Jefferson Davis

A passionate defender of slavery, Jefferson Davis was also an experienced military man, having graduated from West Point in 1828 and served with distinction in the Mexican War of 1846–48. As secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce during the mid-1850s, he proposed the capture and annexation of Cuba to the United States as an additional slave state. After the secession of his home state, Mississippi, Davis resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate. He won election as president of the newly founded Confederate States of America in February 1861.

Although the people of the South were firmly behind secession, Davis knew he had to make his case to the rest of the world and to history. In this crucial speech to the Confederate Congress, delivered on April 29, 1861, Davis recounts the many burdens placed on the Southern states...