Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Father and mother certainly delighted in their children. To her mother, Varina depicted the antics of “very smart” Maggie, and Jeffy “so big, and white, and fat.” The two played together, with Jeffy “stirring around like mad.” When Jefferson was at Davis Bend, Varina kept him posted. Maggie knew he had a wax doll for her in his trunk, while Jeffy shouted fifty times a day, “I love my Daddy, I love Mr. Davis, I do.” In one letter she reported that Jeffy, “as red as a burr,” had eaten two large mutton chops for breakfast. She called him “the best child on earth,” who from the minute he was born, she felt, “would be ‘friend of my bosom the balm of my life.’ ”56

  The proud father was enchanted. At fifty, he had little ones around his feet. In early 1859, he wrote Franklin Pierce that both the older children “have grown rapidly and the little girl is now quite a companion to me.…” He found Maggie bright, and said she was better at meeting people than were her parents. He thought charming her habit of waiting by her gate for someone to unlock it, and then going to a house where she was known to wait until “her hiding place” was discovered. As for Jeff Jr., Jeff Sr. portrayed him at two as “a large strong fellow and the most manly little fellow I ever saw.” Admitting his partisanship, the father added, but “public opinion in which I retain full confidence” concurred. Davis did more than write about his feelings. On one occasion, a visitor to his home in Washington discovered him lying on the floor with the two children climbing over him, and Varina recounted his gamboling on Humpback Mountain with Maggie on his shoulders.57

  As usual, books formed a part of the Davis household; the records of the Library of Congress reveal an eclectic lot borrowed between 1857 and 1860 under Senator Davis’s name. The volumes numbered several contemporary novels, mostly by American and English women, Louisa Stuart Costello, Letitia MacLean, and Catherine Maria Sedg-wick. There was also a collection of British drama and the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso in English translation. Their borrowings included the memoirs of the famous French writer Alexandre Dumas (in French) and of the English playwright Richard Sheridan, as well as a two-volume literary history of Southern Europe. Accounts of travel in Spain and in the American West indicate the Davises’ abiding interest in that genre. Their taste in history ranged widely: the memoir of a Russian princess in the court of Catherine the Great, two studies of Napoleon I, David Ramsay’s History of South Carolina (1808, reissued in 1858), and History of the National Flag (1852) by a grandson of Alexander Hamilton.58

  When on April 18, 1859, Jefferson and Varina welcomed a newcomer to their family, an old family wound reopened. Although Varina’s physician worried that she was in “such a very unfavorable condition” before delivery and feared puerperal fever, after the birth Varina reported her most “comfortable confinement.” Yet her physical improvement was paralleled by an emotional decline after a disagreement between her and Jefferson over the baby’s name. Varina had planned to name him William Howell Davis for her father. Jefferson had a different intention, however, and he made a decision diametrically opposed to his wife’s wishes. The child was named Joseph Evan Davis, in honor of his uncle, Jefferson’s surrogate father and Varina’s nemesis. Even though Varina said Jefferson had the right to make the decision, his doing so greatly upset her. Distraught, she cried to her mother that she had wept herself so sick she had to take quinine. She confided she could not participate in paying “the highest compliment in a woman’s power to a man whose very name was only suggestive to me of injustice and unkindness from my youth up to middle age.” She expressed unhappiness that the infant looked like a Davis. She prayed he would outgrow the resemblance, and if not, she assured herself, it would be solely an external likeness, “unless Howell & Kempe blood has run out.”59

  Joseph Davis, c. 1859.

  Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University (photo credit i10.2)

  The iron emotional triangle of the Davis family endured unbroken and unbending. Varina had no use for Joseph, letting him know how she felt in word and deed. When Joseph had tried to give her money to buy “a fine dress” for Buchanan’s inaugural, she refused, in spite of his saying he had only the “kindest” affections for her and loved her like a father. Passing through Washington in 1859 on his way to Europe, Joseph offered to defray all expenses for Varina, her three children, and a nurse to accompany him and his family. He told her that he believed she would be “an agreeable traveling companion to talk about all we saw there.” Again, she turned him down.60

  Two years later, in a private conversation with her, Joseph discussed their “estrangements.” According to Varina, Joseph said the naming of little Joseph after him had “obliterated” all memories of ill feelings between them. Varina responded that the naming was Jefferson’s choice, not hers, and she had given in. Then she informed Joseph she knew how much Jefferson loved him, and she granted she would teach her children to respect him for the assistance he had given their father at “the outset of life.” But, as for herself, “I owe you nothing, & perfectly appreciate your hostility to me.” Continued discussion produced no reconciliation.61

  Since the fall of 1846 Jefferson Davis had been navigating the treacherous shoals separating the two people he cherished most. Seeming to side with one or honoring the other generated a ferocious reaction from brother or wife, each perceiving disfavor. During those years he had discovered no formula that would temper the rigid triangle.

  In the late 1850s, Jefferson Davis confronted a political world as thorny and treacherous as the relationship between his wife and his sole living brother. The continued success of the Republican party deeply troubled him because of his understanding of its self-proclaimed mission, disregarding the constitutional rights of southerners as Americans and destroying the southern social system. He continuously attacked Republicans for what he judged their unthinking hostility to the South and southern institutions. The Republicans’ “greatest evil” had already occurred—“the perversion of the Northern mind and … the alienation of the Northern people, from the fraternity due to the South.”62

  Republican leaders talking about a higher law and an irrepressible conflict greatly distressed him. In response, he emphasized that a written Constitution formed the law for Americans, which he defined as “the plighted faith of our fathers” and “the hope of our posterity.” To Davis, references to a higher law were irresponsible and fraught with danger. In the Senate, he identified the first advocate of a higher law as “the tempter” in the Garden of Eden, who led mankind down the road of sin and to the loss of liberty and happiness, all the way to death. As for an irrepressible conflict, he simply could not detect one. The North and the South with their different labor systems had lived together for generations. From an economic viewpoint, he maintained that the agricultural South and the manufacturing North complemented each other, each contributing to the growth and development of the entire country. As for attitudes toward labor, he rejected Republican assertions that slavery belittled labor. His version was quite different. In the South whites outnumbered blacks; most whites worked and were not at all “degraded” by labor. On the contrary, slavery exalted all whites including those who worked: “Nowhere else will you find every white man recognized so far as an equal as never to be excluded from any man’s house or any man’s table.”63

  Davis also denied the South had any aggressive intentions; instead, he labeled the Republicans as aggressors. He could discern no aggression in the demand of southerners for their constitutional rights. Rather, Republicans aggressively assaulted even the Americanism of southerners. Davis saw a concrete and dangerous manifestation of Republican belligerence in a notable incident of October 1859. On the sixteenth of that month, the avenging angel of abolition, John Brown, a bloody veteran of Bleeding Kansas, hurled his fury and twenty-two followers against slavery at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown’s hope to spark a slave uprising failed utterly. No slaves rose; he and his men were trapped in the town. Two days later it was over; ten of Br
own’s men were dead or dying, and seven were captured, including Brown himself. Although major Republican leaders repudiated Brown’s violent tactics, a notable group of respectable northerners had financed his venture. And John Brown became a folk hero in the antislavery North. In the Senate, Davis condemned what he called “a murderous raid” and “a conspiracy against a portion of the United States, a rebellion against the constitutional government of a State.” He supported the creation of an investigating committee, and as a committee member took an active role in the Senate’s inquiry.64

  The possibility of a Republican victory in the 1860 presidential election presented a vexing personal and political dilemma to Davis. He did not want the failure of the Union, which he considered “the grandest achievement of uninspired human intellect to be found in the records of time.” “Young as a nation,” he proudly told his fellow senators, “our triumphs under this system have had no parallel in human history.” To Mississippi Democrats he enunciated his confidence “that a sanguine temperament does not mislead me to the belief that the mists of sectional prejudice are steadily though slowly floating away and … promises to our country a happier day than this.” Still, he worried that if victorious, the Republicans might actually destroy the constitutional Union he cherished, and if so, he wanted no part of the country, for it would no longer be his conception of the Union created by the Founding Fathers.65

  In Mississippi extreme sectionalists or fire-eaters, with Albert Brown in the lead, clamored for prompt secession if the Republicans won, and they had a receptive audience. Commenting favorably on Brown’s fire-eating speeches, the Mississippian prophesied that disunion would greatly benefit the South. The state Democratic convention of 1859 resolved unanimously that the state would regard the election of a Republican as “a declaration of hostility,” requiring Mississippi to be prepared for any eventuality. Senator Davis could disregard these sentiments only at his personal political peril.66

  On the stump in Mississippi, Davis could at times match the rhetoric of any fire-eater. To the state Democratic convention, he announced that a Republican victory would mean “the despotism of a majority,” and Mississippians would have to decide if “you will become the subjects of a hostile government.” Seven months earlier in Vicksburg he had proclaimed that should an abolitionist be chosen president, he “would rather appeal to the God of Battles at once than attempt to live longer in such a Union.” To a Jackson audience late in 1859 he vowed that even if Mississippi seceded alone, “he would ‘hug her to his heart.’ ” He also urged preparation for potential separation, and even conflict. Work should be pushed on a railroad to connect Jackson with the Gulf Coast, a project Davis had long supported and believed crucial for the state’s economic development. He wanted volunteer companies raised, arms and ammunition stockpiled. But he always placed caveats alongside those declarations and pledges. He would substitute “abolitionist” for “Republican.” He would specify the Republican’s being elected on a particular platform, for example, endorsement of the higher-law doctrine. He held to what he had earlier said, that he was equally opposed to “slavish submission” and to “the brainless intemperance of those who desired a dissolution of the Union, and who found in every rustling leaf fresh evidence of volcanic eruption.”67

  On the floor of the Senate he was always careful. Professing his loyalty to his country, he stated in the winter of 1858, “I think I have given evidence in every form in which patriotism is ever subjected to a test.” He also denied having ever announced that the election of a Republican president would mean dissolution of the Union. He insisted that only if any individual became president “not to administer [the government] according to the Constitution, but to pervert it to our destruction, to make this Government one of hostility to us, we would with the right hand redress our wrongs.” Thus, according to his script, the fate of the Union rested in the hands of the Republicans, especially their platform writers and their candidate. Senator Davis balanced along an extraordinarily thin tightrope.68

  The Republican party did not present Davis with his only political difficulties. On both the state and the national level, confusion ruled within his own Democratic party, burdening him with concerns and hazardous challenges. Pressure from the sectional left in Mississippi did not end with the question of secession. Albert Brown spoke out forcefully on filibustering; to applause he advocated governmental backing for offensive campaigns in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. He also said Congress must enact a law to protect the rights of slaveowners in the territories, especially in Kansas. In the Lower South, including Mississippi, there was also agitation to reopen the international slave trade, prohibited by Congress since 1808, though Brown did not push this issue.69

  Senator Davis met both. Although he embraced neither, he carefully tailored his responses to retain his political base in Mississippi. From the public platform, he denounced filibustering, but repeated his support for an American Cuba. He predicted that in time the United States would acquire the island through purchase. When he steadfastly opposed reopening the international slave trade, he emphasized states’ rights, arguing that the states, not the federal government, knew best their own interests regarding slaves. Asserting that Mississippi had access to all the slaves it wanted, he was confident the state did not want the trade renewed, though he would not speak for other states. Davis made absolutely clear that his opposition did not rest on moral grounds. On the contrary, he said the trade had a powerful moral impact, bringing heathen Africans in touch with Christianity. To his constituents his positions rang true; the Mississippian praised “the correctness” of his stance.70

  The territorial issue did not only stir up Democrats in Mississippi, it also sparked the turbulence roiling the national Democratic party. The breach between the Buchanan administration and southerners on the one hand and Senator Stephen Douglas on the other widened after the senator won reelection by narrowly turning back a vigorous Republican challenger named Abraham Lincoln. In the 1858 contest the territorial question was central. Lincoln spoke for the traditional Republican doctrine of free soil. He and his party still maintained that Congress should exercise its constitutional authority to prohibit slavery in all territories, even though the Supreme Court in its Dred Scott ruling denied that Congress had power to exclude slavery from any territory. Facing a powerful and popular Republican onslaught, Douglas knew he could not stand naked on Dred Scott and survive politically, despite his oft-repeated declaration that he would abide by the Court’s ruling. Ever inventive, he found a way around Dred Scott, while continuing to claim that he backed the Court and its decision. In what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas argued that despite Dred Scott, slavery could not survive unless local law supported it; Dred Scott would have no impact in a territory unless the territorial legislature enacted statutes affirming it. Douglas insisted that he was here simply holding to a policy he had long espoused: popular sovereignty.71

  The southern Democrats condemned the Freeport Doctrine, derisively terming it “squatter sovereignty.” In the southern view, the Supreme Court had settled the matter, and Douglas, who for years had said he would abide by the rulings of the Court, should abide by his own promise. Their fight disrupted the party in Congress. At the opening of the first session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, party schism prevented the election of a Democratic speaker of the House. Although the House was closely divided, with Republicans having a plurality, Democrats and American party members, mostly from the South, could combine to command a majority. But the Democrats could not unite among themselves, much less with the Americans. For two months congressmen wrangled while the House remained unorganized. Not until February 3, 1860, when the Republicans put forward one of their most conservative men, one who had even supported the Fugitive Slave Law, was a speaker selected. Democratic division also appeared in the Senate, but with the party holding a safe majority and the southerners dominant, Douglas was the immediate loser. To show their displeasure
at what they considered his apostasy, the southerners and the administration loyalists stripped him of his chairmanship of the Committee on Territories.

  On the Senate floor Davis flayed Douglas as “full of heresy” for Freeport, and he certainly supported removal of Douglas from his chairmanship. At the same time, he said he did not attack Douglas as a Democrat, nor did he feel “personal animosity” toward the Illinois senator, for whom he had “a great many kind remembrances” of the many years they had worked together. Davis even offered to turn over his Committee on Military Affairs to Douglas—an offer other chairmen also made. Douglas refused all. Both he and his antagonists recognized the powerful symbolism of depriving him of the post he wanted, a position equated with national development and territorial policy. Hounded in the Senate, the Illinois senator looked to 1860, when, he had grounds for believing, his popularity in the free states would bring him the Democratic presidential nomination, and vindication. Although Davis and Douglas injected levity into their oral jousting, both claiming to be no more than members of their party’s “rank and file,” each man realized, as did their colleagues, that a menacing fissure still ran through their party.72

  The administration and the southern Democrats, with Davis in the forefront, wanted to close that rift on their terms. Their method was to provide the party with a territorial policy that Douglas could not accept without a shameful recantation. When Davis rose in the Senate on February 2, 1860, to present a series of resolutions, he acted for himself, but also for his wing of the party, which wanted to ensure its unity on vexing territorial questions. The Democrats discussed the proposals, and on March 1, Davis substituted a modified set, though it had no substantive alterations. There were seven resolutions. Five of them concentrated on reaffirming traditional southern and Democratic views on the Constitution and slavery, the equality of all citizens, the correctness of fugitive slave legislation, and the right of territories to choose or reject slavery when they applied for statehood. The fourth and the fifth were the controversial ones. The former echoed the Dred Scott decision, declaring that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could prohibit slavery in any territory. The latter, and most critical, stipulated: “That if experience at any time prove that the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the territorial government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.”