Jefferson Davis's fairwell address compared to First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln.

Student Name Professor Name Course Date Jefferson Davis’s Fairwell Address Compared to First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln Jefferson Davis’s Farewell Address (1861) defends Mississippi’s decision to secede from the Union. As a representative of his State, Davis declared Mississippi’s separation, asserting that the State’s sovereign rights had been violated. His address focuses on the doctrine of secession as a legitimate means for States to protect their rights. He distinguishes secession from nullification, arguing that the former is a State’s ultimate remedy when faced with threats to its constitutional rights. Davis states, “It is by this confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a great man, whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to justify coercion against a seceded State” (2). Here, he references John C. Calhoun, whose nullification theory was based on maintaining the Union. In contrast, Davis’s secession theory was based on the belief that Mississippi’s rights, specifically regarding slavery, were under attack. Central to Davis’s speech is his justification of secession as an act of necessity. He contends that the North’s refusal to honor the South’s rights concerning slavery forced the Southern States to take drastic action. Davis claims, “It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision” (2). By aligning Mississippi’s actions with the founding fathers’ principles, Davis attempts to legitimize secession as a continuation of the struggle for self-determination. He frames Mississippi’s...