Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Worried, sad, and lonely, Davis found solace in his friendship with the Clays, especially Virginia Clay, “Ginnie” to him. He had known them since the 1850s in Washington, when Clement served as a senator from Alabama and his wife enjoyed a prominent social role. Sharing many common experiences at Fortress Monroe deepened the bond between the two men, an embrace Davis extended to Virginia. Upon his return from England, he reached out to them for his emotional lifeline. After his initial visit to the Clays’ mountain retreat near Huntsville, Alabama, Davis said he would like to return, “but the vision is so sweet to me, that I fear to disturb it.” He did go back, however. He wanted to know every move the Clays made. Virginia did most of the Clays’ letter-writing, and Davis relished her communications. Relatives in Memphis also passed on news of his dear friends. Clement Clay’s suffering from tuberculosis and his poverty generated Davis’s solicitation and attempt to aid his companion financially. Davis even made Clay an agent of Carolina Life, but selling insurance did not turn into a profitable enterprise for the Alabamian.

  Joseph Davis, late 1860s.

  Museum of the Confederacy (photo credit i17.2)

  Writing often, mostly to Virginia, Davis did not hide his profound attachment to the Clays and his dependence on them. “If the evening of life has not given me mystical love,” he wrote, “it has taught me the value of true love such as the sterling and sensitive nature of my precious Clays feel and inspire.” Talk of their moving to Minnesota because of Clement’s disease pained him. “I must see you,” he implored Virginia, “there is so much I would hear and something I would say.” He recounted his daydream for the three of them—a good ship, good cigars, a good library, and “sail on, on to the Port where men embark for the world unknown.”

  With Virginia Clay he was utterly open. He told her he thought of her as his “indulgent confessor and a sincere, cordial adviser.” He poured out his desolation. “A life of disappointments has not deprived me of hope, though it so often proves the seed from which springs a new disappointment.” Reacting to a gentle chiding from her about his mournful melancholy, Jefferson defended himself and underscored his need for her: “But you would not expect one whose disappointments had been greatest, whose possessions were only the true and loving hearts of those from whom he was separated, and whose future was dark where he would see, and evil where forced upon the sight, who feels decay approaching and fears he may not be able to perform the little work he hoped to achieve, to feel as he did when life was new and full of promise, and as little would you expect me, I hope, to feign any sentiment or opinion, which was entertained. Don’t you feel sorry for having (given) me a chance to inflict my sorrows upon you? Forgive me, this once.”

  Not only a confidante, Virginia Clay also brought cheer into Davis’s life. He admitted that no one else gave him the joy she did. When she could not make a scheduled reunion in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Davis was distressed. His regret was “enhanced by the frequent thought, she would enjoy that, as either the grotesque the grand or the beautiful came into view.” The scent of the flowers, “especially the orange blooms,” would have delighted her. “Authors say there is nothing so difficult as a beginning,” he stated, then disagreed. “In writing to you I find it hardest to stop. It is as if to leave you so near does the act of addressing you bring you to me.”56

  Despite his bouts of sadness and his frequent illnesses, Davis carried on his duties as an insurance executive. By the summer of 1870 he thought the time had come for his family to join him. After a combined business and vacation trip from Memphis to Baltimore, he went on to New York City, and there on August 10 took passage on the Russia for Liverpool. He traveled alone, for he had been unable to persuade either the Clays or Joseph to join him. Davis commented on the few passengers because of the Franco-Prussian War raging in Europe, and noted a correlation between American sectionalism and the conflict. He informed Joseph that northerners lined up with the Prussians while southerners stood by the French.57

  Reaching Liverpool on August 31, he went to the home of his sister-in-law Margaret Howell Stoess. He reported to Varina in London on his safe arrival and his only partially successful effort to obtain the money they had invested in Liverpool. But before heading for London, he struck out on a brief side trip back across the Irish Sea to Dublin and up to Belfast. Then he returned to Glasgow, where he took the train to London, arriving on September 26. Although he remained in England only a couple of weeks and saw a few old acquaintances, he missed Judah Benjamin, who regretted that he had to be in France.58

  By the beginning of October, Davis prepared to return to the United States with his family, except for Polly, who was placed under her aunt Margaret’s care to continue her schooling. Plagued by lingering ailments, concerned about living in what she saw as a conquered South, and unenthusiastic about the climate of Memphis, Varina delayed their departure for some two weeks. On October 8 they went on board a steamer for the voyage west, but after a rough first night they stopped in Queenstown, Ireland. The rolling of the ship had caused a round of seasickness among the children and upset their mother. Davis said she just wanted to go ashore and “touch the sod.” As a result, he sailed on by himself, and she followed with her young ones a bit later.59

  Davis made Baltimore by October 24. Before leaving England he had received the wrenching but not unexpected news of Joseph’s death. Back in the United States, he shared his feelings with young Lise Mitchell. Although in the summer he had left his brother in Vicksburg with “sad forebodings,” he confessed, “my heart refused to surrender hope and I crossed the Atlantic hopeful of being able again to embrace my mentor and benefactor.” He cried out: “how bitter are the waters in which I am overwhelmed.”60

  Davis expected his wife to follow him. He wanted her while in Baltimore to have her eyes thoroughly examined, and he left instructions about money. While there she oversaw the placing of both boys in a nearby Episcopalian boarding school run by a ministerial friend. She also visited with other friends; finally, with six-year-old Varina Anne she set out for her husband and her new residence.61

  The reunion in Memphis, which Varina recalled “looked very small after London,” did not bring stability to the Davises. Varina, Varina Anne (Winnie), and an Irish nurse joined Jefferson at the Peabody, but hotel life suited no one. Moreover, poor health continued to beset Varina, who was being treated by a homeopathic physician she and Jefferson had known for years. When the onset of summer heat increased her discomfort, her husband sent her with Winnie back to Baltimore, to cooler temperatures and the comfort of a number of old associations. Besides, Jeff Jr. and Billy were in school nearby.

  Jefferson stayed on in Memphis to manage Carolina Life. In June the board of directors unanimously reelected him president of the company he was striving to run effectively. On occasion he complained about redoing and undoing “whatever has been done or commenced by others [that] was much worse than nothing.” Even though his work kept him busy, he did not forget his family. “Kiss the dear children for me,” he wrote Varina, “I miss you dreadfully and wish we had a quiet home.” Laboring in the intense heat of a Deep South summer, he was pleased to accept an invitation to attend commencement at the University of the South in the Tennessee highlands. On a business trip east he also managed a detour to Lexington, Virginia, the burial place of Robert E. Lee and the home of his former aide William Preston Johnston, a faculty member at Washington College. Davis had Jeff Jr. with him, and they made a jaunt over to the Virginia springs.

  Back in Memphis, Davis decided he had to move out of the Peabody, noting that the hotel had “run down very low.” Friends even invited him to take meals with them. He found and rented what he termed one of “the better class” of Memphis houses, though he said it featured a “cranky” plan and not much of yard. He also worried that the small rooms and low ceilings would not please his wife, who on her journey from Baltimore had come through Richmond in a mostly unsuccessful search for any of their old furniture. Ch
ristmas 1871, at 129 Court Street, with both boys home as well as Polly from England, the entire Davis family was under one roof in the United States for the first time since the war.

  While Davis strove to support his immediate family, his extended family also brought their financial troubles to him. Nieces trying to hold on to family property had difficulty dealing with the combination of low cotton prices, declining land values, and tax payments. Uncle Jeff commiserated but felt unable to help. As he wrote once to Varina, “I can wish, but can I venture in the face of our wants and uncertainties?” He did not think so.

  Their situation in Memphis did not improve. At the center of Davis’s disquiet was his wife’s health. It concerned him that she became “nervous under suspense.” She did not seem to be able to throw off nagging ailments. And he had his own usual complaints. The arrival of summer deeply distressed him, for he feared the effect of the hot, humid weather on both wife and children. Yet Varina would not leave him alone, and he said he lacked the money for a summer trip. Then, in the autumn, came cataclysm: Billy, almost eleven, and the delight of his parents, contracted diphtheria; within days he was dead. The Davises had lost their third son—first Sam, then Joe, now Billy.62

  Mother and father were devastated. Davis called him “the bright boy … the hope and pride of my house.” His “heart bowed down at the loss,” Davis said all his disappointments and sorrows had not increased his ability to bear them. For an unwell Varina, the blow was crushing. A greatly distressed Jefferson perceived that Billy’s death had substantially increased her emotional suffering. In December he confided to Virginia Clay that Varina’s “grief is increasing her physical ills to a degree which has made me very anxious.” To a sister he depicted a terrible situation: “Varina has for a long time suffered from a numbness in her limbs and the mental depression caused by our domestic bereavement has increased both the frequency and violence of the attacks.” There seemed to be no help for anyone; “the doctors seem powerless and only advise cheerfulness.”

  During the spring of 1873 her health continued to give him “constant anxiety.” In hopes of improving her condition, he sent her in the summer to a considerably cooler place, Drummondville, Canada, which was home to a southern seasonal colony. The village was quite near Niagara, where he had visited James Mason back in 1867. During his own business trips he wrote regularly reporting on his activities and professing his devotion. From Richmond he mailed her a sprig of grass from Joe’s grave. Winnie went to Canada with her mother while Polly and Jeff Jr. spent the hot months with the Preston Johnstons in Lexington. On an eastern trip their father visited and took them on an excursion to nearby Natural Bridge, a magnificent rock formation.63

  As Davis grappled to keep his family well and whole, his business venture came apart. The financial winds buffeting American business that resulted in the Panic of 1873 did not bypass Carolina Life. Davis reported that insurance men feared the southern death rate. The scarcity of money made very real the probability of unpaid claims as well as distraught policyholders and investors. To avert the impending collapse, Davis, at the behest of his board, traveled east to New York, Baltimore, and Richmond to find financial succor for his faltering company. He claimed to have assurance that the company could raise an additional $150,000 from new stocks dependent on chartering Carolina in Maryland and moving its headquarters to Baltimore. But while Davis was obtaining promises of rescue, his directors back in Memphis decided they could hold on no longer. Without either asking his advice or awaiting his return to Memphis, and according to Davis “insensible of their responsibility,” they transferred Carolina Life to another locally owned company. Condemning the transaction as “most loosely and unwisely conducted,” Davis asserted that the new arrangement meant the abandonment of widows and orphans of deceased policyholders as well as of living policyholders and investors. Unwilling to maintain responsibility for a plan he disapproved and believed grossly unfair, on August 25, 1873, he resigned as president.

  The resignation placed him in a difficult financial spot. Although he would have to pay $5,150 for his indebtedness as a stockholder, he could charge from advances and commissions only $3,500 against that sum. Moreover, during the summer the household had spent $55.36 more than it had taken in. And he no longer had a salary. He apologized to Varina for piling all this dismal news upon her, saying it was “more of money trouble than I would have you to hear in your life.”64

  “The tide of my fortune is at its lowest ebb,” Davis told his wife. He was out of work; he had no income. Moreover, upon the advice of a friend he had made an investment in Alabama coal and iron mining, which soured. He recouped nothing. He even spoke of selling furniture to raise income. As he told Virginia Clay, the collapse of Carolina Life had occurred so suddenly that he had not made any arrangements for other employment. Unemployment necessitated leaving Memphis, because he considered the city too expensive for him without a good salary. Although a woman friend in Memphis offered assistance, Davis refused. He responded that “your sweet letter so delicately offers aid that it relieves me of the pain one always feels as being recognized in need.” While he assured this would-be benefactor that he was not in want, he lamented to a relative, “I am too sad, too deep in anguish.…”

  Yet he forced himself to look ahead. He knew employment was essential. Although he recognized his association with the failed Carolina Life injured his business reputation, he believed he would find another opportunity so that his family would not suffer. Wanting to look in Louisville, he informed Varina that she could either come down and join him there, or he would proceed on to Canada, and they could return together.

  But these immediate plans had to be postponed, for when he reached the Galt House in Louisville, Davis fell ill with what he called an “acute attack of neuralgia.” From early September to the end of October, he struggled through a series of assaults on his body. Bronchial problems and dangerous fevers led to complications that he believed placed him in mortal danger. During this protracted siege, Varina and Winnie came to him, as did Polly from Virginia.

  His slow recuperation did not alter reality. Decisions had to be made. Davis’s physician advised that a long sea voyage was essential for the restoration of his health, though the patient feared he would be “permanently convalescent.” Finally able to travel, Davis left for the East Coast to search for employment. Varina returned to Memphis with her two daughters to begin closing down their house. There eighteen-year-old Polly began receiving young men.

  From Baltimore, Davis reported that his health had improved and that he had seen an unhappy Jeff Jr., who was not prospering as a cadet and college student at Virginia Military Institute. There was no news about any job, though Davis did say that he had looked into transoceanic steamers. Most important, he brought up the subject of Brierfield.65

  At this desperate point his attention turned to his old plantation. He had not been totally divorced from Davis Bend—or since 1867, more accurately Davis Island—for Joseph’s will named him an executor, along with nephew Joseph D. Smith and a close family friend in Vicksburg, Dr. J. H. D. Bowmar. In a will dated March 1869 Joseph provided for his two living daughters and divided the proceeds from the $300,000 sale of Hurricane and Brierfield between his orphaned grandchildren Lise and Joseph D. Mitchell and the children of Jefferson Davis. He specified $150,000 for his grandchildren and $20,000 each for his nieces and nephews, leaving $70,000 unmentioned. All else was to go to the Mitchells.

  Although Joseph made generous bequests to Jefferson’s children, significant problems remained. Because of several floods and low cotton prices, the Montgomerys still had difficulty meeting their interest payments and had done nothing toward repaying the principal. Aware that Joseph’s will directed that every generosity be shown to the Montgomerys in their efforts to make payments, the executors followed the example Joseph had set during his lifetime. They forgave, lowered, and postponed payments.

  Because of his devotion to his brother and his r
ecognition that his children stood to benefit from the land sale, Jefferson took his duties as executor quite seriously. He traveled to Vicksburg for meetings; he corresponded with Ben Montgomery about agricultural and financial matters, and on at least two occasions went to the property, both times with Dr. Bowmar. In May 1870 they made a surprise appearance, which Ben Montgomery’s oldest daughter termed pleasing. The next year Ben Montgomery acted as host. He gave Davis and Dr. Bowmar a tour of the plantations and also presided at the breakfast and lunch prepared for them. In each instance he waited upon his visitors but did not sit with them. The former master was served in his old house by his brother’s ex-slave, who now owned the Davis acres. But despite the Montgomerys’ best efforts, Davis was convinced they could never succeed in fulfilling the purchase contract.

  With his income practically nonexistent and his conviction that the Montgomerys would fail, Davis decided to press his claim to Brierfield. There were complex issues. He had never held formal title to the land, a fact Joseph had taken advantage of to reclaim Brierfield as well as Hurricane from the federal government. And in his first will drawn in 1865 Joseph specified Brierfield as his, but in the second and final document prepared four years later he made no such declaration. Posing another difficulty was the adamant opposition of Joe and Lise Mitchell, who had become Lise Hamer in 1873. They had come to believe that their grandfather never intended for their great-uncle Jeff to possess Brierfield. In their opinion, the property and all the proceeds from it belonged to them. Thus, to regain Brierfield, Davis would have to seek a legal remedy.

  He did consult with attorneys, who told him he could mount a strong case. Still, pursuing his claim in court would endanger and perhaps destroy his relationship with Lise Hamer, long a cherished grandniece as well as a favorite of Varina’s. Moreover, he would have to file suit in a Warren County court whose judge had been appointed by a Republican governor, a longtime bitter foe of Davis’s. Davis had little choice if ever again he wanted Brierfield to be his, for the statute of limitations would bar legal action after 1875. But he wanted no suit brought unless there was every chance of success.