The Sons of Confederate Veterans propose donating a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, calling it a gesture to “soothe some feelings” hurt by the installation of an Abraham Lincoln statue there several years ago. We ask the presidents their views on soothing feelings in this week’s Dixie throwdown: ÿ

“We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority,” Jefferson Davis in 1860, in the United States Senate in response to a speech by Senator William H. Seward.ÿ

“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal,” Lincoln in 1858, to a Chicago crowd during his race against Stephen A. Douglas for the United States Senate seat from Illinois.