Ex-President Fillmore read GW's Farewll Address in Buffalo
150 years ago today there were celebrations throughout the Union (including the Border States) to honor the 130th anniversary of George Washington’s birth. Many localities featured the public reading of Washington’s Farewell Address per a proclamation by President Lincoln. Part of the Washington’s Address:
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; …
On the other hand, in Richmond, Virginia Jefferson Davis delivered his inaugural address as the first elected president of the Confederacy. The South now considers its government permanent. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 24, 1862:
Site of President Davis' inaugural address
Inaugural Address of President Jefferson Davis,
delivered in Richmond, February 22, 1862.
Follow-Citizens On this, the birth-day of the man most identified with the establishment of American independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled to usher into existence the permanent Government of the Confederate States. Through the instrumentality, under the favor of Divine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles of our Revolutionary Fathers. The day, the memory’ and the purpose, seem fitly associated.
It is with mingled feelings of humility and pride that I appear to take, in the presence of the people and before high Heaven, the oath prescribed as a qualification for the exalted nation to which the unanimous voice of the people has called me. …
Fellow-citizens, after the struggles of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to Constitutional. Representative Government, our colonial ancestors were forced to vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned their efforts, and they provided for their posterity a peaceful remedy against future aggression.
Seal proclaims CSA - 150 years ago today: "God will vindicate"
The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious, and least responsible form of despotism has denied us both the right and the remedy; therefore, we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of Constitutional liberty. At the darkest hour of our struggle the Provisional gives place to the Permanent Government. After a series of successes and victories, which covered our arms with glory, we have recently met with serious disasters.–But in the heart of a people resolved to be free, these disasters tend but to stimulate to increased resistance.
To show ourselves worthy of the inheritance bequeathed to us by the patriots of the Revolution, we must emulate that heroic devotion which made reverse to them but the crucible in which their patriotism was refluxed. [Applause.] …
He had to spend some time in Yankeedom
