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At the unveiling of Jefferson Davis’ bronze figure in Statuary Hall, Hon. Pat Harrison spoke: “Few men in the history of the Nation rendered more signal service for the country in peace or in war than did Davis. He is not among strangers . . . Over there are clay, Webster, Benton, Cass and Calhoun, his idol, with whom he served in the Senate of the United States.”
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com
A Soldier and Statesman Who Served His State
An impressive scene was that in Statuary Hall of the Capitol at Washington, on June 2 [1931], when the State of Mississippi presented to the nation the bronze figure of her adopted son, Jefferson Davis, soldier and statesman.
As the cord holding the huge United States flag about the statue was drawn by Miss Adele Hayes-Davis, great grand-daughter of Jefferson Davis, another son of Mississippi, Hon. Pat Harrison, stepped to the front and delivered an eloquent tribute to the man who had served his State and nation in high places, yet had died without a country.
Fitting indeed that he should be now be known and recognized for that high service, as he has stood for long in the love and esteem of his people of the South, so now he stands in the Nation’s Valhalla of those who gave it greatest service. Of high character and blameless life, no more distinguished citizen of Mississippi could have been thus honored, and few there be who will feel but that Jefferson Davis has at last come into his own.
Commenting upon the feeling that would have been aroused by the placing of this statue in the Capitol some years back, the Boston Transcript concludes in a lengthy editorial: “The name of Jefferson Davis is justly revered in the South today, and there is no reason why it should not be honored in the North.”
In his address, Edgar S. Wilson, of Mississippi – who was a pallbearer at the Davis funeral in New Orleans – recounted scenes in the last days of Mr. Davis, “particularly when the Mississippi legislature called him before it to demonstrate to him the love and affection of the people of the State, although he walked among them a disenfranchised man.”
(In the Nation’s Capitol, Confederate Veteran Magazine, July 1931, excerpt, page 244)