Davis Jefferson


Jefferson Davis Responds to Letter from Friend from the Early Days of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama





JEFFERSON DAVIS. Autograph Letter Signed, to Mary T. Lanier, November 27, 1874. 3 pp., 5.25" x 8". Thin paper with a few edge tears not affecting text; expected folds.





Complete Transcript


New Orleans, La.


27th Nov. 1874


My dear Friend,


You most welcome letter was twice forwarded and finally reached me here.


Most cordially do I respond to the wish that we could in direct oral communication remount the river of our years and live over again the happy days of the long ago. Some business affairs called me recently to Montgomery. To say your absence was sadly felt at every turn, but feebly expressed the regret I felt, that you were not among the objects associated with so many cherished memories. Save those inanimate objects dear by association I found little with which we were familiar. Your sister Mrs. Watt was living at the Hotel and was quite unchanged in appearance though she seemed less gay than when you and she were together. She told me of your joint visit in search of me in N.Y. and was good enough to say that you were both disappointed in learning that I had left.


I hope it may be my fortune soon to be in N.Y. City and now knowing your address I shall not again fail to see you, in that event. God grant to us a speedy reunion


I can scarcely realize that your little boy is in a business house, so vividly do the memories of our life in Montgomery rise before me, that it seems but lately that we parted. Your gentle care and cordial greetings are ever so dear to me. It is like you to depreciate yourself, as unworthy the favors the Father has bestowed on you, it is well however that you are the only one who has ever witheld from you full praise.


May every blessing attend you my dear Mary and give you friends worthy of you, is the sincere wish of yours


Faithfully


Jefferson Davis





[Postscript in left margin:] The enclosed Photograph came safely.





Historical Background


Montgomery served as the first capital of the Confederate States of America, from February to May 1861. During these months, Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet had offices in the Exchange Hotel, operated by brothers-in-law Abraham P. Watt and Sidney Cook Lanier. There, Davis became acquainted with the hotel operators’ wives, Mary T. Lanier and her sister-in-law Jane E. Lanier Watt. Their nephew Sidney Clopton Lanier (1842-1881) later became known as the “poet of the Confederacy” for his post-war poetry.





Davis was again in Montgomery in mid-November 1874, a few months after returning from London, where he had visited with capitalists and ship builders on the feasibility of building light-draft steamers for use in shallow harbors.


Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was born in Kentucky and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1828. After service under Zachary Taylor in the Black Hawk War, Davis married the future president’s daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, in 1835, but she died three months after their wedding. Davis established a plantation in Mississippi and became a Democratic politician. In 1845, he married Varina Howell and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Davis soon resigned his seat in Congress and raised a volunteer regiment for the Mexican War. He returned to politics after the war and served as a U.S. Senator (1845-1852, 1857-1860), and as Secretary of War (1853-1857). A moderate, he initially opposed secession, but when Mississippi seceded in January 1861, Davis resigned from the Senate and returned to Mississippi to raise troops. A month later, the Montgomery Convention named him as provisional president of the Confederacy, until he was elected to a six-year term as president in November 1861, and inaugurated on February 22, 1862. Davis took a direct role in the management of military affairs and worked with the Confederate Congress to expand the powers of the Confederate government, including conscription, impressment, and suspension of habeas corpus, which prompted some states’ rights opposition to his administration. After the fall of Richmond, Union troops captured a fleeing Davis in Georgia. He was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, charged with treason. He was never brought to trial and was eventually released. He published his two-volume memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, in 1881.





Mary Theodora Browne Lanier (1837-1908) was born in New York and married Sidney Cook Lanier (1821-1866) in 1859. He was the uncle of the poet Sidney Clopton Lanier (1842-1881). In 1860, he and his brother-in-law Abraham P. Watt (1813-1871) operated the Exchange Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, and both couples lived in the hotel. While in Montgomery, she and her sister-in-law Jane E. Lanier Watt (1824-1879) met and befriended Confederate President Jefferson Davis before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond. Some time between 1863 and 1865, Sidney Cook Lanier and Mary Browne Lanier fled to Xalapa, Mexico, where Emperor Maximilian welcomed Confederate refugees to the short-lived New Virginia colony, and Sidney Cook Lanier died there. Mary T. Lanier was a devout Catholic, and lived with her son Sterling Sidney Lanier (1860-1917) in Birmingham in the 1880s.








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