The grieving crowd suddenly parted to let through a distinguished visitor. The tall, gaunt Confederate president had arrived to say his good-byes to his most beloved general. Jefferson “took his [J.E.B.’s] hand in there, and asked how he felt. Easy, he said, but willing to die if God and his country felt that he had fulfilled his destiny and done his duty.” Later that day his doctor, Dr. Brewer, told him the end is near. Stuart nodded his head and said, “I am resigned, if it be God’s will; but I would like to see my wife.”7
Flora was staying with friends in Beaver Dam Station, about twenty-five miles from Richmond. She received a telegram the morning of May 12 that J.E.B. had been gravely wounded—a message that she had probably been expecting, and dreading, for months. Flora had always known that J.E.B. would fight to the death if needed, with no regard for his personal safety. The telegram read: “General Stuart has been seriously wounded. Come at once.”
Flora and her two children, J.E.B. “Jimmy” Stuart II, age three, and seven-month-old Virginia Pelham Stuart, accompanied by a nurse named Tilda and the Reverend Woodbridge as their escort, set out that afternoon by train to reach the fallen general.8 Flora was frantic to see her husband. When she and the children reached Ashland, Virginia, around three o’clock, they found the rails destroyed.
The reverend then accepted the offer of a mule-drawn ambulance wagon for the rest of the journey on Flora’s behalf. When the family finally reached Richmond, late that evening, it was during the peak of a violent thunderstorm. Terrible lightening lit up the muddy, rutted road to Richmond. The winds that evening were so strong that the steeple of historic St. John’s Church was blown away.9 Flora Stuart and her children at last arrived at the Brewers’ house late in the evening, but by then there was no time for a parting embrace. J.E.B. was gone.
Varina wrote to her mother on May 22, 1864, telling her about Stuart’s tragic death and the general atmosphere of panic and chaos that reigned in Richmond at the time. In her letter Varina noted that her husband had displayed a total lack of regard for personal safety: “Jefferson . . . has been forced from home constantly, and in the various battles around Richmond had been pretty constantly on the field. I hear that at Drewry’s Bluff he was very much exposed [—] a man’s drum was taken off by a shell in five feet of him.”10
Varina also clearly saw the mental toll the war was taking on her husband, who had always had a nervous temperament. “Jeff is much worn by anxiety, he seems to have got nearly as bad as I am and I hear the roar of artillery and the crack of musketry it seems to me all the time.” She concludes with a gloomy description of Richmond in crisis: “There is an immense deal of suffering here now, so much so that they are impressing servants in the street to nurse the wounded.”11
Winnie was born into this war-torn environment on June 27, 1864, in her parent’s ornate mahogany bed, draped with filmy mosquito netting.12 The baby arrived not simply in the midst of Civil war battles and political maneuvers but also during a very personal period of parental grief. Both parents were still deep in mourning for little Joe. Emotions and stress were running high throughout the Davis household. Surely as a result of this tense environment, Winnie was always hyper-attuned to her parents’ needs and moods.
Winnie partially filled a gap in both her mother’s and her father’s hearts. While she could not totally bridge the voids left by the deaths of her two brothers, her presence still helped both parents tremendously. Before Winnie was even conscious of her surroundings, she became a salve to her parents’ psychic wounds as well as the spirits of beleaguered Confederate troops. Superstitious southern soldiers viewed the passing of J.E.B. Stuart as an ominous sign. The arrival of Winnie, however, seemed to counteract their feelings of dread, at least temporarily.
The birth of the last child of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was thought to be a good omen for the Confederate forces battling the Union soldiers. Winnie’s arrival was heralded by one and all as a blessing to southerners weary of war. In the late 1920s Eron Opha Moore Rowland, Varina’s first biographer, wrote of the child’s birth, “Born amid the victories that had saved the city [Richmond] from the enemy, it was thought to be a happy augury, and General Lee came and held the infant in his arms.”13
As the object of much hero worship, Gen. Robert E. Lee bestowed a special status upon the newborn that would remain with her throughout her life. The fact that she was born during a short period of southern victories was especially significant. Confederate troops, by now completely desperate for positive signs, took Winnie’s birth as a sign that the South might still triumph, despite increasingly negative odds.
Winnie had the distinction of being born in Richmond’s White House of the Confederacy during the war. Rowland noted of Winnie, “Since she had been born in the White House of the Confederacy, she should be set apart as a kind of shrine at which those below the Mason-Dixon Line should worship.”14 Winnie always retained this special distinction, which fostered a deep sense of camaraderie between her and her father. The baby’s nickname “Winnie” was chosen with a view toward a happier future. An Indian name meaning bright or sunny, it was perhaps chosen in an attempt to shed some light on a dark time. It also was her father’s pet name for her mother.15
Although Winnie bore her nickname from birth, Varina and Jefferson took almost a year to give their youngest child her formal name of Varina Anne Davis. In contrast to the family’s upbeat view of the child’s nickname, Varina expressed regret that Winnie’s formal name reflected her own. “My name is a heritage of woe, but as no one is exempt now, the chances are greater for her than in the days when some were happy.”16
Varina adored Winnie, and she would eventually bond with her the most completely of all her children. Throughout Winnie’s life Varina would brag about her youngest to friends and acquaintances. In a letter to Mary Chesnut, Varina gushed: “She is so soft, so good, so very ladylike—and knows me so well. She is white as a lily and has such exquisite hands and feet and such bright blue eyes.”17 The description seems to be one of a much more mature child or even a grown woman. The emphasis her mother put on Winnie being “ladylike” was a label that would stick with her throughout her life. Even as an infant, Winnie already represented so many of the virtues and traits held in high regard by southerners and the Confederate culture.
The pre–Civil War “Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood” had four ideals to which southern women especially were expected to adhere: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.18 Winnie would eventually become an interesting mix of these ideals—a fusion of the True Woman and the New Woman. But for now she was just an infant with the hopes and dreams of those around her projected onto her tiny countenance.
A brighter future seemed within reach for the new baby lying snug in her cradle in the Executive Mansion at 12th and Clay Streets. She was soon ensconced with her loving Irish nurse, Mary Ahern, who was to become an adored member of the Davis household and would remain with Winnie and her family for ten years.19 Her godmother, noted beauty Imogene Penn Lyons, lived close to her goddaughter in a mansion on Grace Street.20 The experience of living in the capital of the Confederacy with her family and friends nearby, however, was not to last long for Winnie.
Richmond was seen as “the spiritual center of Virginia’s aristocracy and of the rebellion.”21 Unlike other southern cities (such as Atlanta, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, Savannah, and Vicksburg) that had fallen to the Union army, Richmond had proudly survived. By 1865, despite the fierce battles that raged close to the southern capital between Union and Confederate troops, no invaders had been able to break through the city’s defenses. The headquarters of the Confederacy had “been spared the horrors of war, the physical devastation, and humiliating enemy occupation that had befallen many of the great cities of the South.”22 This feeling of invincibility, of being above the fray, lasted for Richmonders, and indeed for Jefferson Davis, until almost the end of the war.
On a bright and beautiful early spring Sunda
y, however, while Jefferson was attending St. Paul’s Church, a telegram from General Lee arrived.23 The message was addressed to secretary of war Gen. J. C. Breckenridge, but the fateful document soon made its way into the hands of the highest-ranking Confederate. The president of the Confederacy turned gray as he read the devastating news.
HEADQUARTERS
April 2, 1865
General J. C. Breckenridge:
I see no prospect of doing more than holding our position here till night. I am not certain that I can do that. If I can I shall withdraw tonight north of the Appomattox, and if possible, it will be better to withdraw the whole line tonight from James River. Brigades on Hatcher’s Run are cut off from us. Enemy have broken through our lines and intercepted between us and them, and there is no bridge over which they can cross the Appomattox this side of Goode’s or Beaver’s, which are not very far from the Danville Railroad. Our only chance, then of concentrating our forces, is to do so near Danville Railroad, which I shall endeavor to do at once. I advise all preparation be made for leaving Richmond tonight. I will advise later, according to circumstances.
—R. E. Lee24
With this news Jefferson and his fellow cabinet members made plans to leave the city that evening. They would evacuate Richmond and establish a new Confederate capital in Danville, Virginia, which lay 140 miles to the southwest.
But what of Varina and the Jefferson’s four remaining children? As any good leader knows, your family is your most vulnerable spot. Find and capture the wife and children, and you can be exploited and manipulated into decisions that will not be beneficial to your political cause. Jefferson would be forced to give himself up to Union forces if the children and Varina were captured.25
Anticipating this possibility, Jefferson had sent Varina, Maggie, Jeff Jr., Billy, and the infant Winnie away to Charlotte, North Carolina, three days earlier, on Friday, March 31. Naturally, Varina was terrified, but she begged to stay with her husband, as did their children. Varina recalled: “Mr. Davis almost gave way, when our little Jeff begged to remain with him. And Maggie clung to him convulsively; for it was evident he thought he was looking his last upon us.”26 Winnie mostly slept in her mother’s arms. Ever loyal, Varina did not want to leave her husband alone to face the Union invasion.
Jefferson gave his wife scarce provisions, some gold and other money to bribe her way South, and a loaded percussion cap, black powder .32 or .36 caliber revolver. He knew Varina would fight to the death to protect their family, telling her, “You can at least, if reduced to the last extremity, force your assailants to kill you.”27
Although she had been selling and giving away her possessions for weeks, she was still forced to leave many sentimental items at the Executive Mansion. The women of Richmond knew long before most of the city’s men of the Davis family’s plan to flee town. “The upper-crust ladies of St. Paul’s [Church] had known through their own grapevine that Mrs. Davis had been planning an evacuation for weeks before she actually left. She had put her finest possessions such as her collection of silk dresses and leather gloves on consignment in the shops in the city that specialized in fine ladies attire.”28 Such worldly goods were excess baggage, and she had much more precious cargo, her four children, to protect and transport. Facing a long journey as refugees, hunted and wanted by the Union army, Varina and her brood were desperate to get away.
Jefferson’s private secretary, Col. Burton Harrison, and two daughters of the secretary of the treasury, George Trenholm, accompanied the Confederate first lady and her children on their escape route. Varina’s sister, Margaret, the free black boy James Limber, and two trusted black servants, Ellen and James Jones, rounded out their entourage. The group’s sole armed escort was James Morgan, a young midshipman.29
Varina was a woman of rare courage and resolve—for this her children and Jefferson were extremely lucky. She would keep a cool head and guard her children fiercely. There is no doubt the Confederate first lady would have given her life for any one of her offspring or for her husband without hesitation. This proud and refined woman would soon walk miles in the mud, carrying baby Winnie in her arms with her children trailing behind her as she fled toward Charlotte, North Carolina, then further South and hopefully beyond Yankee reach.
For days the bedraggled Davis family and their companions had only scant knowledge regarding the fate and whereabouts of Jefferson. On May 2 President Andrew Johnson proclaimed a $100,000 bounty on the Confederate president’s head (equivalent to almost $8 million today).30 This husband, father, and rebel leader was soon to become the most wanted and vilified man of the Confederate cause. Even worse, he was considered by many to be the probable assassin of beloved President Abraham Lincoln. “In the emotional aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination an angry northern public opinion and an antagonistic, suspicious government assumed Davis’s complicity, even to the point of orchestrating, in that horrific act.”31
CHAPTER THREE
Escape, Capture, and Fort Monroe
Her loving and generous nature as exhibited when she was an infant and I a prisoner is to be a blessed memory & gives high hopes of what she will be in her maturity.
Jefferson Davis to Varina Howell Davis, January 17, 1870, regarding Winnie
Varina and her party arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina, mentally spent but physically unharmed on April 1 or 2, 1865.1 After spending several days there, she learned that on the night of April 2, Richmond had been evacuated and that the city had been burned and looted. The thought of her household treasures and domestic goods being pawed by Yankee invaders must have endlessly tortured Varina. She may have also vaguely wondered who among the ladies of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church might be wearing her fine silks now.
Because Richmond had served as the mobilization and supply center for the Confederacy during the majority of the war, its ultimate fate if the Confederates had to evacuate was not unexpected. Ironically, it was the Confederate troops themselves who set fire to part of the business district, vowing that nothing valuable would fall into Union hands. A first-person account of the burning of Richmond on April 2 vividly illustrated a catastrophe of biblical proportions. The author, Oscar F. Weisiger, lived and worked there and was told by Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Richmond’s military commander, that the city was to be evacuated at midnight.
Weisiger recalled: “I cannot begin to describe to you the terrors of the day. It can only be likened to my conception of the Judgment Day. At no time during the war did the fiercest artillery duel equal in bursting of shell the firing of the Laboratory [building] . . . The whole business part of the City from 9 to 15th St. is in ashes.” The author went on to note the ultimate implications of the fire: “The result has been just what I predicted three years ago, that when Richmond was given up it would be the death blow of the Confederacy.”2
Although parts of Richmond’s downtown were reduced to cinders, the Confederate capital escaped the total destruction that characterized so many other southern cities. Yet the capture and burning of Richmond was a psychologically potent symbol and a massive victory for the northern troops, whose rallying cry over the past three years had been “On to Richmond!”3 Photographers flocked to the city while it still burned to document its ruins. “These views were stamped into the national memory, and for a long time to come Richmond in ashes signified irretrievable loss to the South and the fruits of failed rebellion to the North.”4
Another image made famous by the northern press was that of President Abraham Lincoln touring the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond on April 4, 1865. Abraham and his young son Tad had sailed up the James River from Petersburg that day and disembarked from Rockett’s Landing. From there the pair made their way on foot to the Executive Mansion, at the intersection of 12th and Clay Streets.5 April 4 happened to be Tad’s twelfth birthday.
The Davises’ housekeeper showed the president and his son into the mansion. Abraham soon was sitting in Jefferson’s padded leather chair and surveying the pl
ace where his archrival had lived and worked against him, and the Union, for the past four years. Not surprisingly, the office was almost obsessively orderly.6 As Nelson Lankford writes in his study of the destruction of Richmond, “For the few first days, before too many souvenir hunters had passed through, the house retained the air of having just been abandoned by its residents.”7 It must have been an eerie sight, this gorgeous southern mansion remaining almost untouched amid the charred remains of downtown Richmond.
While Abraham was inspecting her former home, Varina was strung tight with terror and worry for her husband, her children, and herself. By mid-April the former first lady of the Confederacy was forced to flee farther south, nomadically wandering and seeking shelter from Confederate sympathizers and old friends along the way. To fall so far so fast must have been humiliating to Varina, though she herself had predicted such a turn of events for months.
The southern first lady and her children eventually joined the Confederate “treasure train,” which carried the remains of the administration’s treasury. When the cache originally left Richmond, it contained “Mexican silver dollars, American golden double eagles, ingots, nuggets, and silver bricks, millions of dollars in Confederate banknotes and bonds, 16,000 to 18,000 pounds sterling in Liverpool Acceptances, negotiable in England, and chest full of jewels—diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls—donated by Southern women to buy a warship.”8
Over the course of its transport, large sums were paid out to Confederate troops for their services. Davis and his Cabinet were given $35,000 to keep the Confederate government afloat. All these funds were eventually disbursed or handed over to federal troops. Contrary to reports in the northern press, Jefferson retained nothing for himself.9
Winnie Davis Page 3