tire inland waters of North Carolina, Port
Royal, South Carolina, Florida's line has been broken. Grant's army is
swarming into Tennessee. McClellan is drilling three hundred thousand
men in Washington to descend on Richmond. It's no time to nurse such
reptiles in our bosom--"

"I can't play the petty tyrant--"

"They'll sting you to death--I warn you--no administration on earth can
live in times of war and endure such infamous abuse as these
conspirators are now heaping on your head. And mark you--they have only
begun. The junta of disgruntled generals which they have organized will
strangle the cause of the South unless you grip the situation to-day
with a hand of steel. They are laying their plans in the new Congress to
paralyze your work and heap on your head the scorn of the world."

The President moved with a gesture of impatience.

"I've told you, Benjamin, that I will not suppress these papers nor sign
your order for the arrest of the editors. I am leading the cause of a
great people to preserve Constitutional liberty. Freedom of speech is
one of their rights--"

"In times of peace, yes--but not in the crisis of war when the tongue of
a fool may betray the lives of millions. I am not here merely to ask you
to suppress these three treacherous rags--I'm here to ask a bigger and
far more important thing. I want you to stop this inaugural ceremony
to-day--"

Davis rose with a quick excited movement.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. Stop in time. We inaugurated a Provisional Government
at Montgomery to last one year. Why one year? Because we believed the
war would be over before that year expired. It would have been madness
to provide for the establishment of the elaborate and clumsy forms of a
Constitutional Government during the progress of war. Why set up a
Constitution until you have won by the sword the power to maintain it?"

"But," Davis interrupted, "if we delay the adoption of a Constitution we
confess to the world our want of confidence in the success of our cause.
Such a permanent Constitution will be to our people the supreme sign of
faith--"

"With these jackals and hyenas of the press yelping and snarling and
snapping at your heels? These men will destroy the faith of our best men
and women if you only allow them to repeat their lies often enough. They
will believe them at last, themselves. You have the confidence to-day of
the whole South. Your bitterest enemy could not name a candid