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.”


“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.”


“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.”

Answer 1

“I would cling tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfillment of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for…” is my best guess since i have read the whole thing

Answer 2

The correct answer is “In the language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the Union as a great though not the greatest calamity.”. In the Speech to the State Legislature of Mississippi given by Jefferson Davis (1862), Davis mainly argues that Mississippi should separate from the Union. Mississippi was the state he represented in the United States Senate. Because of his love to this state, Davis strongly believed in this separation. That is why the quote cited above as a correct answer is the excerpt from Jefferson Davis’s speech to the Mississippi Legislature that best expresses a major theme of his speech. In fact, in the previous lines to the excerpt quoted above, David argues that “Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of Mississippi to be the last remedy—the final alternative.”, reassuring his position and the major theme of his speech.