again from the hyatt starbux i hit ye

from today's writer's almanac:

It was on this day in 1861 that Jefferson Davis learned that he had been selected as the president of the new Confederate States of America. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Davis had been a senator for the state of Mississippi and in the lead up to the war he had traveled widely in the North and South urging compromise. Though he believed the constitution did give states the right to withdraw from the Union, he personally opposed secession and spoke out against it. But when Abraham Lincoln was elected president Davis knew that the Southern states would secede.

He didn't attend the Confederate Convention in Montgomery, Alabama, and so he was at home, pruning rose bushes with his wife on this day in 1861 when a messenger arrived to give him the news that he had been selected as the president of the new confederate states. His wife, Varina, later wrote that as he read the message his face grew pale. She said, "Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death."

aw, poor jeff.