From the article:
Mary Dix is associate editor of “The Papers of Jefferson Davis,” a collection of about 100,000 Davis-related documents. She pushed back on criticism, saying Davis was a good person who wanted to end slavery on moral grounds but considered it necessary for the Southern economy.
Dix also said there’s documented evidence that Davis befriended a “man-servant” over cigars during a journey into the uncharted Midwest.
A history pamphlet at the First White House of the Confederacy echoes Dix’s sentiment.
“Jefferson Davis believed ‘the peculiar institution’ a temporary necessity in developing the cotton economy of the South on which New England textile industry depended,” their history pamphlet reads. It says Davis believed whites were preparing Africans for freedom by “submitting” them to Anglo-Saxon culture and Christianity.
This is what Davis said in his book
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter XXVI; published 1881,
The forefathers of these negro soldiers (enlisted by the Union army) were gathered from the torrid plains and malarial swamps of inhospitable Africa. Generally they were born the slaves of barbarian masters, untaught in all the useful arts and occupations, reared in heathen darkness, and, sold by heathen masters, they were transferred to shores enlightened by the rays of Christianity.
There, put to servitude, they were trained in the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and personal attachment secured faithful service to those to whom their service or labor was due. A strong mutual affection was the natural result of this life-long relation, a feeling best if not only understood by those who have grown from childhood under its influence.
Never was there happier dependence of labor and capital on each other.
The tempter came, like the serpent in Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word of "freedom."
Davis said that negroes were happy being slaves, and that they were content with their lot, i.e., they didn't need or want to be anything other than slaves. Meanwhile, freedom was a "magic word" that could only come from the Devil. By extension, the freedom that negroes did eventually receive must have been seen by Davis as satanic.
I don't see how it honors Davis to claim he said things that he himself did not believe to be true. You see this a lot: promoters of Southern heritage who soften or even hide the details of antebellum white southerners' pro-slavery and prejudiced views. As movies like
The Birth of a Nation illustrate, white Southerners of the era were only too happy to make these views known. The only conclusion as to why current heritage promoters do what they do, is that they're being PC because they fear the loss of financial support. But sooner or later, these antiseptic interpretations will be challenged, and they could lose the support they hope to keep.
- Alan