Note 106 — Chapter XXXII · THE CONFEDERATE LOAN.

"Should it turn out that there has been a mistake, the announcement will be hailed with warm gratification,—not from any idle feeling of partisanship for the South, on the one hand, or the merely sordid consideration of the prospects of the bondholders on the other, but because there can be no question, whether his course be judged by Northerners or Southerners, that in his conduct of the existing war Mr. Jefferson Davis has displayed such qualities as to give the world an interest in wishing that the dishonorable classes who are to be found in every nation should not, either now or in the future, be able to point to him as an instance of the possibility of a heartless disregard of pecuniary rights being compatible with real greatness of character. It is to be apprehended, however, that the solution will not come in the manner contemplated. Nevertheless, in another way it is not out of reach, and the best probability is that the unhappy blot upon Mr. Davis's reputation was caused by the influence of an unscrupulous community upon a then young and aspiring politician, deriving his views, perhaps, from the sophistical perversions of fraudulent lawyers, and that he has since discovered his mistake, and learnt to feel and acknowledge that if he had again to act in the matter, it would be in a very different spirit."[106]