Jefferson Davis, American
Page 92
NOTES
Note on Sources
This book is based chiefly on the manuscript record of Jefferson Davis, his family members, and associates. Because of Davis’s importance and long life, materials relating to him are voluminous and are located in numerous depositories. The Jefferson Davis Papers at Rice University has brought together almost all known Davis documents, literally tens of thousands of them. The generosity of editor Lynda L. Crist and her associates permitted me to make unrestricted use of their collection. As a result, for letters to and from Davis, for his endorsements, and also for letters of intimate family members, I mainly used photocopies from the Davis Papers. Still, I cited the location of the original document. Likewise, apart from the Davis Papers, I did not differentiate in my citations from manuscripts in archives I visited and manuscripts utilized in the form of photocopies. In addition, the work of many other scholars has been essential for me, and throughout the Notes I have tried to register my obligations to them.
I do want to mention the prominent Davis collections. The National Archives has substantial material, in several record groups, chiefly dealing with Davis’s service in the United States Army, his term as secretary of war, and his presidency of the Confederate States. The Louisiana Historical Association Collection of Jefferson Davis Papers at Tulane University is composed mostly of wartime documents including presidential letterbooks, many of which have been printed in JDC, O.R., and PJD, and also contains the bulk of his surviving library. Three major collections contain chiefly family letters: the Jefferson Davis Papers at both the University of Alabama and Transylvania University, and the Jefferson Davis and Family Papers at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Duke University possesses an important, wide-ranging collection. The significant holdings of the Museum of the Confederacy concentrate overwhelmingly on the postwar years. The sizable documentary record compiled for Bowmar, at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, provides indispensable information, especially on antebellum Brierfield and on Davis family relations.
The major published materials relating to Davis merit notice. PJD, which in ten volumes has reached September 1864 (though the tenth became available too late for me to utilize thoroughly), constitutes an impressive achievement. Splendidly edited and superbly annotated, these volumes are absolutely indispensable for anyone working on Davis, even though from the third volume the editors have had to be increasingly selective in what they print. When my own work went beyond volume nine, I felt like a lonely traveler. In addition, JDC retains great value. Dunbar Rowland was a scrupulous editor, and he included many items not in PJD, especially speeches. Moreover, JDC covers the postwar period in some detail. Any serious investigator must use both sets; I have cited them regularly. For the Confederacy, O.R. and M&P, the latter containing Davis’s official messages to Congress and his proclamations, remain immensely useful. Jefferson Davis: Private Letters, 1823–1889 (New York, 1966), edited by Hudson Strode, must be used with extreme care. Strode, who published a three-volume biography of Davis between 1955 and 1964, was a lax editor, who apparently had little respect for the integrity of a document. For example, he repeatedly omitted substantive portions of letters without using ellipses, or in any other way indicating that he had done so. I have cited Private Letters quite sparingly, only when I could find no other source for a particular letter.
Both Jefferson and Varina Davis wrote memoirs. R&F is really an apologia for Davis’s interpretation of the Constitution and the Confederacy, not a memoir as customarily understood. He did begin a more traditional memoir late in life, but only fragments survive, which focus on his early years. PJD, in the first volume, prints them. Varina’s Memoir is invaluable, and I have used it extensively, despite its intense partisanship and its occasional confusion about dates and events. It contains much vital information, a good deal of it unavailable elsewhere.
Abbreviations Used in the Notes
AHR American Historical Review
Bowmar Jefferson Davis v. J. H. D. Bowmar et al., Warren County Chancery Court, July 3, 1874–January 8, 1874, unreported, MDAH
CG Congressional Globe
Chesnut C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 1981)
CV Confederate Veteran
CWH Civil War History
DAB Allen Johnson and Dumar Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (20 vols.; New York, 1928–36)
DU Duke University, Durham, N.C., Rare Books, Manuscript & Special Collections Library
EU Emory University, Atlanta, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Special Collections Department
FC Filson Club Historical Society, Louisville, Ky.
HL Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
HU Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Houghton Library
IA Iowa Department of Archives and History, Des Moines
JAH Journal of American History
JD Jefferson Davis
JDC Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (10 vols.; Jackson, Miss., 1923)
JMH Journal of Mississippi History
JSH Journal of Southern History
LC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Division of Manuscripts
LSU Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Libraries, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections
MaHS Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
MC Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Va.
MDAH Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson
Memoir Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir by His Wife (2 vols.; New York, 1890)
MHS Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
MI University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, William L. Clements Library
M&P James D. Richardson, comp., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy… (2 vols.; Nashville, Tenn., 1906)
MU Miami University, Miami, Ohio, Walter Havighurst Special Collections
MVHR Mississippi Valley Historical Review
NA National Archives, Washington, D.C.
m437 Letters Received by the Confederate Secretary of War
m474 Letters Received by the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General
NYPL New York Public Library, New York City
O.R. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols. in 128; Washington, D.C., 1880–1901)
PAJ Paul H. Bergeron et al., eds., The Papers of Andrew Johnson (15 vols.; Knoxville, Tenn., 1967—)
PJD Lynda L. Crist et al., eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (10 vols.; Baton Rouge, La., 1971—)
PMHS Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society
PU Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., Firestone Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
R & F Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols.; New York, 1881)
RU William Marsh Rice University, Houston
SCA South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia
SCHS South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston
SCL University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Caroliniana Library
SHQ Southwestern Historical Quarterly
SHSP Southern Historical Society Papers
TQH Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine
TR Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky.
TSLA Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville
TU Tulane University, New Orleans, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Special Collections
UA University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library
UGA University of Georgia, Athens, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library
UM University of Memphis, Memphis, Tenn., Special Collections Department
/> UNC University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Wilson Library, Southern Historical Collection
UT University of Texas, Austin, Center for American History
UVA University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Alderman Library, Special Collections Department
VD Varina Howell Davis
VHS Virginia Historical Society, Richmond
W&L Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., Cyrus Hall McCormick Library
WM College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, Earl Gregg Swem Library
WPL Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin, eds., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (Boston and Toronto, 1961)
WRHS Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
PREFACE
1. JD to W. L. Saunders, May 9, 1882, United Daughters of the Confederacy Texas Museum; Potter, “Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat,” in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War (Baton Rouge, La., 1960), 91–114. For more general comments about JD and historians, see my “Jefferson Davis and the Sudden Disappearance of Southern Politics,” in Charles W. Eagles, ed., Is There a Southern Political Tradition? (Jackson, Miss., 1996), 27–29, 212–13; Mark E. Neely, Jr., “Abraham Lincoln vs. Jefferson Davis: Comparing Presidential Leadership in the Civil War,” in James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper, Jr., eds., Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand (Columbia, S.C., 1998), 96–111, 278–83; and Herman M. Hattaway, “Jefferson Davis and the Historians,” in Roman J. Heleniak and Lawrence L. Hewitt, eds., Confederate High Command and Related Topics (Shippensburg, Pa., 1990), 142–71.
2. William J. Cooper, Jr., Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860 (New York, 1983).
PROLOGUE: “The Saddest Day of My Life”
1. Caroline P. Myers Manuscript Memoir, Phillips-Myers Papers, UNC; “Register of Meteorological Observations, District of Columbia, Under the Director of the Smithsonian Institution…(January 1861),” National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, N.C.
2. New York Herald, January 6, 1859.
3. New York Times, March 1, 1860; Harper’s Weekly, February, 2, 1861.
4. JD to Anna Ella Carroll, March 1, 1861, PJD, VII, 64; Memoir, I, 696.
5. “When the States Seceded, from the Diary of Mrs. Eugene McLean,” in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, CXXVIII (January 1914), 284.
6. JD to Pierce, January 20, 1861, JDC, V, 37–38; JD to Anna Ella Carroll, March 1, 1861, PJD, VII, 65.
7. Elizabeth Blair Lee to Phillip, January 21, 1861, Virginia Jean Laas, ed., Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee (Urbana and Chicago, 1991), 27; William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), 173–74; Joan Nunn, Fashion in Costume, 1200–1980 (New York, 143.
8. Elizabeth Blair Lee to Phillip, January 21, 1861, Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 27; New York Herald, January 22, 1861; Memoir, I, 696; JD to Anna Ella Carroll, March 1, 1861, PJD, VII, 65; CG, 36:2, 487.
9. New York Herald, January 22, 1861; Memoir, I, 698; Myrta Lockett Avary, Dixie After the War: An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South… (New York, 1906), 414–15.
10. JD to Anna Ella Carroll, March 1, 1861, PJD, VII, 65; William M. Gwin to J. F. H. Claiborne, November 14, 1878, J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, UNC; Myers Memoir, Phillips-Myers Papers, ibid. Most of Davis’s surviving library is in the Louisiana Historical Association Collection of JD Papers, TU (hereafter all citations to the JD Papers, TU, are from this collection unless otherwise noted).
CHAPTER ONE: “There My Memories Begin”
1. Uncertainty has long plagued the year of Davis’s birth. For a time he believed 1807 the correct year, but then he changed to 1808. At one point he seemed cavalier about it, but later he stipulated that his mother told him 1808 was correct. I assume that she knew. JD to W. H. Sparke, February 19, 1858, PJD, I, lxvn., and to Crafts J. Wright, June 3, 1878, JD Papers, TR. Some have also questioned whether Davis ever had a middle name. He used the initial at West Point, as did his mother in her will. Again, I assume that both would not have invented it. PJD, I, 16, 458–59; Walter L. Fleming, “The Early Life of Jefferson Davis,” Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, IX, part 1 (1915–16), 157. No evidence supports Hudson Strode’s claim that the actual middle name was Finis, signaling the final child. Jefferson Davis (3 vols.; New York, 1955–64), 1, 3.
2. Many gaps remain in the Davis genealogy. For the most thorough genealogical investigation, see PJD, I, 488–529, IV, 402–16. My discussion in the following paragraphs is based on that material.
3. Ibid., I, lxvii–lxviii, 512–13. JD to Jerome S. Ridley, February 3, 1875, JMH, V (July 1943), 155–56; Fleming, “Early Life,” 153–56; and Janet Sharp Hermann, Joseph E. Davis: Pioneer Patriarch (Jackson, Miss., 1990), 3–11, all have pertinent information on Samuel Emory Davis.
4. New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 14, 1909; Fleming, “Early Life,” 156; Hermann, Davis, 11.
5. Fleming, “Early Life,” 157–58; Hermann, Davis, 16–17; Samuel Emory Davis Subject File, MDAH.
6. S. E. Davis Subject File, MDAH.
7. The house still stands, though it is now known as Rosemont. After Jane Davis’s death in 1845, the family changed the name to honor her and her beloved roses. She is buried in the family cemetery on the property. Rosemont Subject File, MDAH; “Rosemont Plantation: The Childhood Home of Jefferson Davis,” Southern Accents, X, No. 2 (March–April 1987), 137–42.
8. PJD, I, lxviii; JD to Jno. A. Williams, April 2, 1889, JD Collection, UVA.
9. PJD, I, lxviii, lxxiii; Fleming, “Early Life,” 155.
10. PJD, I, lxxiv–lxxv; Fleming, “Early Life,” 162.
11. PJD, I, lxxii; Fleming, “Early Life,” 163.
12. PJD, I, lxix–lxxi.
13. Ibid., 3.
14. On St. Thomas College, see Rt. Rev. John Baptist David to?, October 26, 1818 (typescript), Diocese of Bardstown Papers, FC; V. F. O’Daniel, A Light of the Church in Kentucky: Or the Life, Labors, and Character of the Very Rev. Samuel Thomas Wilson… (Washington, D.C., 1932), 179–99 passim; Felix N. Pitt, “Two Early Catholic Colleges in Kentucky,” Filson Club History Quarterly, XXXVIII (April 1964), 133–38.
15. PJD, I, lxxii.
16. Ibid.; JD to Philip Phillips, September 26, 1874, Philip Phillips Papers, LC.
17. PJD, I, lxxii.
18. Ibid., lxxii–lxxiii.
19. Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, ed. J. Charles Cox ([1801]; London, 1903), 200 (first quotation); Ricky Jay, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women (New York, 1986), 9–27 (second quotation on 15; I am grateful to Charles Royster for these references).
20. W. P. Johnston to Rosa, August 5, 1862, Mrs. Mason Barrett Collection of the Papers of Albert Sidney and William Preston Johnston, Manuscripts Collection 1, TU (hereafter all citations to the Johnston Papers, TU, are from this collection).
21. PJD, I, lxxii–lxxiii.
22. Ibid., lxxiii.
23. Ibid., lxxv; D. Clayton James, Antebellum Natchez (Baton Rouge, La., 1968), 223–24.
24. PJD, I, lxxv.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., lxxiii–iv.
27. Hermann, Davis, 32–37; Bowmar, 203; S. E. Davis Subject File, MDAH; JD to Lise, February 7, 1884, October 24, 1870, Lise Mitchell Papers, TU.
CHAPTER TWO: “Put Away the Grog”
1. Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991), 17 (first quotation); Charles Caldwell, A Discourse on the Genius and Character of the Rev. Horace Holley, LL.D., Late President of Transylvania University(Boston, 1828), 151 (second quotation); Margaret Newman Wagers, The Education of a Gentleman: Jefferson Davis at Transylvania, 1821–1824 (Lexington, Ky., 1943), 26–27.
2. Caldwell, Discourse, 70 (quotation). My general discussion of Transylvania is based on Earl Gregg Swem, ed., Letters on the Condition of Kentucky, in Heartman’s Historical Series Number 22 (New York, 1916; I am indebted to Charles Royster for this reference), 41�
��46; Wagers, Education; Walter Wilson Jennings, Transylvania: Pioneer University of the West (New York, 1955), chaps. 6–7; John D. Wright, Jr., Transylvania: Tutor to the West (Lexington, Ky., 1975), chaps. 5–6.
3. Wright, Transylvania, 58.
4. Wagers, Education, 5–6, 27 (quotation).
5. PJD, I, lxxvi. A first reading of Davis’s “Memoir” seems to imply that he began in 1821, but a closer reading, along with other information, makes clear that he matriculated in the spring of 1823.
6. Wagers, Education, 37.
7. Ibid., 17–18; PJD, I, lxxvi.
8. Wagers, Education, 32–34; PJD, I, 10n.
9. PJD, I, lxxvii–lxxviii; Wagers, Education, 31.
10. John Carl Parish, George Wallace Jones (Iowa City, 1912), 83; Wagers, Education, 38.
11. Wagers, Education, 7, 13; JD to William L. Marcy, February 10, 1851, PJD, IV, 159; Memoir, I, 29–31.
12. JD to Susannah Davis, August 2, 1824, PJD, I, 11; JD to [Amanda Bradford], August 2, 1824 (copy), William L. Richter, Manhattan, Kans. (1979).
13. Samuel Davis to JD, June 25, 1823, PJD, I, 5.
14. William Stamps to JD, ca. November 10, 1874, PJD, I, 12n. In 1940 Samuel Davis’s remains were removed and reinterred at Beauvoir, near Biloxi, Mississippi.
15. Samuel Davis to JD, June 25, 1823, ibid., 5.
16. Ibid., 10, 11n.
17. JD to [Amanda Bradford], August 2, 1824 (copy), William Richter. Davis misremembered when he later stated that he had an agreement with Joseph that he could transfer to the University of Virginia after only a year at West Point. The University of Virginia did not receive students until 1826. PJD, I, lxxix.