Davis Varina


Varina Davis Rare Endorsed Calling Card





VARINA HOWELL DAVIS. Autograph Endorsement on calling card, ca. 1880s. 1 p., 3.5" x 2.5". Paste residue on verso.





Complete Transcript


Dear Mrs Baugher, will you drink your afternoon tea out of this little cup for your affectionate friend.





[Printed:] Mrs Jefferson Davis. / Beauvoir House. / Mississippi.





Historical Background


In 1877, the widowed novelist and biographer Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey (1829-1879) invited Jefferson and Varina Davis to stay at her estate, Beauvoir, facing the Gulf of Mexico in Biloxi, Mississippi. She provided them a cabin and encouraged him in writing his memoirs. Davis insisted on purchasing Beauvoir, for the modest price of $5,500 (payable over three years). Before her death, Dorsey willed her three Louisiana plantations and other assets to Davis. Although her relatives contested the will, a court dismissed their lawsuit in 1880. Davis continued to live at Beauvoir until his death in New Orleans while returning from a trip to his reclaimed Brierfield plantation in Mississippi. Two years after his death, Varina Davis and their daughter “Winnie” Davis moved to New York City to pursue literary careers.



Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis (1826-1906) was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and educated in Philadelphia and by private tutors. In February 1845, she married Jefferson Davis, who was much older and had been married to the daughter of Zachary Taylor eight years earlier for three months before she died. Varina Davis accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., for his first term in Congress, but he 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). They had six children, born between 1852 and 1864. All four sons died as children or young adults. The two daughters survived their father, but only Margaret Howell Davis (1855-1909) married and survived her mother. When Jefferson Davis won election to a six-year term as President of the Confederacy in November 1861, Varina Davis became the first and only First Lady of the Confederate States of America.


When Richmond fell, she fled with her husband and was captured in Georgia by Union cavalry. During her husband’s imprisonment, Varina Davis and their youngest daughter Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis (1864-1898) joined him in prison. When he was released, they traveled with him in Europe. They lived with him at Beauvoir from 1877 until his death in 1889, but moved to New York City in 1891, where Varina Davis began a literary career, contributing many articles to newspapers, and worked for sectional reconciliation.








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