brought to my attention, and I have read with emotion the terms in which you are pleased to express the deep sorrow with which you regard the slaughter, ruin, and devastation consequent on the war now waged by the Government of the United States against the States and people over which I have been chosen to preside, and in which you direct them, and the clergy under their authority, to exhort the people and the rulers to the exercise of mutual charity and the love of peace. I as deeply sensible of the Christian charity and sympathy with which your Holiness has twice appealed to the venerable clergy of your church, urging them to use and apply all study and exertion for the restoration of peace and tranquillity.
I therefore deem it my duty to offer to your Holiness in my own name and in that of the people of the Confederate States the expression of our sincere and cordial appreciation of the Christian charity and love by which your Holiness is actuated, and to assure you that this people at whose hearthstones the enemy is now pressing with threats of dire oppression and merciless carnage are now and ever have been earnestly desirous that this wicked war shall cease; that we have offered at the footstool of Our Father who is in heaven prayers inspired by the same feeling which animated your Holiness; that we desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people; and that we be permitted to live at peace with all mankind under our own laws and institutions, which protect every man in the enjoyment not only of his temporal rights but of the freedom of worshiping God according to his own faith.
I therefore pray your Holiness to accept from me and from the people of these Confederate States this assurance of our sincere thanks for your effort to aid the cause of peace, and of our earnest wishes that your life may be prolonged and that God may have you in His holy keeping.
Jefferson Davis,
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America to A. Dudley Mann, greeting.
Reposing special trust and confidence in your prudence, integrity, and ability, I do appoint you, the said A. Dudley Mann, special envoy of the Confederate States of America, to proceed to the Holy See and to deliver to its most venerable chief, Pope Pius IX, sovereign pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, a communication which I have addressed to his Holiness under date of the twenty-third of this month. Given under my hand and the seal of the Confederate States of America at the city of Richmond, this 24th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.
[SEAL.]Jefferson Davis.
By the President:
J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State.
