Jefferson Davis, American
Page 80
With Jefferson’s lack of earning power, the paucity of money was a major problem. The Confederate funds that had been furnished to Varina were dwindling. Very little came from other sources, though in August students at the University of Mississippi contributed $500. The Davises did, however, pursue another Confederate source they knew about. Captain Watson Van Benthuysen, Eliza Davis’s nephew, had commanded the treasure train that was separated from the president’s retreat and sent to Florida, but he had not been forthcoming with the money that ended up in his hands. Upon learning of President Davis’s capture, Captain Van Benthuysen, over the objection of a civilian official, had taken charge of the funds he was guarding—more than $30,000. After paying some soldiers and other expenses, Van Benthuysen proposed to divide the remaining sum, consisting of gold sovereigns, among other officers and himself, with the remainder set aside in Van Benthuysen’s care for Varina Davis. The officers agreed, and the division was made. According to estimates by participants, the sovereigns designated for Varina had a value of between $6,500 and $9,000.
But none of this money ever reached Varina. In the summer of 1865 she received information about the transaction and had a nephew of her husband contact the captain, then living in New Orleans. He asserted he had no money for his aunt Varina. In January 1866 Burton Harrison got involved, and others who had been in Florida confirmed what had happened. Finally Van Benthuysen admitted he had some money, but only a presidential order would cause him to part with it. Though no longer a president, Davis signed such an order. Thereupon Van Benthuysen and Harrison met in New York City. Van Benthuysen’s account differed from his former compatriots’. According to him, he owed Davis only $1,190 in gold. Even though Harrison did not believe the crafty ex-captain, he had no way of enforcing his opinion and accepted the offered amount. Davis was furious. He said Van Benthuysen had acted dishonorably, and he directed Harrison not to provide any “exonerating statement” to a man Davis considered unfaithful and deceitful. But he accepted the money.6
Early in the fall the Davises changed their base to Lennoxville in Quebec Province, around eighty-five miles east of Montreal. Finances dictated the move to what Varina termed “this little out of the way village.” Jeff Jr. attended an Episcopalian preparatory school there. In Lennoxville the family lived in a small hotel, except for Maggie Davis, who stayed in a Catholic school in Montreal. They had no ready friends, but often visited orphaned siblings of a well-to-do English family, who resided under the care of older sisters in a grand house just outside of town. The two sets of children enjoyed each other, but there was little to do. Jefferson rarely walked about the village, though at least weekly he led his family along secluded country roads, and there were picnics at nearby Lake Massawippi. Northern sympathizers occasionally made things uncomfortable, particularly for young Jeff when some of his schoolmates serenaded him with “We’re Going to Hang Jefferson Davis.” Despite drawbacks, Davis was generally pleased: “This is a very quiet place and so far agreeable to me but further I have little to add.”7
In November, Davis took his first trip back into the United States. His initial destination was Richmond because, under the terms of his bond, he had to appear in federal court on the fourth Monday in the month. Throughout the autumn O’Conor had kept him posted on the legal scene. Aware of his opponents’ continuing difficulties, O’Conor still worried greatly about a trial with only Judge Underwood on the bench and a jury made up primarily of blacks. O’Conor did not believe a trial would take place, though he was not certain. “The future is absolutely impenetrable,” he wrote Davis. Yet he did not want Davis to undertake the journey to Richmond unless absolutely necessary, in part because there had been talk of assassination attempts. Eventually O’Conor discounted the threats as empty rumors. He also decided he did not want to give the other side any opportunity or excuse to revoke his client’s bail. Thus, he finally told Davis his presence was mandatory.8
Court opened on November 26 with Judge Underwood presiding, again without Chief Justice Chase, who did not appear. The government requested a continuance. The same legal and political problems continued to bedevil the administration and federal prosecutors. The defendant’s lawyers readily concurred in the delay. All parties agreed to carry the case over to the spring term of the court, which would begin on the fourth Wednesday of March 1868.9
After the postponement, Davis planned to go on south, all the way to Mississippi. He had been told that the Canadian winter might be difficult for him; besides, he wanted to see his relatives. But he had to wait for Varina, who had not accompanied him to Richmond because her mother had become seriously ill. When the Davises moved to Lennoxville, Margaret Kempe Howell, whose postwar role in taking care of her grandchildren had been so central, had gone to see friends in Bennington, Vermont, and while there she became sick. Varina promptly went to her side and took her back to Montreal. But she never recovered. On November 24 she died, not quite sixty-two and only thirty months older than her son-in-law. After the funeral, Varina set out to join her husband, leaving the children under the care of Maggie Howell and a family friend.10
In Richmond, Davis consulted with his attorneys and visited with friends. For the first time since March 1865 he saw Robert E. Lee, who had come as a prospective witness from Lexington, where he was president of Washington College. Davis’s appearance surprised Lee. Observing his former commander in chief, Lee relayed to a daughter-in-law, “I saw Mr. Davis who looks astonishingly well & is quite cheerful.”11
After Varina’s arrival, husband and wife departed for Mississippi. They went first to Baltimore, then took a steamer to New Orleans via Cuba, where they stopped for a week. Reaching the island just before Christmas, they stayed in a hotel run by a southern woman and reveled in the tropical weather and flora. Then it was on to New Orleans and a hero’s reception for Jefferson. Varina recalled “the warmth of the welcome here no words can describe.” From the city the Davises traveled north to West Feliciana Parish and Wilkinson County, where Jefferson visited two sisters and other relatives, most of whom he had not seen since before the war. Finally, he reached Vicksburg, the postwar residence of his brother Joseph.12
The circumstances of the two brothers had changed dramatically since their last meeting in their home county. In 1861 Jefferson had reached the political pinnacle, fulfilling an ambition both he and Joseph shared. He had risen to great power in the United States and had been chosen president of the fledgling southern republic. His benefactor and mentor Joseph, owner of 355 slaves in 1860, was one of the richest and most influential men in Mississippi. The wealth of Joseph and Jefferson placed them among the financial elite of the country, and their combined economic and political power was matched by few others in the United States.
In 1868 all was different. Jefferson’s political career had crashed with the Confederacy. He had been indicted for treason by the country he had once cherished. The destruction of slavery demolished the foundation of the brothers’ wealth. Moreover, the ravages of war, which had blasted the southern economy, resulted in a scarcity of money and plummeting land prices. Both Joseph’s age and the labor transformation made unthinkable his return as a great planter, though he had managed to regain his land.
When President Johnson issued his amnesty proclamation in May 1865, Joseph Davis was among those excluded because of his pre-1861 wealth, but he was eligible to apply for an individual pardon. In September 1865 he did petition the president for a pardon, which was granted the following March. The pardon did not restore his land, however. A year later he applied for the return of his Davis Bend acreage and even sent an agent to Washington to lobby for him. After Joseph had evacuated Davis Bend during the war, the U.S. Army had taken over his and Jefferson’s plantations. The Freedmen’s Bureau eventually took charge of and operated them with former Davis slaves as laborers. Finally Joseph’s effort succeeded. The president directed that all his land be restored to him, with his regaining full control set for January 1, 1867.13
Joseph had the land, but not a guaranteed income from it. He knew he could no longer farm, and suspected leasing would not work. Aside from financial considerations, he also desired the blacks on both places to retain their communities. As a result, he decided to sell both properties to his former slave Ben Montgomery and the latter’s two sons, Isaiah and Thornton. Joseph expected the Montgomerys to succeed as planters, in large part because he thought they could handle the new labor situation. He also believed they could keep the Brierfield and Hurricane communities of freedpeople together.
But before Joseph finalized the sale to the Montgomerys, he communicated his intention to Jefferson, still in Fortress Monroe. His messenger was a niece who was going to see her uncle Jefferson. Joseph sent word that he would do nothing about Brierfield without Jefferson’s permission. Unsure of his future, Jefferson responded that Joseph should do whatever he thought best. He also urged quick action because he feared that Joseph’s close relationship to him might cause Congress to move against his brother’s ownership and interfere with any sale. Yet he had one serious reservation. He doubted whether the Montgomerys would become successful planters and make all the payments, “unless the Negroes exceed my expectations.” While he agreed the Montgomerys seemed able, he told his brother, “I think they will rapidly lapse to the ignorance and vagrancy characteristic of their race.”14
Upon receiving Jefferson’s reply, Joseph moved ahead. Seller and buyers agreed on a price of $300,000 for 4,000 acres, the asserted total of Brierfield and Hurricane. This sum amounted to $75 an acre, a fair price based on the sale of similar properties at that time. The principal would be paid over nine years, with the final payment due on January 1, 1876. The interest, 6 percent annually or $18,000, would be due on January 1 of each year, beginning in 1867. No down payment was required, but Joseph took a mortgage on the property to protect himself if the Montgomerys failed. The interest payments alone would provide a comfortable living for Joseph as well as funds for Jefferson’s family. Joseph added one oral caveat to the sale: should Jefferson ever return and want Brierfield, that part of the deal would be rescinded. Ben Montgomery agreed.
While in Vicksburg, Jefferson visited Brierfield and Hurricane for the first time since leaving in February 1861. Although his wife reported that his former slaves welcomed him, he saw what the war had wrought—the Hurricane mansion and other structures burned, buildings, fields, and levees in poor condition. A significant physical change had also occurred: Davis Bend had become Davis Island. In the spring of 1867, the flooding Mississippi River finally severed the narrow eastern neck of the bend. The main channel of the great river flowed between the Davis plantations and the rest of Warren County; a secondary course on the west maintained the separation from Louisiana. Both Brierfield and Hurricane could be reached only by boat.15
An important reason for Jefferson’s journey to Mississippi was to find out whether he could count on future income from the land deal. The news was not good. When the Montgomerys made the initial interest payment, they immediately borrowed $16,000 of it for their planting operation. Thus, on January 1, 1868, they would owe $34,000, but flooding and insect infestation made for a disastrous year. They could neither pay the interest due nor repay the loan. Through these disappointments Joseph was a lenient creditor and kept faith in the purchasers, though they themselves expressed doubts that they could make the plantations profitable. The land sale clearly would not provide the steady income that Jefferson hoped for and needed.16
Although Jefferson enjoyed seeing his relatives, especially Joseph, whose welfare had been on his mind during his imprisonment, conditions among them and in his home state distressed him. After listing for his children the people he and Varina had seen, he added that all wanted to see the young Davises. He also observed, “The war has left our people very poor and as our relations were prominently true to our country and its cause they have suffered more from the devastation of the enemy than most others.” To a friend he commented, “The desolation of our country has made my visit sad, but the heroic fortitude with which our people bear privation, injustice and persistent oppression fills my heart with pride.”17
In Mississippi, Davis made no public statements about Reconstruction or any political developments. In his view, anything that he said, even in response to “the sympathy felt by our people,” could end up harming them. Worry about possible repercussions on friends caused him to decline invitations. He kept to his family. He even decided against visiting the University of Mississippi, which had offered to save places for his sons, fearing that a visit by him could be used to harm the institution.18
Davis’s public silence did not mean that he had no opinion about the South and Reconstruction. Congressional Reconstruction, which organized the southern states into military districts, the rise of a southern Republican party, and political rights for blacks all troubled him. He viewed the South as unjustly pummeled and punished; he saw oppression of southern whites. “My thoughts are ever turned to our oppressed countrymen and my prayers are daily offered for their restoration to freedom and prosperity,” he wrote. This reaction was not unique, or even unusual. Most white southerners of his background and class shared that opinion. His hope lay in the future. “It cannot be,” he stated, “that so noble a race and so fair a country can be left permanently subject, a desert.” He counted on the young people, especially the students at the University of Mississippi, whom he described as “the rising hope of the state,” to carry forward the work on which he and his generation had “unsuccessfully labored.”19
Court requirements governed the chronology of Davis’s sojourn in Mississippi. He came to the state from Richmond after the court session in November, and he left in late February 1868 for the term beginning March 26. The Davises went downriver to New Orleans, where they spent more time than they intended in a futile attempt to recover a $1,500 investment Varina had made in 1866 in a business that subsequently failed. They departed on a steamer for Baltimore via Cuba, where they stopped briefly, as they had done on their western voyage. In Havana the Davises socialized with ex-Confederates, one of whom described Jefferson as “wearing a look of melancholy,” but “entertaining and amusing at times.” He and his wife reached the Virginia capital in time for the opening of court.20
This time, the outcome replicated what had transpired the previous November. The government requested a continuance. Alerted beforehand of the government’s plan, Davis’s lawyers agreed. The case was put off until May 2. The brief, almost perfunctory hearing in the courtroom resulted from critical events taking place elsewhere in the winter and spring of 1868. On the legal front, the government’s private attorneys handling the case, Evarts and Richard H. Dana, Jr., in conjunction with U.S. Attorney Chandler, prepared a new indictment charging Davis with treason. Evarts and Dana considered the earlier indictment defective. Even though they obtained a new indictment for the March session of court, they asked for a delay both because Chief Justice Chase was once more absent and because they had grave reservations about ever bringing Davis to trial. Like some of President Johnson’s earlier advisers, they worried about obtaining a conviction. They pointed out that one juror could force an acquittal. And no matter the effort expended to guarantee a sound jury, a Confederate partisan could get on or intimidation might cause a dissenting vote. Dana argued that the Supreme Court in 1863 had held secession and war to be treason, a ruling that had been steadily followed. But a jury trial could end with Davis found not guilty of treason, humiliating
the government.21
In addition to the prosecution’s serious legal doubts, politics also intruded. In February 1868 the combat between President Johnson and the congressional Republicans had become even more desperate with the impeachment of the president by the House of Representatives. The Senate trial began in early March, Chief Justice Chase presiding. As long as the president and his opponents in Congress remained locked in a political death struggle, no movement on Davis would occur. Further, for the length of the Senate trial the chief justice would not sit on the circuit court. In addition, Evarts was retained as one of the president’s lawyers. He could not simultaneously concentrate on defending Johnson and prosecuting Davis.
Legal and political reality dictated that Davis would remain under indictment and free on bail. Before departing Richmond, he had another visit with Lee, again in the city as a witness. In his conversations with this particular friend, Davis revealed the great anxiety caused by his precarious finances. According to Lee, Davis admitted “he did not know what he should do or what he could turn his hands to for Support.” Davis said he could not concentrate on anything. He did not believe the business community could put confidence in him, for at any time he might have to appear in court, with unknowable results.22