In 1861, as the United States tore itself apart in civil war, Varina Davis was thrust into a position she never wanted and for which she was uniquely unsuited: First Lady of the Confederacy. Her husband, Jefferson Davis, had been chosen as the president of the newly formed breakaway nation, and suddenly the woman who privately doubted the Confederate cause became its most prominent female representative. From the beginning, her position was fragile. She never shared her husband’s conviction in the institution of slavery, and those around her sensed her misgivings.
Worse, in a society obsessed with race and bloodlines, her dark complexion and features became the subject of vicious public speculation, with critics openly suggesting that she was of mixed ancestry. The war, meanwhile, brought her devastating personal losses, and by its end, she would have lost her home, her wealth, her reputation, and most of her children. Varina Howell was born on May 7, 1826, into a family that represented the early American elite. Her parents, William and Margaret Howell, lived in Natchez, Mississippi, though she was likely born in rural Louisiana during a family visit.
Her paternal grandfather had served as governor of New Jersey in the 1790s, and her father had fought against the British in the War of 1812. Her mother was the daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter and slaveholder of Scots-Irish descent. Varina was the second of eleven children, though only seven survived to adulthood. Her documented lineage traced back to European ancestors from the British Isles, with Welsh and Scots-Irish roots, but from her birth, some whispered that she did not look as expected.
Her olive complexion, dark eyes, dark hair, and broad nose were attributed to Welsh ancestry, but in the racially rigid society of the antebellum South, these traits invited suspicion rather than explanation. Her father was a prosperous merchant for much of her childhood, owning a plantation and dozens of enslaved people. But in the 1830s, poor investments and an expensive lifestyle drove the family into financial decline, and by 1839, William Howell was bankrupt. It was his wife’s wealthy family who rescued them, and through their support, Varina was sent to a boarding school in Philadelphia for her education.
She proved a diligent student, and when she returned home, she was likely one of the most well-read young women in her community. In late 1843, at just seventeen, Varina met her future husband at a Christmas party at Hurricane Plantation. Jefferson Davis was eighteen years her senior and a wealthy plantation owner. He had been married before, to Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of Zachary Taylor, but Sarah had died just months after their wedding in 1835, and Davis had spent the following eight years withdrawn from society, mourning her deeply.
Varina was smitten from the moment they met, but her parents were troubled by the differences in age, background, and politics between the pair. They eventually gave their consent, and the courtship continued through 1844 and 1845. When they married in 1845, the ceremony was held at Varina’s parents’ home with only a small circle of her relatives and friends in attendance. No one from the Davis family was there.
Only after the wedding did Varina realize that her husband held deeply traditional views about gender roles. He expected her to play the role of a conventional Southern wife, despite her education and intellect. She also discovered that he still carried a lingering affection for his deceased first wife. Their brief honeymoon included a visit to his elderly mother and a solemn stop at the grave of the woman who had come before her.
Varina would later admit that she sometimes felt like a consolation wife. The newlyweds settled at Brierfield, a plantation Jefferson had established on land provided by his older and richer brother, Joseph. Soon after, Jefferson’s widowed and impoverished sister arrived with her seven children to live there, a decision made without consulting Varina, much to her displeasure. In 1846, Jefferson Davis was elected to the US House of Representatives, and Varina accompanied him to Washington, D.
C. , a city she quickly adored. She threw herself into its social life and became one of the city’s most popular and youngest hostesses. But Davis soon resigned his seat to serve in the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848, and after the conflict he returned to politics with renewed ambition.
As his stature grew, so too did the political tension between husband and wife. Varina held views more aligned with northerners on the subject of slavery, while Jefferson took a harder line, even comparing enslaved people to livestock. She somehow reconciled their opposing perspectives in her own mind, and the relationship remained steady, smoothed over by his growing wealth in the 1850s. He served for many years as a senator for Mississippi, and in 1853 he was appointed Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce.
Between 1845 and 1861, the family spent much of their time living in Washington, where Varina felt far more at ease than in Mississippi’s increasingly heated atmosphere. Family tragedy soon followed. Between 1852 and 1864, Varina and Jefferson had six children: four boys and two girls. Most would have short lives.
In 1854, their first child, Samuel, died before reaching the age of two, and a grief-stricken Varina withdrew from social life. Their daughter Margaret, born the following year, was the only one of their children who would grow up, marry, and have a family of her own. Jefferson Junior survived into adulthood but died at twenty-one during a yellow fever epidemic in 1878. Two more sons followed, Joseph in 1859 and William in 1861, both of whom died in childhood.
Their youngest child, Winnie, born in 1864, would become especially close to her mother. The trajectory of Varina’s life changed entirely in late 1860. The debate over slavery had been escalating for years, and the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 pushed the South to the breaking point. South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, and other states followed between January and April 1861, uniting to form the Confederate States of America.
In April, the first shots of the Civil War rang out. Mississippi seceded on January 9, 1861, and Jefferson formally resigned from the Senate twelve days later. Just four weeks after that, he became the provisional president of the Confederacy at a convention in Montgomery, Alabama. The position was made permanent on February 22, 1862, by which time the war was well underway and the capital had moved to Richmond, Virginia.
As Jefferson’s wife, Varina immediately became the First Lady of the Confederacy. But she never truly believed in the Confederate cause, and her doubts left her ill-suited for the role. In Richmond, people who met her picked up on her misgivings, and the press began to comment viciously on her appearance. Newspapers drew attention to her sallow skin and dark features, suggesting she might be part Native American or African American.
Hostile critics described her in language meant to shock, calling her a mulatto or an Indian in a society obsessed with purity of blood. During the war years, she was frequently pregnant, grieving, criticized, and thrust into the role of public spokesman for a cause she did not believe in. The Civil War ended in Confederate defeat in April 1865. As General Robert E.
Lee organized the surrender, Jefferson, Varina, their family, and their supporters fled south from Richmond. They were captured in Georgia, and Jefferson was detained on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of President Lincoln, which had occurred just days after the fighting stopped. He spent the next two years in confinement. During that time, Varina sent their children to Canada for safekeeping while she campaigned for her husband’s release.
He was freed on bail in May 1867 and included in a general amnesty issued by President Andrew Johnson at Christmas 1868. The Davises were now free, but their world was gone. Jefferson’s wealth had been built on plantations run by slave labor, which was now abolished. There was no chance of a renewed political career, and their finances had been decimated by the war and by his legal fees.
The family traveled to Europe, surviving on speaking and appearance fees generated by their celebrity status as the former president and first lady of the Confederacy. Varina remained in Europe with the children after Jefferson returned to America. In 1870 and 1871, she was outraged to read about his possible affairs back in the United States. During this time, their son William died just before his eleventh birthday, and the combination of loss and financial collapse plunged the family into prolonged depression.
In the mid-1870s, Varina returned to America, and the couple gradually reconciled, living together again by 1878. By then, Jefferson was relying on the generosity of a patron, Sarah Dorsey, a wealthy widow of a Louisiana planter who had known Varina since their school days. Dorsey invited the Davises to live on her estate at Beauvoir, Mississippi, and eventually sold them a house there at a cheap rate. When she died in 1879, she left Jefferson a substantial sum that largely solved their financial problems for the rest of his life.
Jefferson died in 1889 during a massive yellow fever outbreak, aged eighty-one. After her husband’s death, Varina moved to New York City, a decision that was widely considered controversial. She was related to the media magnate Joseph Pulitzer, who gave her a job writing for the New York World in 1891. Her daughter Winnie went with her, and Varina published several books during these years.
She was often criticized in the Southern press for moving north and writing for a Yankee newspaper. She shot back that the war and her husband’s death had forced her to work to support herself. In 1898, tragedy struck again when Winnie died at the age of thirty-four, possibly from pneumonia or gastritis. Varina arranged for her to be buried in Richmond, next to her father and brother.
Varina continued to write, focusing in her later years on promoting reconciliation between the northern and southern states, which remained bitterly divided three decades after the war. In 1901, she met with the influential African-American leader Booker T. Washington to discuss expanding educational opportunities for women and African-Americans. She lived to be eighty years old, dying of pneumonia in her midtown Manhattan apartment on October 16, 1906, survived by her daughter Margaret and several grandchildren.
She was honored with a funeral procession through the streets of New York City and was later laid to rest in Richmond. The one and only first lady of the Confederacy was buried in its brief capital. Her tombstone simply read: “At peace.
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