Davis Varina


Varina Davis Re: Jailer's Account of Jefferson Davis

VARINA HOWELL DAVIS, Autograph Letter Signed, to Henry A. Scomp, March 3, 1905, Colorado Springs, Colorado. 2 pp., 8.5" x 11". Some edge toning; excellent.

When Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s widow published her memoirs in 1890, she reserved special criticism for General Nelson A. Miles (1839-1925), who served as her husband’s jailer as commandant of Fort Monroe, Virginia. In 1905, the controversy between them again erupted. During the course of debate on an army appropriations bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Congressman made some critical remarks of Miles’s treatment of Davis. Miles responded with an article entitled “My Treatment of Jefferson Davis,” published in The Independent magazine in New York on February 23, 1905. In that article, he quoted a note from Varina Davis thanking him for his “courtesy and kind answers to my questions of this morning. I cannot quit the harbor without begging you again to look after my husband’s health for me.”


In this fascinating letter to a professor in Georgia, Davis questioned the accuracy of Miles’s quotation of her note and again accused Miles of “afflicting” her husband “with every indignity in his power.” She insisted that she never knew “a worse or more cruel creature than this loathly man.”

Complete Transcript

Colorado Springs / March 3, 1905.

Rev. Dr. H. G. Scomp

Emory College, Ga


My Dear Professor,

* * * My young sister lay ill when I sent for a physician to come to the ship as we were not allowed to go on shore. One was refused on the ground that we were not permitted to leave the ship. The day before, my husband and younger brother—an adopted child—and all the rest of the prisoners had been taken off the tugs. Miles came on the boat the day after. I had heard whispered such dreadful rumors of their having been imprisoned in the hold of an iron-clad that I questioned Gen. Miles earnestly and besought him to tell me where they were.

He answered my questions in a meager kind of a way but told me Mr. Davis was well and comfortable.

We were to sail that night or the next day under sealed orders, for what port or what country we could not form an idea. I wrote the little note to Miles—thanking him—not for kindness to my husband, as I could not possibly have known if Miles had been kind or otherwise—but for answering my questions. In the abandonment of my misery I neglected no chance to hear what had been done.

At that time Miles was having the irons forged and was afflicting him with every indignity in his power, and not one of Miles answers was the truth. I was a prisoner when the note was written on the Clyde transport ship in Hampton Roads.

If you will read that part of my memoirs you will see a particular statement of the circumstances.

I really never knew a worse or more cruel creature than this loathly man. I hope God may pardon him and help me to forgive him.

My poor child, Mrs Hayes of Colorado Springs, took up this fight when I was too ill even to see Miles false account. I am still too weak to do more than to add my testimony with her’s.

But I could not permit this catiff [caitiff] to pretend he had a letter of thanks from me. One southern paper after another gave this falsehood credence. I felt I had incautiously put a weapon in his hands, so I was forced to enter the public arena and demand that my note of thanks be published. He would better have pretended that it was lost than to have convicted himself of a downright falsehood.

I required that the letter should be photographed or sworn to before a notary-public. His letter to Gen. Townsend I send to you but beg you to return it to me as soon as you have read it. Please take care of the slips I send you for I do not know how soon this industrious and unscrupulous vilifier of the dead and living may renew his attack.

Very truly your’s,

V. Jefferson Davis.


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.

Henry A. Scomp (1843-1913) was professor of Greek and Hebrew at Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, from 1876 to 1894, when he resigned over what he believed to be declining standards. He was an ardent prohibitionist and the author of King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton (1888). He served as a presidential elector for the Prohibition Party in 1892.


Provenance: Ex-Forbes Collection. Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990), the American owner-publisher of Forbes magazine and a consummate collector, amassed one of the most substantial autograph collections of such breadth and depth that it filled a half-dozen residences on three continents. Many of his manuscripts were sold in a series of multi-million dollar sales by Christie's in the early 2000s. The Forbes name is considered to be the apex of provenance, especially when attached to an item like the above. We are honored to have been chosen by the family to sell at auction the substantial balance of the collection.


This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.


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