On 7 November 1864, Confederate President Jefferson Davis gave a speech that unleashed howls of protest from Southern newspaper editors. In the speech, given to a joint session of the Confederate Congress, Davis proposed revising the country's conscription law to remove the exception of certain classes of professions, including newspaper editors and employees. To say that the Southern press received this proposal poorly is an understatement. Newspaper editors wrote editorial after editorial proclaiming Davis to be the worst sort of despot, and one editor even went so far as to proclaim that, if the South was to be ruled by a military despot, they would just as soon have Abraham Lincoln as Jefferson Davis. This paper examines editorial reaction to Davis' speech, with emphasis given to the response by Georgia newspapers.
Georgia papers are singled out as particularly worthy of interest because, at the time of Davis' speech, Gen. William T. Sherman's forces occupied Atlanta, and by the time reprints of the speech began appearing in the state's press, the infamous March to the Sea had begun. Newspapers facing such a crisis might be expected to support any measure that would provide relief, but this was not true of Georgia editors whose responses show most of them to be journalists first and Rebels second.
Last updated: November 24, 1997
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