He was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, to be tried as a traitor to the United States. Being finally released on bail, he went for his health to England and Canada; and then he resided in Memphis and at “Beauvoir,” Mississippi, which latter place was his home when he died. This home, “Beauvoir,” he had arranged to purchase from Mrs. Dorsey, who was a kind and devoted friend to his family and had assisted him in his writing; but on her death in 1879, it was found that she had left a will bequeathing it to him and to his daughter Varina Anne. He, like Lee, had always declined the many offers of homes and incomes made by their devoted and admiring friends.
On him, as President of the Confederacy, seems to have fallen in some sense the whole odium of the failure of that cause; and this passage from Winnie Davis’ “An Irish Knight” has a touching application to his case: “Thus died Ireland’s true knight, sinking into the grave clothed in all the bright promise of his youth; never to put on the sad livery of age; never to feel the hopelessness of those who live to see the principles for which they suffered trampled and forgotten by the onward march of new interests and new men. Perhaps Freedom like some deity of ancient Greece, loved him too well to let the slurs and contumely of outrageous fortune dim the bright lustre of his virgin fame.” He is enshrined in the hearts of thousands.
His daughter, Varina Anne, or Winnie, “the Child of the Confederacy,” as she is lovingly called, is a writer of some ability. She was educated in Europe, and has written “An Irish Knight” [story of Robert Emmet], and articles for magazines. Mrs. Jefferson Davis’ Life of Mr. Davis is a work of rare excellence and interest. See also Davis Memorial Volume, by J. Wm. Jones.
WORKS.
Rise and Fall of the Confederacy.
Autobiography, [unfinished; it is included in Mrs. Davis’ book.]
Mr. Davis’ writings have a force and dignity of style that accord well with his character. “His orations and addresses are marked by classical purity, chaste elegance of expression, a certain nobleness of diction, and a just proportion of sentence to idea.”—John P. McGuire.
TRIP TO KENTUCKY AT SEVEN YEARS OF AGE, AND VISIT TO GENERAL JACKSON.
(From Autobiography in Mrs. Davis’ Life of Davis.[16])
My first tuition was in the usual log-cabin school-house; though in the summer when I was seven years old, I was sent on horseback through what was then called “The Wilderness”—by the country of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations—to Kentucky, and was placed in a Catholic institution then known as St. Thomas, in Washington county, near the town of Springfield.
. . . When we reached Nashville we went to the Hermitage. Major Hinds wished to visit his friend and companion-in-arms, General Jackson. The whole party was so kindly received that we remained there for several weeks. During that period I had the opportunity a boy has to observe a great man—a stand-point of no small advantage—and I have always remembered with warm affection the kind and tender wife who then presided over his house.