Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  By the late 1880s Davis had become more pessimistic about the progress and future of African Americans. He saw devolution. In 1889 the Virginian Philip A. Bruce published his influential book The Plantation Negro as a Freeman. At this time around 90 percent of all blacks still lived in the former slave states, and overwhelmingly they resided in the plantation belts, especially in the Deep South. Although Bruce based his account on personal observations in the predominantly black plantation counties of his state, he declared that the same conditions prevailed elsewhere in similar regions of the South, such as the river counties of the lower Mississippi Valley. Bruce narrated a dismal story of the degeneration of blacks in those areas where large numbers of them lived among few whites. He told of a decline in moral and productive capacity. His conclusion: the end of slavery had been disastrous for the well-being and prospects of blacks. Upon reading the book, Davis applauded Bruce: “It is gratifying to know that at last a Southern writer comprehending the true characters of the Negro, has chosen to present a real portrait for the benefit of the uninitiated.”19

  Even though Davis’s general view of race was quite clear, his connections with individual blacks complicate what initially seems uncomplicated. Without question he respected individual blacks and in turn received their respect. His dealings with his slave James Pemberton and with Ben Montgomery as both a slave and a freedman illustrate such a relationship. Inviting Davis to attend the Colored State Fair in Vicksburg in 1886, Montgomery’s son Isaiah said he knew Davis would have an interest “in any Enterprise tending to the welfare and development of the Colored people of Mississippi.” “We would be highly pleased to have you here,” Isaiah Montgomery asserted, and he closed “with best wishes for your continued preservation.”

  The year before Davis died, he received a letter from James H. Jones, a former Davis slave. Residing in Raleigh, North Carolina, Jones identified himself as a Republican and detailed his successful career, including a decade and a half as an alderman and a stint as a deputy sheriff. Although he had not seen Davis in fifteen years, Jones professed, “I have always been as warmly attached to you as when I was your body servant.” He declared that he had never missed an opportunity to defend Davis from “any attack of malicious or envious people.” He said he occasionally read about Davis and had even bought a copy of Rise and Fall. He also asked for a photograph. Responding, Davis wrote Jones that his letter had brought much pleasure to Varina and him. “We all here rejoiced when we heard of your honorable prosperity & have felt that it was due to your integrity [and fidelity].” Davis then assured Jones that the Davises’ regard for him was undiminished. And he put his most recent photograph in the mail.20

  At the end of his life, Jefferson Davis believed unequivocally in the superiority of his race. He also had serious reservations about black people ever achieving any kind of equality with the superior race. Yet he was no race-baiter or racial demagogue. Neither by themselves nor in conjunction with others did blacks any longer threaten what Davis considered the proper order in the South. The politics of racial demagoguery lurking just ahead in the 1890s and early twentieth century articulated a malignancy of feeling that far surpassed anything Davis ever expressed. His conviction about the innate supremacy of his race did not require hatred or viciousness.

  In the late 1880s, when Davis concluded that Brierfield was not providing the income he expected and needed, he turned to writing for the first time since the publication of Rise and Fall. His subject remained chiefly the same: the justice and honor of secession and the Confederate cause. He declined a request to write a piece on Abraham Lincoln, though he agreed to do one on Zachary Taylor. A key figure in this new direction was James Redpath. A native Scot who immigrated with his family to Michigan around 1850, Redpath had been a Civil War journalist and had booked lecturers in the postwar years. In 1886 he became an editor at the North American Review, and he invited contributions from Davis. In two successive articles published posthumously, Davis praised Robert E. Lee and once more spelled out his states’-rights constitutionalism, which legitimized secession. He also wrote a lengthy treatment of the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia, that was not published.21

  Ruins of Brierfield (the house was destroyed by fire in 1931), looking west, 1995.

  Courtesy of Patricia H. Cooper (photo credit i19.2)

  Prompted and aided by Redpath, he prepared a pared-down version of Rise and Fall for Redpath’s new publishing association with Robert Belford of the Belford Company. Drastic cuts were made in the discussion of constitutional history and issues, which constituted a considerable portion of Rise and Fall. The coverage of the war was also reduced and the appendices jettisoned. Even so, A Short History of the Confederate States of America, published in the year after Davis’s death, totals a hefty 505 pages.

  Davis did not hesitate to emphasize his concern about money. Only with agreement on a suitable honorarium did he agree in 1888 to write the sketch of Taylor for Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography. In the last year of his life, he reacted vigorously when a new editor at the North American Review sent him a check for $100 for an article rather than the $250 he and Redpath had agreed upon. Incensed, Davis returned the $100, saying he did not understand the reason for the smaller amount. A check for $250 was soon mailed to Mississippi. He also instituted a lawsuit against D. Appleton & Company over royalty payments from Rise and Fall.22

  Davis contemplated writing his memoirs as well. This time he really meant memoirs or reminiscences, not a constitutional treatise or an apologia. In the summer of 1888 Redpath, who had grown to admire Davis and had become a warm friend, spent three months at Beauvoir working with Davis. He returned again in the fall of 1889 just after Davis had departed on his final trip to Brierfield. Davis often dictated to both Varina and Redpath from his sickbed, but he had not gotten much done before his death. Only two fragments survived. One known as the “Autobiography” appeared in Belford’s Magazine, with a variant version included in J. William Jones’s The Davis Memorial Volume. The other, “Autobiographical Sketch,” was published only in Varina’s own Memoir.23

  Although Davis returned to writing for publication, he maintained his public silence on current political issues, with one notable exception. From the time of his return to Mississippi, he shunned any talk of public office for himself and stayed away from political disputes. He realized he could easily have been elected to either house of the Congress, but he declared his primary goal had always been to serve his state, and he recognized the liability of the controversy swirling about him. “From youth to age,” he informed a Mississippi editor, “it has been my pride to represent Mississippi in military and civil service, and I would add that all her sons should realize that it is her interest which dictates my present decision.” Davis professed himself satisfied and humbled with “the affection of our people.…”24

  He did express his private opinion on one major national issue of the 1880s. As early as 1882 the first serious effort was underway in Congress to secure a federal appropriation for public education. Known as the Blair Bill for its chief congressional sponsor, Senator Henry W. Blair, Republican of New Hampshire, the measure got through the Senate on three separate occasions during the decade but never passed the House, and ultimately failed. In 1884 a South Carolinian asked Davis for his opinion. Replying in a private letter, Davis opposed the initiative on the grounds of strict construction and states’ rights: “Unless therefore there can be found among the enumerated powers a grant to take money out of the Treasury & apply it to support of the schools, an act making such an appropriation must be unconstitutional.…” Money, Davis predicted, would be followed by federal control of curriculum, teacher accreditation, and textbooks—in his judgment an unmitigated disaster.25

  While Davis’s opinion on the Blair Bill did not become part of the public debate, he did stand in the spotlight on an increasingly important and divisive issue: prohibition. His involvement began when his wartime aide Franc
is Lubbock, who had also been governor of Texas, requested Davis’s opinion on the attempt to place an amendment requiring statewide prohibition in the Texas constitution. Lubbock was a leader of the forces opposing the proposed amendment. In his response, Davis occupied the same constitutional ground he had always defended. He asserted that prohibition would mean “governmental supervision and paternity,” which would violate the individual liberty at the heart of the Constitution. He contended that the world had “long suffered from the oppression of government … excusing the invasion into private and domestic affairs on the plea of paternal care for the morals and good order of the people.”

  While he agreed that “the intemperate use of intoxicating liquors is an evil” and “the root of many social disorders,” he deemed the appropriate remedy to be education and Christianity, not constitutional directives. “To destroy individual liberty and moral responsibility would be to eradicate one evil by the substitution of another,” Davis expounded, “which it is submitted would be more fatal than that for which it was offered as a remedy.” Moreover, Davis warned that official statewide prohibition could become “the wooden horse in which a disguised enemy to State sovereignty as the guardian of individual liberty was introduced.…” He foresaw “the progressive march” eventually moving “from State to United States.”26

  Lubbock made Davis’s letter public, drawing him into a bitter contest. For Davis, who wanted no part of public disputes, that outcome was most unwelcome but not unexpected. He had written Lubbock, “If the utterance shall avail anything for good, it will compensate me for the objurgations with which I shall doubtless be pursued by the followers of the popularism of the day.” Even friendships could be strained. John H. Reagan was a major spokesman for prohibition, but the two men did not permit this difference to become personal. Davis became especially upset when prohibitionists in Texas began accusing him of opposing temperance and calling him a saloon man. Rightly believing that such charges distorted his position, he felt compelled to answer them. He sent an open letter to the Houston Post denying the accusations and repeating his fundamental points about strict construction and individual liberty. When the votes were counted, the antiprohibitionist side triumphed. And Lubbock gave Davis much of the credit for the victory.27

  Davis’s involvement in the prohibition wars was not restricted to Texas. In his own Mississippi, he ended up in a publicized conflict with the Reverend Charles B. Galloway, the Methodist bishop of the state. Featured in the state’s newspapers, this fracas revolved around Galloway’s assertion that Davis advocated intemperance and supported saloons. Davis’s reaction had two components. First, he expressed his distress that “a dignitary” of the Methodist Church “should have left the pulpit and the Bible to mount the political rostrum and plead the higher law of prohibitionism.” Davis proclaimed that Galloway’s activity violated the separation of church and state. Second, as in his Texas statements, Davis based his position on the conviction that legalized statewide prohibition would endanger individual liberty. He claimed that “to undertake, by coercive means, the reformation of drunkards” would be a hopeless and futile task. To a friend he said he wanted no “governmental supervision of domestic habits,” and he perceived another and even greater danger. “Shirk it as they may, this Prohibition means to bring the Federal Government to the supervision of our private affairs.” After the Davis-Galloway exchange, the furor died down.28

  At Beauvoir, Davis’s status as the revered leader of the southern cause still brought numerous honors and requests. College fraternities and literary societies wanted his name on their rolls. Old and young wrote for autographs, photographs, and his opinion on various questions such as states’ rights. A riverboat captain wanted permission to name his steamboat “Jefferson Davis.” A Pennsylvanian wanted to know where he could buy a copy of Rise and Fall. Correspondents joyously informed him about namesakes, and one little girl in Colorado wrote, “We have a large tree in our yard named after you.”

  Invitations to make personal appearances and give speeches poured in. They came from a wide range of organizations and institutions. Colleges and veterans’ associations clamored for visits and talks. Agricultural societies and fairs requested his presence. Groups laying cornerstones for monuments or unveiling them wanted him to join their ceremonies. In 1888 the governor of Mississippi sent a special delegation to Beauvoir to invite Davis to Jackson for the laying of the cornerstone of the Confederate monument.

  Most of these invitations Davis declined, usually claiming poor health, but he did accept a few. He made the short trip to New Orleans to participate in rituals honoring the Confederacy and its heroes. Occasionally he spoke briefly, concentrating on timeworn themes—the valor and heroism of a particular individual and the glory of Confederate patriotism. In 1884 he agreed to go to his state capital and make a few remarks to the legislature. Before a joint session he proudly identified himself as a Mississippian and underscored his devotion to his state. While not forgetting the “disappointed hopes and crushed aspirations of the past,” he declared that the patriotism which enabled the Confederacy to sustain for so long its mighty struggle for independence still flourished, “not measured by lines of latitude and longitude.” He pictured the South in “a transition state,” with all resulting changes unforeseeable. Yet he enunciated his unwavering confidence in Mississippians and spoke of “bright hopes for the future.”29

  In the fall of 1886 sentimental feelings compelled a quick journey to his birthplace in Kentucky. A group of Davis partisans in December 1885 had purchased the land on which the house stood and sent him the deed. The homestead had been torn down, and a Baptist church was set to be built on the spot. As planned, Davis in turn deeded the land to the church. He was wanted at the dedication of the new brick edifice, in which a marble tablet would specify the location as the site of Davis’s birth and also indicate that he had donated the land to the Bethel Baptist Church. At Fairview he heard speeches acclaiming him and witnessed the rite of dedication. He said a few words, declaring Kentucky home country, praising his father, and speaking of the love of God. His return to Beauvoir was uneventful.30

  His most ambitious tour had occurred earlier, in the spring of that year. Agreeing initially to go to Montgomery for the laying of the cornerstone for a monument to the Confederate dead, Davis also acceded to the urging that he continue on to Atlanta for the unveiling of the statue of his wartime ally, Senator Benjamin H. Hill, and then travel on to Savannah for ceremonies at the statue of the Revolutionary War hero General Nathanael Greene. In late April the seventy-eight-year-old Davis, accompanied by daughter Winnie, left Beauvoir in the private railroad car provided for him. In all three cities his brief public statements covered familiar ground: the legitimacy of secession, the heroism and virtue of the Confederate cause, and his pleasure in celebrating its commemoration with fellow Confederates and southerners. On every podium, dignitaries including governors and United States senators lauded the honored guest. Winnie was also introduced with great excitement at each site.

  The remarkable aspect of this journey was Davis’s reception. Wherever the train stopped along the route to Montgomery, crowds gathered and showered him with flowers. At the three major stops people congregated in overwhelming numbers. Newspaper accounts said 15,000 stood in a drizzle to welcome Davis to the Alabama capital; more than three times that many thronged into Atlanta; and a multitude jammed the streets and open spaces in Savannah. Davis’s actual appearance at the various ceremonies generated intense emotional outbursts. When he was introduced at the Capitol in Montgomery, on almost the exact spot where he had been inaugurated in 1861, the roar was “so long drawn out that it seemed for a time he was not going to get a chance to speak.” Virginia Clay, who had become Virginia Clopton, attended and remembered: “I saw women, shrouded in black fall at Mr. D’s feet, to be uplifted and comforted by kind words. Old men & young men shook with emotion beyond the power of words on taking Mr. Davis’s hand, & I feared the ordeal
wd. Prove the death of the man.”

  No letdown occurred in Georgia. In Atlanta, where the approach of Davis’s carriage caused the removal of hats, the eruption of a mighty cheer “was caught up by the people that lined other streets and was carried on and on until at every point in the city it could be heard.” A reporter exulted: “History does not contain an account of such a grand and wonderful outburst from human throats.” In Savannah the crowd surged to the platform “eager to grasp the hand of the old statesman. So great was the rush that there was some danger of Mr. Davis being crushed.”

  Finally, this emotionally and physically demanding trip was over. At its outset in Montgomery, Virginia Clopton reported Davis admitted feeling somewhat shaky. Back at Beauvoir after more than two weeks on the road, he collapsed. Varina worried that he was in “imminent danger.” For another two weeks high fever along with acute bronchitis kept him confined and left him quite weak. His daughter joined him on the sick list; she returned with the measles. But despite the toll on his health, Davis did not want to give up such wonderful, reassuring experiences. The plaudits told him that his beloved southerners shared his view of their common cause and his dedication to it and them.31

  The following year, 1887, he was invited to attend a combined agricultural fair and veterans’ reunion scheduled for October in Macon, Georgia. Late that summer the president of the Georgia State Agricultural Society traveled to Beauvoir to prevail upon Davis to come. He succeeded. This time Davis’s wife and older daughter joined Winnie and him. The scene in Macon replicated what had transpired the previous year. Varina said “the enthusiasm baffled description.” A journalist observed that the first glimpse of Davis brought forth “a mighty yell” from the assembled multitude. Veterans made “a wild charge” toward Davis, “every one of them yelling.” On the porch of the large house where he was staying, Davis lifted his hat and bowed; next, he leaned forward on the balustrade and grasped every outstretched hand that he could. An old Confederate flag was then brought up. After the restoration of quiet, Davis spoke: “Friends and Brethren—I am like that flag, torn and battered by storms and years. I love it for its own sake; I love it for yours. I love it as a memento of what your fathers did and hoped that you would do. God bless you.” At that point he clutched the flag to his chest, burying his face and tear-filled eyes in it. Winnie took it, kissed it, and handed it back to the flag-bearer. This occasion, too, felled Davis, even before he could leave Macon. According to Varina, heart problems caused great suffering and for some days placed him in great danger. At last his attending physician permitted the return to Beauvoir.32