" Thus, the address stresses in its intentions, the political and economic reasons for secession, as Davis is concerned that the Confederacy is still able to trade with other nations and conduct diplomatic relations. "An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit." The implications are as thus -- Davis clearly wished to create and maintain trade relations for the confederacy with the nations of the world, for vital economic reasons and also to create legitimacy for the new regime. He did not wish the Southern states' traditional trading powers to consider them mere upstart revolutionary powers in their new formations. Davis' was in the uncomfortable position, however, of justifying a regime based upon states rights, and yet having to govern this regime as a unifying, chief executive. He needed to provide a unifying history for the new Confederacy. He justified the Confederacy's existence based upon the history of the American past, stating that states rights and the Confederate philosophy were the true legacy of the Founding Father's Declaration of Independence from the control of Great Britain, despite the fact...
Other than a tacit reference to the need for agricultural sustenance, Davis clearly made a conscious effort to downplay this in his address. Instead, he used the doctrine of states rights and the right of individuals to self-determination and self-governance to create a more positive and internationally popular view of the regime, even if a stirring defense of slavery may have played better to the local Southern crowds listening to his speech. In this Davis wished to speak as a statesman of international legitimacy, evidently, as well as a defender of the agricultural system of oppression and racial divisions of the South.
Second Reconstructions One of the most dramatic consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction was that the South was effectively driven from national power for roughly six decades. Southerners no longer claimed the presidency, wielded much power on the Supreme Court, or made their influence strongly felt in Congress But beginning in the 1930s, the South was able to flex more and more political muscle, and by the 1970s some
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