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young man and an ambitious soldier, he refused President Folk's offer of a brigadier-generalship, because he thought the appointment ex- ceeded the president's constitutional power. He answered thus the solicitations of friends to send a force of men to protect his planta- tion and property in danger of seizure, ' ' The President of the Confed- eracy cannot afford to use public means to protect private interests."
His aide, Governor Lubbock, of Texas, said of him: " From the day I took service with him to the very 'moment we separated, sub- sequent to our capture, I witnessed his unselfishness. He forgot himself, and displayed more self-abnegation than any other human being I have ever known." One of the strongest traits of his char- acter was his aversion to receive gifts. He declined the beautiful home offered him by the people of this generous city. Over and over again he refused to receive gifts of money, even in his greatest extremities.
Mr. Davis' tenderness of heart was noticeable. On one occasion a commander of the United States forces in Missouri took nine Con- federate prisoners and hung them in infamous disregard of the laws of war. The people clamored loudly for retaliation in kind, and it was proposed in the very cabinet that an equal number of prisoners of war, then in Libby Prison, should be taken out and hanged. " I have not the heart," replied the man, afterwards accused of cruelty to prisoners, ' ' to take these innocent soldiers, taken in honorable warfare, and hang them like convicted criminals." His Attorney- General said of him: " I do not think I am a very cruel man, but I declare to you that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep Mr. Davis up to the measure of justice. He wanted to pardon everybody. If ever a wife or a mother or a sister got into his pres- ence it took but a little while for their tears to wash out the record."
MERCIFUL AND TENDER.
It is not necessary at this day, I take it, to defend Mr. Davis from the charge of cruelty to prisoners, any more than from the pictu- resque calumny of stealing Confederate gold, or even that slowly expiring libel that to escape capture he disguised himself as a woman. The man who could not bear to punish the guilty, never tortured the innocent; the man who refused private gifts never soiled his hands with public money; and the President of the Confederacy was never ridiculous. The mortality among Confederate prisoners of war in the North was over three per cent, greater than that of Union pris- oners in the South. ' ' The mortuary tables thus exhibiting a large
