Davis’s journeys occurred during a period of renewed interest in the Confederacy and the war. In mid-decade the Century Magazine published its enormously popular series of articles by participants that led in 1887 and 1888 to the appearance of the four-volume Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. In the South, public bodies and private organizations engaged in a new spurt of monument building. Additionally, more Confederate army units held reunions than ever before, and veterans’ groups were organized throughout the region. The foundation was being laid for the United Confederate Veterans, founded in 1889. In the midst of this celebration, Davis became for many southerners a tangible connection with a revered past.33
In the spring of 1889 Davis tentatively accepted an invitation to participate in the centennial celebration of North Carolina’s ratification of the Constitution. Set for late November in Fayetteville, the commemoration was predicted by its organizers to be the largest gathering in the history of the state. Asking Davis to speak on the Constitution, they used language that would encourage his assent. This opportunity, their letter read, “gives you the chance in a word to forever silence the blatant curs of high and low degree who by assailment of you have hoped to degrade the cause by you represented.” The governor of the state also wrote assuring Davis that “nowhere throughout this Southern land, will your welcome be warmer or the people be more gratified.…” Davis held out hope that he could make the journey. He even prepared a short manuscript summarizing his constitutional views and praising North Carolina for her loyalty to principle from the Revolution forward. As the time approached, Davis realized that his health simply would not permit him to go, but he did not finally admit it until October 30.34
At home, far from the tumultuous excitement, Jefferson and Varina Davis thought about their lives and reflected on their mortality. Varina wrote to one friend, “Memory has summoned the past before me.” “It is evident even to us,” she continued, “that the night is far spent and eternal day may break upon us at any moment.” Davis himself mentioned “the sad memories of the past.” Time “has told heavily on me,” he related to a niece, and “there is much preparation for the world of which we knew so very little.…” Varina said that her husband “dwells in the past.” “The Shadow of the Confederacy grows heavier over him as years weigh his heart down…,” she noted.35
While Davis was committed to his immutable principles and to the memory of the Confederacy, he also looked forward. He did not believe the South or individual southerners should remain entrapped in the past or enfeebled by memories. This conviction prompted him in both his family life and public statements. Though initially unhappy and reluctant to accept Winnie’s marrying Alfred Wilkinson, he did not attempt to prohibit his daughter’s marriage. He even blessed her engagement. That she did not marry a man she clearly loved arose from complex reasons, but opposition by her father was not among them.
In a different sphere, Davis also embraced the future. He told audiences that their patriotism now belonged to the United States. And he took pride in what he identified as material progress in his state, especially economic diversification and greater support for public education. Although in his time those economic and social advances never reached a level to transform Mississippi, Davis wanted and welcomed what he saw as transformation-in-the-making. To one visiting northern reporter, he sounded like the most ardent New South booster. Asserting that developing the summer resorts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast into year-round playgrounds would “afford rare chances for capitalists to make money,” he saw no reason why the towns along that coast could not eventually rival winter destinations in Florida. Jefferson Davis was certainly not a man trapped in a time warp.36
In the last public talk Davis ever gave, he merged his devotion to the past with his hope for the future. In 1888 he went to nearby Mississippi City to speak briefly before a gathering of young men. That his listeners were young was important to him. He told them he would not otherwise have come. Beginning with words about himself, he confessed that his personal ambition along with his political dogma lay “buried in the grave of the Confederacy.” But then, calling to the “Men in whose hands the destinies of our Southland lie…,” he announced, “the past is dead.” He continued, “let it bury its dead, its hopes and aspirations; before you lies the future—a future full of golden promise; a future of expanding national glory, before which all the world shall stand amazed.” His closing: “Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feelings, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished—a reunited country.”37
Whether Davis pondered the past or estimated the future, he always had to deal with Brierfield. Toward the end of the first week in November 1889, he left Beauvoir for the annual fall journey to his plantation. From New Orleans on November 6 he took a steamboat for the trip upriver. Aboard ship he became ill, and the captain would not put him off at Davis Island, carrying him instead on to Vicksburg. On the return, Davis disembarked on the island and drove to Brierfield. From there on the twelfth he penned his final note to his wife, telling her he planned to come back downriver right away. The omission of words signaled his feebleness: “Lest you should hear alarming write say I have suffered much but by the help of the Lord.” Before leaving Brierfield the next day, Davis set down in a memory book of his overseer’s little daughter the last lines he ever wrote: “May all your paths be peaceful and pleasant, charged with the best fruit, the doing good to others.”38
He was seriously ill. An employee had sent Varina a telegram dated November 11 stating that Davis was in bed and would not see a doctor. Immediately she started for New Orleans and on the thirteenth embarked on a steamboat headed toward Davis Island. In the meantime Davis had followed his intentions and gotten on a southbound vessel. The two boats met on the river, and Varina joined her husband. When their boat docked at Bayou Sara, Louisiana, Davis received medical attention for the first time. According to Varina, the diagnosis was acute bronchitis complicated by serious malarial symptoms.
Jefferson Davis, c. 1888 (photograph by Washburn).
Museum of the Confederacy (photo credit i19.3)
On November 16, a wet, miserable day, they arrived back in New Orleans. Friends waited at wharfside, as did Davis’s physician and friend Dr. S. E. Chaille, and Dr. T. C. Bickham, both eminent members of their profession in the city. Varina allowed no one else to see her husband. When the rain let up, he was transported by ambulance to the home of Judge Charles E. Fenner, brother-in-law of Jacob Payne, at First and Camp Streets. Dr. Chaille told the press he saw no cause for alarm. Davis was suffering from a bad cold which might get worse, but he was resting quietly.
During the next two weeks Davis’s condition remained basically stable. He sat up in bed, and his temperature was almost normal. There was even talk of his going to Beauvoir. But he did not gain much strength, and the doctors did not like their patient to speak because they said it aggravated his throat. According to Varina, his doctors gave him cordials and quinine. In constant attendance, she permitted practically no visitors. Even Jacob Payne could enter the sickroom only when Davis asked for him. She wanted to know whether her husband wished their daughters to be notified. He said no; he did not want to worry them. Alarmed by newspaper accounts, however, Polly started east, but did not reach her father in time. Winnie was in Europe.
The beginning days of December brought mixed news. On December 1 Davis was reported slightly better but still had no appetite. His daily nourishment consisted of one half-pint of milk and beef tea or broth. For the first time, the reporter covering Davis’s illness indicated that prospects for recovery were dim. But a change for the better occurred on Monday, the second, and on December 3 Judge Fenner declared his guest “decidedly improved.” On Wednesday, the fourth, the reporter talked with Varina, who described her husband as “frail as a lily and requir[ing] the most exquisite care,” which she surely gave.
The situation worsened
suddenly and dramatically. Early on the fifth he still appeared to be improving. But just before 6 p.m. a “severe congestive chill” struck him. He spurned medicine that Varina offered him. At that point he lost consciousness, which he never really regained. His doctors were summoned. Word went out that the end was near. At his bedside were his wife, his two physicians, Jacob Payne, Judge Fenner with his wife and a son, and a grandniece of Davis’s. Holding his hand, Varina said she could feel occasional pressure. Then there was none. At 12:45 a.m. on Friday, December 6, Jefferson Davis died quietly.39
EPILOGUE
“Esto Perpetua”
During his long lifetime Jefferson Davis witnessed many changes in his country, but he held to certain verities. He saw himself as a faithful American, even though he tried to destroy the Union that to him had become subverted. He always identified himself as a constitutional patriot and true son of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. Professing the United States a nation created by the sovereign states that upheld it, he looked to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John C. Calhoun as the great explicators of states’ rights and strict construction, of the proper understanding of the nation and the Constitution. In his mind a continuum stretching over the decades connected these constitutional statesmen with their disciples of his time.
Davis cherished a vibrant United States. He shared in the sense of inevitable growth and progress that dominated the national outlook. This powerful surge pulsing through the country had two interrelated dimensions: geographic and economic. The Mexican Cession and the industrial and agricultural booms of the 1850s exemplified this combination in its inexorable march toward greater wealth and power for the country. And as a national politician Davis was willing to use the authority of the government in its own defense. As Confederate president he absolutely did so.
Certain about America, Davis also had confidence in himself and in his ability to overcome any obstacle. Moreover, his own ambition matched the ambition he had for his country. From young manhood he struggled with a wide range of serious physical maladies, but he never let their assaults on his body deter him from his course. He also knew deep sadness in his personal life, yet he never permitted that heavy veil to smother him with self-pity. His achievements underscored his convictions about himself. He wanted to succeed, and he did. He became a successful planter, a genuine war hero, and a notable politician whose career carried him into the highest councils of his country. Men spoke seriously about his becoming president.
As Davis witnessed the physical and economic development of his country, he envisioned no conflict between this progress and racial slavery. Growing up in a slave society, he accepted servitude as normal, as moral, and as American. In his public life he defended slavery on those grounds and maintained that the institution helped civilize and Christianize an inferior race. While not all Americans joined his embrace of slavery, few dissented from his belief in the superiority of the white race, an outlook shared by almost all white Americans as well as Western Europeans. On a practical level Davis conceived of slavery as adaptable and flexible. Slave labor could flourish, he believed, in many venues, such as factories and mines, not just in cotton fields. As an owner of slaves he wanted protection of slavery in his own self-interest. As a politician representing tens of thousands of other slaveowners and tens of thousands of aspiring slaveowners, he deemed guarding slavery his duty.
When geographic expansion led to conflict over slavery in the territories, he insisted on the rights of slaveowners as Americans to participate equally in the national bounty. He also feared where the energy of antislavery might lead, for he defined it chiefly as a political force—the North striving to wrest power from the South. As a result, he fought bitterly in 1849 and 1850 against the admission of California as a state because it would end the numerical equality between the free and slave states, which he believed fundamental to the Constitution and essential to secure southern rights.
But the inequality that came with California’s admission did not damage his section or its interests, including slavery. His service in Franklin Pierce’s administration convinced him that a substantial segment of northern opinion was prepared to honor what he considered the constitutional rights of the South. That sanguine outlook was buttressed by his satisfying, even triumphant, sojourn in Maine in 1858.
Davis rejected any notion of a contradiction between slavery and America. So many of the great national heroes who had won and preserved the independence of the nation and led its battalions against foreign foes were slaveholders—men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Zachary Taylor. Furthermore, his view that the Constitution protected slavery was not at all unique. Most white Americans, northerners included, shared that interpretation, and the U.S. Supreme Court emphatically sustained it. Davis dismissed as un-American the proposition propounded in the 1850s by the Republican party that the United States could not persist, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “permanently half slave and half free.” A solid majority of Davis’s fellow citizens concurred with his contention that slavery and freedom could continue to coexist, as they had since the birth of the nation. In the 1860 presidential election 60 percent of the voters cast their ballots for candidates who found no fundamental problem with slavery in America. The Republican Lincoln captured only 40 percent of the popular vote, though, of course, he had an indisputable majority in the Electoral College.1
Lincoln’s election brought on the crisis of the Union, a Union Davis did not want to break up. Although he had always preached the constitutionality of secession, he never advocated its implementation. Even in 1860 he remained convinced that significant northern support for southern rights still existed. He also had no doubts about the guarantees the Constitution gave to southern rights and slavery. But powerful political currents, to which he had contributed, gripped all southern Democrats, including Jefferson Davis. Moreover, the Republicans were caught up in their own whirlwind. Compromise proved impossible. For Davis there was no question about his course. Secession was constitutional, and his loyalty to Mississippi underlay his allegiance to the United States. He departed the Union with his state.
For Davis the Confederate States provided a way to save the America he had cherished. For him the Confederacy became the true descendant of the American Revolution and the Constitution. Preserving that sacred heritage made the Confederacy a holy cause. It must triumph, and Davis would adopt whatever measures he thought necessary to achieve victory. He contended that the Confederacy alone defended liberty. That guarding this precious liberty also involved sanctioning slavery posed him no problem. To Davis as to most white southerners, their liberty had since the American Revolution always included their right to own slaves and their right to decide about the institution without outside interference. White liberty and black slavery were inextricably intertwined.
Davis committed himself utterly to the Confederacy and directed a titanic war on its behalf. His commitment to his cause was as total as that of his great antagonist on the other side. Neither he nor Lincoln would relent. In order to save the Confederacy, Davis even led his fellow Confederates toward an abandonment of slavery. Despite a mighty effort, the Confederacy was overwhelmed. Davis lost the war, but he clung to his cause.
Defeated, he could no longer wield a sword. Still, he interpreted Reconstruction as an extension of the Republican oppression the Confederacy had so stalwartly resisted. Even so, he said his faith in the American people reassured him that they would eventually end Reconstruction. His expectations were fulfilled, for by the mid-1870s most white northerners were rapidly withdrawing their backing for federal support of Republican regimes in the old Confederacy. The collapse of Reconstruction meant in part that northern whites came to the position southern whites had never relinquished: blacks were inferior to whites, and their fortunes should be controlled by the superior race. Because over 90 percent of black Americans still lived in the former slave states, those in control wo
uld be southern whites.
After 1865 Davis never wavered on the constitutionality of secession. Because in his mind he had acted properly under the Constitution, he had done nothing wrong in 1861. Accordingly, he never requested a pardon. But for him, secession and the Confederacy had now become part of history. Secession had failed in its attempt to create a new nation, and he did not believe it would ever be attempted again. He declared he surely would not advocate it.
Despite the dislocation and disconsolation of the postwar years, Davis in the last decade of his life became more positive about the future. He talked proudly about the grandeur of the United States, its growing wealth and power. He saw the future of his beloved South in its young people. He urged them to hold dear their Confederate heritage, but not let the past entrap them. As for himself, Davis looked back with pride on the past and on his part in what had been. At the same time, he looked ahead with the anticipation of his youth. He hoped “that crimination and recrimination should forever cease, and then, on the basis of fraternity and faithful regard for the rights of the States, there may be written on the arch of the Union, Esto perpetua.”2
Jefferson Davis, American Page 91
