© 2024 Texas Public Radio
Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
00000174-b11b-ddc3-a1fc-bfdbb1a20000The Schreiner University Department of History is honoring the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War with a series of short vignettes focusing on events from 1861 through 1865. The Civil War was the most destructive conflict in American history, but it was also one of our most defining moments as a people and as a nation. Let us know what you think about "This Week in the Civil War." E-mail your comments to Dr. John Huddleston at jhuddles@schreiner.edu.Airs: Weekdays at 5:19 a.m., 8:19 a.m., 4:19 p.m. on KTXI and 4:49 a.m., 9:29 p.m. on KSTX.

This Week in the Civil War - 725

During the war, both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis had their detractors.  Jefferson Davis in particular had strong political rivals, who by the end of 1863 included his vice president, Alexander Stephens of Georgia. 

However, in the Confederate Congress, perhaps no man more bitterly opposed Jefferson Davis than Representative Henry S. Foote, who had defeated Davis for the l85l Mississippi gubernatorial post and now represented Tennessee in the Confederate Congress. 

In an address before that body on Tuesday, December 8, 1863 Foote viciously attacked Davis’ military and civil policies. So disillusioned was Foote that in early January 1864 he decided to go to Washington to sue for peace.  Arrested, he then would go to Canada and subsequently to England from where he would urge his constituents to secede from the Confederacy.