton Roads Peace Conference During the War Between the States by John V. Denson. Most establishment historians today might as well be the Orwellian historians writing for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's novel 1984, especially in relation to the War Between the States. They rarely, if ever, mention the Hampton Roads Peace Conference which occurred in February of 1865, because it brings into question most of the mythology promoted today which states that Lincoln and the North fought the war for the purpose of abolishing slavery and the South fought for the purpose of protecting it.
The story of the peace-conference is related by a participant who was vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, in volume two of his work entitled A CONSTITUTIONAL VIEW OF THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES: ITS CAUSES, CHARACTER, CONDUCT AND RESULTS, at pages 589 through 625.
The story begins in early January of 1865 which was before Sherman left Savannah on his march through the Carolinas. Mr. Francis P. Blair, Sr., instigated the conference by obtaining President Lincoln's permission to contact Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, concerning a possible temporary halt in the war. Mr. Blair was closely connected to the Lincoln administration and he was concerned about the efforts on the part of the French to establish a military presence in Mexico in order to help them reconquer the territory that had been lost in the war with America. Mr. Blair made his proposal to President Jefferson Davis that a secret military. Blair to talk with Jefferson Davis but indicated to him that he did not endorse Mr. Blair's ideas; however, he would not stand in the way of some military conference to discuss peace terms and to stop hostilities while the conference was in session. Jefferson Davis listened to Mr. Blair's proposal, met with his cabinet and it was decided that three delegates were to be appointed to meet with President Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Seward. The three Confederate delegates were Mr. Stephens, John Campbell, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice from Alabama, and a Mr. R. M.T. Hunter, a member of the Confederate Senate. The Confederate delegates were given safe passage through Northern lines and met directly with General Grant, who put them on a boat to go to Fortress Monroe. When they reached Fortress Monroe near Hampton Roads, Virginia, they were then escorted to another steamer where President Lincoln and Mr. Seward were to meet with them. The actual meeting occurred on February 3, 1865.
Mr. Seward indicated that this was to be an informal conference with no writing or record to be made, all was to be verbal, and the Confederates agreed. President Lincoln announced in the beginning that the trip of Mr. Blair was approved by him but that he did not endorse the idea to halt the hostilities for the purpose of the American army going to Mexico to enforce the Monroe Doctrine; however, he had no objection to discussing a peace offer at this time. President Lincoln stated that he had always been willing to discuss a peace offer as long as the first condition was met and that would be for the Confederacy to pledge to rejoin the Union. If that condition was agreed upon then they could discuss any other details that were necessary. Mr. Stephens responded by suggesting that if they could come up with some proposal to stop the hostilities, which might lead to the restoration of the Union without further bloodshed, would it not be advisable to act on that proposal, even without an absolute pledge of ultimate restoration being required at the beginning? President Lincoln replied firmly that there would be no stopping of the military operations unless there was a pledge first by the Confederacy to rejoin the Union immediately.
Judge Campbell then asked what would be the terms offered to the South if they were to pledge to rejoin the Union and how would they be taken back into the Union. Since there was no immediate response by either President Lincoln or Mr. Seward, Vice-President Stephens stated that it would be worthwhile to purse stopping the hostilities to have a cooling off period so that the peace terms might be investigated without the passions of the war. Mr. Stephens indicated tha should the hostilities stop for some extended period of time, he felt that there would be a good chance that many of the states would rejoin the Union on the same terms as they had when they joined in the beginning, but that the sovereignty of the states would have to be recognized upon rejoining the Union. Mr. Seward objected that a system of government founded upon the right of secession would not last and that self-preservation of the Union was a first law of nature which applies to the nations as well as to individuals. He brought up the point that if all the states were free to secede, they might make a treaty with some foreign nation and thus expose the Union to foreign aggression. Mr. Stephens responded that the principle of self-preservation also applied to every state by itself and it would never be in the interest of any single state or several states to join with some foreign power against those states which remained in the Union.
Mr. Hunter then brought up the question of whether PrThe subject of slavery then came up and Mr. Stephens asked President Lincoln what would be the status of the slave population in the Confederate states, and especially what effect the Emancipation Proclamation would have if the Confederate rejoined the Union. President Lincoln responded that the Proclamation was only a war measure and as soon as the war ceased, it would have no operation for the future. It was his opinion that the Courts would decide that the slaves who were emancipated under the Proclamation would remain free but those who were not emancipated during the war would remain in slavery. Mr. Seward pointed out that only about two hundred thousand (200,000) slaves had come under the operation of the Proclamation and this would be a small number out of the total. Mr. Seward then brought up the point that several days before the meeting, there had been a proposed 13th constitutional amendment to cause the immediate abolition of slavery throughout the United States, but if the war were to cease and the Confederates rejoined the Union they would have enough votes to kill the amendment. He stated that there would be thirty-six (36) states and ten (10) could defeat the amendment. The reader should be reminded at this point that President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address before the war, gave his support to the first 13th amendment pending at that time which would have explicitly protected slavery where it already existed.
Mr. Stephens then inquired as to what would be the status of the states in regard to their representation in Congress and President Lincoln replied that they would have their full rights restored under the Constitution. This would mean that there would be no punishment or reconstruction imposed. President Lincoln then returned to the slavery question and stated it was never his intention to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed and he would not have done so during the war, except that it became a military necessity. He had always been in favor of prohibiting the extension of slavery into the territories but never thought immediate emancipation in the states where it already existed was practical. He thought there would be 'many evils attending" the immediate ending of slavery in those states. Judge Campbell then asked Mr. Seward if he thought there would be good race relations in the South upon immediate emancipation and inquired about what would happen to the freed slaves. President Lincoln responded by telling an anecdote about an Illinois farmer and how he avoided any effort in finding food for his hogs, and his method would apply to the freed slaves, in other words, 'let'em rot.' The Confederate delegation showed no interest in protecting slavery in the Confederacy with their only interest being independence from the Union and the protection of the right to secede, which raised the subject of West Virginia. Mr. Hunter asked President Lincoln whether West Virginia, which had seceded from the State of Virginia, would be allowed to remain a separate state and President Lincoln stated it would. Lincoln had once been a strong proponent of secession, and as a first-term congressman from Illinois, he spoke in a session of the House of Representatives in 1848 and argued that: 'Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have to the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.'
Lincoln recognized the right of West Virginia to secede but rPresident Lincoln returned to the question of slavery stating that he thought the North would be willing to tax to compensate the Southern people for the loss of their slaves. He said that he had many conversations to the effect that if there was a voluntary abolition of slavery the American government would pay a fair indemnity and probably be appropriated for this purpose. Mr. Seward said that the Northern people were weary of the war and they would be willing to pay this amount of indemnity rather continuing to pay for the war.
Mr. Stephens wrote that the entire conversation took about four hours and the last subject was the possible exchange of prisoners. President Lincoln stated he would put that question in the hands of General Grant and they could discuss it with Grant as they left. Finally, Mr. Stephens asked President Lincoln to reconsider stopping the hostilities for a period of time so that the respective sides could 'cool off,' and while cooling off, investigate further possibilities for ending the war other than by simply have the South pledge to rejoin the Union. President Lincoln stated he would reconsider it but he did not think his mind would change on that point. Thus, ended the Peace Conference and the Confederates returned to meet with General Grant and were escorted back to the Confederate lines.
In summary, the South wanted independence, not the protection of slavery, and the North wanted reunion rather than abolition of slavery. This is what President Lincoln had stated in the very beginning before the war and again what he had stated near the end of the war.
It was generally recognized in both the North and the South by 1865 that slavery was a dying institution, not just in America, but throughout Western Civilization. It was also obvious to both the North and the South that slavery would be hard to maintain in a separate Confederate South without the constitutional and statutory fugitive slave provisions which had required free states to return escaped slaves. In fact, many abolitionists had advocated Northern secession before the war as a means to end slavery by depriving the Southern states of the benefits of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution and the laws relating thereto. The offer of the North to pay for the freed slaves was merely an added inducement to rejoin the Union but Lincoln had always been willing to accept slavery where it already existed if the South would remain in, or later, rejoin the Union. The right of a state to secede clearly had been accepted in the North and the South at the time of the formation of the Union and up until the time of the War Between the States. For example, the New England states frequently asserted the right of secession and threatened to use it on five occasions; in 1803 because of President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase; in 1807 over the Embargo Act; in 1812 over the admission of Louisiana as a state; in 1814 at the Hartford Convention because of the War of 1812; and finally, in 1845 over the annexation of Texas.
If the agricultural South rejoined the industrial North, they would again be subject to economic exploitation of the protective tariff, which was paid primarily by the South and was by far the main tax to operate the central government in Washington, D.C. The North, due to their increased representation in Congress, was able to control where the money was spent, which was primarily for internal improvements in the North, a practice the South considered unconstitutional. The protective tariff and internal improvements had been two of the key problems between the two sections since 1828, along with the general disagreement aFinally, in order to bring into clear focus the significance of the Hampton Roads Conference, it should be recalled that on April 4, 1861, before the start of the war on April 12, the Secession Convention in Virginia, which had convened in February of 1861, sent a delegate to visit President Lincoln in the White House to discuss the results of the action recently taken in Virginia. When the State of Virginia originally voted on its ratification ordinance approving the U.S. Constitution, it contained a specific clause protecting their right to secede in the future. The delegate was Colonel John B. Baldwin, who was a strong opponent of secession by Virginia, although he recognized the right. His message communicated privately to the president on April 4, was that the convention had voted not to secede if President Lincoln would issue a written pledge to refrain from the use of force in order to get the seceded states back into the Union. President Lincoln told Colonel Baldwin that it was four days too late now to take that action. Unknown to all except a few insiders of the administration, meaning that members of the Congress did not know, the president had already issued secret orders on April 1, to sent a fleet of ships to Fort Sumter in order to provoke the South into firing the first shot in order to start the war. (For more details see my chapter, 'Lincoln and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit and Deception' in the book REASSESSING THE PRESIDENCY.) Lincoln stated that he could not wait until the seceded states decided what to do and added: 'But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?'
Baldwin replied: 'Yes sir, unless they can be peaceably brought back.'
Lincoln then replied:
'And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten percent tariff....' (as opposed to the much higher forty percent Federal tariff). 'What then would become of my tariff?' (For more details on this meeting and a subsequent meeting with President Lincoln by other delegates of the Virginia Secession Convention, again see my chapter 'Lincoln and the First Shot.'
The original Constitution still in effect before the war, prohibited all 'direct' taxes on the people, i.e. income, estate, gift, etc., so almost all the revenue to operate the Federal government in Washington was derived from an 'indirect' tax on imports. The South, being agricultural, had to import almost all manufactured goods from Europe (primarily England) or buy the products from the North. The higher the tax on imports, the more protection the North got to raise its prices for its manufactured goods and for this reason a high import tax was called a 'protective tariff.' As long as the import tax was ten percent or less it was classified as a 'revenue tax' to which the South did not object. In fact, the new Confederate Constitution adopted in March of 1861, placed a maximum tax on imports of ten percent. However, when an import tax or tariff exceeded ten percent, it became known as a 'protective tariff' for the protection of domestic (Northern) industry. Shortly before the war, Chicago Daily Times was the only one of many newspapers predicting a calamity for federal revenue and business in the North if the South was allowed to secede with its ten percent limit on import taxes which would attract trade, especially from abroad, to the South rather than the North. In an editorial it stated: 'In one single blow our (Northern) foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade will pass into other hands.... We should lose our trade with the South, will all of its immense profits. Our manufactories will be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue (ten percent or less), and these results would likely follow.'
In a debate in England, two notable British citizens, Charles Dickens and John Stuart Mill, took opposing views on the cause of the American War Between the States with The meeting at Hampton Roads in 1865 and the meeting with Colonel Baldwin in 1861 both showed that President Lincoln's concern was preventing the secession of the South in order to protect Northern manufacturers and to retain the tax source for the Federal government. The abolition of slavery was not the purpose of the war. In his Inaugural Address he promised he would invade the South for the purpose of collecting taxes and recovering the forts he would support the first 13th amendment which protected slavery in the states where it already existed.
The War Between the States was not a noble war to abolish slavery, but instead was a war of conquest to require the Southern states to continue paying the taxes which paid for the federal government and to change the system of government given to us by our Foundings and instead replace it with a strong national government thereby removing most of the political power from the states and the people. When the famous British historian Lord Acton, wrote to Robert E. Lee after the war, in a letter dated November 4, 1866, he inquired about Lee's assessment of the meaning of the war and the result that would follow. Lord Acton's letter stated, in part, that: 'I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles for our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.'
Lee replied in a letter dated December 15, 1866, and stated, in part, the result would be: 'The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of the run which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.'
Never have truer words ever been written or broken.
Rarely do any governments, or the politicians, intellectuals and news media who support their wars, tell the truth about the real motives for the wars. After all, the citizens must be convinced either that their safety is being protected from an aggressor or that the war serves some noble purpose, because it's the citizens who fight, die and pay the taxes. The Orwellian historians have falsified the true purposes or motives behind most of America's wars, and have instead given us glorified accounts designed to mislead the public in order to justify the sacrifices the people have made. All wars, whether won or lost, tend to centralize and increase the power into the national government, increase the debts and taxes and diminish the civil liberties of the citizens. It is time we begin to see through the myths and false propaganda about American wars so that we can prevent future wars. Americans have a strong tendency to accept as true the false wartime propaganda which now appears in the history books and which is repeated by politicians and intellectuals to the effect that all of America's wars have been just, necessary and noble. This tendency of the Americans to accept this false propaganda tends to prevent them from questioning the alleged reasons for current wars. There is also a strong tendency by Americans to measure a person's patriotism by how much that person supports an American war rather how much the person supports the concepts of American freedom and the ideas of our Founders, which includes a noninterventionist foreign policy.
It is time that Americans learn the truth about the real reasons behind our wars, and particularly, the War Between the States, because of the price that we have paid in the long-term loss of liberty in that war. The deaths of over 600,000 American young men in that war is not exactly iThe abolition of slavery by the 13th amendment was a great step forward in the struggle for individual freedom and it eliminated a horrible evil in America which had been practiced for centuries throughout the world, but the passage of that amendment was not the purpose of the war and slavery would certainly have died soon without a war as it did elsewhere throughout Western Civilization without wars. It is the War Between the States which was the first great turning point in American history away from the system of government and the individual freedom that our Founders provided for us. We need a new 'Reformation and Renaissance,' but this time, it needs to be about government, especially the American government. We need a new 'turning point' to go in the right direction to recover the original ideas about individual freedom advocated by our Founders before it is too late; or have we already passed the point of no return." - January 10, 2006


"...Though the Davis family lacked a coat of arms and an aristocratic pedigree, and were only second-generation Southerners, Jefferson Davis had blue-blooded manners and high-minded tastes and values. Tall, slim, dramatically handsome, and often saturnine, he had deep-set gray-blue eyes and a sweet musical Southern voice with great rhetorical power. His political career was soon off and running when he won a spot in the U.S. House of Representatives. But his tenure was punctuated by the Mexican War, during which he was elected to the rank of colonel and served under his former father-in-law (Zachary Taylor). Commanding a volunteer regiment, the Mississippi Rifles, he saw action at Monterrey and then helped win the decisive battle of Buena Vista by drawing his small force into a pincer and breaking the exquisitely outfitted Mexican cavalry charge; it was a turning point of the conflict, and a turning point in his life. Davis emerged from the war a national hero, and was labeled 'the best volunteer officer in the army.' President Polk offered him a general's commission. But because he had been badly wounded in the foot at Buena Vista, he turned it down. Instead, he chose to be nominated to the Senate." - Winik

"...the North was politically divided over the issue of slavery. Some Northerners such as John A. Logan, a prominent Democrat from Illinois, believed that the federal government had no right to coerce Southern states. He even went so far as to compare the secessionists with the Founding Fathers who, he argued, were both simply struggling for liberty. Later, after he became a Union general, Logan reportedly said if this was a war to free the Negro, he would turn his men around and march them home. Even some prominent Republicans were not committed to fighting a war to end slavery or, for that matter, even to restore the Union. Horace Greeley, the well-known editor of the New York Tribune and a Republican, called for President Lincoln to allow the South to depart in peace. Thus, Lincoln would have to be very careful not to alienate Northern politicians of either party if he was to count on their support to continue the war." - Carroll & Baxter

"Secession - or rebellion, as the Jacobins preferred to call it - might be treason, but no court had ever said so - or even would say so - no matter what the opinion the radicals had on the matter." - Shelby Foote

"The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of these states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right not to do so." - Alexis de Tocqueville

"The indissoluble union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right b
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have to right to rise up, and shake off existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit." - Abraham Lincoln, 1848.

"...The next step was the repression of the Southern states when they attempted to secede from the Union and set up a republic of their own - in the course of which, it may be mentioned, the Canadians became so alarmed at the increasing aggressiveness of the Washington government that they for the first time began to take steps to consolidate their diverse provinces in a single federal system. The slave-owning Southern states and the rapidly industrializing North had by this time become so distinct from one another that they were virtually two different nations; they were as much two contending power units - each of which was trying to expand at the other's expense - as any two European countries. The action of the Washington government in preventing the South to seceding was not prompted by the motives that have been often assumed. The myth that it was fighting to free the slaves is everywhere except in the South firmly fixed in the American popular mind; and it is true, of course, that slavery in the Southern states was embarrassing to many people - in the South as well as the North; but many other people thoroughly approved of it - in the North as well as the South. Abolitionists like Whittier and Garrison were not in such mortal danger as they would have been in South Carolina, but both were mobbed in New England and the former, in Philadelphia, had the office of his paper burned down. These fanatics were handled rather gingerly by the anti-South Republicans, and exploitation of the wickedness of the planters became later a form of propaganda like the alleged German atrocities in Belgium at the beginning of the first World War. The institution of slavery, which the Northern states had by this time got rid of, thus supplied the militant Union North with the rabble rousing moral issue which is necessary in every modern war to make the conflict appear as a melodrama. As for the wickedness of secession, New England itself had debated seceding when, at the time of the War of 1812, its trade with Great Britain was interrupted. But these pseudo-moral issues which aroused such furious hatred was never fundamental for the North; and it was possible for the Washington government to coerce and to crush the South not by reason of the righteousness of its cause but on account of the superior equipment which it was able to mobilize and its superior capacity for organization....
The 'Monster,' as he calls its, as (Alexander H.) Stephens fear is 'the Demon of Centralism, Absolutism, Despotism;' and the warning against the danger of this is the burden of all his post-war writing. Here is a passage from the peroration of the Constitutional View. 'It affords me pleasure, ' he declares to his guests, 'to say, in winding up, that, while in our long and social interchange of views, and discussions of the various questions...in which we here occasionally so widely differed upon some points, yet upon one we are at last all so fullt tendencies and rapid strides, until it reaches complete Consolidation!
Depend upon it, there is no difference between Consolidation and Empire; no difference between Centralism and Imperialism. The consummation of either must necessarily end in the overthrow of Liberty and the establishment of Despotism.... But without further speculation upon this subject or any other, let me, in conclusion, barely add: If the worst is to be befall us; if our most serious apprehensions and gloomiest foreboding as to the future, in this respect, are to be realized; if Centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene in the great tragic drama now being enacted; then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but by the judgement of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.
And here is the peroration to his history of the United States: 'Now, therefore, that the chief cause which led to the late war between them is forever removed, if they shall adhere to the principle of the sovereign right of local self-government, on the part of the States respectively, which lies at the foundation of the whole fabric, then there is no perceived reason why they should not go on in a still higher career in all that constitutes true greatness in human development and achievement. But if this principle shall be abandoned, then all that is so glorious in the past and so hopeful in the future will, sooner or later, be lost in the same inevitable despotism of a Consolidated Centralized Empire, which eventuated in the overthrow and destruction of the liberties of Rome." - Wilson

"If the people of these plundered States retain a love of honor, with correct ideas of liberty and government, they are richer than we to-day. If they cherish the grand philosophy of right, which made our revolutionary period so glorious, they will yet emerge from the poverty which our vandalism has brought upon them, and stand forth the inheritors of all the glory of this continent. Do we think because we have burned their wheat fields, and hold them, at the present moment, under the point of our bayonets, that we therefore quenched the fires of freedom in their bosoms, and permanently overthrown the splendid structure of self-government in the new world? We may kill men; but we cannot kill things. If the principal of liberty survives in their breasts, it will one day as surely spring forth and conquer our despotism as God lives! Are we mad enough to think that we can long succeed in bringing back, and fixing upon this country the institutions of the Huns and Vandals? Do we imagine that the law of force is forever to displace the law of consent - in the land of Washington? Has military despotism permanently taken the place of civil liberty here? Have we burned the Declaration of Independence? Has the Constitution been buried so deep that it cannot be dug up? Be sure that if we have not succeeded in doing this, God holds in His hand a day of redemption for the South, and of retribution for us. O, my countrymen, God will teach us this great lesson, that poverty does not mean the final overthrow of liberty, nor luxury the everlasting triumph of despotism! We boast of our prosperity and riches. So did that rich idiot, Nebuchadnezzar: 'Is not this great Babylon that I have built by the might of my power, for the glory of my majesty?' We next behold the boastA hundred years hence, the historian will cause shocks of horror to startle mankind at our brutalities, our despotism, and our falseness to the splendid theory of government which we inherited from a brave and virtuous ancestry. Sitting amid the ashes of their homes, the southern people are still richer than we, in the inheritance of everything that elevates, ennobles, and honors a people....
The model men of northern power and civilization just now are the Stantons, the Sumners, the Holts, the Jim Lanes, and (God pity us!) the Ben Butlers.....This then, is the result of the war - that the South is poor in cash, and the North bankrupt in honor." - C. Chauncey Burr, September, 1865.

"In times of war the commercial interests had practiced the grossest frauds in corruptly imposing upon the government every form of shoddy supplies. These were the same interests so vociferously proclaiming their intense patriotism. The Civil War put their pretensions of patriotism to the test. If ever a war took place in which Government and people had to strain every nerve and resource to carry on a great conflict it was the Civil War. The result of that war was only to exchange chattel slavery for the more extensive system of economic slavery. But the people of that time did not see this clearly." - Myers

"The American Civil War turned out to be a revolution indeed. But its striking achievement was the triumph of industrial capitalism. The industrial capitalist, through their political spokesmen, the Republicans, had succeeded in capturing the state and using it as an instrument to strengthen their economic position. It was no accident, therefore, that while the war was waged on the field through Negro emancipation, the real victors were found in banking, public-lands, railroad, and contract labor legislation." - Louis Hacker

"The armed conflict had been only one phase of the cataclysm, a transitory phase; that at bottom the so-called Civil War, or the War between the States...was a social war, ending unquestioned establishment of a new power in the government, making vast changes in the arrangement of classes, in the accumulation and distribution of wealth, in the course of industrial development, and in the Constitution inherited from the Fathers." - Charles & Mary Beard

"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side." - Ulysses S. Grant

"The irrepressible conflict was not between slavery and freedom, but between the industrial civilization of the North and the agrarian civilization of the South....The South had to be crushed out; it was in the way; it impeded the progress of the machine. So Juggernaut drove his car across the South." - Frank Owsley.

"In the United States it required a terrible Civil War for the industrial-commercial interests of the North to vanquish the agrarian elites of the South." - Alvin & Heidi Toffler

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history... the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their own people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country - and for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense
"Again, one is faced with the anomaly that in our own day the fundamental positions taken by Great Britain and America in the year 1775 are reversed. For Great Britain in the twentieth century repudiated its earlier position that sovereignty was indivisible within the Empire by conceding that its self-governing units were distinct nationalities with complete freedom should they so choose to sever all political connections with the parent state. The United States on its part...has just as surely repudiated the Revolutionary War idea that each state is a sovereign entity within the federal system, in favor of the unitary concept of sovereignty as resting in the whole American nation...." - Lawrence H. Gipson

"While the planting class was being trampled in the dust - stripped of its wealth and political power - the capitalist class was marching onward in seven league boots. Under the feverish stimulus of war the timid army marshaled by Webster in support of the Constitution and Whig policies had been turned into a confident host, augmented in numbers by the thousands and tens of thousands who during the conflict made profits out of war contracts and out of the rising prices of manufactured goods. At last the economic structure of machine industry towered high above agriculture - a grim monument to the fallen captain, King Cotton. Moreover, the bonds and notes of the federal government, issued in its extremity, furnished the substance for still larger business enterprise. And the beneficent government, which had carefully avoided laying drastic imposts upon profits during the war, soon afterwards crowned its generosity to capitalists by abolishing the moderate tax on incomes and shifting the entire fiscal burden to goods consumed by the masses.
To measurable accumulations were added legal gains of high economic value. All that two generations of Federalists and Whigs had tried to get was won within four short years, and more besides. The tariff, which the planters had beaten down in 1857, was restored and raised to the highest point yet attained. A national banking system was established to take the place of the institution abolished in 1811 by Jefferson Democracy and the second institution destroyed by Jacksonian Democracy in 1836. At the same time the policy of lavish grands from the federal treasury to aid internal improvements so necessary to commerce was revived in the form of imperial gifts to railway corporations; it was in the year of emancipation that the construction of the Pacific railway, opening the overland route to the trade of the Orient, was authorized by the Congress of the United States. With similar decisiveness, the federal land question which had long vexed eastern manufacturers was duly met; the Homestead Act of 1862, innumerable grants to railways, and allotments to the states in aid of agricultural colleges provided for the disposal of the public domain. As a counter stroke, the danger of higher wages, threatened by the movement of labor to the land, was partially averted by the Immigration Act of 1864 - an extraordinary law which federal authorization to the importation of working people under terms of contract analogous to the indentured servitude of colonial times.
While all these positive advantages were being won by capitalists in the halls of Congress, steps were taken to restrain the state legislatures which had long been the seats of agrarian unrest. By the Fourteenth Amendment, proclaiming that no state should deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, the Supreme Court at Washington was granted constitutional power ot strike down any act of any state or local government menacing to 'sound' business policies. Finally the crowning result of the sacrifice, the salvation of the Union, with which so many lofty sentiments were justly associated, assured to industry an immense national market surrounded by a tariff wall bidding defiance to the competition of Europe." - Beard

"By 1860, a criPolitical control over the national state in the interests of industrial capitalism was now assured; the New Radicals could withdraw their military and judicial support form the Negroes in the South. At this point, that is to say, in 1877, when the final withdrawal took place, the Reconstruction era was formally ended. And industrial capitalism itself took up where the Freedmen's Bureau and the Union League clubs left off; so that there now began the peaceful penetration, industrially and financially, of the South with the assistance of the southern Bourbons....
The American Civil War turned out to be a revolution indeed. But its striking achievement was the triumph of industrial capitalism. The industrial capitalists, through their political spokesmen, the Republicans, had succeeded in capturing the state and using it as an instrument to strengthen their economic position. It was no accident, therefore, that while the war was waged on the field and through Negro emancipation, in Congress' halls the victory was made secure by the passage of tariff, banking, public-land, railroad, and contract-labor legislation." - Hacker

"The northern victory did eradicate once and for all the notion of double sovereignty and made the Union indisputably a union - the United States ceased to be plural and became an 'it.' The federal government now also fulfilled a new and important redistributive function through the sizable apparatus of veteran pensions. Thus there could be no return to antebellum conditions. Yet the state retreated as an institution and the dominant forces in the North and South alike supported this well into the 1890s. Economically exploited and stagnant, the South began after Reconstruction to develop an apartheid regime, disenfranchising in the process not only the newly emancipated blacks but also many poor whites. In such circumstances, invigoration of federal authorities entailed no virtues; it created visions of the hated Yankee occupation that had finally ended in 1877. Northern capital, on the other hand, had achieved its basic aims; the opening up of national markets, a protectionist tariff system, massive subsidies in the form of land grants to railroads, the creation of a resourceful indigenous system of finance tied to, yet also independent from, the federal government. Henceforth its interest lay in blocking any political attempts to circumscribe the capitalist liberty to expand and make profits. Nothing illustrates the direction of events better than the strange career of the Fourteenth Amendment: intended to endow former slaves with citizenship, by the 1890s, it had been converted into a legal weapon for big corporations to combat emerging unions, the existence of which was ruled to violate the civil rights of said cooperations, which had been defined by obliging courts as 'persons.'
Exercising the right to free enterprise generated clashes with labor remarkable for their frequency and violence. It is instructive here to note that the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the 1890s was larger than the U.S. Army. The Pinkertons were chiefly engaged in labor repression in the form of intelligence gathering and physical intimidation. Corporations, in some cases, also had private armies. When, in open confrontation, these proved insufficient, industrialists could call upon various state militias and sometimes even federal troops. In such a
"Rather than assume the care of the slaves, they would control labor with the use of capital. It necessarily followed that, when the laborer ceased to be of service because of sickness or old age, he would be of no concern to capital. He could either get well or die without the capitalists being obliged to provide medical attention or bury the dead. Such was the interest that capital had in the result of the Civil War. The people of this country poured out both their treasure and their blood to establish the political and industrial independence of humanity, and the mercenary capitalists turned a trick of finance and converted the enormous sacrifice made by the people during that struggle into a victory for capital in order that they might enforce upon humanity the industrial slavery that the trusts preferred rather than the chattel slavery which then existed in the Southern States." - Congressman Charles A. Lindberg Sr. of Minnesota.

"We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen - Stephen (Douglas, Senator and Democratic Party leader), Franklin (Pierce, US President, 1854-57) Roger (Taney, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and author of the Dred Scott decision), and James (Buchanan, US President, 1857-1861), for instance - and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill - ….in such a case, we find if impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood each other from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first lick was struck." - Abraham Lincoln

The Jefferson Davis rifle has now been in the Springfield Armory collection since 1887 when it was transferred here from the Ordnance Office in Washington, D.C. This weapon has been prominently and proudly displayed in Springfield now for over 117 years. This French made rifle, designed to fire an explosive projectile, has been interpreted as taken from Davis at the time of his capture in Irwinsville, Georgia on May 10, 1865. This has been generally accepted based on existing US Army documents. Unfortunately, it might not be true.
The official records would seem to indicate the rifle was recovered shortly after Davis' capture. In fact, on page 653 of the Official Records, it is stated by Captain O.E. Bryant, that "I have also to deliver a French rifle-musket, a most murderous weapon, which I received from Mrs. Yulee as the private property of Jefferson Davis." Since Mrs. Yulee was not with Jefferson Davis at the time of his capture, but rather in Gainesville, Florida, the Irwinsville, Georgia story may finally have to end.
No less a Jefferson Davis scholar than William C. Davis has recently come forth with even more information. It seems that much of Jefferson Davis' personal effects and papers were in the possession of Micajah Clark, who was the acting treasurer of the Confederacy, Captain Watson Van Benthuysen, Tench Tilgham, a military engineer in Richmond before the fall, and five Maryland Confederates. These individuals had travel ahead of Davis' party and reached Gainesville, Florida on May 15th, five days after Davis' capture. Here they would soon learn the news of the Davis capture from the enigmatic Senator David Yulee, a friend to certain wealthy "Yankees" and Southerners alike, and who would never let the war interfere with a good business deal. Once it was learned that Davis was in custody, Micajah Clark and company left their contraband with the Yulees in Gainesville and then went seeking parole. What property of Jefferson Davis was left with the According to William C. Davis there "was found a host of personal items - clothing, some of it recently worn and unwashed; a pistol; a fancy imported French rifle, razors and combs and the like; cigars, Confederate paper money; and a portrait of General Lee. There was also much private correspondence, some military telegrams, and several reports by Lee and others. Most interesting of all, however, were Davis' copies of the reports from his cabinet ministers on the Sherman-Johnston cartel, offering in detail a glimpse in the last, troubled official days of the Confederate government."
Unless Davis owned two "fancy imported French" rifles, then it is fairly conclusive this rifle was not with Davis on the night of May 10th. Do we now change what has always been a good story? Not necessarily. In fact, maybe General Sherman, in possible reference to the 'Sherman-Johnston cartel,' said it best: "The truth is not always palatable and should not always be told." - John McCabe, 2004.

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