Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Despite the setbacks and myriad difficulties, there were gratifying moments, particularly a sojourn in Scotland in the summer of 1869. On July 24 Davis, along with his friend and traveling companion Dr. Charles Mackay, departed London for Scotland. Davis had longstanding invitations from the ardently pro-Confederate James Smith of Glasgow, from John and William Blackwood, proprietors of Blackwood’s Magazine, in St. Andrews, and from Lord Abinger, who lived near Fort William. His doctor also prescribed the Scottish climate as a bracer for a weakened Davis. He delighted in the weather and urged Varina to take herself and the children to a cooler place. The travelers stopped first in Edinburgh, where they took in the major historical points, such as the castle, the old Parliament House, Holyrood, and John Knox’s home.44

  Next, Davis headed south into the Border Country between Edinburgh and England. Captivated, he called the countryside “the best combination of the beautiful the useful and the grand that I have beheld.” The historic places impressed him, especially the ruins of Melrose Abbey and Dryburgh Monastery, Sir Walter Scott’s burial site, and Abbotsford, Scott’s home, where Davis was permitted to see some original manuscripts. He picked several flowers, which he enclosed in letters to his wife, including a harebell from near Scott’s tomb and a daisy from near the depository of Robert the Bruce’s heart.

  Then Davis turned north to St. Andrews, arriving on August 2 and receiving a warm greeting from the Blackwoods. John Blackwood’s daughter described him as “dignified and commanding,” even though his face was pale and drawn and his features attenuated. In addition to enjoying his congenial hosts, Davis toured the area and met the local people. Writing Varina, he once again enclosed a flower, another harebell, this one from the “ground dedicated to the ‘Royal Game of Golf.’ ”

  After St. Andrews, Davis traveled west into the Highlands, immersing himself in the world that Scott had described in The Lady of the Lake. Although the accuracy of the poet’s descriptions impressed him, he wrote Varina, “the beauty and grandeur of the scenery can only be realized by visiting it.” To commemorate his visit, he bought her a wonderfully illustrated copy of Scott’s long poem. He continued to send flowers: little wildflowers from Rob Roy’s grave and moss from a rock beneath the oak prominent in a key section of the poem. He also noted that the clear, cool climate had improved his health.

  Leaving the Highlands, he went south to Glasgow, where on August 9, James Smith and his wife cordially welcomed Dr. Mackay and Davis into their home. From there the two men struck out westward to Oban and the Isle of Mull. On this jaunt he ran into Lord Abinger, who had previously asked Davis to join him at his estate near Fort William.

  In Abinger’s company, he and Dr. Mackay journeyed to Inverlochy Castle, Abinger’s palatial mansion, which has a marvelous view of Scotland’s highest peak, Ben Nevis. Here Davis had a grand time. He tried salmon fishing and grouse shooting. The scenery enthralled him: “You would find a wide field for your imagination in the midst of changing lights & shades which characterize the Scottish mountains,” he told his wife.

  Finally, this special holiday ended. For Davis it was a tonic; during his weeks in Scotland he seemed to escape his cares. He returned by canal and railroad to Edinburgh and took a steamer back to London. In the meantime Varina had taken the children to Yarmouth on the sea. By August 26, when the family reunited in London, Davis had decided he must return to the United States. There was no longer any danger of prosecution, but, more important, he had to find a source of income. Because nothing had turned up in England, in September he headed back across the Atlantic. But he determined to go alone. Given the uncertainty of his future, he would not uproot his family. He would establish himself first.

  Jefferson and Varina’s difficult parting underscored their reliance on and love for each other. From his ship at Southampton he remembered their last moments at the train station in London. “Long after we were under way your face as last seen was before me.” He stated that he wanted to run after her, “for in your failure to look back I had the evidence of the struggle you had made to suppress the manifestations of your emotions.” His own feelings he did not hold back: “Before this reaches you my eyes will have turned with longing looks to the place where my treasure is, that treasure which most of all assures that the heart will be with it always.” Responding to “My dearest, and best beloved,” Varina spoke of the children’s sadness, and as for herself, “my great object too had been suddenly taken from me.”45

  After a rough crossing, Davis’s ship docked in Baltimore on the evening of October 10. He was met by brother Joseph, who was accompanied by his constant companion, granddaughter Lise Mitchell. After a few days they sailed for New Orleans, and then on upriver to Vicksburg. En route Jefferson stopped once again to visit his relatives in West Feliciana Parish and Wilkinson County.

  From Vicksburg he went on to Memphis to discuss employment with the Carolina Life Insurance Company. The possibility of working for Carolina Life had come up in correspondence before he left England. Although Davis knew nothing about the firm, he had asked friends to make inquiries. The intimation was that the company intended to open a new branch office in Baltimore and considered him an excellent prospect to manage it.

  But in Memphis a different decision was made. After discussions between Davis and the directors, which included an examination of the company’s books, the directors asked him whether he thought his influence would be greater running a branch or the parent company. He indicated the latter. His interviewers agreed, and the sitting president acted on his earlier offer to step aside in Davis’s favor. The directors then named Davis as president, with an annual salary of $12,000 plus travel expenses, a substantial income at a time when the annual earnings of an industrial worker amounted to around $350. Having satisfied himself about the financial stability of the business and the character of the directors, Davis accepted the position.46

  The decision to go with Carolina Life was not easy, nor was it Davis’s first choice, but the job had two overriding assets: availability and a good salary. He had been approached to head educational institutions. Even before he went to England, Randolph-Macon College in Virginia offered him its presidency. Davis said no, in part because he was still under indictment and would not risk the future of the college by associating his name with it. Just after his arrival in Memphis the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, an Episcopalian school, tendered him its top post. Declining, Davis admitted that the position “would be more congenial to my tastes than that now occupied,” but because of the need for money to support his family, salary had to be a critical consideration. Carolina Life paid much better. Before Carolina Life there had also been talk of something with the Southern Pacific Railroad, but nothing ever materialized.47

  Aware of the relationship between occupation and social status, Davis was anxious about how any position he took would affect his reputation and image. A proud man who had been a successful planter and politician, he wanted to make a decision about his employment that would not diminish his standing either in his own estimation or in anyone else’s. He reminded Varina that even if they themselves forgot, “others will not fail to remember the difference between a man of business, and a Soldier, or a Planter, or a Senator, or a Cabinet minister, or a President, or even an exiled Representative of an oppressed people.” Friends expressed an identical concern to him; they worried about a man of his stature going into the insurance business. Close associates, mostly in New Orleans, sent a circular to a select group in an attempt to raise money for Davis and his family; they also emphasized that Davis had been a planter and had no professional training for a respectable position.48

  Although concerned about propriety, Davis faced his situation head-on. He refused to accept private donations, and as he informed his wife, “our property at Brierfield is no longer to be thought of as concerning me or you or our heirs.” He had to have a paying job, and he had to go where he could find one. In a letter to Varina, who shared his
interest in appropriate employment and did not prefer living in Memphis, he spelled out what he saw as economic and social reality. He bluntly stated that in Memphis—and at the moment only in Memphis—he could earn a living to support all of them. He even indicated he would have sufficient income for her to live elsewhere “until all things may combine to give us a less restrained choice.” He then furnished his own primer on social ranks and prejudices. The differences between the classes were greater in London than in Liverpool, just as the gap was wider in Baltimore than in Memphis. He maintained that in Baltimore the upper class would have greater prejudice against an agent of a company than the president of a company, a position he did not have there. “I have compounded with my pride for the material interest of my family, and am ready to go on to the end as may best promote their happiness,” he concluded. He also had Joseph’s approval.49

  Jefferson Davis in Scotland.

  Museum of the Confederacy (photo credit i17.1)

  Thus did the sixty-one-year-old Davis embark on a new career as president of a life insurance company. His office at 42 Madison Street in Memphis was as unready as he was. As workmen prepared the rooms, he set about to learn the insurance business. He described his colleagues as decent fellows, and even though his lack of background in the business showed, he thought he got along pretty well. He found the work not unpleasant, though it confined him to his office more than he originally thought it would. But he hoped that as he gained experience and the company matured, he would be able to travel more. The company envisioned the entire South as its territory. Its carrying the name Carolina while situating its home base on the Mississippi River in Tennessee telegraphed that ambition. Davis and the directors envisioned expanding all the way to Baltimore, a much larger financial center, where eventually the company might be headquartered. It was even possible that Davis would end up there as president.50

  One of Davis’s first major tasks was the recruitment of agents to sell his company’s product. Across the postwar South many former Confederates desperately needed gainful employment, and Davis turned to them to form the core of his sales force. Once again a president, he called on men who had worn the gray to enlist with him in this new effort. A number who had been prominent soldiers, including Braxton Bragg and Wade Hampton, signed up in almost every state, though a few turned Davis down.

  As a company president, Davis faced issues common to business executives, such as the technical aspects of his industry, salary structure of employees, and marketing strategy. According to Varina, after a time he mastered the mathematics of life insurance. Although Carolina Life paid its state agents a small salary, commissions on the sales of policies constituted the bulk of an individual’s income. Suggestions came from the field to alter that balance toward a higher salary level. Davis believed in a base sufficient for an agent to establish himself, but no evidence indicates that he changed the calculation of compensation. With many of the newly hired agents totally inexperienced in selling life insurance or anything else, the president received requests for advice on sales techniques. Davis’s response fit with his choice of agents: “It has seemed to me a reasonable hope that southern men would prefer to insure with us rather than a northern company.”

  Davis was concerned about both the morale and the performance of his far-flung employees. Although he worked on building up both through correspondence, after a few months he spent considerable time traveling through the area covered by Carolina Life. He ventured all the way to the Atlantic coast and as far north as Baltimore, without neglecting the Gulf states and his own Tennessee and neighboring Kentucky. On these journeys Davis did not spend every hour on business. Stops with friends like the Clement Clays near Huntsville, Alabama, and at holiday sites such as Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, where he stayed with the poet Sidney Lanier, and the springs in the Virginia mountains provided interludes of enjoyment and relaxation.51

  On a stopover in Richmond in early November 1870, he made his first public speech since the war, a eulogy of the man who had been his comrade and his first soldier. Robert E. Lee’s death the previous month served as the occasion to gather Confederate soldiers and sailors to organize a Lee Monument Association. When Davis rose to speak in the First Presbyterian Church, everyone stood amidst what a reporter termed “a storm of applause” that seemed to shake the building’s foundations. In his brief remarks Davis concentrated fiercely on the character and genius of Lee. He stayed completely away from politics, except to proclaim that Lee did nothing wrong when he resigned from the U.S. Army upon the secession of Virginia, to which he owed his fundamental allegiance. Identifying Lee as a friend since West Point and a close companion during the war, Davis emphasized his personal generosity and his military ability. Between commander in chief and commander, harmony had reigned; any differences of opinion fell aside during discussion. After concise praise of Lee’s Confederate career, Davis exulted in the Christian faith that had ennobled the general in life. He gave Lee his highest accolade: “I may add that I never in my life saw in him the slightest tendency to self-seeking. It was not his to make a record, it was not his to shift blame to other shoulders; but it was his with an eye fixed upon the welfare of his country, never faltering to follow the line of duty to the end.”52

  When Davis accepted the presidency of Carolina Life, he moved into the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where he decided to live until his life settled down. While learning about the insurance business, he joined St. Lazarus Episcopal Church. And he did have a few old acquaintances in the city. Encountering a woman he knew, he suggested a walk. Thereupon, according to his companion, “he grew very eloquent & politic, & said a number of beautiful sweet things.…” He could still charm.

  In Memphis, Davis’s health followed its traditional pattern, as his recurring problems flared up regularly. He contracted a cough in December, which he attributed to the chilly and damp weather. Describing another siege of coughing, Davis said it made him “bark more than a watchdog.” The cough stayed with him through much of the winter, though with the arrival of spring the hacking disappeared. Then he experienced chills and fever, reminders of his old foe malaria. In mid-May he blamed the alternating hot and cold temperatures for the neuralgia that plagued him.

  At this time optimism and sadness coexisted in his heart and mind. He did have a positive outlook about Carolina Life and was determined to succeed in his new undertaking. Yet he simultaneously wrestled with where life had placed him. To a niece he spoke of “these days of sorrow and disappointment.” Responding to a request to list his amusements, he answered: “I cannot enumerate them for they are zero.” Aside from contemplating what he called “the wreck,” he had two other overriding concerns.53

  The condition of his beloved brother Joseph worried him deeply. Upon seeing Joseph in Baltimore, he commented on how feeble the eighty-five-year-old man had become. Jefferson was thankful, however, that Joseph still had his granddaughter taking care of him. To young Lise, whom he addressed affectionately as “My dear Daughter” or “My dear Niece,” Jefferson declared both his love for his brother and his gratitude to her. Sometime toward the end of 1869 Joseph suffered a fall that severely dislocated his shoulder. Even though in late February 1870 Jefferson arranged a trip to New Orleans for the three of them, in part to see about the injury, Joseph’s condition continued to deteriorate. Late in the spring Jefferson informed his wife that Joe could no longer take care of himself. By August both hearing and sight were almost gone.54

  That his wife and children remained in England preyed upon him. In every letter to Varina and his little ones, he professed his abiding love for all of them. Varina tried to bring her husband into their circle. She wrote him about their activities and sent him photographs. At Christmas she described presents and mentioned sadly that she had nothing for him, not even a token. A constant was mention of sickness. Word about illness affecting her or the children greatly distressed him. She catalogued coughs and flu for all, chicken pox among the children, eye in
flammation and insomnia for herself, and another ominous situation: Shortly after Davis’s departure, Polly, now almost fifteen, was diagnosed with a spinal problem with potentially severe repercussions. The doctor forbade her return to school in France. Fortunately, no grim manifestations ever appeared. Even so, she continued her studies at home with governesses. Jeff Jr. and Billy were in school in Liverpool. A notable event took place in February 1870, when Varina’s sister Margaret, for years a fixture in the Davis household, became engaged. Although the engagement, to a widower of German descent living in Liverpool, did not thrill Varina, both she and Jefferson gave their blessing, which greatly pleased the bride-to-be.

  Upcoming wedding aside, Varina struggled with her own turmoil. Once again she had charge of her children and her home without her husband and with limited means. Although she had said he should choose where they would settle, she admitted that she “dread[ed] the return to America as a country in which we are to live and die.…” She described a visit to friends as “a cold plunge to go among those who are happy, and at home with a tolerably certain future.” One line to her husband was particularly anguished: “This death in life is the most harrowing of all sorrows.”

  Jefferson was anxious about his wife’s reaction to his decision to locate in Memphis. Even though she had told him the choice was his, he knew that she detested the heat of the southern summer. She had made clear that she much preferred Baltimore to any place farther south. Still, Jefferson hoped she would “realize the advantage of my position here over that I would have occupied in Baltimore, and so be thankful.” Whatever his wish, he tried to allow her to make her own decision. Although he had to stay in Memphis, at least for a time, he told her his income would permit her to live elsewhere if she chose, even in Europe. Yet they both wanted to reunite their family as rapidly as possible.55