41. PJD, V, 30–31; JDC, II, 249–51.
42. PJD, V, 30–31.
43. William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven, Conn., 1959), chaps. 6–7, is superb on the railroad surveys; Report of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, published by the War Department (13 vols.; 1855–60), contains a wealth of material. JD’s assessment dated February 2, 1855, is in I, 3–30.
44. PJD, IV, 167–70; Senate Executive Document 62, 34:3 (serial 881), has a detailed record of the camel effort. Also see Lewis Burt Lesley, ed., Uncle’s Sam’s Camels: The Journal of Mary Humphreys Stacey Supplemented by the Report of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, 1857–1858 (Cambridge, Mass., 1929).
45. Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 ([19967]; Lincoln, Nebr., 1981), 53–55; JDC, II, 391 (quotation).
46. PJD, V, 18, 19n., 48–49n., VI, 6–7, 7–8n.
47. JD to Luther M. Kennett, August 12, 1856, ibid., VI, 36; JDC, II, 326–29.
48. Archibald Campbell to JD, August 20, 1853, PJD, V, 39–40; ibid., 42n., 119n., 386, and VI, 49n.; Memoir, I, 558–59. For the rent, see Anthony Hyde to JD, April 13, 1855, W. W. Corcoran Papers, LC. The mansion was owned by Edward Everett, the Massachusetts educator and orator.
49. JD to VD, August 28, 1853, PJD, V, 543–44; VD to Mother, July 26, 1853, January n.d., March 3, 26, April 29, 1854, JD Papers, UA; Elizabeth Blair Lee to S. P. Lee, October 18, 1855, Blair-Lee Papers, PU; Memoir, I, chaps. 39–40 passim.
50. PJD, V, xxxix, 38 ed.n.; JD to VD, August 28, 1853, ibid., 43–44. During the trip JD said that he had been in New England previously, back in the 1830s. He was undoubtedly referring to his northern trip in the winter of 1837–38, but there is no surviving record of his having visited New England at that time. JDC, II, 262.
51. VD letters to Mother cited in note 49 above; JD to VD, July 12, 1853, PJD, V, 28.
52. PJD, V, 69n., 73n.; VD to Her Parents, July n.d., 1854, JD Papers, UA; John H. Wheeler Diary, June 15, 1854 (second quotation), LC; statement re: Oak Hill Cemetery, June 28, 1854, JD Papers, MC. The remains were subsequently moved to the Davis plot in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
53. VD to Her Parents, July n.d., 1854, JD Papers, UA; JD to William B. Howell, October 22, 1854, PJD, V, 92; Henry Turner to “My Dear Sister,” June 29, 1854, Quitman Family Papers, UNC; Memoir, I, 535.
54. Janet Sharp Hermann, Joseph E. Davis: Pioneer Patriarch (Jackson, Miss., 1990), 38; VD to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, William E. Dodd Papers, LC; PJD, VI, 59–60n.
55. PJD, V, xli, 93n., and VI, xlvi.
56. Memoir, I, 571; PJD, V, 73n., 92n., VI, 49n.; VD to Her Parents, September 15, 1856, JD Papers, UA.
57. Memoir, I, 546, 551–55 (quotation 553), 567–68; VD to Mother, March 26, 1854, JD Papers, UA.
58. Elizabeth Blair Lee to S. P. Lee, October 18, 1855, Blair-Lee Papers, PU; Memoir, I, 557–58 (first quotation), 548–51 (second quotation 549).
59. PJD, V,125–27.
60. JD to VD, July 12, 1853, ibid., 28 and 28 ed.n.
61. Ibid., 29–32 (Philadelphia, third quotation 30); JDC, II, 236–39 (Wilmington), 239–42 (Trenton, second quotation 241), 242 (Princeton), 246–51 (New York City, first quotation 247), 252–56 (Newark, fourth quotation 253).
62. R. M. T. Hunter to JD, May 6, 1853, David L. Yulee to JD, March 27, 1855, Miles Taylor to JD, April 28, 1856, JDC, II, 214–15, 445–46, III, 35; JD to Howell Cobb, October 9, November 5, 1853, Randy Reid, “Howell Cobb: A Biography” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1995), 797; JD to Mason, September 28, 1853, PJD, V, 45, and Mason to JD, October 2, 1853, JDC, II, 269–70; JD to John Perkins, Jr., January 14, 1856, PJD, VI, 5.
63. On Pierce and Cuba, see Nichols, Pierce, 266–67, 327–30, 341–43, 352–59, 366–71, 393–96, and David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, comp. and ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York, 1976), 183–93. My account follows them.
64. JD to Gen. T. S. Jesup, March 19, 1856, JD Papers, FC, to Thomas J. Hudson, November 25, [1855], PJD, V, 138; ibid., VI, 118.
65. PJD, VI, 118.
66. Ibid., 119.
67. Nichols, Pierce, 342; John Slidell to J. F. H. Claiborne, August 25, 1855, J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, MDAH.
68. On the Kansas-Nebraska Act, see my The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 346–54; Holt, Whig Party, chap. 22; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), 395–400, chap. 17; Potter, Impending Crisis, 154–67. My account follows them.
69. JD to Mrs. Archibald Dixon, September 27, 1879, Mrs. Archibald Dixon, The True History of the Missouri Compromise and Its Repeal (Cincinnati, 1899), 457–59; Potter, Impending Crisis, 161.
70. JD to John C. Breckinridge, May 15, 1854, PJD, V, 67.
71. On the struggle in Kansas, see Potter, Impending Crisis, chap. 9.
72. Atchison to JD, September 24, 1854, February 26, 1856, PJD, V, 83–84, VI, 13.
73. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chap. 7, discusses the army and the Indians in Kansas.
74. JD to Brigadier General Persifor Smith, September 3, 1856, JDC, III, 58–59, to Governors Joel A. Matteson and Charles S. Morehead, both on September 3, 1856, PJD, VI, 419; Nichols, Pierce, 474.
75. PJD, VI, 418–20, calendars communications that underscore his attentiveness. See also specifically JD’s endorsements on August 27, September 23, 1856, ibid., 41–42, 46–47, and JD to Colonel E. V. Sumner, May 23, 1856, to Brigadier General Persifor Smith, June 27, September 3, 1856, JDC, III, 40–41, 48–49, 58–59.
76. Collin Tarpley to JD, May 6, 1853, and JD to William R. Cannon, December 13, 1853 (quotation), PJD, V, 12–15, 52–53; JD to Stephen Cocke, December 19, 1853, JDC, II, 335–37.
77. Douglas Cooper to JD, May 11, 1853, JD Papers, TR; Collin Tarpley to JD, May 6, 1853 (quotation), James Phelan to JD, July 19, 1853, PJD, V, 12–15, 35–37.
78. JD to William R. Cannon, December 13, 1853 (first, second, sixth, seventh quotations), to Eli Abbott, April 17, 1853 (fourth and fifth quotations), PJD, V, 53, 9; JD to Stephen Cocke, December 19, 1853 (third quotation), JDC, II, 335.
79. Collin Tarpley to JD, May 6, 1853, James Phelan to JD, July 19, 1853, PJD, V, 12–15, 35–37; F. L. Claiborne to JD, June 8, 1853, J. Mitchell to JD, July 10, 1853, Charles D. Fontaine to JD, July 13, 1853, JD to J. J. McRae, September 17, 1853 (quotation), J. J. McRae to JD, January 13, 1855, JDC, II, 231–32, 233–34, 234–36, 264–65, 439; J. J. McRae to JD, January 26, 1854, JD Papers, TR.
80. J. F. H. Claiborne to JD, March 25, 1881 (enclosing two MS pages from a projected Brown memoir), JD Papers, MC; O. R. Harris to John A. Quitman, September 18, 1855 (first quotation), and Quitman to B. F. Dill, February 9, 1854, John A. Quitman Papers, MDAH; Brown to J. F. H. Claiborne, May 17, 1854, June 7, 1855 (second quotation), January 4, 1857, and John Slidell to J. F. H. Claiborne, August 26, 1855 (final quotation), Claiborne Papers, ibid.; John J. Pettus to JD, June 5, 1857, PJD, VI, 128. On Brown, James Byrne Ranck, Albert G. Brown: Radical Southern Nationalist (New York, 1937), remains the best study.
81. JD to J. F. H. Claiborne, April 21, 1853, to Caleb Cushing, June 18, 1853, PJD, V, 11–12, 22–23; Madison McAfee to JD, April 20, 1853, and JD to Stephen Cocke, May 13, 1853, JDC, II, 208–09, 223; D. S. Pattison to JD, November 18, 1855, JD Papers, MC; W. Barry to Wm. R. Cannon, December 12, 1853 (first quotation), William R. Cannon Papers, LC; Giles Hillyer to John A. Quitman, January 4, 185? (second quotation), Quitman Family Papers, UNC; B. L. C. Wailes Diary, October 2, 1854, MDAH.
82. PJD, V, xli, xlii, 107–08 ed.n., 108–09.
83. Ibid., xlii; Vicksburg Weekly Whig, June 13, 1855; Brown to J. F. H. Claiborne, June 7, 1855, Claiborne Papers, MDAH.
84. W. Barry to William R. Cannon, June 5, 1854 (first quotation), and William Barksdale to [William R. Cannon], December 28, 1855 (second quotation), C
annon Papers, LC; JD to Thomas J. Hudson, November 25, [1855], to Collin Tarpley, December 19, 1855, to Stephen Cocke, January 6, 1856, PJD, V, 137–39, 147–49, and VI, 3; William R. Cannon to JD, December 12, 1855, ibid., V, 144–45, and [December 18, 1855], JD and Family Papers, MDAH.
85. John J. McRae to JD, January 13, 1855, JDC, II, 439–41; Wm. A. Stone to John A. Quitman, December 27, 1855, Quitman Papers, MDAH; Brown to J. F. H. Claiborne, May 19, 1855, and Thompson to J. F. H. Claiborne, November 17, 1855, Claiborne Papers, ibid.; [John W. Jewell] to JD, August 16, 1856, JD Papers, DU.
86. [John W. Jewell] to JD, August 16, 1856, JD Papers, DU; PJD, VI, 4n.; Edward Pickett to John A. Quitman, February 7, 1856, Quitman Papers, MDAH.
87. JD to Stephen Cocke, January 6, 1856, PJD, VI, 3; Vicksburg Daily Whig, January 15, 1856.
88. On the demise of the Whigs, the story of the Know-Nothings, and the rise of the Republicans, Holt, Whig Party, chaps. 23–26, and William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York, 1987), are definitive.
89. PJD, V, 109; JD to James Buchanan, July 23, 1855, ibid., 115.
90. James M. Mason to JD, September 30, 1856, Virginia Mason, The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason (New York and Washington, D.C., 1906), 117–18 (calendared in PJD, VI, 504); JD to South Carolina Citizens, September 22, 1856, ibid., 44.
91. JD to Herschel V. Johnson, October n.d., 1856, PJD, VI, 54–55.
92. JD to B. Tucker, October 8, 1853, JDC, II, 271–72; JD to Thomas J. Hudson, November 25, [1855], to William L. Ellsworth, June 5, 1856 (quotation), PJD, V, 139, and VI, 25–26.
93. JD to William J. Brown, May 7, 1853, to Charles J. McDonald, April 13, 1854 (quotation), JDC, II, 217–18, 350–51.
CHAPTER TEN: “The Darkest Hour”
1. JD to Joseph Davis, September 22, 1855, PJD, V, 123, 124n.; ibid., VI, 114–15, 115 n.
2. VD to her mother, May n.d., 1857, JD Papers, UA (final quotation); VD to Mrs. Franklin Pierce, May 25, 1857 (typescript, first two quotations), VD Subject File, MDAH.
3. PJD, VI, 117 ed.n., 118–19, 120 ed.n.; New York Times, June 18, 1857.
4. PJD, VI, 120–25, 129n.
5. Ibid., xlvii–xlviii, 130n., 547–48; JD to Franklin Pierce, July 23, 1857, ibid., 131–32; VD to her father, August 9, 1857, to JD, August 31, 1857, JD Papers, UA.
6. JD to VD, July 20, 1857, PJD, VI, 130, to VD, August 23, 1857, JD Papers, UA.
7. VD to JD, August 31, 1857, JD Papers, UA.
8. JD to Joseph Davis, August 30, 1857, PJD, VI, 136–37.
9. Ibid., xlviii, 147–48 (Mississippi City), 548, 549; New York Times, October 12, 1857.
10. PJD, VI, 147–48.
11. Ibid., xlviii, 157–62.
12. Ibid., xlviii, 115n.; JD to Clement Clay, May 17, 1859, ibid., 252.
13. Ibid., 110n., 166n.; JD to [E. G. W. Butler], December 28, 1886, JD Papers, DU; see photograph, p. 303.
14. Harper’s Weekly, January 9, 1858.
15. JDC, III, 134–69, 175–214; PJD, VI, 559–60.
16. The best general account of Kansas and Lecompton is David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, comp. and ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York, 1976), chaps. 9, 12. Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), chap. 23, and Roy Franklin Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), chaps. 7–10, are indispensable for Democratic and congressional details.
17. On Dred Scott, see Don E. Fehrenbacher’s magisterial The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York, 1978), especially parts 2–3.
18. PJD, VI, 149–52, 159–60 (second and third quotations), 550 (first quotation).
19. JD to William H. Sparks, February 19, 1858, PJD, VI, 170.
20. JDC, III, 228–31, 353–54.
21. Ibid., 228–31 (quotation 230); PJD, VI, 228–29 (Buchanan quotation on 229); Vicksburg Daily Whig, May 26, June 1, 1858.
22. JD to Franklin Pierce, July 23, 1857, PJD, VI, 132.
23. JD to William H. Sparks, February 19, 1858, ibid., 169–70; Memoir, I, 575.
24. Memoir, I, 575–76; Office Record Book, Dr. Robert Stone Papers, LC; JD to Franklin Pierce, April 4, 1858, PJD, VI, 172.
25. Memoir, I, 577–83; Virginia Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties: Memories of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in the South, 1853–1866.… (New York, 1905), 69. Unfortunately, I have uncovered no details about the JD-Seward friendship, but during the war Seward alluded to it: see Memorandum on Dinner in 1863 by Henry Bellows in Henry Bellows Papers, MaHS (I am grateful to Charles Royster for this reference).
26. Memoir, I, 575–76.
27. JD to Franklin Pierce, April 4, 1858, to Joseph Davis, April 19, 1858, PJD, VI, 172, 176. For the illness, I have relied on Dr. Roderick Macdonald to WJC, January 29, 1997; Office Record Book, Stone Papers, LC; Harris D. Riley, Jr., “Jefferson Davis and His Health, Part I: June, 1808–December, 1860,” JMH, XLIX (August 1987), 197–99, and other sources cited in my chapter eight, note 35.
28. JD to Joseph Davis, April 19, 1858, PJD, VI, 176; ibid., 171n.
29. JD to Margaret K. Howell, March 28, 1859, to J. L. M. Curry, June 4, 1859, ibid., 242, 254; Riley, “Jefferson Davis,” 201.
30. JD to Theodore Woolfson, January 6, 1860, PJD, VI, 625; Dr. Macdonald to WJC, January 29, 1997; William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), 173; Walter Lord, ed., The Fremantle Diary: Being the Journal of Lieutenant Colonel James Arthur Lyon Fremantle, Coldstream Guards, on His Three Months in the Southern States (Boston, 1954), 168; J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary (2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1866), I, 172; James Roach Diary, March 22, 1859 (clouded quotation), Roach-Eggleston Papers, UNC; Richmond Daily Whig, June 3, 1861 (discolored quotation); see photographs, pp. 6, 303.
31. Memoir, I, 584; JD to Caleb Cushing, August 14, 1858, Caleb Cushing Papers, LC; VD to her mother, September 15, 1858, JD Papers, UA.
32. Memoir, I, chap. 42 passim (quotation 586); VD to her mother, September 15, 1858, JD Papers, UA; JD to Sidney Webster, August 14, 1858, PJD, VI, 203; ibid., xlix–l; A. M. C. Maine Mountain Guide: A Guide to Trails in the Mountains of Maine (4th ed.; Boston, 1976), 104–05.
33. Memoir, I, 593–94, 641; New York Times, October 13, 1858; PJD, VI, i.
34. JD to Sidney Webster, August 14, 1858, PJD, VI, 203; S. G. Dennis to JD, April 3, 1882, JD Papers, MC; Memoir, I, 588, 592.
35. PJD, VI, xlix–l; JDC, III, 279–81, 295 (quotation); John H. Pilsbury to Caleb Cushing, September 20, 1858, JD to Cushing, September 5, 1858, Sidney Webster to Cushing, October 7, 1858, F. W. Lincoln to Cushing, October 8, 1858, Cushing Papers, LC; JD to Sidney Webster, August 14, 1858, PJD, VI, 203.
36. The speeches: on the Joseph Whitney, July 4, JDC, III, 271–73; crowd at Portland, July 9, ibid., 274–81; Maine Democratic convention at Portland, August 24, ibid., 284–88; militia encampment and banquet at Belfast, September 2, ibid., 288–95; Democratic rally at Portland, September 11, PJD, VI, 214–23; state fair at Augusta, September 23, JDC, III, 305–15; Faneuil Hall in Boston, October 11, 1858, ibid., 315–32; New York City, October 19, 1858, ibid., 332–39. I only cite the page numbers for quotations, which are in order from ibid., 273, 294, 338, 327. These addresses are also printed in Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Delivered During the Summer of 1858.…(Baltimore, 1859).
37. JDC, III, 276.
38. Ibid., 306, 326.
39. Ibid., 332; PJD, VI, 220.
40. JDC, III, 320.
41. JDC, III, 287, 285, 329.
42. PJD, VI, 224n.; New York Times, October 6, 15, 20, 1858; Caroline E. Vose, “Jefferson Davis in New England,” Virginia Quarterly Review, II (October 1926), 557–68, cites many newspapers.
43. PJD, VI, 223; JD to Pierce, January 17, 1859, JDC, III, 498.
44. Jackson Mississippian, August 11, 1858; William H. Branch to R. B. Rhett, August 26, 1858, Robert Barnwell Rhett Papers, DU (first quotation); PJD,
VI, 207 (second quotation).
45. James Roach Diary, July 26, 29, 30, August 12, 15, 17, Roach-Eggleston Papers, UNC; JD to James Roach, August 3, 1858, Jackson Mississippian, August 18, 1858 (calendared PJD, VI, 582); JD to Arthur C. Halbert, August 22, 1858, ibid., 204.
46. On Brown’s activities, see James Byrne Ranck, Albert Gallatin Brown: Radical Southern Nationalist (New York, 1937), 160–64 (quotation 163).
47. Jackson Mississippian, July 28 (second quotation), August 11 (first quotation), September 8, October 13, 1858; Vicksburg Daily Whig, July 30 (third and fourth quotations), August 7 (fifth quotation), September 14 (sixth quotation), October 12, 1858.
48. PJD, VI, 1, 227 ed.n.
49. JDC, III, 339–60 (quotations 343, 347, 349, 356, 358).
50. PJD, VI, 1, 228.
51. Mississippi Citizens (thirty-two signatures) to JD, October 1, 1858, Collin Tarpley to JD, December 1, 1858, PJD, VI, 586–87; JD to Mississippi Citizens, December 18, 1858, JD to J. L. M. Curry, June 4, 1859, ibid., 229–30, 253. The Brown volume was published in New York in 1859: M. W. Cluskey, ed., The Speeches, Messages, and Other Writings of the Hon. Albert G. Brown, A Senator from the State of Mississippi.
52. Speeches of Jefferson Davis; VD to JD, April 10, 17, 1859, PJD, VI, 244, 609; JD to J. L. M. Curry, June 4, 1859, ibid., 253.
53. VD to JD, April 10, 17, 1859, PJD, VI, 244, 609; Memoir, I, chap. 42 passim; JD to Franklin Pierce, January 17, 1859, JDC, III, 498.
54. VD to JD, April 17, 1859 (first quotation), PJD, VI, 244, July 2, 1859, JD Papers, UA.
55. JD to William B. Howell, April 24, 1859, to Clement Clay, May 17, 1859, to William Emory, June 15, 1859, PJD, VI, 247, 251, 256.
56. VD to her mother, November 21, 1858, March 1, 1859 (first quotation), JD Papers, UA; VD to JD, April 10, July 2, 1859, ibid., 105–06 (quotation on loving Daddy); VD to JD, April 17, 1859, PJD, VI, 243–44 (other quotations).
57. JD to Pierce, January 17 (quotation), September 2, 1859, JDC, III, 498, and IV, 93; JD to Margaret Howell, March 28, 1859, PJD, VI, 241; Mrs. D. Giraud Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61: The War-Time Memories of a Confederate Senator’s Daughter (New York, 1905), 29; Memoir, I, 592.
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