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.