Joan E. Cashin First Lady of the Confederacy (2006)

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.Hercircle of close friends had survived the war intact.32Davis now reasserted the moderate states rights opinions she hadvoiced intermittently since the secession winter.To an attorney sheremarked that the Constitution protected states rights and the fed-eral government had broken the grand old compact with the states,but she thought the structure of the government was basically sound.When Francis Preston Blair proclaimed, I know that your eagle-eyedintellect was never shut to the true glory of her country meaningthe United States nor her honest heart severed from its worship,she made no reply; she did not hear from her other wartime corre-spondents, James Buchanan and Franklin Glaser.Yet she told MaryChesnut in the fall of 1865 that she did not take a dim view of the fu-ture as most Southern politicians did.She reasoned that they couldmake their case once they rejoined the Union, which provided greatscope for men to try to persuade others of the states rights cause byexercising their rights of speaking, writing, and making use of thepress.South Carolina, she believed, had caused the secession crisis byits hasty action in 1860.In September 1865 she told John W.Garrett, the railroad magnate whom she had known in Washington,that she never believed in the Southern people because they were too self indulgent and unwhipped of justice, quoting King Learabout villains who conceal their wrongdoing and are then discov-ered.She may have told Garrett because he was a Unionist but funda-mentally apolitical and most interested in his business concerns.Yetshe did not specify what kind of justice or what kind of self-indul-167run with the restgence maybe something related to slavery, secession, or rural lifeitself.33Then she retreated, abjuring any serious interest in politics, an in-terest that was, she told Chesnut, unfeminine.Women were insuf-ferable when they tried to generalize about politics, she said, adding, I think I see the beard sprout. She still accepted conventional genderroles, despite the fleeting doubts expressed to Colonel Boteler that[To view this image, refer tothe print version of this title.]John W.Garrett.The businessman to whom Varina Davisconfided her thoughts about the war.(MarylandHistorical Society, Baltimore, Maryland)168run with the restspring and her bravery at the capture, and she still saw herself as awoman first and foremost.That summer she was astonished to learnthat a Union officer said that she injured the government by not tak-ing the oath of allegiance to the United States, as women in someparts of the former Confederacy were required to do, and she calledherself an unprotected mother with four children in her charge.Moreover, she had done what she thought a wife should do.She toldFrancis Preston Blair that she had been punished for being Mr.Da-vis [s] wife and born in the South. 34Perhaps because she saw herself as a woman, a mother, and a wife,she did not face her husband s responsibility for the events of the lastfour years.She was profoundly unhappy, and as the leaden days wentby she had more free time than she had had in years, certainly timeenough to reflect on how this had come to pass.She was primed, as itwere, for a breakthrough.Moreover, she was better educated, moreobservant, and capable of more insight than most of her peers.To herfriend Martha Phillips, she quoted Milton s Paradise Lost, what in meis dark / illumine, what is low raise and support, but she had no illu-mination, no catharsis, no epiphany.She did not face the hard truthsthat all the bloodshed was in vain because, as she told Mrs.Blair inJanuary, the South lost the war; that her husband, who headed theSouthern government, bore much of the responsibility for the blood-shed; and finally, that his political choices had brought a storm of ca-lamities upon his family.Nor did she face her own complicity [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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