ALS, one page, lightly-lined, 6 x 9.5, January 27, 1883. Letter to Mrs. Crawford, the daughter of an old friend of Davis’s. In part: “Though you are far away from our beloved Mississippi, the land of your nativity, I am sure you are not unmindful of her and rejoice with us that she is emerging from the pall of disaster which so heavily enshrouded her for many years after her gallant but unsuccessful effort to maintain her constitutional rights.” Davis believed that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union. He counseled delay among his fellow Southerners, however, because he did not think that the North would permit the peaceable exercise of the right to secede. Mississippi was the second state to declare secession from the Union, on January 9, 1861. In February, it joined with six other Cotton States to form the Confederate States of America. A former senator from Mississippi, Davis was elected to the U. S. Senate again in 1875, but was refused the office, having been barred from Federal office by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He continued to counsel the South to recover its wasted resources and maintain its principles. Secession, he frankly admitted, to be no more possible, but he remained to the last an unyielding opposer of power centralized in the Federal government. In very good condition, with uniform overall toning, some scattered light foxing, and light damp staining to right edge, lightly affecting the last words of several lines of text.
RRAuction COA.
