First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War - Hardcover

Cashin, Joan E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674022947 ISBN 13: 9780674022942

Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006

Synopsis

When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection.

After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war.

A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.

About this title

About the Author:

Joan E. Cashin is Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University.

Review:

This fascinating biography is the first full life of Varina Howell, the wife of Jefferson Davis. It is also the first detailed account of their turbulent marriage--between an adoring woman who could not always agree with her husband's ideas, and a stiff, much older man who cared nothing for his wife's opinions but demanded her total obedience. Joan Cashin has done an extraordinary amount of research--much of it in manuscripts and diaries hitherto unused by historians--and she writes with sensitivity, but without sentimentality. This is a major biography, essential for an understanding of the Confederacy and important for the history of women.
--David Herbert Donald, author of Lincoln

Cashin has done justice to this compelling figure. A respected and prolific scholar of southern women's history, Cashin spent over fourteen years researching Varina Davis, painstakingly examining print sources and combing the many archives that hold relevant manuscript material. This extraordinary effort and Cashin's skill as a historian and writer are apparent on every page of this thorough, objective, and engaging book. Cashin has been careful not to impose twenty-first-century feminist values on Varina Davis, instead establishing the historical context of social, political, and gender relations and letting the documentary evidence fill in the details of Davis's life. The result is a subtle examination of an actual person, warts and all.
--Elizabeth Bramm Dunn (North Carolina Historical Review 2007-01-01)

Joan Cashin's superb new reading of the First Lady of the Confederacy offers a vivid yet balanced account of Varina Howell Davis. This is biography at its best: deep research, new material, a perceptive author, and an engrossing subject. In Cashin's hands Varina's story reaches beyond the First Lady's unique circumstances as wife, mother and widow to tell us about the old and new South. Both specialists and the general public will enjoy this exceptional portrait.
--Jean Baker, Professor of History, Goucher College

Fascinating in her own right, Varina Davis was in some ways a 20th century woman out of her time. Her force of personality, dedication, and independent spirit, make her in many ways more interesting than her husband. In Joan Cashin's First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War we have a biography worthy of the woman at last.
--William C. Davis, author of An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government

Cashin is always sure-handed in showing us Varina Davis as a woman who kept an inner toughness while giving in to inflexible demands, a woman who endured a marriage that was "so many holocausts of herself." A signal scholarly achievement and a marvelous read!
--Jane Turner Censer, Professor of History, George Mason University

Cashin has written a smashing study--the first scholarly biography of Varina Howell Davis (1826–1906), wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Cashin follows Davis from her Mississippi childhood through her marriage, her years in Washington (when her husband served in the Senate), through the Civil War, concluding with her widowhood, during which Varina lived in New York City and supported herself by writing for newspapers. Davis had a deep commitment to family (and in later years an almost co-dependent attachment to her daughter) and intellectual sophistication. She was a passionate reader and a scintillating conversationalist. The letters quoted here sparkle with wit. Cashin also uncovers Davis's ambivalence about the Confederacy; a "wavering Confederate patriot," she believed the South was doomed from the start. Davis kept up correspondence with Northern friends and relatives throughout the Civil War, an act that could have landed her in jail. Cashin is a strong, clear writer and situates her complex subject in larger academic debates, for example, about gender in the 19th century, without getting bogged down in academese. All in all, this is a terrifically winning portrait of a fascinating woman. (starred review) (Publishers Weekly 2006-05-22)

Though Davis's life reads like a tragic novel, Cashin has taken care not to romanticize her subject...Cashin has meticulously researched her subject's long life, including her move to New York after Jefferson Davis's death in 1889 and her subsequent career as a writer.
--Tessa L. H. Minchew (Library Journal 2006-07-01)

Over the past three decades a great deal has been written about Southern women in the Civil War period, and it has left little doubt that some of them were far more restless and rebellious than their husbands and fathers would have preferred. But the case of Varina Davis takes on special meaning because she was the most prominent Southern woman of her time...Cashin's book leaves no doubt that she was in fact a considerably more interesting person than her husband, and a better one as well.
--Jonathan Yardley (Washington Post 2006-09-03)

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War is that rare combination of a scholarly masterpiece which is also enjoyable to read. You will come away from it glad that you took the time to get to know this woman and her life.
--Laurie Chambliss (Civil War Interactive)

Joan Cashin has dedicated years of research and writing to produce what will surely become the definitive work on this remarkable and misunderstood woman. Meticulous research in contemporary newspapers, government documents and correspondence places Varina Davis within the political and social framework of her world. The contents of nearly 600 letters reveal Davis' private thoughts on the hot-button issues of her time: women's rights, slavery and secession. Her belief that women should have at least equal rights within the bonds of marriage set her apart from her husband on numerous occasions...Varina Davis occupies a unique position in American history, and Cashin's masterful work leaves us imagining what this woman of talent and tenacity might have achieved in a later time.
--Mary Hatcher (Charleston Post and Courier 2006-10-29)

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0674022947
• ISBN 13: 9780674022942
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416