1864–1865
Addressing the Second Confederate Congress on May 2, 1864,
Davis outlined his strategy of achieving Confederate independence by outlasting
the Union will to fight. The speech stated that the Confederates would continue
to show the Union they could not be subjugated and hoped to convince the North
to vote in a president open to making peace.
Near the beginning of 1864, Davis encouraged Joseph Johnston
to begin active operations in Tennessee, but Johnston refused. In May, the Union
armies began advancing toward Johnston's army, which repeatedly retreated
toward Atlanta, Georgia. In July, Davis replaced Johnston with General John B.
Hood, who immediately engaged the Union forces in a series of battles around
Atlanta. The battles did not succeed in stopping the Union army and Hood
abandoned the city on September 2. The victory raised Northern morale and assured
Lincoln's reelection. Confronted by only light opposition, the Union forces
marched to Savannah, Georgia, capturing it in December, and then advanced into
South Carolina, forcing the Confederates to evacuate Charleston and capturing
Columbia in February 1865. In the meantime, Hood advanced north and was
repulsed in a drive toward Nashville in December 1864, forcing him to retreat
to Mississippi. Hood resigned in January 1865 and was replaced by Johnston.
In Virginia, Union forces began a new advance into Northern
Virginia. Lee put up a strong defense and they were unable to directly advance
on Richmond, but managed to cross the James River. In June 1864, Lee fought the
Union armies to a standstill; both sides settled into trench warfare around
Petersburg, which would continue for nine months.
In January, the Confederate Congress passed a resolution
making Lee general-in-chief, and Davis signed it in February. Seddon resigned
as Secretary of War and was replaced by John C. Breckinridge, who had run for
president in 1860. During this time, Davis sent envoys to Hampton Roads for
peace talks, but Lincoln refused to consider any offer that included an
independent Confederacy. Davis also sent Duncan F. Kenner, the chief
Confederate diplomat, on a mission to Great Britain and France, offering to
gradually emancipate the enslaved people of the south for political
recognition. In March, Davis convinced Congress to sign a bill allowing the
recruitment of African-Americans in exchange for their freedom.
End of the
Confederacy and capture
At the end of March, the Union army broke through the
Confederate trench lines, forcing Lee to withdraw and abandon Richmond. Davis
intended to stay as long as possible, but evacuated his family, which included
Jim Limber, a free black orphan they briefly adopted, from Richmond on March
29. On April 2, Davis and his cabinet escaped by rail to Danville, Virginia,
where William T. Sutherlin's mansion served as the seat of Government. Davis
issued a proclamation on April 4, encouraging the people of the Confederacy to
continue resistance. Pursued by Union forces, Lee surrendered at Appomattox
Courthouse on April 9. After unofficially hearing of Lee's surrender, the
president and his cabinet headed to Greensboro, North Carolina, hoping to join
Joseph Johnston's army.
In Greensboro, Davis held a summit with his cabinet, Joseph
Johnston, Beauregard, and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina, arguing
that they must cross the Mississippi River and continue the war there. The
generals argued that they did not have the forces to continue; Davis finally
gave Johnston authorization to discuss terms of capitulation for his army.
Davis continued south, hoping to continue the fight. When Lincoln was
assassinated on April 14, the Union government implicated Davis, and a bounty
of $100,000 (equivalent to $3,400,000 in 2022) was put on his head. On May 2,
Davis met with Secretary of War Breckinridge and Bragg in Abbeville, Georgia,
to see if they could pull together an army to continue the fight. He was told
that they were not able to. On May 5, Davis met with his cabinet in Washington,
Georgia, and officially dissolved the Confederate government. Davis continued
on, hoping to join Kirby Smith's army across the Mississippi. Davis was finally
captured on May 9 near Irwinville, Georgia, when Union soldiers found his
encampment. He tried to evade capture, but was caught wearing a loose-sleeved,
water-repellent cloak and a black shawl over his head, which gave rise to
depictions of him in political cartoons fleeing in women's clothes.
Civil War policies
National policy
Davis's central concern during the war was to achieve
Confederate independence. When Virginia seceded, the state convention offered
Richmond as the Confederacy's capital and the provisional Confederate Congress
accepted it. Davis favored the move. Richmond was a larger city, had better
transportation links than Montgomery, and was home to the Tredegar Iron Works,
one of the largest foundries in the world. It ensured Virginia's support for
the war, and it was associated with the revolutionary generation of leaders,
such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Davis arrived
in Richmond at the end of May 1861, moving into the White House of the
Confederacy in August. In November, Davis was officially elected to a six-year
term, and was inaugurated on February 22, 1862. On his arrival in Richmond,
Davis had attempted to create public support for the war by describing it as a
battle for liberty, claiming the original U.S. Constitution as the sacred document
of the Confederacy. He deemphasized the role slavery played in the secession,
but asserted white citizens' right to have slaves without outside interference.
Davis had to create a government with almost no institutional
structures in place. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had no army,
treasury, diplomatic missions, or bureaucracy. Davis quickly built a strong
central government to address these problems. For instance, he created a Bureau
of Ordnance and convinced Josiah Gorgas to be its head. Gorgas successfully
built an arms industry from the ground up, creating a network of
government-supervised factories for war materials and using innovative measures
to produce a stable supply of gunpowder.
Though he supported states' rights, Davis believed the
constitution gave him the right to centralize authority to prosecute the war.
Learning that the Confederacy's military facilities were controlled by the
individual states, he worked with the Congress to bring them under national
authority. He received authorization from Congress to suspend the writ of
habeas corpus when needed. Contrary to the desires of state governors who
wanted their troops available for local defense, he intended to deploy military
forces based on national need and was authorized to create a centralized army
that could enlist volunteers directly. When the soldiers in the volunteer army
seemed unwilling to re-enlist in 1862, Davis instituted the first conscription
in American history. He also challenged property rights. In 1864, he
recommended a direct 5% tax on all property, both land and slaves, and
implemented the impressment of supplies and slave labor for the military
effort. These policies made him unpopular with states' rights advocates and
state governors, who saw him as creating the same kind of government they had
seceded from. In 1865, Davis's commitment to independence led him to compromise
on slavery; he convinced Congress to pass a law that allowed African-Americans
to earn their freedom by serving in the military, though it came too late to
have an effect on the war.
Foreign policy
The main objective of Davis's foreign policy was to achieve
foreign recognition, allowing the Confederacy to secure international loans,
receive foreign aid to open trade, and provide the possibility of a military
alliance. Diplomacy was primarily focused on getting recognition from Britain.
Davis was confident that Britain's and most other European nations' economic
dependence on cotton from the South would quickly convince them to sign treaties
with the Confederacy. Cotton had made up 61% of the value of all U.S. exports.
The South filled most of the European cloth industry's need for cheap imported
raw cotton: 77% of Britain's, 90% of France's, 60% of the German states', and
92% of Russia's. Around 20% of British workers were employed in the industry
and half of British exports were finished cotton goods. Despite Britain's
imperative need for cotton, the Confederacy was prepared to downplay the role
of slavery as the British Empire had outlawed it in 1833. One of Davis's first
choices for envoy to Britain, William Yancey, was a poor one. He was a strong
defender of slavery and had favored the return of the slave trade, creating the
impression that he was impulsive and erratic. British opinion did not turn
against the South in the first year of the war, but that was because the Union
had initially failed to declare that abolition was a war goal.
There was no Southern consensus on how to use cotton to gain
European support. Davis wanted to make the cotton available, but require the
Europeans to obtain it by violating the blockade declared by the Union;
Secretary of War Benjamin and Secretary of the Treasury Memminger wanted to
export cotton to Europe and warehouse it there to use as credit; the majority
of Congress wanted to embargo cotton until Europe was coerced to help the
South. Davis did not allow an outright embargo; he thought it might push
Britain and France away. This stance gave him a chance to be an proponent of
open trade, but an embargo was effectively put into place anyway. In May 1861,
Britain declared neutrality, recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent who
could buy arms but not as a nation that could make treaties. In midsummer,
Britain agreed to honor the Union's blockade. By 1862, the price of cotton in
Europe had quadrupled and European imports of cotton from the United States were
down 96%, but instead of joining with the Confederacy, European cotton
manufacturers found new sources, such as India, Egypt and Brazil.
British intervention on the side of the Confederacy remained
possible for a short while after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation on January
1, 1863, which many in Britain initially saw as a desperate political gesture
that risked causing a race war by sparking a slave rebellion. Davis's view of
the proclamation was similar, but the Confederates needed to achieve decisive
victories to demonstrate their independence before the British would consider
being involved. Over time, the proclamation undermined foreign support for the
South as no slave rebellion occurred and it became apparent that the Union
aimed to end slavery. By the end of the war, not a single foreign nation had
recognized the Confederate States of America.
Financial policy
Although Davis thought the war might be a long one, he did
not propose legislation or take executive action to create the needed financial
structure for the Confederacy. Davis knew very little about public finance,
largely deferring to Secretary of the Treasury Memminger. Memminger's knowledge
of economics was limited, and he was ineffective at getting Congress to listen
to his suggestions. Until 1863, Davis's reports on the financial state of the
Confederacy to Congress tended to be unduly optimistic; for instance, in 1862
he stated that the government bonds were in good shape and debt was low in proportion
to expenditures.
Initially, the Confederacy raised money through loans. The
first loans were bought by local and state banks using specie. This money was
supplemented by money confiscated from U.S. mints, depositories and custom
houses. Much of this specie was used to buy military goods in Europe. In 1861,
Memminger initiated "produce
loans" that could be purchased with goods like cotton or tobacco.
Though the government could not sell much of the produce due to the blockade,
it did provide the government with collateral for foreign loans. The most
important of these loans was the Erlanger loan in 1862, which gave the
Confederacy the specie needed to continue buying war material from Europe
throughout 1863 and 1864.
Davis's failure to argue for needed financial reform allowed
Congress to avoid unpopular economic measures, such as taxing planters'
property—both land and slaves—that made up two-thirds of the South's wealth. At
first the government thought it could raise money with a low export tax on
cotton, but the blockade prevented this. Though the provisional Congress levied
a war tax of one-half percent on all property, including slaves, the government
lacked the apparatus to efficiently collect it. The adoption of the Confederate
Constitution prohibited further direct taxation on property. Instead, the
Confederate government relied on printing treasury notes. By the end of 1863,
the currency in circulation was three times more than needed by the economy,
leading to inflation and sometimes refusal to accept the notes. In his opening
address to the fourth session of Congress in December 1863, Davis demanded the
Congress pass a direct tax on property despite the constitution. Congress
complied, but the tax had too many loopholes and exceptions, and failed to produce
the needed revenue. Throughout the existence of the Confederacy, taxes
accounted for only one-fourteenth of the government's income; consequently, the
government used the printing press to fund the war, thus destroying the value of
the Confederate currency. By the end of the war, the government was relying on
impressments to fill the gaps created by lack of finances.
Imprisonment
On May 22, Davis was imprisoned in Fort Monroe, Virginia,
under the watch of Major General Nelson A. Miles. Initially, he was confined to
a casemate, forced to wear fetters on his ankles, required to have guards
constantly in his room, forbidden contact with his family, and given only a
Bible and his prayerbook to read. Over time, his treatment improved: due to
public outcry, the fetters were removed after five days; within two months, the
guard was removed from his room, he was allowed to walk outside for exercise,
and he was allowed to read newspapers and other books. In October, he was moved
to better quarters. In April 1866, Varina was permitted to regularly visit him.
In September, Miles was replaced by Brevet Brigadier General Henry S. Burton,
who permitted Davis to live with Varina in a four-room apartment. In December,
Pope Pius IX sent a photograph of himself to Davis.
President Andrew Johnson's cabinet was unsure what to do
with Davis. They considered trying him by military court for war crimes—his
alleged involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or the mistreatment
of Union prisoners of war at Andersonville Prison— but could not find any reliable
evidence directly linking Davis to either. In late summer 1865, Attorney
General James Speed determined that it was best to try Davis for treason in a
civil trial. In June 1866, the House of Representatives passed a resolution by
a vote of 105 to 19 to put Davis on trial for treason. Davis also wanted a
trial to vindicate his actions, and his defense lawyer, Charles O'Conor,
realized a trial could be used to test the constitutionality of secession by
arguing that Davis did not commit treason because he was no longer a citizen of
the United States when Mississippi left the United States. This created a
dilemma for the Johnson administration. The trial was to be set in Richmond,
which might be sympathetic to Davis, and an acquittal could be interpreted as
validating the legality of secession.
After two years of imprisonment, Davis was released at
Richmond on May 13, 1867, on bail of $100,000, which was posted by prominent
citizens including Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerrit Smith. Davis
and Varina went to Montreal, Quebec, to join their children who had been sent
there while he was in prison, and they moved to Lennoxville, Quebec. Davis
remained under indictment until after Johnson's proclamation on Christmas 1868
granting amnesty and pardon to all participants in the rebellion. In February
1869, Attorney General William Evarts informed the court that the federal
government declared it was no longer prosecuting the charges against him.
Though Davis's case never went to trial, his incarceration made him a martyr for
many white southerners.
Later years
Seeking a livelihood
After his release from prison, Davis faced continued
financial pressures, but he refused to accept any work that he perceived as
diminishing his status as a former U.S. Senator and Confederate President. He
refused a position as head of Randolph–Macon College in Virginia because he was
still under indictment and did not want to damage its reputation. In the summer
of 1869, he traveled to Britain and France looking for business opportunities,
but failed to find any. After the federal government had dropped its case
against Davis, he returned to the United States in October 1870 to become
president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company of Memphis, Tennessee. He left
his family in England because he was not financially stable. Davis moved into
the Peabody Hotel and committed himself to work, hiring former friends such as
Braxton Bragg to serve as agents. Soon after his return, he was offered the top
post at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, but he declined
because of the insufficient salary.
Davis went back to England to get his family in late summer
of 1870. While there, he learned that his brother Joseph had died. When they
returned, they first stayed at the Peabody Hotel, but eventually rented a
house. When Robert E. Lee died in 1870, Davis delivered a public eulogy at the
Lee Monument Association held in Richmond on November 3, emphasizing Lee's
character and avoiding politics. He received other invitations. He declined
most, but he gave the commencement speech at the University of the South in
1871 and a speech to the Virginia Historical Society at White Sulphur Springs
declaring that the South had been cheated, and would not have surrendered if
they had known what to expect from Reconstruction, particularly the changed
status of freed African Americans. After the Panic of 1873 severely affected
the Carolina Life Company, Davis resigned in August 1873 when the directors
merged the company with another firm over his objections. Davis went back to
England in January 1874 looking to convince an English insurance company to
open a branch in the American South, but heard that animosity toward him in the
North was too much of a liability. He also explored other possibilities of
employment in France, but none worked out.
Around this time, Davis took action to reclaim Brierfield.
After the war, Davis Bend had been taken over by the Freedmen's Bureau which
employed former enslaved African Americans as laborers. Joseph had successfully
applied for a pardon and was able to regain ownership of his land, including
both Hurricane and Brierfield plantations. Unable to maintain the property,
Joseph sold it to his former slave Ben Montgomery and his sons, Isaiah and
William. When Joseph died in 1870, he made Davis one of his will's executors,
but his will did not specifically deed the land to Davis. Davis litigated to
gain control of Brierfield, and when a judge dismissed his suit in 1876, he
appealed. In 1878, the Mississippi supreme court found in his favor. He then
foreclosed on the Montgomerys who were in default on their mortgage and in
December 1881, Brierfield was back in his hands, although he did not live there
and it did not produce a reliable income.
After returning from Europe in 1874, Davis continued to
explore ways to make a living, including investments in railroads and mining in
Arkansas and Texas, and in building an ice-making machine. He gave a few speeches
at county fairs as well. In 1876, the Agriculture and Mechanical College of
Texas offered him the presidency, but he turned it down because Varina did not
want to live in Texas. He also worked for an English company, the Mississippi
Valley Society, to promote trade and European immigration. Davis traveled
through the South and Midwest, and in 1876, he and Varina again went to Europe.
After determining that the business was not succeeding, he returned to the
United States while Varina stayed in England.
Author
In January 1877, the author Sarah Dorsey invited him to live
on her estate at Beauvoir, Mississippi, and to begin writing his memoirs. He
agreed, but insisted on paying board. Davis's desire to write a book showing
the righteousness of his cause had begun taking tangible form in 1875, when he
authorized William T. Walthall, a former Confederate officer and Carolina Life
agent, to find a publisher. Walthall worked out a contract with D. Appleton
& Company, in which Walthall got a monthly stipend for preparing the work
for publication and Davis received the royalties when the book was completed.
The deadline for the contract was July 1878. As he worked on his book, Davis
occasionally agreed to speaking engagements. In his speeches, which were to
veterans of the Mexican–American War or Confederate veterans, he defended the
right of secession, attacked Reconstruction, and promoted national
reconciliation.
When Davis began writing at Beauvoir, he and Varina lived
separately. When Varina came back to the United States, she initially refused
to come to Beauvoir because she did not like Davis's close relationship with
Dorsey, who was serving as his amanuensis. In the summer of 1878, Varina
relented, moving to Beauvoir and taking over the role of Davis's assistant.
Dorsey died in July 1879, and left Beauvoir to Davis in her will, providing him
with a permanent home. In 1878, Davis missed the deadline to complete his work,
and eventually Appleton intervened directly. Walthall was dismissed and the
company hired William J. Tenney, who was experienced with getting manuscripts
into publishable condition. In 1881, Davis and Tenney were able to publish the
two volumes of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. The book was
intended as a vindication of Davis's actions, reiterating that the South had
acted constitutionally in seceding from the Union and that the North was wrong
for prosecuting an unjust, destructive war; additionally it explicitly
downplayed slavery's role in the origins of the war.
In the 1870s, Davis was invited to become a member of the Southern
Historical Society. The society was devoted to presenting the Lost Cause
explanation of the Civil War: the South was morally and constitutionally right
to secede from the Union, Confederate military leaders and soldiers, who fought
to free themselves from Northern tyranny, were superior to the Union's
soldiers; and the South only lost because of treachery and the superiority of
Union resources. Davis became a life-time member, and appreciated the society
as a depository of information on the Confederacy. Early works about the Lost
Cause had scapegoated political leaders like Davis for losing the war, but the
society shifted the blame for the South's defeat to the former Confederate
general James Longstreet, particularly for his performance at the Battle of
Gettysburg. Davis generally avoided public disputes regarding who was to blame
for the Confederacy's defeat, but he did defend himself when William T. Sherman
accused him of plotting not for secession, but to rule all the United States.
He also responded in a personal letter to Theodore Roosevelt when the future
president accused him of being a traitor like Benedict Arnold. Davis publicly
maintained that he had done nothing wrong and that he had always upheld the
Constitution.
Davis spent most of his final years at Beauvoir. In 1886,
Henry W. Grady, an advocate for the New South, convinced Davis to lay the
cornerstone for a monument to the Confederate dead in Montgomery, Alabama, and
to attend the unveilings of statues memorializing Davis's friend Benjamin H.
Hill in Savannah and the Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene in Atlanta.
The tour was a triumph for Davis and got extensive newspaper coverage, which
emphasized national unity and the South's role as a permanent part of the
United States. At each city and on stops along the way, large crowds came out
to cheer Davis, solidifying his image as an icon of the Old South and the
Confederate cause, and making him into a symbol for the New South. In October
1887, Davis participated in his last tour, traveling to the Georgia State Fair
in Macon, Georgia, for a grand reunion with Confederate veterans. He also
continued writing. In the summer of 1888, he was encouraged by James Redpath,
editor of the North American Review, to write a series of articles. Redpath's
encouragement also helped Davis to completed his final book A Short History of
the Confederate States of America in October 1889; he also began dictating his
memoirs, although they were never finished.
Death
In November 1889, Davis left Beauvoir and embarked on a steamboat
in New Orleans in a cold rain to visit his Brierfield plantation. He fell ill
during the trip, but refused to send for a doctor. An employee at Brierfield
telegrammed Varina, who took a northbound steamer from New Orleans and
transferred to his vessel mid-river. He finally got medical care and was
diagnosed with acute bronchitis complicated by malaria. When he returned to New
Orleans, Davis's doctor Stanford E. Chaille pronounced him too ill to travel
and he was taken to the home of Charles Erasmus Fenner, the son-in-law of his
friend J. M. Payne. Davis remained bedridden but stable for the next two weeks.
He took a turn for the worse in early December, and died at 12:45 a.m. on
Friday, December 6, 1889, in the presence of several friends and holding Varina's
hand.
Funeral and reburial
Davis's body lay in state at the New Orleans City Hall from
December 7 to 11. During this period the prominence of the United States flag
emphasized Davis's relationship to the United States, but the hall was
decorated by crossed U.S. and Confederate flags. Davis's funeral was one of the
largest held in the South; over 200,000 mourners were estimated to have
attended. During the funeral his coffin was draped with a Confederate flag and
his sword from the Mexican-American War. The coffin was transported on a
two-mile journey to the cemetery in a modified, four-wheeled caisson to
emphasize his role as a military hero. The ceremony was brief; a eulogy was
pronounced by Bishop John Nicholas Galleher, and the funeral service was that
of the Episcopal Church.
After Davis's funeral, various Southern states requested to
be the final resting site for Davis's remains. Varina decided that Davis should
be buried in Richmond, which she saw as the appropriate resting place for dead
Confederate heroes. She chose Hollywood Cemetery. In May 1893, Davis's remains
traveled from New Orleans to Richmond. Along the way, the train stopped at
various cities, receiving military honors and visits from governors, and the
coffin was allowed to lie in state in three state capitols: Montgomery,
Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; and Raleigh, North Carolina. After Davis was
reburied, his children were reinterred on the site as Varina requested, and
when Varina died in 1906, she too was buried beside him.
Political views on
slavery
During his years as a senator, Davis was an advocate for the
Southern states' right to slavery. In his 1848 speech on the Oregon Bill, Davis
argued for a strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution. He
insisted that the states are sovereign, all powers of the federal government are
granted by those states, the Constitution recognized the right of states to
allow citizens to have slaves as property, and the federal government was
obligated to defend encroachments upon this right. In his February 13–14, 1850,
speech on slavery in the territories, Davis declared that slaveholders must be
allowed to bring their slaves in, arguing that this does not increase slavery
but diffuses it. He further claimed that slavery does not need to be justified:
it was sanctioned by religion and history, blacks were destined for bondage,
their enslavement was a civilizing blessing to them that brought economic and
social good to everyone.[385] He explained the growth of abolitionism in the
north as a symptom of a growing desire to destroy the South and the foundations
of the country: "fanaticism and
ignorance–political rivalry–sectional hate–strife for sectional dominion, have
accumulated into a mighty flood, and pour their turgid waters through the broken
Constitution". On February 2, 1860, Davis presented a set of
resolutions to the Senate that not only reaffirmed the constitutional rights of
slave owners, but also declared that the federal government should be
responsible for protecting slave owners and their slaves in the territories.
After secession and during the Civil War, Davis's speeches
acknowledged the relationship between the Confederacy and slavery. In his
resignation speech to the U. S. Senate, delivered 12 days after his state
seceded, Davis said Mississippi "has
heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this
made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions and the sacred
Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the
equality of the races." In his February 1861 inaugural speech as
provisional president of the Confederacy, Davis asserted that the Confederate
Constitution, which explicitly prevented Congress from passing any law
affecting African American slavery and mandated its protection in all
Confederate territories, as a return to the intent of the original founders.
When he spoke to Congress in April on the ratification of the Constitution, he
stated that the war was caused by Northerners whose desire to end slavery would
destroy Southern property worth millions of dollars. In his 1863 address to the
Confederate Congress, Davis denounced the Emancipation Proclamation as evidence
of the North's long-standing intention to destroy slavery and dooming African
Americans, who he described as belonging to an inferior race, to extermination.
In early 1864, Major General Patrick Cleburne sent a proposal to Davis to
enlist African Americans in the army, but Davis silenced it. Near the end of
the year, Davis changed his mind and endorsed the idea. Congress passed an act
supporting him, but left the principle of slavery intact by leaving it to the
states and individual owners to decide which slaves could use for military
service, and Davis's administration accepted only African Americans who had
been freed by their masters as a condition of their being enlisted.
In the years following the war, Davis joined other Lost
Cause proponents and downplayed slavery as a cause of the war. In The Rise and
Fall of the Confederate Government, he wrote that slavery played only an incidental
role in the Civil War, and that it did not cause the conflict.
Performance as
commander in chief
Davis came to the role of commander in chief with military
experience. He had graduated from West Point Military Academy, had regular army
and combat experience, and commanded both volunteer and regular troops. He was
confident of his military abilities. Davis played an active role in overseeing
the military policy of the Confederacy: he worked long hours attending to
paperwork related to the organization, finance, and logistics needed to maintain
the Confederate armies.
Some historians argued that aspects of Davis's personality
contributed to the defeat of the Confederacy. His focus on military details has
been used as an example of his inability to delegate, which led him to lose
focus on larger issues. He has been accused of being a poor judge of generals:
appointing people—such as Bragg, Pemberton, and Hood—–who failed to meet
expectations, overly trusting long-time friends, and retaining generals, like
Joseph Johnston, long after they should have been removed. Davis's need to be
seen as always in the right has also been described as a problem. Historians
have argued that the time spent vindicating himself took time away from larger
issues and accomplished little, his reactions to criticism created many
unnecessary enemies, and the hostile relationships he had with politicians and
generals he depended on, particularly Beauregard and Joseph Johnston, impaired
his ability as commander in chief. It has also been argued that his focus on
military victory at all costs undermined the values the South was fighting for,
such as states' rights and slavery, but provided no alternatives to replace
them.
Other historians have pointed out his strengths. In
particular, despite the South's focus on states' rights, Davis quickly
mobilized the Confederacy and stayed focused on gaining independence. He was a
skilled orator who attempted to share the vision of national unity. He shared
his message through newspaper, public speeches, and trips where he would meet
with the public. Davis's policies sustained the Confederate armies through
numerous campaigns, buoying Southern hopes for victory and undermining the North's
will to continue the war. A few historians have argued that Jefferson may have
been one of the best people available to serve as commander in chief. Though he
was unable to win the war, he rose to the challenge of the presidency, pursuing
a strategy that not only enabled the Confederacy to hold out as long as it did,
but almost achieved its independence.
Legacy
Although Davis served the United States as a soldier and a
war hero, a politician who sat in both houses of Congress, and an effective
cabinet officer, his legacy is mainly defined by his role as president of the
Confederacy. After the Civil War, journalist Edward A. Pollard, who first
popularized the Lost Cause mythology, placed much of the blame for losing the
war on Davis. Into the twentieth century, many biographers and historians have
agreed with Pollard, emphasizing Davis's responsibility for the South's failure
to achieve independence. In the second half of the twentieth century, some
scholars argued that he was a capable leader, but his skills were insufficient
to overcome the challenges the Confederacy faced. Historians writing in the
twenty-first century also acknowledge his abilities, while exploring how his
limitations may have contributed to the war's outcome.
Davis's standing among white Southerners was at a low point
at the end of the Civil War, but it rebounded after his release from prison.
After Reconstruction, he became a venerated figure of the white South, and he
was praised for having suffered on its behalf. Davis's later writings helped
popularize Lost Cause mythology, contending that the South was in the right
when it seceded, the Civil war was not about slavery, the Union was victorious
because of its overwhelming numbers, and Longstreet's actions at Gettysburg
prevented the Confederacy from winning. His birthday was made a legal holiday
in six southern states. His popularity among white Southerners remained strong
in the early twentieth century. Around 200,000 people attended the unveiling of
the Jefferson Davis Memorial at Richmond, Virginia, in 1907. In 1961, a
centennial celebration reenacted Davis's inauguration in Montgomery, Alabama,
with fireworks and a cast of thousands in period costumes. In the early
twenty-first century, there were at least 144 Confederate memorials
commemorating him throughout the United States.
On October 17, 1978, Davis's U.S. citizenship was
posthumously restored after the Senate passed Joint Resolution 16. President
Jimmy Carter described it as an act of reconciliation reuniting the people of
the United States and expressing the need to establish the nation's founding principles
for all. However, Davis's legacy continued to spark controversy into the
twenty-first century. Memorials such as the Jefferson Davis Highway have been
argued to legitimate the white supremacist, slaveholding ideology of the
Confederacy, and a number of his memorials have been removed, including his
statues at the University of Texas at Austin, New Orleans, Memphis, Tennessee,
and the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. After the murder of George Floyd
in May 2020, Davis's statue on his Richmond monument—along with the statues of
other figures who were considered racists—was toppled by protesters. As part of
its initiative to dismantle Confederate monuments, the Richmond City Council
funded the removal of the statue's pedestal, which was completed in February
2022, and ownership of its artifacts was given to the Black History Museum and
Cultural Center of Virginia.
Writings
Books
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Vol. I. D.
Appleton. 1881. OCLC 1084571088.
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Vol. II. D.
Appleton. 1881.
A Short History of the Confederate States of America.
Belford. 1890. OCLC 1084918966.
Andersonville and Other War-Prisons. Belford. 1890.
Articles
"The Indian
policy of the United States". The North American Review. 143 (360):
436–446. 1886.
"Life and
character of the Hon. John Caldwell Calhoun". The North American
Review. 145 (370): 246–260. 1887.
"Lord Wolseley's
mistakes". The North American Review. 149 (395): 472–482. 1889.
Davis, Jefferson (1889). "Robert
E. Lee". The North American Review. 150 (398): 55–56. JSTOR 25101921.
"The doctrine of
state rights". The North American Review. 150 (399): 204–219. 1890.
"Autobiography of
Jefferson Davis" 1889. in Rowland, Dunbar, ed. (1923). Jefferson
Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches. Mississippi
Department of Archives and History. pp. xx–xxxi.
Collections of
letters, speeches, and papers
Cooper, William J. Jr., ed. (2003). Jefferson Davis: The
Essential Writings. Modern Library. ISBN 0-8129-7208-2. OCLC 70773557.
Rowland, Dunbar, ed. (1923). Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist:
His Letters, Papers, and Speeches. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives
and History. Available online:
Vol I. (1824–1850), Vol. II (1850–1856), Vol. III
(1856–1856), Vol. IV (1856–January, 1861), Vol. V (January, 1861 – August
1863), Vol. VI (August 1863 – May 1865), Vol. VII (May 1865–1877), Vol. VIII
(1877–1881), Vol. IX (1881–1887), Vol. X (1887– 1891 includes letters to Varina
about Davis)
Crist, Lynda L., ed. (1971–2015). The Papers of Jefferson
Davis. Rice University. (14 Volumes)
A selection of documents from The Papers of Jefferson Davis
is available online:"List of
Documents Available Online". Rice University: The Papers of Jefferson
Davis.
Volume 1 is available online: Monroe, Haskell M. Jr.;
McIntosh, James T.; Crist, Lynda L., eds. (1971–2012). The Papers of Jefferson
Davis: 1808–1840. Vol. 1. Louisiana State University Press.
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