Question

Refer to Explorations in Literature for a complete version of this speech.

Which excerpt from Jefferson Davis’s speech to the Mississippi Legislature best expresses a major theme of his speech?

“…whenever a Northern army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own State…”

“In the language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the Union as a great though not the greatest calamity.”

“For many of the best years of my life I have followed that flag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have been claimed as my winding sheet.”

“Absurd as all this may seem to you… I have reason to believe that it has been inculcated to no small extent in the Northern mind.”

Answer 1

The excerpt that best expresses the theme in Jefferson Davis's speech is

A) “…whenever a Northern army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own State…”