uman breast tells us
nothing. History seems, as Napoleon said, a series of lies agreed upon,
yet not without dispute.

V

I read in an ultra-sectional non-partisan diatribe that "Jefferson Davis
made Aaron Burr respectable," a sentence which clearly indicates that
the writer knew nothing either of Jefferson Davis or Aaron Burr.

Both have been subjected to unmeasured abuse. They are variously
misunderstood. Their chief sin was failure; the one to establish an
impossible confederacy laid in human slavery, the other to achieve
certain vague schemes of empire in Mexico and the far Southwest, which,
if not visionary, were premature.

The final collapse of the Southern Confederacy can be laid at the door
of no man. It was doomed the day of its birth. The wonder is that sane
leaders could invoke such odds against them and that a sane people could
be induced to follow. The single glory of the South is that it was able
to stand out so long against such odds.

Jefferson Davis was a high-minded and well-intentioned man. He was
chosen to lead the South because he was, in addition, an accomplished
soldier. As one who consistently opposed him in his public policies, I
can specify no act to the discredit of his character, his one serious
mistake being his failure to secure the peace offered by Abraham Lincoln
two short months before Appomattox.

Taking account of their personalities and the lives they led, there
is little to suggest comparison, except that they were soldiers and
Senators, who, each in his day, filled a foremost place in public
affairs.

Aaron Burr, though well born and highly educated, was perhaps a
rudely-minded man. But he was no traitor. If the lovely woman, Theodosia
Prevost, whom he married, had lived, there is reason to believe that the
whole course and tenor of his career would have been altered. Her
death was an irreparable blow, as it were, a prelude to the series
of mischances that followed. The death of their daughter, the lovely
Theodosia Alston, completed the tragedy of his checkered life.

Born a gentleman and attaining soldierly distinction and high place,
he fell a victim to the lure of a soaring ambition and the devious
experience of a man about town.

The object of political proscription for all his intellectual and
personal resources, he could not successfully meet and stand against it.
There was nothing in the affair with Hamilton actually to damn and ruin
him. Neither morally no