d his final allegiance to his State and his section.
After a cadetship at West Point and a brief term of military service, he
lived for eight years, 1837-45, on a Mississippi plantation, in joint
ownership and control with an older brother. In these early years, and
in the seclusion of a plantation, his theories crystallized and his
mental habits grew. The circumstances of such life fostered in Southern
politicians the tendency to logical and symmetrical theories, to which
they tenaciously held, unmodified by the regard for experience which is
bred from free and various contact with the large world of affairs.
Davis fully accepted the theory of State sovereignty which won general
favor in the South. In this view the States were independent powers,
which had formed with each other by the Constitution a compact, a
business arrangement, a kind of limited partnership. If the compact was
broken in any of its articles, or if its working proved at any time to
be unsatisfactory and injurious, the partners could withdraw at will.
This theory found more or less support among the various utterances and
practices of the framers of the Constitution and founders of the
government. In truth, they had as a body no consistent and exact theory
of the Federal bond. Later circumstances led their descendants to
incline to a stronger or a looser tie, according to their different
interests and sentiments. The institution of slavery so strongly
differentiated the Southern communities from their Northern neighbors,
that they naturally magnified their local rights and favored the view
which justified them in the last resort in renouncing the authority of
the Union if it should come to be exercised against their industrial
system. State sovereignty was the creed, and the slavery interest was
the motive.

To a man living like Davis on his own plantation, the relation of master
and slave seemed a fundamental condition of the social order. Not only
his livelihood rested on it, but through this relation his practical
faculties found their field; his conscience was exercised in the right
management and care of his slaves; there was a true sentiment of
protection on his side and loyalty on theirs. His neighbors and friends
were situated like himself. The incidental mischiefs of the system, the
abuses by bad masters, the ignorance and low morality of the
slaves,--these things they regarded, let us say, as an upright and
benevolent manufacturer to-day re