Z 2085.000 Davis (Jefferson) and Family Papers

Z 2085.000
DAVIS (JEFFERSON) AND FAMILY PAPERS

Jefferson Finis Davis was born on June 3, 1808. He was the tenth and last child of Samuel and Jane Cook Davis of Christian County (now Todd County), Kentucky. The family moved to Wilkinson County, Mississippi Territory, in 1812. Davis entered the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, in 1824, and he graduated in 1828. From West Point, Davis went on to serve as a second lieutenant in the United States Army at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin; Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin; and Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, during which time he participated in the Black Hawk War.

Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor, in June of 1835, and later that month, Davis resigned from the army. The couple traveled to Hurricane, the Warren County, Mississippi, plantation of Joseph Davis, the elder brother of Jefferson Davis, who gave the couple Brierfield, an eight-hundred-acre plantation adjacent to Hurricane. Shortly after their arrival in Mississippi, both Davis and his wife contracted malaria, and on September 15, 1835, she succumbed to the disease. Davis recovered and became a cotton planter in Warren County.

In February of 1845, Jefferson Davis married Varina Howell at The Briars in Natchez, Mississippi. The couple had six children: Samuel Emory (1852-1854), Margaret Howell (1855-1909), Jefferson, Jr. (1857-1878), Joseph Evan (1859-1864), William Howell (d. 1872), and Varina Anne (1864-1898).

Davis was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1845, a position from which he resigned after less than a year, to command the Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War. He was wounded at Buena Vista, Mexico, in February of 1847. Later that year, Davis was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate. In 1851, Davis resigned from the senate to run as governor of Mississippi, but he was defeated by Senator Henry Stuart Foote. The following year, he campaigned for presidential candidate Franklin Pierce, and Davis was eventually appointed secretary of war under President Pierce. In 1857, Mississippi reelected Davis to the United States Senate. Four years later, in a farewell speech to the senate, Davis announced the secession of Mississippi and resigned his seat. In February of 1861, Davis was elected provisional president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, and in October of that year, he was elected president of the Confederacy.

When Lee's surrender at Appomattox ended the Confederacy in April of 1865, Davis fled with his family and advisors. He was captured one month later at Irwinville, Georgia, and imprisoned at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Davis was released from prison on bail in 1867, and in 1869, the United States government dropped all charges against him. In that same year, Davis became president of the Carolina Insurance Company in Memphis, Tennessee. The company failed four years later, forcing Davis to attempt to regain legal control of his plantation, Brierfield. Davis eventually succeeded, but was unable to make very much money from the plantation. In 1877, Davis moved to a small cottage at Beauvoir, the estate of Sarah Anne Dorsey, an admirer of Davis. Dorsey eventually sold Beauvoir to Davis and later willed her entire estate to him. While he lived at Beauvoir, Davis completed two books, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in 1881 and A Short History of the Confederate States in 1889. Davis contracted bronchitis on a trip to Brierfield in 1889. He returned to New Orleans where he died on December 9, 1889. Davis was buried in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, but his remains were reinterred in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, four years later.

This collection contains photocopies of correspondence, speeches, wills, notes, and newsclippings regarding the Jefferson Davis family and their friends and associates. Principal correspondents are Jefferson Davis, Varina Howell Davis, and Varina Anne (Winnie) Davis. Other correspondents include Albert Gallatin Brown, Henry Stuart Foote, Robert McClelland, and Franklin Pierce. There are also photocopies of two letters from Eliza Turner Quitman to her son, Frederick Henry, that are apparently unrelated to the Davis family.

1. Correspondence and Related Papers. 1827-1861; 1880; n.d. 1 folder.

This series includes photocopies of incoming and outgoing personal, military, and governmental correspondence and notes of Jefferson Davis. Several letters regard the manufacture of muskets and rifles by Colt, Whitney, and Remington, and their display to foreign clients. There is a photocopy of the will of Sarah Dorsey in which she deeds the Beauvoir property to Jefferson Davis. There is also a photocopy of a twelve-page letter to Marcus J. Wright, written on October 15, 1880, in which Davis discusses controversies over his leadership during the Civil War.

2. Correspondence and Related Papers. 1883-1905; n.d. 1 folder.

This series includes photocopies of incoming and outgoing personal correspondence and related papers of Varina Howell Davis (who also signed her name Varina Jefferson Davis) and her daughter, Varina Anne (Winnie) Davis. One item of note is the will of Winnie Davis that was made just before a proposed trip to Egypt in 1898. Another item of note is a letter from Union veteran G. Harris to Varina Howell Davis.

3. Speeches. 1860; 1861. 1 folder.

This series contains photocopies of printed speeches delivered by Jefferson Davis in the United States Senate on May 7, 16, and 17, 1860, and on January 10, 1861.

4. Newsclipping. n.d. 1 folder.

This series contains a photocopy of a newsclipping regarding a note that Jefferson Davis wrote to the daughter of his overseer at Brierfield. She kept the note in a scrapbook.

5. Correspondence. 1849; 1850. 2 items.

This series consists of photocopies of two letters by Eliza Turner Quitman, wife of Mississippi governor John Anthony Quitman, to her son, Frederick Henry, who was away at college. In the first letter, Eliza Quitman admonishes her son to go to class and to write home. She also describes an illness from which she had recently recovered. The second letter concerns an illness of Frederick Henry Quitman, his Presbyterian beliefs, and family news.