In the midst of their domestic life, both happy and sad, the Davises led an active social life. Friends like President Pierce and James Guthrie visited often, and the Davises developed new friendships, as with New York senator William Henry Seward, who entered their circle by braving a snowstorm in his sleigh to deliver a nurse during an illness of Varina’s. Family members also appeared in the capital. Varina’s mother came after Samuel’s death and before her namesake’s birth, staying several months. In the late summer of 1856, Joseph arrived with his wife and daughter. His visit underscored his reconciliation with Jefferson, the brothers having gotten past the difficulties that had divided them since 1852. Joseph was especially pleased with his new niece, making a fuss over her and giving her $60 in gold.56
Beyond good friends and family, Secretary and Mrs. Davis kept a calendar filled with receptions and dinners. Diplomatic affairs introduced them to a variety of people from the papal legate to a delegation of Japanese princes, in Washington following the initial contact between the United States and Japan. Varina hosted dinners for members of Congress and for bureau chiefs and other senior officers; “General’s dinners,” she called them. Proud of her skills as a hostess and the success of her parties, she told her mother that she was “universally acknowledged to give the finest dinners in Washington, with the most elegant decorations.”57
As during her previous residences in Washington, Varina especially enjoyed the company of the sophisticated people she met. This woman whom a close female friend called “funny & smart” relished the environment of the capital city, so different from the world of Davis Bend and Warren County. She played the observer with men like the selfconsciously intellectual senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner. She reported that he liked to talk with southern ladies, in whose presence he said nothing about his strident antislavery views. Instead, he prepared setpieces on various topics like Demosthenes, Platonian theory, or lace. She recollected one occasion when he gave her “an interesting résumé of the history of dancing.” She was really impressed, however, when with her husband she conversed at length with eminent scientists attending conferences in Washington. Because of Jefferson’s longtime interest in the Smithsonian Institution, the Davises often saw its director, Professor Joseph Henry, whom Varina thought “a most attractive man, whose wisdom made his ‘face to shine.’ ” Other encounters that excited her involved the eminent Louis Agassiz of Harvard and John LeConte, the noted geologist from Georgia.58
Books retained their place of consequence in the Davis household. From the Library of Congress, Jefferson borrowed historical and literary titles covering a broad range of topics. As always, Shakespeare was on a list that also included the Roman writer Apuleius, the seventeenth-century Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and the popular contemporary British novelist Maria Edgeworth. The first description of Ceylon in English, by Robert Knox, caught the Davises’ attention, as did the diaries and correspondence of the British diplomat James Harris (1746—1820), first Earl of Malmesbury.59
Whether reading or participating in an active social life, Jefferson Davis never lost sight of the main business of a man who identified himself as a “politician.” Early in his secretaryship he established a visible political connection between himself and the president he served. In July 1853 President Pierce traveled to New York City to attend the Exhibition of All Nations, taking with him three cabinet officers, Cushing, Guthrie, and Jefferson Davis. Making public appearances along the way, the presidential party reached New York City on the fourteenth.60
At each stop, from Wilmington, Delaware, through Philadelphia, Trenton, Princeton, and Newark, as well as in New York City, Davis made a brief address. In addition to praising President Pierce, he sounded the same themes in all his remarks. He gloried in his American citizenship and declared his pride in marching under the flag, “loved as the insignia of our States united.” Strict construction as the foundation for the band of Union among equals was his watchword, for, as he told listeners in Trenton, “on fraternity our Union was founded.” He also proudly pointed to American success with what he called “the useful sciences.” Asserting that energy and science underlay national destiny, he announced, “We are on our way to American industry and inventive genius compared with that of the Old World—to see the progress of American mind in its contest with matter.”
Everywhere Davis revealed a deft political touch, making sure he forged a link with each audience. In Wilmington, he praised Delaware for its role in creating and maintaining the Union. In the three New Jersey stops, he reminded his hearers of their state’s heroism in the Revolution and lauded the New Jersey plan, which he said provided for the equality of states in the United States Senate. The glorious future he foresaw was central in Philadelphia and New York City; he noted that Pennsylvania coal and iron and New York trade would be critical in the certain American conquest of the West.61
Davis also made his presence felt in a quite different political arena. For professional politicians, access to patronage was absolutely critical—patronage meant rewarding labor and loyalty, and its dispensation also enabled a politician to demonstrate his power and influence. States’ rights politicians across the South perceived Davis as their conduit to patronage for their partisans. Davis took this responsibility seriously, working on behalf of his political friends and curbing the power of southern Democrats who had been active in Union parties. Eager for a strong southern man to become minister to France in order to assist the hoped-for acquisition of Cuba, Davis strove successfully to get the appointment for John Y. Mason of Virginia. The creation in 1855 of four new army regiments placed him at the center of patronage decisions, working closely with Congress and the president. Of course, the distribution of federal jobs in Mississippi always occupied much of his attention. When in 1856 he informed a former Louisiana congressman he had but little influence in securing official posts for his friends, Davis clearly dissembled. Throughout his tenure in the cabinet, he wielded considerable authority over patronage decisions both within and without his department.62
As a central figure in the Pierce cabinet, Davis was directly involved in major policy matters apart from his duties as secretary of war. As a result, his hand was evident in both the leading foreign policy initiative and the most important domestic issue of the administration. Pierce and his advisers shared an ardent desire to reach a goal that had eluded administrations for decades—the acquisition of Spanish-owned Cuba, the Pearl of the Antilles. The same vision of Manifest Destiny that had propelled the United States to the Pacific Ocean led expansionist-minded Americans to covet Cuba. Some underscored its strategic location as making its annexation essential; many southerners saw it as a perfect new slave state, for slavery already existed on the island.63
Davis held both views, and, indeed, believed possession of Cuba imperative for the South. That belief underlay his desire to place a southern man in the Paris embassy. When Pierce named John Mason to the post, he matched his choices for the other two crucial European capitals, each with Davis’s enthusiastic approval. To London he sent the strongly pro-southern James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, and to Madrid, the zealous, volatile Pierre Soulé of Louisiana.64
The administration tried to keep open all options for obtaining the prize. It always considered purchase, just as it continuously hoped revolt against Spanish rule would place Cuba in its hands. Even the use of armed force was not ruled out. The president also received pressure from groups wanting to mount privately sponsored attacks on the island from the United States. Never consistent in its approach, the administration sometimes followed one avenue, then another, and occasionally almost all at once.
Despite his genuine desire and considerable exertions, President Pierce failed to obtain Cuba. Perhaps his best chance came in the spring of 1854, when Spanish authorities in Cuba confiscated the cargo of an American merchant ship. Attempting to build on the national outrage caused by the seizure, Pierce requested Congress to adopt provisiona
l measures as the emergency demanded. Congress, however, did not respond promptly. Subsequent attempts to buy the island or to intimidate Spain were poorly handled, and eventually unsuccessful. Growing sectional opposition in Congress to what many northerners perceived as a strategy to expand slavery helped immensely in dooming Pierce’s hopes. And after mid-1854 no chance remained for a congressional majority on any initiative marked as a southern measure.
Although the Pierce administration would win no accolades for its particularly inept Cuban diplomacy, Davis ardently defended its actions. On the stump he argued that the administration had “done all in its power to accomplish so desirable an object.” He blamed the failure to acquire the island on Congress for refusing at critical moments to back the president.65
While Jefferson Davis took a forthright stand on Cuba, his position was not so clear-cut on filibustering, the efforts by certain Americans to employ privately raised and financed forces and set off from the United States to take various parts of Mexico and Central America as well as Cuba. Filibustering and filibusters were not new to Davis. His fellow Mississippian John A. Quitman stood in the forefront of those striving to prepare an expedition against Cuba. Moreover, strong pro-filibustering sentiment ran through Mississippi. In public speeches Davis spoke in favor both of the basic concept and of specific filibustering expeditions.66
But filibusters and their most fervent advocates expressed serious doubts about Davis’s fidelity to their cause. They suspected that in 1854 he had been instrumental in preparing a presidential proclamation enforcing the Neutrality Laws which really blocked Quitman’s enterprise. This was the point at which Pierce decided to turn away from violence and seek instead a negotiated purchase. Although the record is incomplete on this matter, Davis was surely privy to the innermost deliberations on Cuban policy, and he certainly never denounced the proclamation that so incensed the filibusters.67
While it is impossible to ascertain precisely Davis’s position on filibustering, no doubt exists about his role in President Pierce’s most fateful decision—one of the most momentous in all of American history—to back the proposed Kansas-Nebraska bill. In its beginnings Kansas-Nebraska had nothing to do with sectional politics or slavery. Its originator, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, was a great proponent of development, and by the early 1850s settlement had reached the western borders of Iowa and Missouri. As Douglas viewed the situation, the logical step was to organize officially the adjacent Nebraska Territory. Otherwise, settlers could not keep on following the horizon. Moreover, the possibility of transcontinental railroads underscored the need for congressional action because a central route could run through Nebraska. A Nebraska bill made it through the House at the close of the Thirty-second Congress, but failed in the Senate. When the Thirty-third Congress convened in December 1853, Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, came forward with another Nebraska measure.68
It was at this juncture that sectional politics consumed Douglas’s plans. He recognized that to win passage he needed southern backing, which he had not gotten when the Senate had earlier rejected organizing Nebraska. Obtaining those votes meant he would have to find a way to permit the possibility of slavery in the new territory. As it stood, the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in Nebraska because the entire territory lay north of 36°30′. To get past that restriction, Douglas fastened on the Democratic doctrine of popular sovereignty, which had been employed in the Compromise of 1850 and promulgated in the Democratic platform of 1852. In turning to popular sovereignty, Douglas actually copied language from a Compromise bill. Even so, he did not propose the overt repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
For southerners, Douglas did not go far enough. Political rivalry between southern Whigs and southern Democrats, along with the desire of the latter to stamp their authority on their party, underlay the demand that Douglas include open repeal. Southern Democrats perceived nothing radical in their requirement; both the hailed Compromise of 1850 and their own party platform embraced popular sovereignty. To the southerners those endorsements signified the Missouri Compromise had already been superseded in law and in party doctrine. Douglas readily accepted the southern conditions. He was totally committed to popular sovereignty; and besides, expansion and development, not slavery, was paramount to him.
No evidence places Jefferson Davis in any of these discussions, though the prospect of overturning the Missouri Compromise surely pleased him, for he had long thought it unconstitutional. Finally, on Saturday, January 21, 1854, Douglas had the repeal inserted in his measure, which also created two territories, Nebraska bordering free Iowa and Kansas next to slave Missouri. But because this new version did abrogate the Missouri Compromise, Douglas wanted presidential approval before he introduced it in Congress. Timing was a problem, however. Douglas was not ready until Saturday night, and because of the congressional calendar he had to present his bill on Monday morning or face delay. The difficulty confronted by Douglas had to do with the president, who did not usually transact business on Sunday.
On Sunday morning Douglas appeared with a group of southern Democratic senators and congressmen at Jefferson Davis’s door. They wanted Davis to get them an audience with President Pierce, even on Sunday. The southerners saw Davis as their champion in the cabinet, and all knew of the closeness between him and the president. Initially Davis demurred, telling his callers they were either a day early or a day late. But after hearing Douglas’s case for the necessity of immediate action, Davis went with them to the White House. There, Davis had a private meeting with Pierce, explaining to him the purpose of the visit. Then the president agreed to see the waiting solons. Their argument persuaded him to accept this draft of the bill, which voided the Missouri Compromise and called for two territories. In so doing, Pierce changed his mind, for just the day before he had indicated his unwillingness to broach directly any Missouri repeal. In that cabinet meeting only Davis and one other had spoken for the direct approach. True, Pierce did not find reconsideration difficult, for his new stance placed him squarely on his party’s campaign platform, and he did have doubts about the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise line. Douglas had a further concern: Pierce’s reputation for being swayed by whoever spoke to him last. Thus, Douglas got the president to write out the statement on repeal that would go into the bill. With President Pierce’s endorsement, Kansas-Nebraska became an administration measure.69
That Monday, Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the congressional contest commenced. In the Senate, Democratic predominance made for relatively easy passage, by 37 to 14 on March 3. In the House, the battle was hot. Strenuous opposition led by northern Whigs joined by numerous northern Democrats put the outcome in doubt. In that chamber only the president’s exercise of the full force and influence of his office enabled the advocates of Kansas-Nebraska to prevail. Jefferson Davis took an active part in the administration’s campaign, communicating ideas on legislative strategy to congressional leaders. At last, on May 22, the House gave its approval by the narrow margin of 113 to 100, with half the northern Democrats opposing their president. Eight days later Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law. He and the southerners had triumphed, but at the enormously high cost of splitting the Democratic party.70
President Pierce’s signature on the legislation did not end the trouble over Kansas-Nebraska. In a fundamental sense it was only beginning, for during the next two years the more southerly territory, Kansas, became at the same time a microcosm of the increasingly virulent fight over slavery and a severe political test for Pierce and his administration. When settlers began moving into Kansas, most had the same motives that had prompted Americans to head west since the colonial era—cheap land and along with it opportunity. Few had any direct interest in slavery. The territory faced the usual fractious issues, such as land titles, locations of county seats, and local taxes, that marked the opening of new territories. But in Kansas the bitter struggle between
northern and southern zealots overpowered normal difficulties and processes.71
Both northern and southern extremists were active in Kansas, each determined to control the destiny of the new territory, to make it either free or slave. Highly publicized activities of New England abolitionists aimed at ensuring that Kansas became free soil prompted a vigorous response from staunch proslavery men, especially in Missouri. At first, the Missourians could set the course in Kansas, for they were so close, and most of the earliest immigrants were from Missouri and other slave states. But in their zeal to demolish any possibility of free soil, they overplayed their hand, engaging in election fraud, legislative intimidation, and even violence.
Jefferson Davis knew firsthand about events in Kansas. The proslavery leader in Missouri, Democratic senator David R. Atchison, whom Davis had known since Transylvania and who had stood at his door on that portentous Sunday morning, kept him posted. In relating Kansas incidents to Davis, Atchison held nothing back. According to Atchison, antislavery men in Kansas had pledged to keep out slaveholders, but “our people are resolved to go in and take their ‘niggers’ with them.…” Reporting in September 1854 that within six months his side would have “the Devil to play in Kansas,” Atchison made clear just how far he was willing to go: “we will be compelled, to shoot, burn & hang, but the thing will soon be over, we intend to ‘Mormanise’ the Abolitionists.” But “the thing” did not end soon. Eighteen months later an embittered Atchison was still talking about keeping his “wrath warm.”72
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