“The Cause of a Defeated Man”

Relics and Shrines of Jefferson Davis


CONTENT WARNING

In 1889—24 years after the fall of the CSA and his own flight from Richmond, capture, and imprisonment—Jefferson Davis, the sole president of the Confederacy, died at the age of 81. His body was initially laid to rest in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, where he had passed away, but was moved in 1893 to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.[1] Neoconfederates honored Davis’ memory via a plethora of statues, monuments, memorials, marches, speeches, and other forms of commemoration in the years to come. But a less formal, impromptu form of commemoration also emerged: reverence for Davis’s body and things his body had touched. Black journalists observed at least five such categories of transfiguration: his daughter, his wife, his homes, his desk, and his church.

The Broad Ax (Chicago, IL) and the American (Coffeyville, KS) reported on Jefferson Davis’s daughter, Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis, referred to as the “daughter of the Confederacy.”[2] Winnie became closely connected with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the group behind much of the Confederate commemoration throughout the country, which also took their name from her title. After Winnie Davis’ untimely death, this title was transferred to Lucy Lee Hill, the daughter of CSA General Ambrose Powell Hill, Jr.[3] If Jefferson Davis embodied the spirit of the Confederacy, then Winnie Davis was the next generation of that spirit. Her connection to her father was so strong that a statue was erected at her grave in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, adjacent to her father’s grave, before a crowd of 15,000.[4]

Similarly, Jefferson Davis’s wife, Varina Anne Banks Davis, was quoted in the Kansas City Sun on the occasion of her address to the Mississippi legislature. In response to Mississippi State Senator Newnan Cayce’s eulogy of her husband, Varina Davis spoke, full of emotion, “Gentlemen, I shall always tenderly love the people of Mississippi who clung to the cause of a defeated man. I can say no more.”[5] Both Winnie and Varina Davis were mentioned in the Kansas City Sun’s report of the funeral procession of Jefferson Davis. They rode in a carriage following Davis’s body, surrounded by “some fifty prominent confederate officers,” “a number of military companies,” “the governors and officials of the southern states and many other prominent citizens.”[6] Winnie Davis was depicted as a noble grieving widow.[7]

The Huntsville Gazette reported on the development of the “White House of the Confederacy,” the CSA executive mansion occupied by Davis. In 1890, “initial steps looking to the transfer of the Davis mansion… to the ladies of the Hollywood Memorial Association” in Richmond were already under discussion. Each Southern state would have their own room in the newly apportioned museum to display their “Confederate relics.”[8] The Hollywood Memorial Association and local Richmond veterans’ groups even tendered an appeal to Varina Davis that her father’s remains be reburied in the mansion.[9] (He would instead be reinterred at Hollywood Cemetery three years later.) The Kansas City Sun also reported in 1902 that Varina was likely to sell the Davis estate in Biloxi, Mississippi to the state.[10] Varina ended up selling the estate a year later to the United Confederate Veterans, on the condition that it be a memorial to Jefferson Davis.[11]

The Langston City Herald (Langston, OK) ran an article describing Jefferson Davis’s desk in the Senate chamber. It reported the account of a guide at the United States Capitol Building who hoped that “before Captain Bassett, ‘the watchdog of the senate,’ dies he will tell somebody which one of the desks it was which Jefferson Davis occupied when he was a member of the senate.”[12] Apparently, “Bassitt [sic] is the only one that knows [which desk was Davis’s], and he will not tell for fear visitors will clip off splinters for souvenirs.” During the Civil War, the Herald noted, “soldiers stuck their bayonets into the desk” as a symbol of their resentment of the South.[13]

The American (Coffeyville, KS), Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, UT), and the Star of Zion (Charlotte, NC) all published articles about St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond where Jefferson Davis and CSA General Robert E. Lee, among other Confederates, worshipped while in the CSA capital. The American published a short news article observing that a memorial window had been unveiled in St. Paul’s, with Varina Davis and other Confederate affiliates in attendance.[14] The Broad Ax reprinted an article from an unspecified source describing a window dedicated to Jefferson Davis in the church.[15] It was noted that this monument was of special significance because this is where Davis was baptized, confirmed, and worshipped. The article zeroed in on a different moment, though, noting that it was in this church on Sunday morning, April 2nd, 1865, that Davis “was handed the telegram from Gen. Lee announcing that the lines of Petersburg were broken and the necessity for evacuating Richmond that night.”[16]

The Rev. William M. Dame, a Confederate veteran, claimed that Davis was a “statesman and Christian” in his eulogy.[17] After the religious services in the fashion of the Episcopal Church, the curtains revealed the window with the inscription: “To the Glory of God and in Memory of Jefferson Davis.”[18] The window was made of Tiffany glass and located in the “most conspicuous place in the edifice.”[19] Although the whole church was decorated with plaques and symbols of the Confederacy, the Broad Ax article concluded by identifying the Lee window as the only rival in the church to the beauty of Davis’s.[20] An article in the Star of Zion contradicted this preference, though. This journalist asserted that the most impressive window was the “magnificent Mosaic of the Last Supper” which was dedicated in honor to CSA General William Anderson (also known as “Bloody Bill”).

The same Star of Zion article also commented on the racism of post-Reconstruction Virginia, albeit obliquely. The author noted that although the congregation was “composed of the bluest of the F.F.V.s [First Families of Virginia],” the church’s pastor was “a true blue democrat and stoutly opposed to Richmond’s segregation law.”[21] The author also observed that the train station where they arrived was “the meanest, dirtiest and most despicable jim crow [sic] railroad waiting room of any large city in the south.”[22] The article ends abruptly with mention of a recent episode in which “the ‘niggers’ were forced to sit in two dirty pig pens” at Richmond’s stations.[23] Without directly connecting Davis or the Confederacy to white supremacism, the article nonetheless underlined ongoing conditions of discrimination, perhaps with an eye to allowing the reader to fill in the blanks as to the role of Confederate commemoration in keeping those conditions in place.[24]

Justin Seward



Please cite as:


Seward, Justin. “‘The Cause of a Defeated Man’: Relics and Shrines of Jefferson Davis.” False Image of History: Perspectives on Confederate Commemoration from the Black Press (online). Fall 2024 Edition. Schaefer, Donovan O., ed. URL = https://falseimage.pennds.org/essay/“the-cause-of-a-defeated-man”-relics-and-shrines-of-jefferson-davis/.



References

American. “In Memory of Jefferson Davis,” Apr 23, 1898.

American. “Winnie Davis’ Successor,” October 1, 1898.

Broad Ax (Chicago). “Winnie Davis is Remembered,” November 18, 1899.

Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis,” July 2, 1898.

Collins, Donald E. The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. http://archive.org/details/deathresurrectio0000coll.

Huntsville Gazette. “The Jefferson Davis Mansion,” May 3, 1890.

Langston City Herald. “Jeff Davis’ Desk,” December 14, 1895.

Kansas City Son. “Mrs. Davis Wept,” February 21, 1902.

Kansas City Sun. “Final Resting Place,” June 2, 1893.

Sullivan, Jane K. “The History of Beauvoir.” Beauvoir. Accessed July 19, 2024. https://www.visitbeauvoir.org/about-beauvoir.

Star of Zion. Star of Zion. “[Editorial Correspondence [Richmond]](https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/ehost/results?vid=1&sid=d78ca104-d8d8-4af5-901b-0777fa7a1c08%40redis&bquery=JN+"Star+of+Zion"+AND+DT+19150128+NOT+PM+AOP&bdata=JmRiPWg3aSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1BbmQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl),” January 28, 1915.

  1. Collins. The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis, 87–89. ↩︎

  2. Broad Ax (Chicago). “Winnie Davis is Remembered”; American, “Winnie Davis’ Successor.” ↩︎

  3. American. “Winnie Davis’ Successor.” ↩︎

  4. Broad Ax (Chicago). “Winnie Davis is Remembered.” ↩︎

  5. Kansas City Sun. “Mrs. Davis Wept.” ↩︎

  6. Kansas City Sun. “Final Resting Place.” ↩︎

  7. Kansas City Sun. “Final Resting Place.” ↩︎

  8. Huntsville Gazette. “The Jefferson Davis Mansion.” ↩︎

  9. Huntsville Gazette. “The Jefferson Davis Mansion.” ↩︎

  10. Kansas City Sun. “Mrs. Davis Wept.” ↩︎

  11. Sullivan. “The History of Beauvoir.” ↩︎

  12. Langston City Herald. “Jeff Davis’ Desk.” ↩︎

  13. Langston City Herald. “Jeff Davis’ Desk.” ↩︎

  14. American. “In Memory of Jefferson Davis.” ↩︎

  15. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  16. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  17. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  18. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  19. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  20. Broad Ax (Salt Lake City). “A Window to Davis.” ↩︎

  21. Star of Zion. “[Editorial Correspondence [Richmond]](https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/ehost/results?vid=1&sid=d78ca104-d8d8-4af5-901b-0777fa7a1c08%40redis&bquery=JN+"Star+of+Zion"+AND+DT+19150128+NOT+PM+AOP&bdata=JmRiPWg3aSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1BbmQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl).” ↩︎

  22. Star of Zion. “[Editorial Correspondence [Richmond]](https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/ehost/results?vid=1&sid=d78ca104-d8d8-4af5-901b-0777fa7a1c08%40redis&bquery=JN+"Star+of+Zion"+AND+DT+19150128+NOT+PM+AOP&bdata=JmRiPWg3aSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1BbmQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl).” ↩︎

  23. Star of Zion. “[Editorial Correspondence [Richmond]](https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/ehost/results?vid=1&sid=d78ca104-d8d8-4af5-901b-0777fa7a1c08%40redis&bquery=JN+"Star+of+Zion"+AND+DT+19150128+NOT+PM+AOP&bdata=JmRiPWg3aSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1BbmQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl).” ↩︎

  24. Star of Zion. “[Editorial Correspondence [Richmond]](https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/ehost/results?vid=1&sid=d78ca104-d8d8-4af5-901b-0777fa7a1c08%40redis&bquery=JN+"Star+of+Zion"+AND+DT+19150128+NOT+PM+AOP&bdata=JmRiPWg3aSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1BbmQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl).” ↩︎