18. Walter Lynwood Fleming, “Jefferson Davis at West Point,” Louisiana State University Bulletin, I, n.s. (March 1910), 249 (quotation). My general discussion of West Point is based on Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (Baltimore, 1966), esp. chaps. 4–5; Albert E. Church, Personal Reminiscences of the Military Academy from 1824 to 1831 (West Point, N.Y., 1879); James L. Morrison, Jr., “The Best School in the World”: West Point in the Pre–Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent, Ohio, 1986); George S. Pappas, To the Point: The United States Military Academy, 1802–1902 (Westport, Conn., 1993), esp. chaps. 6–10.
19. JD to Calhoun, July 7, 1824, PJD, I, 10; ibid., lxxviii.
20. Ibid., lxxviii–lxxix.
21. Ibid., 28, 50, 88, 103; Morrison, “Best School,” appendix 2.
22. PJD, I, 27, 102.
23. Ibid., 97–100; JD to Joseph Davis, January 12, 1825, ibid., 17; Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York, 1995), 49.
24. PJD, I, 39–40.
25. On Benny Havens and his tavern, see Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 163–64 (quotations 163), and Pappas, To the Point, 160–61.
26. PJD, I, 36–41, has the court-martial proceedings.
27. On turning away and facing the wall, see Pappas, To the Point, 160.
28. Memoir, I, 52; PJD, I, 531; JD to Varina Davis, October 11, 1865, ibid., 53n.
29. Pappas, To the Point, 169–73, has a full account. The riot also provided the subject for a novel, James B. Agnew, Eggnog Riot: The Christmas Mutiny at West Point (San Rafael, Calif., 1979). For the official proceedings, see PJD, I, 55–56, 60–61, 64–66, 68–69, 71, 74–75.
30. There is more than one version of Davis’s exact words; I have used the one most often quoted. PJD, I, 61, 67, 73, 75.
31. Ibid., 64, 68, 71, 75; JD to “My Dear Mollie” [Mary Stamps], May 30, 1883 (copy), Mrs. I. D. Stamps Farrar, New Orleans (1968).
32. PJD, I, 82.
33. Ibid., 50, 33, 93–94.
34. Ibid., lxxx–lxxxii; JD to “Dearest Mollie” [Mary Stamps], June 9, 1883, Mary Stamps Papers, UNC; JD to “My dear Austin” [I. J. Austin], September 3, 1882, E. Gerry Collection, MaHS; P. L. Rainwater, ed., “The Autobiography of Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, August 26, 1808–December 20, 1882,” MVHR, XXI (1934), 237.
35. JD to Joseph Davis, January 12, 1825, PJD, I, 18; Bowmar, 209; JD to Charles J. McDonald, April 13, 1854, JDC, II, 350–51. Throughout this book, all italics/emphases appearing in quoted matter are in the original.
36. PJD, I, 30; Memoir, I, 51.
37. PJD, I, 104.
38. Memoir, I, 53–54; Pappas, To the Point, 161, has the Thayer quotation.
39. JD to Charles J. McDonald, April 13, 1854, JDC, II, 351.
40. PJD, I, 105.
CHAPTER THREE: “Ever Ready to Render My Best Services”
1. PJD, I, 106, 108.
2. JD to Susannah Davis, August 2, 1824, to Joseph Davis, January 12, 1825, to Winfield Scott, August 26, 1828, ibid., 11, 17–18, 106.
3. Ibid., 108.
4. Robert McElroy, Jefferson Davis: The Unreal and the Real (2 vols.; New York, 1937), I, 20–21.
5. On the army Davis joined, see Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York, 1986), esp. chaps. 2–4. The quotation comes from Henry Dodge to George Jones, April 18, 1834, PJD, I, 316–17.
6. PJD, 1, 116. For a discussion of the army and army posts in the Northwest, see Francis Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815–1860 (Madison, Wis., 1953).
7. PJD, I, 118; JD to Lucinda Stamps, June 3, 1829, Lynda Lasswell [Crist], “Jefferson Davis Ponders His Future, 1829,” JSH, XLI (1975), 520.
8. JD to A. J. Turner, May 5, 1880, A. J. Turner, The Family Tree of Columbia County (Portage, Wis., 1904), 94n.; JD to George Jones, January 5, 1872, Milwaukee Sentinel, February 3, 1891.
9. Mrs. John H. Kinzie, Wau-bun: The Early Days in the Northwest ([1856]; Chicago, 1901), 69.
10. PJD, I, 206; JD to George Jones, January 5, 1872, Milwaukee Sentinel, February 3, 1891; M. M. Quaife, “The Northwestern Career of Jefferson Davis,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XVI (1923), 13–14.
11. PJD, I, 121, 125, 126, 133, 134, 287.
12. Ibid., 150, 152, 163, 197–98, 211.
13. JD to James Butler, February 22, 1885, “File 1885,” Wisconsin State Historical Society; W. P. Johnston to Rosa, August 28, 1862, Johnston Papers, TU; John Wentworth, Early Chicago, Fort Dearborn, an Address Delivered at the Unveiling of the Memorial Tablet to Mark the Site of the Block-House… (Chicago, 1881), 28.
14. JD to Lucinda Stamps, June 3, 1829, [Crist], “Davis Ponders,” 519; JD to Thomas Jesup, February 3, 1831, PJD, I, 174–76.
15. JD to Colonel Willoughby Morgan, October 31, 1831, PJD, I, 217–18; ibid., 215, 218n.; Memoir, I, 84–89, 150–52.
16. Memoir, I, 86–87.
17. JD to Lucinda Stamps, June 3, 1829, [Crist], “Davis Ponders,” 519–22.
18. Florida McCaleb to JD, June 30, 1833, PJD, I, 271–72.
19. Florida McCaleb to JD, June 30, 1833; Lucinda Stamps to JD, July 7, 1833; Eliza Davis to JD, November 20, 1833 (quotation), and November 17, 1834; David Bradford to JD, June 18, 1834, ibid., 270–72, 273–74, 303–04, 325, 341–43.
20. Ibid., 233–34, 245, 249, 389–90, 396; Ellen D. Anderson to Walter Lynwood Fleming, January 13, 1908, Walter Lynwood Fleming Papers, NYPL.
21. Joseph Davis to JD, July 9, 1832, PJD, I, 246.
22. Ibid.
23. For examples of payments, see ibid., 108 and n., 121, 195; Bowmar, 209; Coffman, Old Army, 50.
24. Samuel Davis to JD, June 25, 1823, PJD, I, 4–5, 6n.; Eliza Davis to JD, November 20, 1833, and David Bradford to JD, June 18, 1834, ibid., 304, 306n., 326.
25. Memoir, I, 81.
26. Ibid., 54, 73–74, 96; PJD, I, 200n.; John Carl Parish, George Wallace Jones (Iowa City, 1912), 294–95; Nellie Gordon to JD, September 1, 1864, JD Papers, MC.
27. Parish, Jones, 88–89, 294–95; JD to George Jones, December 27, 1882, DuBuque Daily Herald, January 14, 1883.
28. Memoir, I, 64; PJD, I, 200n.
29. Memoir, I, 63–64, 74.
30. Ibid., 101; Memorandum by W. P. Johnston dated October 29, 1863, Johnston Papers, TU.
31. W. P. Johnston to Rosa, June 10, 1862, Johnston Papers, TU.
32. Memoir, I, 77; PJD, I, 366, 285n.; Lucius Northrop to JD, April 7, 1879, and JD to Lucius Northrop, April 25, 1879, JDC, VIII, 379–80, 383.
33. JD to Lucinda Stamps, June 3, 1829, [Crist], “Davis Ponders,” 521–22.
34. Memoir, I, 63.
35. Mary Louise Dement Rugg, Dement Dodge Patterson Williams (n.p., 1964), 20–21; JD to Mrs. John Dement (formerly Mary Dodge), February 4, 1883, JDC, IX, 203.
36. Memoir, I, 73; JD to George Jones, December 27, 1882, DuBuque Daily Herald, January 14, 1883.
37. N. Matson, Reminiscences of Bureau County in Two Parts (Princeton, Ill., 1872), 111 -14.
38. Memoir, I, 75–76.
39. For a solid account of the Black Hawk War, see Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783–1846 (Bloomington, Ind., 1969), chap. 11.
40. Charles Aldrich, “Jefferson Davis and Black Hawk,” Midland Monthly, V (1896), 406–11; McElroy, Davis, I, 25–29; Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis (3 vols.; New York, 1955–64), I, 71–77. One event that surely never occurred was the alleged meeting between Davis and Abraham Lincoln, who did serve in the Illinois militia. Neither man ever mentioned such an occurrence, and Davis specifically refused to substantiate it. Memoir, I, 131–33.
41. PJD, I, 240–42n., is thorough on the chronology.
42. Ibid., 252-54n.
43. Memorandum by W. P. Johnston dated October 29, 1863, Johnston Papers, TU; Black Hawk: An Autobiography, ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana, Ill., 1955), 163.
44. John Fran
cis McDermott, ed., The Western Journal of Washington Irving (Norman, Okla., 1944), 83–84; Memorandum by W. P. Johnston dated October 29, 1863 (quotations), Johnston Papers, TU.
45. PJD, I, 264–70, 285. On the Dragoons, see Prucha, Sword of the Republic, 244–46.
46. JD to Lewis Cass, July 24, 1833, PJD, I, 283–84; Henry Dodge to Roger Jones, September 13, 1833, ibid., 289–90; ibid., 314; Army and Navy Chronicle, II (March 24, 1836), 182–83; American State Papers; Military Affairs, VI, 247–48.
47. JD to George Jones, n.d., 1878, Memoir, I, 149; PJD, I, 289, 292–96.
48. PJD, I, 308n.
49. P. St. G. Cooke, Scenes and Adventures in the Army: or Romance of Military Life (Philadelphia, 1857), 219–20; [James Hildreth], Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains; Being a History of the Enlistment, Organization, and First Campaigns of the Regiment of United States Dragoons… (New York, 1836), 37–38, 59–79 (quotations on 78).
50. Cooke, Scenes and Adventures, 220.
51. George H. Shirk, “Peace on the Plains,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, XXVIII (1950), 5n.; Louis Pelzer, Marches of the Dragoons in the Mississippi Valley: An Account of Marches and Activities of the First Regiment United States Dragoons in the Mississippi Valley Between the Years 1833 and 1850 (Iowa City, 1917), 27.
52. PJD, I, 374–75.
53. Dodge to George Jones, April 18, 1834, ibid., 317.
54. For the expedition, consult Prucha, Sword of the Republic, 365–68; Pelzer, Marches of the Dragoons, chap. 4; Shirk, “Peace on the Plains,” 2–41; [Hildreth], Dragoon Campaign, 140–82; Fred S. Perrine, ed., “The Journal of Hugh Evans, Covering the First and Second Campaigns of the United States Dragoon Regiment in 1834 and 1835,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, III (1925), 174–215.
55. Perrine, ed., “Journal of Hugh Evans,” 186.
56. Dodge to Roger Jones, October 1, 1834, quoted in Prucha, Sword of the Republic, 368. In all quoted matter I have retained the spelling and grammar of the original.
57. Perrine, ed., “Journal of Hugh Evans,” passim; W. P. Johnston to Rosa, August 5, 1862, Johnston Papers, TU; Memoir, I, 155.
58. PJD, I, 331–40 passim, 374.
59. Ibid., 391, 394.
60. Memoir, I, 95–96; Walter L. Fleming, “Jefferson Davis’s First Marriage,” PMHS, XII (1912), 25.
61. PJD, I, 153, 156, 164.
62. Ibid., 357–81, contains the proceedings of the court-martial; all quotations come from there.
63. Ibid., 389–90, 396.
64. Fleming, “Davis’s First Marriage,” 26; Twiggs to Thomas S. Jesup, February 7, 1835, PJD, I, 355.
65. Arbuckle to George A. McCall, May 12, 1835, PJD, I, 403.
66. Ibid., 405, 410-11.
CHAPTER FOUR: “Located in a Very Retired Place”
1. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; PJD, I, 347n.; Walter L. Fleming, “Jefferson Davis’ First Marriage,” PMHS, XII (1912), 32–33; Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis (3 vols.; New York, 1955–64), I, 78.
2. Fleming, “First Marriage,” 24–25; New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910 (quotation); New York Times, October 20, 1906.
3. Fleming, “First Marriage,” 25–26; New York Times, October 20, 1906; K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, La., 1985), 69.
4. Fleming, “First Marriage,” 26–27.
5. Ibid., 26.
6. JD to Knox Taylor, December 16, 1834, PJD, I, 345–47.
7. Knox Taylor to Margaret Taylor, June 17, 1835, ibid., 407.
8. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; Fleming, “First Marriage,” 30.
9. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; Knox Taylor to Margaret Taylor, June 17, 1835, PJD, I, 407; Annah Robinson Watson, Some Notable Families of America (New York, 1898), 9.
10. Knox Taylor to Margaret Taylor, June 17, 1835, PJD, I, 406–07.
11. Ibid., 409; New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910.
12. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910.
13. Ibid.; Knox Taylor to Margaret Taylor, June 17, 1835, PJD, I, 407; Watson, Notable Families, 10.
14. Knox Davis to Margaret Taylor, August 11, 1835, PJD, I, 475.
15. Ibid.; George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography Supplementary Series I (12 vols.; Westport, Conn., 1977), VIII, 1000.
16. JD to Winfield Scott, August 26, 1828, and Knox Davis to Margaret Taylor, August 11, 1835, PJD, I, 106, 475. On health and high ground, see Ronald L. Numbers and Todd L. Savitt, eds., Science and Medicine in the Old South (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), chaps. 7–8 passim; John Duffy, ed., The Rudolph Matas History of Medicine in Louisiana (2 vols.; Baton Rouge, La., 1952–62), I, 125; Robert H. Taylor, Antebellum South Carolina: A Social and Cultural History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1942), 103–05.
17. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; New York Times, October 20, 1906.
18. There is a tradition that Knox Davis was already ill before heading for Louisiana; the better, though not absolutely conclusive, evidence supports my account. Cf. Rawick, ed., American Slave, VIII, 1000–01.
19. On malaria, see: William K. Anderson, Malarial Psychoses and Neuroses… (London, 1927), chaps. 2, 15; Herbert M. Gilles and David A. Warrell, Bruce-Chavatt’s Essential Malariology (3d ed.; London, 1993), chap. 1; James B. Wyngaarden et al., eds., Cecil Textbook of Medicine (19th ed., 2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1992), II, section 424; Numbers and Savitt, eds., Science and Medicine, 160–61; John Duffy, “The Impact of Malaria on the South,” in Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young, eds., Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 29-54; Duffy, ed., Medicine in Louisiana, II, 152-53.
20. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; New York Times, October 20, 1906. The cemetery is now the Locust Grove State Historical Area, near St. Francisville, Louisiana.
21. New Orleans Daily Picayune, August 28, 1910; PJD, I, liv; Fleming, “First Marriage,” 35.
22. JD to Miss Lee Willis, April 13, 1889, JD Association, RU.
23. On Joseph and Hurricane, see Janet Hermann, Joseph E. Davis: Pioneer Patriarch (Jackson, Miss., 1990); Frank Edgar Everett, Jr., Brierfield: Plantation Home of Jefferson Davis (Jackson, Miss., 1971); [Mahala E. Roach] to Thomas R. Roach, August 22, 1897, Roach Letters, MDAH.
24. See portrait, p. 79.
25. JD to “Dear Sister,” June 3, 1829, Lynda Lasswell [Crist], “Jefferson Davis Ponders His Future, 1829,” JSH, XLI (1975), 522; Bowmar, 205; Stamps to JD, November 10, 1874, JD Papers, TR.
26. Bowmar, 550; Everett, Brierfield, 6, 23–24.
27. Memoir, I, 165–66. No other contemporary evidence discusses the Cuban journey, but there is no reason to doubt VD’s account, though she was clearly in error when she said Davis returned through the Northeast; she confused this journey with his trip of 1837–38.
28. VD to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, William E. Dodd Papers, LC; Bowmar, 553; Hermann, Davis, 65, 166.
29. Bowmar, 415, 425; PJD, II, 719.
30. On the opening of Brierfield, see Memoir, I, 163–64; Bowmar, 207, 211–12, 409–11, 413, 417–19, 424–26; VD to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, Dodd Papers, LC.
31. Bowmar, 417, 425 (quotations).
32. For the number of slaves in 1838 and 1839, see PJD, II, 719; the U.S. Census (1840) for Warren County, NA, specifies forty slaves owned by JD, but the age breakdown totals thirty-nine.
33. U.S. Census (1840) for Warren County.
34. Bowmar, 228–33; JD to Hugh Davis, April 17, 1842, JD Papers, MC; Lewis Sanders, Jr., to JD, November 30, 1839, PJD, I, 462; ibid., II, 10, 34, 311, 719, and III, 455, has tax data; for per capita income, see Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 85. For a more detailed discussion of Davis as slaveowner and planter, see below, chapter eight.
35. Joseph Davis to JD, January 19, February 19, August 27, 1838, and JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, PJD, I, 438 (first quotation),
442 (second quotation), 450 (third quotation), 435.
36. Ibid. has all of the following: Jane Davis to JD, April 8, 1836, 416 (first quotation); Lucinda Stamps to JD, May 14, 1837, 431–32 (second quotation); Florida McCaleb to JD, July 19, 1838, October 15, n.d., 448–49, 477 (final quotation); Ellen Davis to JD, December 29, 1838, September 22, 1839, 453, 460–61; Caroline Davis to JD, July 24, 1840, 470; Anna Smith to JD, August 27, 1840, 473; JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, 435. In addition, see JD to Hugh Davis, April 17, 1842, JD Papers, MC.
37. Florida McCaleb to JD, July 19, 1838, and Eliza Davis to JD, July 24, 1840, PJD, I, 449, 469–71.
38. JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, and Watson Van Benthuysen to JD, January 16, 1838, ibid., 434, 436.
39. JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, ibid., 434.
40. Ibid.; Memoir, I, 169–70; John Carl Parish, George Wallace Jones (Iowa City, 1912), 266.
41. Parish, Jones, 266–67; Memoir, I, 167–68.
42. L. B. Northrop to JD, April 17, 1879, JDC, VIII, 379.
43. Bowmar, 206–07, 228–33.
44. JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, PJD, I, 434–35.
45. Watson Van Benthuysen to JD, April 18, 1838, ibid., 444–45.
46. JD to Ritchie, September 3, 1875, JD Papers, DU.
47. Varina Davis to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, Dodd Papers, LC; Memoir, I, 172; New York Herald, August 11, 1895; JD to William Allen, July 24, 1840, PJD, I, 467 (in the Burns quotation, JD substituted “honored” for “youthful” from Burns’s “Epistle to a Young Friend”).
48. VD to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, Dodd Papers, LC; Memoir, I, 172; Joseph Davis to JD, January 19, February 19, August 27, all 1838, July 23, 1840, PJD, I, 437–38, 442, 451, 464–65; JD to Joseph Davis, January 2, 1838, ibid., 434–35.
49. JD to W. B. Tebo, August 22, 1849, JDC, I, 245–46.
50. VD to William E. Dodd, March 8, 1905, Dodd Papers, LC; Memoir, I, 172.
51. On the Whigs, Democrats, and Calhoun, consult William J. Cooper, Jr., The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 102–03, 113–14. Edwin A. Miles, Jacksonian Democracy in Mississippi (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), covers the Mississippi story in some detail, and Christopher Morris, Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life: Warren County and Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1770–1860 (New York, 1995), 151–53, addresses partisanship in Davis’s county.
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