Southern History Series: Jefferson Davis’s Exile In Canada

“We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandisement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us, should not now attempt our subjugation by arms.”

– President Jefferson Davis, April 29, 1861

The Union cause in the War Between the States was received with much more skepticism across the West at the time than it is presented today as a noble abolitionist crusade to liberate the poor suffering blacks by mythmaking Northern historians. We’ve already seen how the French came to regret their decision not to intervene in the war on the side of the Confederacy.

By the time of the Lincoln administration, Mexico had already lost half of its national territory to the United States. The French under Napoleon had parted ways with Louisiana. Britain had been bullied out of half of Oregon. Japan had been “opened” by the U.S. Navy. Spain had been bullied out of Florida and Latin America by the independence movements which had been enthusiastically supported by Americans. It would later be bullied out of the rest of its empire in the Spanish-American War.

Foreigners had good reasons to fear the ascendant Yankee Empire and its twin doctrines of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. After it finished off the Confederacy in 1865, the Union Army redeployed to the Great Plains to crush the Plains Indians for the railroad corporations. The Russians threw in the towel and sold Alaska to the United States. President Grant nearly succeeded in annexing the Dominican Republic. Hawaii was conquered and annexed to the United States.

We created Panama by splitting it off from Colombia. We occupied Haiti and took Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain. The defeat of the Confederacy in the War Between the States led to the American Empire being unchecked by any other great power in the Western hemisphere and soon it stretched its tentacles across all of Latin America and the Caribbean and into the Philippines and China in the eastern Pacific. From the South to the Caribbean to the Pacific and ultimately to Western Europe, the American Empire spread its wings through war under the cloak of moral hypocrisy.

No country was more worried about American expansionism than the Dominion of Canada which was created in July of 1867. It was the ultimate irony that Canada, which had stuck to the British Empire in 1776, took its first big step toward nationhood at exactly the same time that the Confederacy lost its independence and the South returned to colonial status in the American Empire.

The following excerpt comes from Adam Mayers’ book Dixie & The Dominion: Canada, The Confederacy and the War for the Union:

“The slap of the Champion‘s paddle wheels was heard long before she was seen, though the steamer eventually slid out of the Lake Ontario fog at about 10:45 AM on May 30, 1867. As she drew alongside Milloy’s Wharf in Toronto’s harbour, thousands of people – Southern exiles, the curious, and prominent local citizens alike – waited in anxious agitation.

The papers that day were full of the news that Queen Victoria had given royal assent to the British North America Act. It meant that on July 1 the clutch of five colonies that made up Britain’s possessions on the continent would be forged into a new nation called the Dominion of Canada. But the papers had been full of Confederation news for months. A far more spectacular, but unpublished, piece of news had brought a crowd of a thousand or more to the waterfront – a Confederate of a different sort. As the Champion drew alongside the wharf, the crowd watched for a glimpse of a celebrated stranger on board.

The rumour had spread through Toronto that Jefferson Davis, President of the late Confederate States of America, would be among the passengers. The papers had closely followed Davis’s release from prison a few days earlier and his journey by train through Washington to New York and from there Montreal, where his family had lived for the past two years. Now Davis was coming to Toronto on a mission he would later tell General Robert E. Lee probably saved his life.

As the Champion hove to, her great paddle wheels fell silent and Davis appeared on deck. He walked slowly, with the help of a cane. His jacket and trousers were black and his coat collar was turned up against the chill. On one side stood the massive athletic figure of James Mason, a one-time U.S. senator from Virginia and the late Confederacy’s ambassador to Great Britain. On the other stood Major Charles Helm, former Confederate consul in Havana.

For some, the sight of Davis’s frail and emaciated frame was a shock. Lieutenant-Colonel George T. Denison, a Canadian officer and Southern sympathizer, stared in disbelief at the change prison and defeat had wrought on Davis. “I was so astonished that I said to a friend near me: “They have killed him.” Denison wrote in his memoirs.

Denison scrambled to the top of a pile of coal and began to cheer. The crowd took up his cry as Davis moved carefully down the wharf. Davis seemed stunned by the reception and paused to shake outstretched hands. The papers reported next day that clutching his hat and bowing repeatedly, Davis said again and again, “Thank you, thank you, you are very kind to me.”

The press of people was so thick that police were forced to clear a way to a waiting carriage. From the wharf, it was a short ride to Helm’s home, where the party rested. About two hours later they boarded the Rothesay Castle and resumed their voyage to the small town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. As the party walked up a hill from the wharf, Davis turned and for a moment stared at Fort Niagara, New York, where an oversized Stars and Stripes fluttered in the evening breeze.

“Look there Mason,” he said, “there is the grid iron we have been fried on.”

After dinner, the local band came to the brick cottage where Mason lived. The band struck up “Dixie” and Davis came out onto the verandah. There was a brief applause and then silence.

“I thank you for the honor you have shown me,” he said. “May peace and prosperity be forever the blessing of Canada, for she has been the asylum of many of my friends, as she is now an asylum for myself … May God bless you all.”

It was a rousing start to an extraordinary five-month Canadian visit, a journey that allowed Davis to restore physical and mental equilibrium after four years of civil war and two more of prison. When Davis arrived in Canada his nerves were so frayed, ordinary sounds tormented him. The voices of people “sounded like trumpets in his ears,” his wife, Varina, later wrote in his memoirs.

In the United States, the railway coach Davis traveled in had been pelted with rotten fruit and crowds had jeered as he passed. In Canada, he was hailed as a tragic, even noble, fallen hero. …”

The Americans had declared to the world in the American Revolution that they were fighting for the principle of self government. Yankees had invaded Canada twice though only to be repulsed – first during the American Revolution, second during the War of 1812. The Fenian Raids by Irish Republicans which were going on at this time also put Canada on edge.

Wasn’t it the Confederates though who were practicing the American theory of government by exercising their sovereign right to withdraw their consent and dissolve their ties with Washington? Hadn’t the Americans rebelled against the British Empire to establish this doctrine? Hadn’t the Americans also fought to preserve slavery in the American Revolution? That’s how the issue was seen in Canada and elsewhere in the world who followed the course of the War Between the States and observed how abolition was enacted as a mere desperate war measure by the Lincoln administration.

Jefferson Davis was on hand that summer to observe the British devolve nationhood on Canada while the same principle had been repudiated in the United States. The disturbers of the peace of the world never looked back and from that moment forward embarked on the course of empire that has exhausted the country and entangled us in every conflict in the entire world:

“And it is with these people that our fathers formed a union and a solemn compact. There is indeed a difference between the two peoples. Let no man hug the delusion that there can be renewed association between them. Our enemies are a traditionless and a homeless race; from the time of Cromwell to the present moment they have been disturbers of the peace of the world. Gathered together by Cromwell from the bogs and fens of the North of Ireland and of England, they commenced by disturbing the peace of their own country; they disturbed Holland, to which they fled, and they disturbed England on their return. They persecuted Catholics in England, and they hung Quakers and witches in America. Having been hurried into a war with a people so devoid of every mark of civilization you have no doubt wondered that I have not carried out the policy, which I had intended should be our policy, of fighting our battles on the fields of the enemy instead of suffering him to fight them on ours. This was not the result of my will, but of the power of the enemy. They had at their command all the accumulated wealth of seventy years- -the military stores which had been laid up during that time. They had grown rich from the taxes wrung from you for the establishing and supporting their manufacturing institutions. We have entered upon a conflict with a nation contiguous to us in territory, and vastly superior to us in numbers. …”

It could have been different.

What if we had won in 1865?

What if we had stuck to agrarianism and avoided the Great Wave of Jewish immigration that overwhelmed the North? What if we had stayed out of the World Wars of the 20th century? What if men like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were remembered as the Founding Fathers?

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

9 Comments

  1. You are misrepresenting history, Mr Wallace. American politics from the period of the Revolution until 1860 was dominated by southerners. 11 out of the first 17 presidents were southern born and it was under their administration “Yankee empire” rapidly expanded. Louisiana purchase, 1812 war, annexation of Florida and Texas, Mexican war all happened under southern presidents. The invasion of Canada was attempted by a southern general. The 1812 war was unpopular in New England which briefly considered seceding from the Union.

    It was through their own arrogance and foolishness that southern leaders instigated a war with Northern states and ultimately lost control in 1860.

    Southerners have been supporting every aggression of US and southern white trash has eagerly enlisted to fight in every foreign war it waged. Woodrow Wilson was a southerner and a warmonger and it was he who led the US into WWI and created New World Order. Even today southern politicians are the whores of Neocon pimps, southern white trash are the attack dogs of Zionist war machine and southern “Christians” are the slaves and worshippers of Kikes. If Blumpf today bombs Iran, his biggest cheerleaders will be southerners.

    So you see, southerners cannot claim moral high ground over Yankees. They have done as much damage to our race and civilisation as Yankees if not more. And no matter what ‘neocon’federates say ‘South’ will not rise again and will just have
    niggerized future like the rest of the US.

    • @Myssk

      “It was through their own arrogance and foolishness that southern leaders instigated a war with the Northern states and ultimately lost control in 1860.”

      Northern Partisans gloss over or ignore the fact that by 1856, two private guerilla armies, raised in the North and supported by the state governments of several Northern states, were conducting combat operations against the citizens and government of the state of Missouri. And against the Territory of Kansas.

      They were also suspected of causing widespread fires and several suspicious murders in North Texas. Which is mentioned, along with Missouri and Kansas, specifically, as one of the causes of Texas Secession.

  2. Much of that has been covered in previous articles.

    The South was expansionist. It’s idea of expansion was annexing contiguous territories and spreading slavery. Generally, it wasn’t interested in going to war for the sake of access to foreign markets.

    Even still, there was an anti-war streak in the South. John C. Calhoun had opposed the Mexican War. The South became more anti-war and anti-expansionist in the late 19th century. We opposed the annexation of Hawaii and the annexation of Cuba.

    In the 20th century, it is true that the South became addicted to federal military spending. The Midwest was more opposed to WW1 and WW2 against Germany for obvious reasons. I’ve also written at length about the concept of the Golden Circle.

    If the Confederacy had won its independence, it wouldn’t have been expansionist though. It would have been allied to Britain and France and concerned about its own border with the United States. Southerners boasted about expanding into Mexico and the Caribbean, but the reality was the South had given that up for independence.

    • I agree if the Confederacy had won independence everything changes. The USA and the CSA would have kept each other too busy to think about foreign wars.

    • Yes, splitting the land area, regardless of the specific merits or demerits of the separate parts thus created, would have prevented most of the overseas adventurism. With two countries, it’s quite possible that the west coast might have ended up as a third, to boot.

      Also, neither of the halves would have had the raw resources and manpower to become the “arsenal of (((democracy))).” Nationalists would likely have won out in Europe. The Germans might have broken the Soviet Union before it could participate in the ruin of the West.

      Split this country back in the 19th century and the whole thing changes.

      It’s so bad right now that any alternative would almost have to be better by default.

    • I read that the “Golden Circle” was the idea of expanding a Southern slave empire into Latin America. I think that’s what the South, flush with victory, would have done if Stonewall Jackson had lived and there’d been no Pickett’s Charge. The White world was all about empire-building and conquest back then: the “Scramble for Africa” and all that by Britain, France, and other European powers. Imperial Russia’s eastward expansion.

      Then again, without a decisive, comprehensive Northern defeat and “Reconstruction”, the war would probably have been renewed down the line.

  3. I definitely wished the southern separatists would have defeated the Americans. Anything that weakens the Evil Empire is good for the rest of the world. If Americans believed in freedom then after they freed the slaves and took them up north to care for they then should have given the South their independence. And I just know yankees wish for more dark ones to baby sit.

    The current USA is a threat to humanity with non stop wars and an attitude that the world is an American planet. This alone makes me wish for a different outcome on the war. Also, the southern colonies joined the Union and were part of the rulers. Therefore if they wished out then so be it. Unless one believes that the USA is the Mafia. Once in never out.

  4. It is the globalists that are the true cancer. “Refugees” and “hardworking migrants” aren’t being shipped into the first world from the third because the peasantry was asking for Somalis and Salvadorans to grace us with their low-IQ, healthcare and educational system-destroying presence. We also didn’t ask to spend all the safety-net dollars necessary to house and feed them. This is not being done for the benefit of anyone not named Koch or Soros. Globalists are in every country of people of European descent. Is the best way to stop them to withdraw into our own enclaves, where we can quietly turn away their diseased “gifts”?

  5. [[Hunter, I don’t know what I did to jumble up the previous post. Here is an intelligible version]]]

    Thanks, Hunter, that was an inspiring post!

    I think Myssk is wrong about the Confederacy being aggressive. Davis’ quote-

    —–Our enemies are a traditionless and a homeless race; from the time of Cromwell to the present moment they have been disturbers of the peace of the world.——

    — reflects the sentiments of a people that loves ITS land and traditions and simply wants to be left alone.

    I see two major shifts which probably would have occurred…had we won…

    1. Foreign policy: The confederacy would have allied with Maximillian of Mexico (as did Jo Shelby) and would have successfully cut off Republican aid and destroyed Juarez and his secularists (dare I say freemasons?)

    2. At home: Thousands of black confederate veterans would have been emancipated and those patriots and their families would have become the black ‘aristocracy’. (instead of the unpatriotic demagogues which the Republicans installed) There would have been no sudden emancipation which left millions of slaves wandering about with no jobs, no homes, no food, no clothing, no health care, sick and dying. Our heroes, Davis, Lee, Beauregard, Longstreet et.al. were soft-hearted men when it came to slaves. (Sorry to all you who were hoping to push blacks into the Gulf of Mexico) There might have come a slow, general emancipation, but nothing that would threaten the lives and livelihood of millions of southerners.

    No KKK. (sorry to all you wannabees) Blacks were neither imprisoned nor lynched in the Antebellum South. Those were ‘white privileges’. Antebellum Dixie had achieved bi-racial harmony which has never been seen again anywhere in the world. This likely would have continued had the South won. Without reconstruction and without victorious Republicans wielding US Colored Troops against disenfranchised southern whites, with no whites angered by black betrayal, there would have been nothing to incite the race war we’ve had simmering for 160 years.

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