The Davis children in Canada.
Beauvoir, The Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library (photo credit i16.1)
Davis thought about his brother Joseph and his mother-in-law, Margaret Howell, as well. He was especially uneasy about Joseph’s condition and fate, fearing that Joseph’s relationship to him would bring increased hardship on his brother. He told Varina that he wanted to do much for the man who had meant so much to him throughout his life, though sadly he realized that he could do nothing. The knowledge that Margaret Howell, whom he had long termed “Ma,” had taken charge of her grandchildren in Canada prompted his gratitude. He regularly asked about her and wanted his appreciation relayed to her.
Matching Davis’s love for his family was his devotion to his God. During the course of the war his Christian faith had deepened, and in prison it provided enormous comfort. References to the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and his own prayers formed a substantial part of every letter. Discussing his Christian conviction, Davis concentrated on two topics. First, he repeatedly praised the goodness and mercy of God, who through Jesus Christ would always watch over His flock, no matter its predicament. “His goodness and my unworthiness … does not press one back,” Davis declared, “for the atoning mediator is the way, and his hand upholds me.” Second, he saw God as the architect of all events; His will controlled the world. As a Christian he accepted God’s will, even when it led to unwanted results. This interpretation of an active God’s power helped Davis endure having absolutely no control over his fate. He proclaimed to Varina that “all things are set in order by infinite wisdom and goodness.”24
Davis also wrote about his activities. Aware that his wife worried about him, especially his health and the burdens of his captivity, he related in detail his physical condition and his living situation. On October 20 he described his daily routine: rose and dressed; read the morning prayer, sometimes adding a passage from both the New Testament and Psalms; breakfast; secular reading; soon after 11 a.m. appropriate portions of the Book of Common Prayer and of Scripture; afternoon, more secular reading; walk with General Miles for an hour; evening, the appointed service from the Book of Common Prayer; night, family prayer. He repeatedly told Varina not to believe the wild tales in the press about his treatment. He never failed to reassure her that his circumstances were far from awful. In the fall, when they measurably improved, he reported the improvement. In addition, he informed her that certain individuals, notably his physicians and the chaplain, treated him with care and kindness. Even the army officers on the post showed him respect and courtesy.
But his activities were few, and he confessed that the hours often dragged. Besides his religious observances and the once daily exercise, he had little to occupy his time. Outside visitors were not permitted, except for the Reverend Minnigerode, who came infrequently. He did get newspapers, though irregularly, and enjoyed them. In 1866 he tried to follow Varina’s travels in their columns. Access to newspapers prompted his cautioning her not to accept at face value their accounts of his treatment.
Davis was allowed to make use of the post library, and occasionally someone sent him a book he enjoyed. Although he told Varina that the library held mostly military manuals and texts used at West Point, he did find worthy reading material. He specifically mentioned George Bancroft’s History of the United States and Thomas Macaulay’s History of England. He even said the technical military volumes “serve[d] the useful purpose of turning my thoughts from painful reflections, and are not without interest to me.…”25
He meditated on the meaning of his imprisonment for himself and for his vanquished country, which he now identified as the South. He did not shy away from the role of martyr. Declaring his confidence in his “ability to bear much and bear long,” he let her know, “I have not sunk under my trials.” “I would rather be a sacrifice for the country,” he claimed, “than it should be a sacrifice for me.” He hoped “the spirit of vengeance [would] be satiated by my sacrifice so that my family and countrymen would then be left in peace.” With his vision of his new service to the South, Davis defined the creed he embraced as “man’s dignity to bear up against trials, under which the lower animals would sink.”26
It was not a one-way correspondence; Varina wrote as often as he did. Her letters to her jailed husband overflowed with declarations of love and praise that encouraged and sustained him. As he told her, her missives “brought the only cheering ray which ever lights up the gloom of my imprisonment.” Her love knew no bounds and her admiration no limits. Naming him “my first and only love,” she announced, “I bless God for every hour that I have borne your spotless name.” He was “the lover of my youth and the Husband of my choice.” “But I lose my sense and reason when I think of you,” she confessed.27
Throughout these letters Varina presented an almost undaunted face and unbroken will. With God’s help, she said, and secure in her husband’s steadfast love, she could deal with the myriad problems she faced. She left no doubt about the importance of hearing from him: “your letters are the sweetest books to me.…” Yet her massive difficulties and worry about Jefferson caused intense anxiety. At the beginning of 1866 she confided to a friend that her eyes were swollen from crying. “I am so very wretched, so very hopeless,” she admitted. But no matter how distraught she became, her determination to do for her children and campaign for her husband never flagged. She saw herself as head of her family and responsible for its well-being.28
Their “painful separation,” in Jefferson’s phrase, drew them closer together. Spiritually and emotionally they had become utterly intertwined. Although the end of the war brought no peace to Jefferson and Varina Davis, they confronted their new conflict as one. The visceral horror of defeat, enforced separation, and fear of an unknown future only welded more securely their close wartime bonds.29
Varina’s pleas had not been totally in vain. In the spring of 1866 President Johnson finally permitted her to rejoin Jefferson. Just after she reached Montreal in mid-April, the War Department notified her that she could go to her husband. With her baby she immediately headed for Fortress Monroe, arriving on a cold morning in early May. She recalled an emotional reunion. First, she had to sit in an open waiting room until an officer from the fort appeared. He brought a parole she had to sign, promising not to deliver any deadly weapons to her husband. Then she was taken to a casemate and shortly thereafter joined by General Miles, who asked if she understood the terms of her parole. Following her affirmative response, another officer escorted her to Carroll Hall and up the stairs to Jefferson’s cell. Upon entering the guard room, she could see the barred door. She recollected, “Through the bars of the inner room I saw Mr. Davis’s shrunken form and glassy eyes; his cheek bones stood out like those of a skeleton. Merely crossing the room made his breath come in short gasps, and his voice was scarcely audible.” She went in, and the door was locked behind her.
This was no temporary visit. Varina moved into quarters in the casemate, where she resided with her Piecake. Burton Harrison termed them “tolerably comfortable.” Later in the month, Jefferson’s privileges were broadened to allow him to walk the grounds of the fort unguarded during daylight hours. For that license he had to pledge not to attempt escape. As a result, he and his wife could spend their days together and share meals, but at night the prisoner had to remain alone in his cell.
In the autumn, their circumstances improved significantly. Varina was permitted to live with her husband in a four-room apartment with a kitchen set up for them in Carroll Hall. They still enjoyed the freedom of the post during the day, and they could socialize. The Davises became friends with Dr. Cooper and his wife, who shared food with them. Advisers and comrades came often and enlivened their home. In addition, Davis enjoyed cigars, whiskey, wine, liqueurs, and a reading chair brought or sent by well-wishers.30
Even though Varina and Jefferson were together and the conditions of his imprisonment had improved vastly, she never ceased her efforts to o
btain better treatment for him or even release. Her husband’s health genuinely concerned her. To friends as well as public figures she depicted him as desperately ill. “It is hard to see him die by inches, the victim of tortures,” she wrote to President Johnson. Her fundamental position was that prison was killing him. She argued first for a less onerous regimen and then for either a prompt trial or release on parole or bail.
Varina Davis waged a vigorous campaign to secure her goals. As before, her letters went to notable men like Horace Greeley, Reverdy Johnson, a leading Maryland Democrat, and John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. She also wrote directly to President Johnson, and on one occasion called on him at the White House. While in Washington, she received influential politicians, including Republicans. In the midst of her struggle, blackness and fear sometimes gripped her. To an intimate she admitted, “… I seem perfectly apathetic. It has taken me a long time to come to this but this ‘peine fort et dur’ to which I have been subjected has crushed hope out of me.” Yet her determination and drive never wavered for long.31
Her major weapon was her assessment of Davis’s health. Not only did she fill her appeals with dire diagnoses and prognoses, she also enlisted the aid of Dr. Cooper. In May he sent a long report to the War Department detailing his patient’s ills and concluding, “should he be attacked by any of the severe forms of disease to which the tidewater region of Virginia is subject, I, with reason, fear for the result.” In response the department dispatched the surgeon general of the army to examine Davis. He found Davis stronger than Dr. Cooper had indicated and saw no reason why Davis would be less responsive to treatment than any other prisoner, should he contract any local malady. He did recommend removal of the night lamp and the treading sentinel. From the surgeon general’s visit until Davis’s release eleven months later, the War Department required weekly written medical reports on Davis.32
To help her campaign, Varina fired heavy barrages at General Miles. In her script he became a hateful monster who watched happily over the deterioration of his star prisoner. In a fundamental sense she orchestrated a political battle against Miles, a politically astute officer who understood his antagonist’s goals and appreciated her cleverness. Rebutting her accusations of maltreatment, he countered to his superiors with a brief relating his oversight of Davis. Although Miles had started out quite hostile to Davis and never became friendly, he presided over a considerable easing of Davis’s prison regime. And Miles rightly maintained that Varina Davis exaggerated her husband’s physical debility. Even so, he could not best her. Against his wishes, President Johnson in September reassigned him.33
His replacement, Brigadier General Henry S. Burton, was more acceptable to the Davises. In fact, Varina considered the general and his wife friends and always spoke highly of them. Never exhibiting any animus toward either of the Davises, General Burton did what he could for the prisoner. He eliminated the light that so interfered with Davis’s sleep, and later authorized the couple’s living together in the Carroll Hall apartment.
In truth, Davis’s health varied over time. In the summer of 1866 Varina and Dr. Cooper expressed grave concern. Others who visited him described him as emaciated and feeble. Yet in the fall and winter he seemed better. Even Dr. Cooper made basically positive statements in his weekly reports. Although somewhat weaker than he had been upon his incarceration, Davis in 1866 and 1867 was not measurably poorer in health than he had been for at least a decade and a half.34
After his wife’s arrival at Fortress Monroe, Davis could enjoy family life, though truncated, and he could also have visitors. They came in numbers, including former associates like his fellow inmate Clement Clay, who had been released in April 1866, Richard Taylor, Burton Harrison, and the Reverend Minnigerode. His attorneys also appeared to consult with their client. In the spring of 1867, Franklin Pierce traveled to Fortress Monroe to see his old comrade, a visit that had special meaning for Davis.35
The continued absence of three of his four children sharply marked the limits on Davis’s family life. The three oldest remained in Canada with Grandmother Howell. They and their father did correspond, however. Polly wrote most often, but Jeff Jr. and even little William penned notes to their father. They told him how much they loved him, missed him, and wanted him to be with them. They also gave him glimpses of their activities. Telling of his falling in a river and being pulled out by a friend, Jeff concluded, “I was only wet.” Polly talked about studying hard and learning hymns and poetry. She let him know that Billy could read quite well. And she added, “I am trying very hard to be all you desire.” Rejoicing in them, a proud father congratulated “My dear Daughter” on her hard work and performance in school. He sent word that their mother and baby sister had brought him great pleasure.36
Although thrilled to be with her husband, on several occasions Varina took trips away from Fortress Monroe. She was not restricted to the post. Most often her travels concerned her efforts to help Jefferson. Consultations with political allies and attorneys found her in Washington, Baltimore, New York City, and even Lake George, New York, where she met with Charles O’Conor, who was on vacation. In December 1866 she went back to Montreal to see her mother, sister, and children. From there she detailed activities of their little ones for her husband, and returned with her sister Maggie, who resided with the Davises at Fortress Monroe. In March and early April 1867 she had an extended stay in Baltimore where she did talk with allies, but spent most of her time having extensive dental surgery. She reported to Jefferson that most of her teeth had been removed; in one operation under chloroform, more than a half dozen were extracted.
Keeping in touch with Jefferson on these journeys, she always declared her love. “I seem sanctified by our last long kiss as we parted,” she confided, “and the memory of your love gives me confidence to do anything except risk your displeasure.” From Montreal she pledged, “When I get in your ‘l’arms again I shall never willingly leave you again.” Yet she also realized that lack of certainty continued to plague their future. “I have no answer yet,” she informed him in mid-March 1867. “I see no plainer.” Still she hoped.37
Although uncertainty about what would happen troubled the Davises, the overwhelming majority of southerners had no doubt about the man who had led their failed struggle for independence. Throughout the war Davis had stood as the preeminent public man in the Confederacy. No other political leader ever mounted a credible challenge to his domination. By the last winter General Robert E. Lee had eclipsed Davis in prestige, but Lee’s ascendancy did not mean that most Confederates had turned on their president. Even defeat did not signal widespread denigration of Davis. Although some southerners blamed him for the disaster, they were distinctly in the minority. A few observers made a great deal of this anti-Davis sentiment, but it had much in common with wartime opposition to the president—shrill and strident, yet localized, and largely ineffectual.38
When Davis entered Fortress Monroe, an angry and disenchanted South did not cheer imprisonment as the proper punishment for a castigated leader. At the same time, incarceration did serve to endear Davis to the South. Most southerners had respected him and admired his dedication to the Confederate cause, but they had not cherished him. As a prisoner Davis became a symbol for the lost Confederacy. Former Confederates did not believe they had done anything wrong. They were convinced they had acted legally and constitutionally in creating their government, and then had carried on a noble fight. Because they certainly did not think they deserved imprisonment, they viewed Davis as standing in for them. His treatment became their treatment, his bars their bars.
Thoughtful southerners made the force of this outlook unmistakable. “I cannot tell you,” General Lee told a former staff officer, “how much I have suffered, & still suffer on account of Mr. Davis.…” A prewar congressman from North Carolina, who emphasized his constant Unionism, told a prominent Republican senator that all southerners, not just those who had been zealous Confederates, wer
e deeply solicitous about Davis and his family. A longtime student of southern public opinion acknowledged that not everyone had agreed with Davis in the final months of the war, but everyone had believed him “true and faithful to the trust which had been reposed in him.” Furthermore, Howell Cobb explained, there was no indifference in the South to Davis’s fate, for southerners considered him “their representative man.”39
Individual southerners demonstrated their feelings about Davis by their actions. To help him and his family, a group in Mississippi calling itself Ladies for the President’s Family raised some $4,000. Women in Fayetteville, North Carolina, sent a check for Varina’s use. A Baltimore tailor was engaged to make Davis a new coat, vest, and pair of pants. Visitors to Fortress Monroe treasured their experiences with the man they deemed their chief. Gifts of spirits and tobacco abounded. A former schoolteacher “yearned to be able to do something to testify my veneration and love for the man who has been called to suffer so much for our people.” His letter included a poem. Writing from Richmond, a little girl told him that her friends called her Jeff Davis “because I love you so much.” She also said that when her school class went to Hollywood Cemetery to decorate soldiers’ graves, “your little Joe’s will not be forgotten.”40
This effort on Davis’s behalf had two goals. One aimed to cheer and warm his time in prison; the other strove to influence what happened to him. From across the South, missives including petitions signed by hundreds of people bombarded the White House to urge President Johnson to release Davis. These southerners insisted that Davis was no criminal and certainly had taken no part in Lincoln’s assassination. They maintained his actions had been honorable in leading a worthy cause. If Davis had committed a crime because he had led the Confederacy, they argued, so had every other Confederate, for Davis’s fellow citizens had chosen him as their president. Thus, Davis should be freed or all other former Confederates arrested.41
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