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Jefferson Davis: Our Greatest Hero
by Dr. Grady McWhiney
League of the South National Director

During and after the War for Southern Independence, Jefferson Davis was accused of a wide variety of villainies. Not all of his accusers were Yankees, but Northerners made the most extensive and lasting attacks upon Davis. In one of these insults -- a letter embossed with an American eagle crushing "Secession" and holding proudly in its beak a U.S. banner announcing "Death to Traitors" -- a New Yorker wrote: "Jeff Davis you rebel traitor here is the beauty of America one of the greatest treasures that ever waved over your sinful head. Now I want you to look at this motto and think of me for -- say death to cession [sic] and death to all traitors to their country and these are my sentiments exactly. Yours not with respect for I can never respect a traitor to his Country a cursed traitor." The same view of Davis as being "among the archtraitors in our annals" was expressed just as emphatically years later by Theodore Roosevelt and Harvard University Professor Albert T. Perkins.

The President's children, circa 1866. From left to right: Jefferson, Jr., Margaret, William, and Varina Anne. The photograph was taken in Montreal while President Davis was incarcerated in Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Davis became, and remained to Northerners, the quintessential wrongdoer. Later generations of liberal progressives would consider him an American Hitler. Immediately after the War for Southern Independence Yankee authorities put Davis in jail and left him there for two years without a trial, while they tried to implicate him in the assassination of Lincoln, alleged cruelty to Federal prisoners, and treason itself. Though never brought to trial or convicted of any crime, Davis received abundant abuse in the Yankee press and on the podium. During and after the war the New York Times depicted him as a murderer, a cruel slaveowner whose servants ran away, a liar, a boaster, a fanatic, a confessed failure, a hater, a political adventurer, a supporter of outcasts and outlaws, a drunkard, an atrocious misrepresenter, an assassin, an incendiary, a criminal who was gratified by the assassination of Lincoln, a henpecked husband, a man so shameless that he would try to escape capture by disguising himself as a woman, a supporter of murder plots, an insubordinate soldier, an unwholesome sleeper, and a mean-spirited malingerer.

Anti-Davis sentiment was more than mere newspaper talk. Following the war the citizens of Sacramento, California, true to their vigilante tradition, hanged Davis in effigy. A few months later the Kansas Senate passed a resolution to hang him in person. More than ten years after the war ended, widespread opposition prevented him from speaking anywhere in the North. In 1876 a Yankee newspaper editor answered the question, should Davis be given amnesty, with a resounding "no," and in 1880 a man who cheered for Jefferson Davis in Madison, Indiana, was shot.

"Malice and slander have exhausted their power against you," a Southerner tried to assure the continually criticized Confederate President. At the end of the nineteenth century an observer noted: "I believe there never was a time when a whole people were more willing to punish one man than were the people of the North to punish Mr. Davis for his alleged crimes." Twenty years after Davis's death, handbills accusing him in Lincoln's assassination still circulated, and the New York Times published an editorial denouncing plans for a Southerner to donate for use on the new battleship Mississippi a silver service with the likeness of Jefferson Davis etched on each piece. More than a hundred years passed before the Congress of the United States officially forgave Davis for being President of the Confederacy.

No other Confederate leader had to wait so long for either official or unofficial exoneration. By the early 1900s, Robert E. Lee, the greatest Yankee killer of all time, had become a national hero, absolved of his sins, and soon considered so harmless that the government allowed his picture to be hung on the walls of Southern public schools alongside those of Washington and Lincoln. When I was young a number of Southern schools were named in honor of Jefferson Davis, but since then most, if not all of those, have been forced to change their names to dishonor the Confederate President.

Such efforts to disgrace him bothered even Southerners who were never his "particular friend." "I never believed he was a very great man, or even the best President the Confederate States might have had," wrote John S. Wise. "But he was our President. Whatever shortcomings he may have had, he was a brave, conscientious and loyal son of the South. He did his best, to the utmost of his ability, for the Southern cause. He, without being a whit worse than the rest of us, was made to suffer for us as was no other man in the Confederacy. And through it all he never, to the day of his death, failed to maintain the honor and the dignity of the trust confided to his keeping. It distresses me to this day," admitted Wise, "whenever I hear anybody speak disparagingly of this man, who was unquestionably devoted to the cause for which he lived and died, and who was infinitely greater than his traducers."

Davis knew how much he was maligned. He rejected an invitation to visit the North in 1875, explaining "the tide of unreasoning prejudice against me, in your section, was too strong to be resisted." "Demagogues, who know better, have found it easier to inflame and keep alive the passions of the war by personifying the idea [that] I instigated and precipitated it."

Jefferson Davis and His Generals
One of the first prints of the Confederate military, this lithograph was issued by the French firm of Goupil in 1861. It included many officers whose prominence would quickly fade. The figuress are (left to right) Leonidas Polk, John B. Magruder, Thomas J. Simmons, George N. Hollins, Benjamin McCulloch, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, Sterling Price, Joseph E. Johnston, and William J. Hardee.

Yankees had even stronger reasons for damning Davis. He was, after all, a wholehearted supporter of those symbols of Southern wickedness that union military might had discredited -- slavery, states' rights, and secession. Davis had defended slavery; described the federal government as having "no inherent power, all it possesses was delegated by the States"; and he was equally emphatic on the legitimacy and necessity of secession. "The temper of the Black Republicans is not to give us our rights in the Union, or allow us to go peaceably out of it," he declared in January 1861. "If we had no other cause, this would be enough to justify secession, at whatever hazard." A few days later hereported to his old friend President Franklin Pierce: "Mississippi, not as a matter of choice but of necessity, has resolved to enter on the trial of secession. Those who have driven her to this alternative threaten to deprive her of the right to require that her government shall rest on the consent of the governed."

The invidious comparisons made between Davis and Lincoln during and after the war by certain foreigners further embittered Northerners. For example, William Howard Russell's published diary contained this unflattering contrast: "[Davis] is certainly a very different looking man from Mr. Lincoln. He is like a gentleman." Or consider the remarks of Percy Greg whose "Tribute to Confederate Heroes" appeared in 1882. He praised Davis as having more "moral and intellectual powers" than any twenty Federal statesmen, and a man vastly superior in every way to "the 'rail-splitter'. . . whose term, had he died in his bed four or five years later, would have been remembered only as marking the nadir of American political decline; the culmination of vulgarity. Lincoln's uncleanness of language and thought," insisted Greg, "would hardly have been tolerated in a Southern 'bar.'"

Perhaps even the contrast between the "gentlemanly" warfare advocated by Davis and the comprehensive destruction practiced by such terrorizers of civilians as Sherman and Sheridan embarrassed some Yankees. Davis believed that war should consist solely of combat between organized armies. He abhorred the killing of civilians and the destruction of private property during hostilities. Years after the war, when General Grant was dying of cancer, Davis wrote: "I have felt a human sympathy with him in his suffering, the more so because I think him so much better than the pillaging, house-burning, women persecuting Sherman and Sheridan." Judah P. Benjamin recalled that "when it was urged upon Jefferson Davis, not only by friends but by members of his Cabinet, that it was his duty to the people and to the army to repress outrages by retaliation, he was immovable in his resistance to such counsels, insisting that it was repugnant to every sentiment of justice and humanity that the innocent should be made victims for the crimes of such monsters." Davis proudly proclaimed after the war: "I am happy to remember that when our army invaded the enemy's country, their property was safe."

Family at Beauvoir, circa 1885. From left to right seated: Varina Howell Davis Hayes, Margaret Howell Davis Hayes, President Jefferson Davis (holding Lucy White Hayes), Mrs. Jefferson Davis, (holding Jefferson Davis Hayes. Servant standing in background.

What made Davis so distinct and so utterly intolerable to most Yankees was his refusal to admit any guilt or to apologize for his actions and the cause he led. He told veterans of the Army of Tennessee who came to Mississippi to honor him in 1878: "Your organization was appropriate to preserve the memories and cherished brotherhoods of your soldier life, and cannot be objectionable to any, unless it be to one who holds your services to have been in an unworthy cause and your conduct such as called for repentance and forgiveness." Davis reminded these old soldiers that they must maintain pride in their cause as well as in their soldierly conduct. "The veteran who shoulders his crutch to show how fields were won must notbe ashamed of the battle in which he was wounded," Davis affirmed. "To higher natures success is not the only test of merit; and you, my friends, though you were finally unsuccessful, have the least possible cause to regret the flag under which you marched or the manner in which you upheld it."

Given this opportunity to explain his views to an understanding audience, Davis unburdened himself. "Every evil which has befallen our institutions is directly traceable to the perversion of the compact of union and the usurpation by the Federal Government of undelegated powers," he contended. "The events are too recent to require recapitulation, and the ruin they have wrought, the depravity they have developed, require no other memorial than the material and moral wreck which the country presents." Davis still believed in secession: My faith in that right as an inherent attribute of State sovereignty, was adopted early in life, was confirmed by study and observation of later years, and has passed, unchanged and unshaken, through the severe ordeal to which it has been subjected." He could express such views, he told his listeners, because he had no "desire for a political future." His only desire was to establish "the supremacy of the truths on which the union was founded." As for himself, he asserted, "I shall die, as I have lived, firm in the State rights faith."

Throughout his remaining years, Davis reiterated these views in speeches, letters, and interviews. He told an appreciative audience of Southerners in 1882: "Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known all that was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again. [Great applause.]" A year earlier Davis had written to a fellow Southerner: "Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defence we made of our inheritance & denying the great truths on which all our institutions were founded. To be crushed by superior force, to be robbed & insulted, were great misfortunes, but these could be borne while there still remained manhood to assert the truth, and a proud consciousness in the rectitude of our course. When I find myself reviled by Southern papers as one renewing 'dead issues,' the pain is not caused by the attack upon myself, but by its desecration of the memories of our Fathers & those of their descendants who staked in defence of their rights -- their lives, their property & their sacred honor. To deny the justice of their cause, to apologize for its defence, and denounce it as a dead issue, is to take the last of their stakes, that for which they were willing to surrender the other."

President Jefferson Davis overlooking the beach at Biloxi

A reporter who interviewed Davis a few years before he died discovered that the Confederate President's "heart [was] as warm as ever for the land he has loved so well," and that Davis "did not desert during the war and has not deserted since."

His steadfastness, his refusal to desert his cause, made Davis particularly obnoxious to his enemies. He was so unlike those Southerners who after the war disassociated themselves from their past as quickly as did certain Germans after World War II and thus gained American forgiveness and patronage. Davis was just the opposite of his fellow Mississippian Confederate General James L. Alcorn, who announced shortly after the war: "You were right Yankee! We are and ever have been in the Union; secession was a nullity. We will now take the oath to support the Constitution and the laws of the United States." As proof of his sincerity, Alcorn became a Republican governor of Mississippi in 1869 and a Republican member of the U.S. Senate in 1871. He also recouped his wartime financial losses and increased his property holdings. Good Yankees approved of such "enlightened" new Southerners as Alcorn, who were "eager to keep step with the North in the onward march of the Solid Nation," as one man expressed it; they disapproved of Jefferson Davis and their newspapers castigated him as "unrepentant" and "the greatest enemy of the South."

Davis still carries such encumbrances. Were he alive today, even the most skilled public relations firm would have difficulty packaging him for the market. He was too honest and too politically incorrect to be elected to public office, or even to have any future in higher education, that last refuge of scoundrels. Scarcely any university professor would want Davis as a colleague. He probably would be as unsuccessful today in business as he was after the war. I even doubt that he could have found employment as aradio talk-show host. He was too dignified and too proud to truckle.

Jefferson Davis, taken in fatigue uniform

Yankees would have liked nothing better than to recast Jefferson Davis as a repentant sinner asking for forgiveness, but he refused to accommodate them. Instead, he assumed the burden of the lost cause, becoming the symbolic defender of not just the Confederacy and a proud Southern tradition, but of its people, their culture, and what Yankees judge to be their unforgivable past. Jefferson Davis is, and should be, our greatest hero. Like no other, he withstood criticism and denigration without kowtowing or wavering. Asking for no pardon, he refused to denounce his people or his cause. His image ought to be everywhere to remind us that for more than a hundred years he has symbolized our courage, our pride, and our unity.

In 1882, a year after the publication of his two-volume defense of himself and the Confederate cause, Davis advocated what Yankees considered totally unforgivable -- a history of the South written by and for Southerners. "I would have our children's children to know not only that our cause was just," he told members of the Southern Historical Society, "but to have them know that the men who sustained it were worthy of the cause for which they fought." Davis, full of hope and passion, outlined in this remarkable address, just what he believed history ought to be and how it should be used. "It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green," he announced. "We want our side of the war so fully and exactly stated, that the men who come after us may compare and do [us] justice." Davis did not call for objectivity. "I will frankly acknowledge that I would distrust the man who served the Confederate cause and was capable of giving a disinterested account of it. [Applause.]" "I would not give twopence for a man whose heart was so cold that he could be quite impartial," admitted Davis. "You may ask the schoolboy in the lowest form, who commanded at the Pass of Thermopylae. He can tell you. But my friends there are few in this audience who, if I ask them, could tell me who commanded at Sabine Pass. And yet," said Davis, "that battle of Sabine Pass was more remarkable than the battle of Thermopylae, and when it has orators and poets to celebrate it, will be so esteemed by mankind.

His appeal for orators and poets to preserve the deeds of heroic Southerners reveals that Davis understood the South's heritage. Southerners, like their Celtic ancestors, were oral and aural people who perpetuated much of their past in stories and songs. Davis compared the Confederacy's military heroes with their Scottish forebears: "May it not come to pass that in some hour of need, future generations, aware of the grandeur and the virtues of these men, will in a moment of disaster cry out like the ancient Scot:

O for an hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-trained Bruce
To lead the fight,
And cry St. Andrew and our right."

Unidentified artist
Salt print, circa 1859
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

History, Davis believed, must inspire those who learn it. "Let the rising generation learn what their fathers did," he implored, "and let them learn the still better lesson to emulate not only the deeds, but the motives which prompted them. May God grant that sons ever greater than their fathers may rise whenever their country needs them to defence her cause. [Applause.]"

The kind of history that Davis advocated was unacceptable to Yankees. First, it was incompatible with the so-called scientific history taught in German seminars and in the later nineteenth century being popularized in the United States by Yankee professors. As adapted for Americans, this history stressed the evolution of New England institutions and how they contributed to the greatness of the United States. There was no place in such history for either the bard or the poet upon whom Davis relied to celebrate Southern values and heroes. Second, a history of the South that revered Southerners and their values rather than Northerners and their values would undermine all that the war had decided. To the victor went the power to write the history that justified the victory. It was that simple.

British history is really English history imposed upon the non-English peoples of the British Isles by their English conquerors. The same may be said of the history of the United States. What passes for standard American history is Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee ideals and heroes.

Jefferson Davis, with his dog, Traveler, at Beauvoir

In the twentieth century, Yankees gained increasing control over the historical journals, the university presses, the commercial publishing houses, and the production and distribution of professional historians; consequently, the Yankee version of the American past became the history most often taught in the colleges and in the public schools.

It is precisely this condition that Mississippian Dunbar Rowland first complained about eighty years ago. "It seems to be admitted on all sides that the people of the South are neglecting the teaching of Southern History in all our institutions," he informed the governor. "That we are neglecting this important field of instruction is made evident by the astonishing amount of ignorance of Southern and State history among the rising generation of college students. Something should be done to enlighten them."

Part of the problem has been that the professors who taught the South's teachers adopted the "New South" doctrine of national unity as readily as Southern businessmen. North Carolina educator Robert Bingham announced in 1884 that "the greatest blessing that ever befell us was a failure to establish a [Southern] nationalism." Bingham boasted that "the past of the South is irrevocable, and we do not wish to recall it. The past of the South is irreparable, and we do not wish to repair it."

Baker (right) talking to Jefferson Davis

Yet this teaching of Yankee ideas and biases in Southern public schools, which Francis Butler Simkins labeled "the education that does not educate," often has been offset "by the survival of overwhelming traditions." Robert Penn Warren testified that his sympathetic view of Confederate history was obtained not from the schoolroom, but rather "from the air around me."

If today the South's air is still full of Confederate history, the bookshelves are not. Yankees now control the writing, publishing, and marketing of most books on the South's history and culture. Yankee professors and Southerners who think like Yankees have taken over most Southern colleges and universities. Southerners who believe in the traditions that Jefferson Davis appreciated are finding themselves unemployable, denied careers in higher education by national forces that systematically discriminate against them. Only Yankees and Scalawags who truckle to the enemies of Southern history and culture get important jobs where they have the opportunity to train college teachers. Most Southerners are relegated to academic Siberia where they receive low pay, scant research opportunities, and rarely see gifted students.

Something not yet fully understood, but that could destroy our culture, has occurred during the more than forty years that I have been a college professor. Discrimination against Southerners has always existed, but today in education it is rampant. Trying to find jobs for young Southerners is difficult in a market that favors political correctness and disdains Southerners. No university, not even one in the South, wants to hire a native son, especially one who appreciates Southern traditions. Not only has Jefferson Davis remained unforgiven by his enemies; so have the Southerners who came after him. We are being reduced to the status once imposed on our Celtic relatives -- the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish -- by their English neighbors. God help us!

Frequently Asked Questions About Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis Statue at Vicksburg

Birthdate

It is unclear whether Davis was born in 1807 or 1808, and Davis himself was unsure. He wrote an acquaintance in 1858 that "there has been some controversy about the year of my birth among the older members of my family, and I am not a competent witness in the case, having once supposed the year to have been 1807, I was subsequently corrected by being informed it was 1808, and have rested upon that point because it was just as good, and no better than another."

Middle Name

From November 30, 1824, until mid-1833, Jefferson Davis' name on official lists and at times his signature included the middle initial "F." The name is not spelled out in full in any known document. In his story of Davis' life, Hudson Strode claimed that the final son born to Samuel and Jane Davis was given the middle name "Finis" because "it seemed unlikely that Jane Davis would ever bear another child" (Jefferson Davis: American Patriot, p. 3). The "Finis" myth has been repeated so often that it has become accepted as fact by many scholarly resources, but there is no evidence for it. All of Jefferson Davis' siblings had traditional names (see Genealogy of the Davis Family).

Perhaps equally curious is the sudden appearance and just as sudden disappearance of the middle initial. Davis had been at West Point for at least three months before it showed up for the first time, on a monthly conduct report. The last known "J. F. Davis" signature is on a note of October 3, 1832, notifying his commanding officer of his acceptance of a furlough. As of the publication of Davis' appointment as second lieutenant of Dragoons on May 4, 1833, the "F." had disappeared from official documents as well. At the time the initial was in use, there were no other Davis officers with the given name Jefferson (Jefferson C. Davis, a Union general in the Civil War, did not enlist until 1846), so it is unlikely the young cadet was trying to avoid mistaken identity. Only two other officers named Davis with the first initial "J." were in the army from 1824-1833, and one of them died in 1828. It should be noted that the "F." was used on Davis' first marriage license (June 17, 1835), although he signed the document without the "F." The initial was not used on his second marriage license ten years later.

Jefferson Davis' signature and the listing of his name on official documents may be traced in the first volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, which includes all known documents from Davis' birth through 1840.

The Case Against Jefferson Davis

What, exactly, happened in the case of The United States v. Jefferson Davis? Enough intrigues, maneuvers, plot twists, and changes of the political wind exist to fill a book (and it would make a good one). It is quite a complex matter, but the bottom line is that the case never went to trial and the indictments were dismissed. The proceedings dragged on into 1869, but Davis himself was only in the courtroom on two separate days.

Davis was captured by troops and held at a military base (Fort Monroe) in a state (Virginia) under martial law. Had he been linked to the Lincoln assassination, his trial would have taken place before a military tribunal, but the fabricated case connecting him to the assassination (the primary informant was convicted of perjury) fell apart before Davis was charged. The government soon decided that any trial for treason would have to be in a civil court, and in Virginia, the base of Davis' alleged treasonable activities, directing armed rebellion against the United States. Neither John C. Underwood, circuit court judge for the District of Virginia, nor Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who presided over the circuit including the Virginia district, felt he had any authority as long as Davis was held by the military. Chase in particular wanted to avoid such dangerous legal waters, and he continued to find excuses to avoid hearing the case. Underwood's competence was questionable, and he was known to be overly zealous (he had bragged to a congressional committee in 1866 that he could pack a jury to insure a conviction), so Chase's presence was essential for a respectable verdict.

Because of the issues of military control of Davis' imprisonment, Chase refused to issue a writ of habeas corpus in June 1866, but almost a year later, in conjuction with an order to the military authorities from the president, a writ of habeas corpus brought Davis to Richmond to be transferred to the authority of the federal courts. He appeared before Underwood on May 13, 1867, bail was set at $100,000, and the bond was immediately posted. "Deafening applause" broke out in the courtroom when Davis was freed. Horace Greeley, one of a growing number of northerners who wanted the case settled so the country could get on with the healing process, had secured backing for the bond and personally guaranteed a quarter of it. He was in the courtroom that day and met Davis after his release.

After half a year with his family in Canada, Davis returned to Richmond in November 1867 for what was supposed to be the beginning of the trial. Court convened on the 26th, but Chase was not present, and the government asked for a postponement. Davis was released on his own recognizance, and the defense asked that some sort of consideration be given him so he would not be "subjected to a renewal of the inconvenience" of making the trip to Richmond if a trial was not going to be held. As it turned out, Davis would not have to appear in court again during any of the subsequent proceedings.

As time passed, many elements changed, and so did the players. U.S. attorneys general came and went (three different men were involved in the Davis case). Andrew Johnson was impeached and nearly convicted. And the 14th Amendment was passed and ratified. Johnson began to fear that if Davis were tried and acquitted--a very real possibility with a Virginia jury--he (Johnson) would be impeached again and removed from office. For a variety of reasons, no significant action was taken until after the 1868 election.

In an unusual twist, Chase made known to Davis' attorneys, a distinguished group of northern and southern litigators, his opinion that the third section of the 14th Amendment nullified the indictment against Davis. His contention was that by stripping the right to vote from high Confederate officials, a punishment for treasonable activities had been legislated, so Davis could not be punished again for the same crime. Davis' friends reminded his lawyers that Davis (who was in Europe and out of telegraphic range) wanted a trial because he saw it as an opportunity to vindicate both himself and the actions of the Confederacy, i.e. the constitutional right to secede. Davis' lawyers, however, pointed out that Davis' life was at stake, and there was a general agreement that they could not pass up the opportunity to arrange what they believed to be an honorable settlement. One of the attorneys later wrote Davis that the defense team also felt that if they could establish a precedent based on the 14th Amendment, it would lift the threat of prosecution for other Confederate leaders as well.

On November 30, 1868, Davis' lawyers filed a motion requiring that the government attorneys show cause why the indictment (the latest of at least four indictments which had been handed down with the same charge--another long story) should not be quashed. A hearing on the motion was held before Chase and Underwood on December 3-4, and on the 5th they announced their finding. The vote was split--Chase favoring laying aside the indictment, and Underwood, who had overseen the grand juries responsible for the indictment, wanting the case to be tried. Chase's anger with Underwood was obvious, and he stated for the record why he believed the 14th Amendment exempted Davis from further prosecution.

The certificate of division between Chase and Underwood was forwarded to the Supreme Court, and the indictment technically remained pending, but there would be no more action taken. It was clear that Chase would favor overturning a guilty verdict, making the government hesitant to proceed. The Davis case remained on the circuit court docket for February 15, 1869, but the government indicated at that time that it would not prosecute (nolle prosequi). The indictment was, therefore, dismissed, as were indictments against thirty-seven other ex-Confederates, including Robert E. Lee. Davis' lawyers contacted the Justice Department to make sure that other indictments against him in Washington and Tennessee were not going to be prosecuted.

The full story of the case remains to be told, but there are a couple of articles which provide good background information. Eberhard P. Deutsch, "United States v. Jefferson Davis: Constitutional Issues in the Trial for Treason," American Bar Association Journal, 52 (Feb. and March 1966): 139-45, 263-68, deals with the legal matters of the case. Roy F. Nichols, "United States vs. Jefferson Davis, 1865-1869," American Historical Review, 31(Jan. 1926): 266-84, covers many of the political issues involved. Bradley T. Johnson's detailed court record is reprinted in Davis, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, edited by Dunbar Rowland (10 vols., 1923), 7:138-227. No work has been done on public perception of the case in North and South. The involvement of influential northerners, with Horace Greeley at the center of activity, was a major factor in what transpired. There is also much left to be written about the maneuvering of Chase, Johnson, and the Justice Department.

Additional Sources:

jeffersondavis.rice.edu
www.pointsouth.com/csanet/greatmen/davis
www.brainyquote.com
www.wildwestweb.net
www.army.mil
jeffersondavis.rice.edu
www.fruitcakecity.net
www.valstar.net/~jcraig
www.beauvoir.org
mshistory.k12.ms.us
www.southerncedarsgallery.com
www.military.com
www.state.ga.us
www.portsmouthbookshop.com
www.wtv-zone.com/civilwar
www.library.wisc.edu
jeffersondavis.rice.edu

On This Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on April 26:
0121 Antonius Marcus Aurelius [Marcus A Verus], Emperor of Rome (161-180)
1319 Jean II the Good, king of France (1350-64)
1573 Marie de'Medici Queen of France
1711 David Hume England, empiricist/philosopher (Treatise of Human Nature)
1718 Esek Hopkins US, 1st commander-in-chief (US Navy)
1776 Joan M Kemper Dutch lawyer (designed civil code law book)
1785 John James Audubon Haiti, bird watcher/artist
1808 Martha Finley children's book author
1812 Alfred Krupp German arms merchant
1827 Charles Edward Hovey Brevet Major General (Union volunteers)
1836 Erminnie Adelle Platt US, ethnologist (Iriquois-English Dictionary)
1839 Cyrus Hamblin Brevet Major General (Union volunteers), died in 1867
1875 Syngman Rhee Whanghai Province South Korea, President of South Korea (1948-60)
1880 Mikhail Fokine Russia, choreographer/founder of modern dance
1886 Ma Rainey [Gertrude Pridgett] "Mother of the Blues", US blues singer
1895 Rudolf Hess Hitler's Deputy Führer, only prisoner at Spandau
1899 Guinn "Big Boy" Williams Decatur TX, actor (Circus Boy, Hoedown, Country Fair, Blackmail)
1900 Charles Richter Ohio, Earthquakes seismologist (Richter scale)
1904 William "Count" Basie jazz pianist (Policy Man, Blazing Saddles)
1906 Gracie Allen Mrs George Burns, comedienne (George Burns Show)
1910 Tomoyuki Tanaka director (Godzilla)
1912 A[lfred] E[lton] Van Vogt Winnipeg Manitoba Canada, science fiction writer (Cosmic Encounter)
1916 Morris L West Australia, novelist (Shoes of the Fisherman)
1917 I[eoh] M[ing] Pei Canton China, architect (1961 Brunner Prize)
1922 Jeanne Sauvé 1st female Governor-General (Canada, 1984-90)
1927 Jack Douglas comedian (My Brother Was an Only Child, Jack Paar Show)
1933 Carol Burnett San Antonio TX, comedian/actress (Annie, 4 Seasons)
1934 J Micheal McCloskey environmentalist, Sierra Club chairman
1938 Duane Eddy Phoenix AZ, guitarist (Peter Gunn, Cannonball)
1942 Bobby Rydell Philadelphia PA, rock singer (Wild One, Bye Bye Birdie)
1943 Gary Wright Creskill NJ, singer/keyboardist (Dream Weaver, Spooky Tooth-Love Is Alive)
1973 Damien Munoz Miss Colorado-USA (1997)

Deaths which occurred on April 26:
0757 Stephen II Pope (752-57), dies
1196 Alfonso II King of Aragon (1162-96), dies
1726 Jeremy Collier English bishop/historian/opponent to theater, dies at 75
1731 Daniel Defoe English author (Robinson Crusoe), dies at about 70
1865 John Wilkes Booth assassin, is shot dead near Bowling Green VA at 27
1940 Carl Bosch German chemist (BASF, IG Farben, Nobel 1931), dies at 65
1956 Edward Arnold actor (Mr Smith Goes to Washington), dies at 66
1970 Gypsy Rose Lee [Rose Louise Hovick] stripper/actress (Pruitts of Southampton), dies rom cancer at 56
1973 Irene Ryan actress (Granny-Beverly Hillbillies), dies at 69
1981 Jim Davis actor (Jack Ewing-Dallas), dies at 65
1984 William "Count" Basie jazz piano great, dies on 80th birthday
1986 [William] Broderick Crawford actor (Highway Patrol), dies at 74
1989 Lucille Ball comedienne/actress (I Love Lucy), dies of a massive heart attack at 78
1990 Carlos Pizarro Leongomez Colombian presidential candidate, assassinated
1997 Peng Zhen mayor of Beijing China (1951-66), dies

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1966 ANDERSON WARREN L.---CAMDEN MI.
[RADIO CONTACT LOST]
1966 REILLY EDWARD D.---PHILADELPHIA PA.
[REMAINS RETURNED 08/22/89]
1966 TUCKER JAMES H.---PAUNEE OK.
[ALL CONTACT LOST]
1967 AUSTIN CHARLES D.---NEW CANAAN CT.
[SURVIVAL UNLIKELY]
1967 DUDASH JOHN F.---MANVILLE NJ.
[REMAINS RETURNED 06/03/83]
1967 ESTOCIN MICHAEL J.---TURTLE CREEK PA.
1967 MEYER ALTON B.---FREDERICKSBURG TN.
[03/04/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1967 MEYER WILLIAM---TAYLOR MI.
[REMAINS RETURNED 08/14/85]
1967 RIATE ALFONSO R.---DELL GARDENS CA.
[03/16/73 RELEASED BY PRG]
1968 MC DANIEL JOHN LEWIS---GIBSONVILLE NC.
1968 STOW LILBURN RAY---VICI OK.
1968 TODD LARRY RICHARD---CHAMBLEE GA.
1969 EAST JAMES BOYD JR.---OKLAHOMA CITY OK.
[REMAINS RETURNED 07/28/97]
1970 ELLIOTT ARTICE W.---TERRELL TX.
[03/27/73 RELEASED BY PRG, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1972 AMESBURY HARRY A. JR.---MORRISON IL.
1972 COOKE CALVIN C. JR.---WASHINGTON DC.
1972 DUNN RICHARD E.---TERRYVILLE CT.
1972 HOSKINS DONALD R.---MADISON IN.
1972 HIRONS ALAN
[NOT ON OFFICIAL DIA LIST.]
1972 RUSSELL RICHARD L.---SNYDER TX.
[CRASH, 1 REMAINS RECOVERED]
1972 REYNOLDS TERRY L.---GRAINFIELD KS.
1972 WEISMAN KURT F.---JASPER IN.
[02/75 REMAINS RETURNED]

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

On this day...
0757 Paolo Orsini replaces his brother Pope Stephen II, as Paul I
1220 German king Frederick II grants bishops sovereign rights
1478 Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo & kill Giuliano de'Medici
1478 Easter is celebrated for the first time
1514 Copernicus makes his 1st observations of Saturn
1564 William Shakespeare baptized
1607 1st British to establish an American colony land at Cape Henry VA
1654 Jews are expelled from Brazil
1655 Dutch West Indies Company denies Peter Stuyvesant's desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam
1721 Smallpox vaccination 1st administrated
1755 1st Russian university opens (Moscow)
1777 Sybil Ludington, 16, rode from New York to Connecticut rallying her father's militia
1803 Meteorites fall in L'Aigle, France
1819 Odd Fellows Lodge is established
1828 Russia declares war on Turkey to support Greece's independence
1835 Frédéric Chopins "Grand Polonaise Brillante", premieres in Paris France
1865 Battle of Durham Station NC (Greensboro)
1865 Battle of Fort Tobacco VA
1865 Confederate General J E Johnston surrenders Army of Tennessee, at Durham NC
1887 Huntsville Electric Company is established to sell electricity
1905 Cubs Jack McCarthy becomes only major league player to throw out 3 runners at the plate in 1 game, all were ends of a double play
1912 1st homerun hit at Fenway Park (Hugh Bradley, Red Sox)
1913 Panamá-Pacific International Exposition opens in San Francisco
1913 Sun Yet San calls for revolt against President Yuan Shikai in China
1920 H Shapley & H D Curtis hold "great debate" on nature of nebulae
1926 Germany & Russia sign neutrality/peace treaty
1928 Madame Tussaud's waxworks exhibition opens in London
1929 1st non-stop England to India flight lands
1931 Lou Gehrig hits a homerun but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake costs him American League home run crown; he & Babe Ruth tie for season
1933 Jewish students are barred from school in Germany
1936 Dmitri Shostakovitch completes his 4th Symphony
1937 German Luftwaffe destroys Basque town of Guernica in Spain
1938 Austrian Jews required to register property above 5,000 Reichsmarks
1941 A tradition begins, 1st organ at a baseball stadium (Chicago Cubs)
1944 1st B-29 attacked by Japanese fighters, one fighter shot down
1944 Papandreou government in Greece forms
1945 Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during WWII, arrested for treason
1948 The XP-86 prototype for the Sabre Jet first "officially" breaks the sound barrier. The first operational F-86A Sabres entered service in May of the same year
1952 US minesweeper "Hobson" rams aircraft carrier "Wasp", kills 176
1957 Jamestown VA 350th Anniversary Festival opens
1961 French paratroopers' revolt suppressed in Algeria
1961 Roger Maris hits 1st of 61 homers in 1961
1962 1st Lockheed A-12 flies
1966 Arnold "Red" Auerbach retires as Boston Celtic's coach
1968 Students seize administration building at Ohio State
1971 Heaviest rains ever in Bahia district of Brazil, 15" in 24 hours
1976 Pan Am begins non-stop flights New York-Tokyo
1977 New York's famed disco Studio 54 opens
1980 Iran begins scattering US hostages from the US Embassy
1980 Longest jump by a jet boat is set at 120'
1981 Largest US bank robbery (Tucson AZ), more than $33 million stolen
1982 Argentina surrenders to Britain on South Georgia near Falkland Island
1984 President Ronald Reagan visits China
1986 Actor/body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger weds newscaster Maria Shriver
1986 Baseball game between California Angels & Minnesota Twins delayed for 9 minutes by strong winds
1986 Worst nuclear disaster, 4th reactor at Chernobyl USSR explodes, 31 die
1990 New York court of appeals ends 2½ year legal battle over 1988 America's Cup by refusing jurisdiction of the case
1990 Nolan Ryan ties Bob Feller's record of pitching 12 1-hitters
1991 23 killed in Kansas & Oklahoma by tornadoes
1992 Ozzie Smith steals his 500th base
1993 The U.S. Holocaust Museum opened in Washington, D.C.
1994 1st multi-racial election in South Africa begins
1994 26.9ºC in Prestebakke Norway (Norwegian April high temp record)
1994 Taiwan Airbus A-300 crashes at Nagoya Japan, 262 killed

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Georgia : Confederate Memorial Day (1868)
Guinea-Bissau : Municipal Holiday
Tanzania : Union Day (1964)
Virginia : Cape Henry Day
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi : Confederate Memorial Day (1868) (Monday)
US-Utah : Arbor Day-plant a tree (1872) (Friday)
US : All You Can Eat Day
World : Milky Way Galaxy Day (8-billion years ago)
International Amateur Radio Month

Religious Observances
Nag Hammadi : Fast Day
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Cletus, pope (76-88)
old Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Marcellinus, pope (296-304)
Moslem : Ashur (Muharram 10, 1420 AH)

Religious History
1518 German reformer Martin Luther stated in his Disputation at Heidelberg: 'Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes.'
1834 Birth of Horatio R. Palmer, American Congregational clergyman. From his books of religious verse came two hymns which are still sung today: "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts" and "My Faith Looks Up to Thee."
1877 The residents of Minnesota observed a statewide day of prayer, asking for deliverance from a plague of grasshoppers that had been ravishing their farm crops this year. (The plague ended soon after, in the summer.)
1955 The Roman Catholic religious program "Life is Worth Living" aired for the last time over Dumont television. Premiering in 1952, it was hosted by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who won an Emmy during its first year of broadcast for being "the most outstanding personality" on television.
1956 English apologist C.S. Lewis wrote in "Letters to an American Lady": 'One of the many reasons for wishing to be a better Christian is that, if one were, one's prayers for others might be more effectual.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit"

Martha Stewart's Way vs. The Real Woman's Way...
Martha's Way #7: Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.
Real Woman's Way #7: Martha, dear, the only reason this works is because you can't rub a lime on your forehead without getting lime juice in your eyes and then the problem isn't the headache anymore, because now you are BLIND. A much better use for the lime is with tequila. You certainly won't have a headache, not until the next day, anyway. If a headache does occur, repeat with the tequila and lime.

New State Slogans...
Montana: How fast can you drive?

Male Language Patterns...
"I was listening to you. It's just that I have things on my mind." REALLY MEANS,
"I was wondering if that red-head over there is wearing a bra."

Female Language Patterns...
"Yes, honey, I heard every word you said." REALLY MEANS,
"My, that golf instructor has a cute butt. I wonder how the hat that slut he's with is wearing would look on me.