On February 18, 1861, after being elected president by the Confederate Congress, Jefferson Finis Davis gave his first inaugural address at the Alabama State Capital building in Montgomery, Alabama, three weeks before President Abraham Lincoln gave his first inaugural address.
During President Davis’s first inaugural address he stated:
“The declared purpose of the compact of Union from which we have withdrawn was ‘to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;’ and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established,”
Author’s Note:
In 1862, Jefferson Finis Davis was elected President by a democratic vote and gave a second inaugural address on February 22, 1862.
Hamilton Historical Records 