the museum of the confederacy today. as kelly said, today is june 28, the day after winnie's 150th birthday. i had a giant cake and ate most of it. it was very good. i am here to tell you her story on site. would like ton, i thank the staff at the museum of the confederacy, sam, kelly, all of the staff here at the museum. warthat the american civil center, penelope carrington, christy coleman, for all their help and support of this program. i especially want to thank my two friends melody carrington cragheadrackhead --

for their wonderful work on the bliss of the. and i think former staffers teresa -- and i think former staffers for their aid with my archival and photo research. this book literally would not have been possible without their expertise and assistance. since we are here on site, i want to set the scene at the white house of the confederacy, next-door. i want to make sure you know the setting before we get started. can everyone hear me ok? is that good? book,oing to read from my "winnie davis, daughter of the lost cause," from the introduction. the girls who loved the poison great, the girls to country true, can never in wedlock give their hands to those who were the blue. this is from a southern poem called "true to the gray." was april 1864, in richmond,

virginia. the northern and southern united states were locked in an epic battle for dominance over states rights and slavery. thousands were being slaughtered every day. richmond was literally surrounded by rivers of blood. depressed and downtrodden, confederate troops prayed for deliverance, for a sign that something good was to come out of all this did her warfare. confederate president jefferson davis was struggling to salvage the remnants of his army, beat the odds, and win the war. who could notic separate his home life from his work obligations, jefferson used his gorgeous dining room as a conference room. george washington's portrait watched over the president of the confederate -- confederacy and his generals while they planned their strategies and held councils. the confederate first lady was heavily pregnant with their winnie,ild, we need --

and worried about her husband, whose constitution was not bearing up under the responsibility. she noticed his angular features becoming more prominent by the day. the stress had begun to take a severe toll on the confederacy's anxious president, who was looking much older than his 56 years. maggie,, also known as holly, jefferson davis junior, william howell, and the youngest, joseph emery, known as little joe. although she could hear gunfire in the distance, arena permanently wished she could keep her children safe at the executive mansion, which had been her one oasis of peace since they moved into the residence in august of 1861. the mansion was a stately and gracious home originally built in 1818 for an aristocratic virginian who was president of the bank of virginia, and his

wife, gabriella. lewis scrimshaw, a wealthy lower merchant and second owner of the house, had just added a third floor to the mansion and redecorated it entirely. he sold the house to the city of ithmond for order $3000, so might serve as the executive mansion for the confederate president. the city rented the house to jefferson and his family. outfitted a house with gas lending a water closet. it newspaper declared the confederate first family was getting a residence with all the modern conveniences. englandre carpets from to show off the previous owner's fine taste and sophistication. the ground up front entrance hall post and marble wallpaper and custom-made floor clocks, imposing plaster statues representing comedy and tragedy flanked both sides of the entry

hall and served as gas lamps. why all reports, the davis family enjoyed living in the executive mansion, spending much of their time in a small library known in the household as the snuggery, which was the warmest room in the house. another popular gathering spot was the imposing drawing room, returning an italian carrera fireplace, with mythological women on either side, who the little boys often kissed good night. richmond is called this the broken mansion and the grey house, due to the gray stucco on the side. i wanted to give you that picture. this gives you a visual of the was born inwinnie 1864. we are going to go through a presentation with some wonderful photos.

these are called from collections at the museum of the valentine, thee historical association in syracuse new york, and the international center for photography in new york. the first thing i want to talk about is the cover of the book. herey of you have seen -- is the book. you can see it like this. is in 1897tself portrait by virginia artist john walker. it is a posthumous portrait. as i said the other day at virginia historical, i hope i look this good when i am dead. she looks great. good job. john walker didn't an excellent job. she was very beautiful in real life. what is somewhat of an idealized portrait, and there is a lot of confederate symbolism in it, jive at some of you could even figure out. i will give you a roadmap. the first thing is, winnie

becomes known as the daughter of the confederacy. she is the symbol, later in life, of the lost cause and all that symbolizes. she has a white dress. she is sort of a vestal virgin of the confederacy. like a wedding dress. she is married to the confederacy. she has a red confederate badge and to her bodice, showing she is one of the confederate veterans, part of their family. there is, in this corner right staff, meaningn the confederacy is broken but not completely torn apart. you also have the forget-me-nots. don't forget the confederacy. pick torian's love their symbolism. this is rife with all kinds of symbolic pieces that i think make it a fascinating portrait. and it really is kind of a propaganda piece in and of itself. that is what i chose for the cover. i had seen this portrait and

others, growing up in richmond, and always wondered about this woman not just because of what she was wearing, and the symbols, but because of her expression. she is so melancholy, so sad, not just in this portrait but in so many others, that i figured there must be a story. when i did more digging in college and in my museum work later, i found there was a huge story and nobody had ever really written about her in full. this is her first mainstream, full biography, the first one she has had. understand winnie and her place in the family, we must go back to the very beginning, and the marriage between jefferson davis and marina davis. tell you about jefferson davis's first marriage. --rson davis was married to

does anyone know who his first wife was? you get a gold star if you do. yes? close. it was a president's daughter, a later president's daughter. throw candy into the audience. good job. it was zachary taylor's daughter. she was known as noxie, sarah knox taylor. she was feisty and jefferson davis was besotted with her, and she with him. they exchanged wonderful love letters, only a few of which survive. time didaylor at the not like davis. he opposed the marriage. did not come to the wedding when they eventually married. later, zachary taylor and jefferson davis would become good friends, but at this point it was not working out. it was more because zachary taylor did not want his daughter to have a military life, like

his wife had had. it was a hard life, and dangerous. everson davis married noxie taylor, they were married for three months, and she died in his arms, singing "fairy bells," died of malaria. he also had malaria and almost died. he was distraught. he became a hermit. think this is, i one of the things that devastated him, more than anything else up to this point. he would have later tragedies i will talk about, many of them. but this formed a shell around his heart. and he married marina, eight years later, we fast-forward. everson davis's rather joseph is like, it's time for you to get out. i am setting you up. he match makes in mississippi with another family that he knows well. daviseve he was in joseph

-- he was his older brother, his father figure. he sets him up with very no -- verina. she is lovestruck. she thinks he's the bee's knees. jefferson davis is attracted to her, and decides it is time for him to get married. he needs to have more children. they get married. i love how demure varina looks here. this is deceptive. she does not stay this way long. even before the wedding, they start finding. they get married and stay married. but to have a long marriage almostwith different epic battles for dominance and control. jefferson davis is very much of his time. he is a 19th-century plant

aristocrat and expects his wife to subscribe to the virtues of the true women -- piety, submissiveness, do what i tell you. varina is not that way. woman.is a modern she is feisty, opinionated, and highly educated for her time. she would fit in with us right now. in the 19th century, this is not an asset. everson is always trying to control her, and this does not work out well for either of them. just to give you the set up, this is early in their marriage. they have a longtime without children. finally, the children start to arrive. so, children start arriving. d.c. asnd the 1850's in one of washington's power couples. this is when zachary taylor, the kinship through the marriage, comes in handy. through some

military campaigns with taylor. he has risen in his esteem. they have a fateful meeting on a riverboat where they reconcile. and he helps jefferson and varina. he's a senator from mississippi. becomes secretary of war under franklin pierce. he helps found the smithsonian. he helps the crack -- the transcontinental railroad. are all these things jefferson davis does that most of us don't know about. most of us think of him as the president of the confederacy. but he did much more than that. he was a rising star in the 1850's, and he and farina -- va rina were among the most powerful couples in the capital at the time. when the war comes -- at this point, we have gone through the 1850's. we are getting to the end of the decade, lincoln's inauguration in 1861. all the southern senators have seceded. they have all left the capital

by january, march. they all start leaving. or rather told, he will be president of the confederacy. he unwillingly accepts his post. and we will talk a little bit more about his time in richmond as the president of the confederacy. i did want to combat this myth that many of us have. this is a very popular image that i think many in the u.s. have that after the war, or at the very end of the war, with davis fleeing from the federal inops -- he is captured petticoats. how many of you have heard this story before? it looks like a lot of people in the room have heard this. i know this is across the country people think that. this is actually northern political propaganda just like we have today. it does not end. it starts with jefferson and it goes on. it is totally at fault story.

i want to tell you real stories so you can correct people when they tell you this. it is such a great image, i can see why it caught on. the jefferson davis and farina -- varina were on separate tracks. fled richmond a few days before davis left. she and the children went one route and they went another. they were trying to keep separate so they would not be captured together. they make the mistake of meeting a has aeorgia, and varin prophetic dream that they will be captured, and she is correct. she has dreams and is almost always right. they are captured. cloak --rough a raglan threw a raglan cloak over jefferson davis. this is a unisex garment invented in the crimean war by lord raglan. but that morphed into petticoats and hoop skirts, high button

boots, the whole get up. it is funny to look at it now. davis biographers -- i think this is william t davis. he said, jefferson davis would rather have died then dressed up as a woman and flat as a woman. that i can guarantee from 20 years of research. ina, whopset with var flung herself between her husband and the confederate troops to save his life. he was like, why did you do that? so embarrassing. he did not appreciate varina in so many ways, and that further fed this myth that his wife or the pants in the family and was in control. that was not good for the marriage, and was definitely not good for publicity. the reason i bring this up winnie, a big part of

her images about reinforcing that her father was feral, masculine, was not in petticoats. is topart of her job prove that davis is not a coward. he is a man. he is feral. these rumors are false. -- he is virile. justw you these rumors not to talk about jefferson davis but to talk about how winnie relates to this. so we will go back to children in the davis family. i read you a little bit about them in the excerpt from my book. at this point, we are going to go to write before the petticoat episode 21864. , in april.the spring it is beautiful outside. dogwoods are blooming. it is a gorgeous day. arena and jefferson together at the customs house. she has left the children with the irish nanny, catherine, at

the white house of the confederacy, to take lunch to her husband. he never eats. she is worried about him all the time. she has left catherine in charge. at this point, we have maggie, the older daughter, and billy, thejeff junior, all here at house, about and around. no one really watching them. catherine is not the best nanny in the world. the firstry, and child -- he died from measles. we have already had that happen. this particular day, jeff junior is out on the balcony of the white house of the confederacy. i want to show you a picture of that. he is out walking on top of the balcony, which at this point is appear. at some point, and we are not really sure when, the balcony was moved, and the brick pavement has been built up, and there is a sub basement now that

goes below me five or six feet down. junior is walking along the balcony, he is walking, balancing of here, as boys will do when they are not really thinking, have not turned their brain on, and girls do this to, not to be gender stereotyping -- jeff junior is walking along the rail. they come out the window and little five-year-old joe follows his brother, is balancing on that, and then he falls not just balcony is now, because people think, how can he die on that? he fell from there to the sub basement. the brick pavement built up, which sam did a good job explaining to me the other day. he fell a long way, 20 or 25 feet. a small five-year-old boy is not going to survive, and he does survive for about 45 minutes. maggie, his sister, is running around screaming, trying to find help.

the irish nanny is nowhere to be found. and there is no account anywhere of jefferson and varina later saying terrible things about catherine. she just sort of disappears from the narrative. jefferson get a message. they are told by a young man right away, go back and they are with joe ibm for about 45 minutes. there is a great quote that they handith him, holding his and looking into his eyes, and he dies. tragic. to label her> children, calls him "my best and brightest," and he is gone. they had penned a lot of hopes on this young child, who really is their favorite, and now he is gone. you see the dynamic. these two boys, and they adored samuel, the first child -- they have lost two sons.

is about to give birth to born intoo will be this emotionally fraught scene. they have a huge funeral and the neighborhood comes and throws white flowers on the grave. it is devastating even to read about. that sets up things for winnie. emotional time in her parent's, not to mention the civil war. winnie --most of these are from the museum of the confederacy archive. you can see the bonding. this is an unusual portrait for a 19th-century portrait. a lot of times, they are very stiff, very post, and no one is touching each other. look, turn all this is. varina adored her children, as to jefferson davis. there were very affectionate parents, ma spoiled those

children, from mary chestnut's account. she called the davis nursery bedlam. i can just see it. they are blowing things up. joe had a cam and that actually fired. he was blowing things up. they were doing what boys do in any era or age. winnie has this tight bond because she is a replacement child for these two dead sons, and later will replace even more. in today's horrible parlance for psychology, we might say codependent. this is what happens later. and then we have winnie as a little girl. i love this picture because it are minds me of these awful beauty pageants we have today, .ike jon benet

she is dressed like a prize pony. that is sort of what she was as a child to jefferson and varina. so smart, so precocious. she was reciting shakespeare when she was six or seven, memorizing long poems. this is a dynamic civil suit or her life, her being a kind of actress for her parents' and when she becomes a writer, her mother tries to stage manage that career as well. winnie, well, i have an almost teenager in my house, and this is her expression every day. like, i am not listening to you. you are an idiot.

that is kind of what we have on a daily basis in my house, and i remember being this teenager many years ago. i love this image because she has a sullen look on her face. she has a good reason, though. not just because she is a had just but she returned from five years in the convent in germany. i think we all might be a little upset if we were sent away five years. at the time, this was customary for upper-class across the country to send their daughters to be educated. often it was paris. more often it would be france. maggie, the older daughter, spent time in the convent in paris. jefferson davis is kind of a prude. he said there were too many amorous toys in paris. interesting. anyway, he did not think it was appropriate. they pulled maggie out after not long at the convent in paris.

spartan,oes to a rigorous boarding school in germany, called the mrs. friedlander school. bys was probably recommended margaret's husband. winnie had a friend, penny meredith, who went with her, so she did have a companion. they were sent away very young. came back,when she and just on the verge of being 13 when she left. she did not see her father five years. at the time, this happened often. her mother did often stay nearby. she did see her mother more often. many would later write about the conditions. she would wake up and there would be a pitcher of water frozen with eyes that you had to stab things into to get it to shatter.

it was freezing called. he did not feed them enough. she would write strongly against women's education abroad in her 20's and 30's, but also did gain a lot from this experience. she became known as one of the most educated women of her time. she spoke fluent german, fluent french. a full painter. beautiful artist and musician. not know a thing about american history, and this is deliberate. her parents, part of the reason they sent her away is, they did not want her to suffer the consequences of the fallout from jefferson davis's time as president of the confederacy, his imprisonment. she was the only child allowed to see him at fort munro, but she did not remember because she was so little when that happened. they wanted to renew her. they would be doing her a favor. but as it turns out, they did not -- he did not know her american history.

this does make me laugh. started out very independent and very stubborn, and they did not like that. jefferson davis did not like women in his family to be anything but submissive. while she herself was not submissive at all, i think so the problems it caused in her own marriage, and they jointly decided to crush this stubbornness of spirit out of winnie, which is very sad today, but they thought she would never find a husband, the goal in life for women at the time, to find a good match. they were worried about that. also, they thought she should be more deferential to them. that was the other reason they sent her to boarding school. that is the reason i did not know about until i started researching. i thought winnie was always submissive, and she was not. they kind of crushed it out of her. she comes home from germany at age 17.

she spends a couple of years ago for, her parents home in mississippi -- in beauvoir, her in mississippi. she was an ardent confederate admirer and supporter of jefferson davis. when he wanted to write his memoirs, she gave him a cottage on the property where he could write. was in england at the time and found out in the newspapers. she was not pleased with the arrangement, nor was dorsey's family. this did not look correct. it looked very strange to people. of gossip about that internationally. eventually, varina comes home to beauvoir. jefferson ends up paying for beauvoir in full. her estate.s him this gives people further cause

for gossip. sarah dorsey dies of breast cancer right after varina gets there, about a year later. they have a home to live in. it is not a nice way of happening, but it kind of worked out. they kind of finally have a place to be at peace. he can write his memoirs, finish them up. winnie becomes a secretary and favorite companion. they stroll the beach together. this is a beautiful part of the gulf coast. they play all kinds of games together and kind of reaffirm the bond that they had which was -- when she was little. this is a good time for them. in 1886, jefferson davis, his memoir has been published. it does not do that well at the press. but solely over time it starts to restore his reputation and he becomes a martyr of the lost cause. it has worked slowly but people start to see him in this light as they hear more about fort monroe and the terrible

conditions he faced and what he gave up for his family and country or for the south. his reputation is being rehabilitated. there are a bunch of monuments all across the south. the money is raised by the women of the united daughters of the confederacy. memorial associations put these monuments up to the confederacy. he and winnie go on a train trip to dedicate all of these monuments. on this trip, there is a fateful day -- it is always in april. in april, near west point, georgia in 1886, jefferson davis is feeling ill. he is on the train. it is dusty and hot. he does not feel like performing today. general john b. gordon is a southern confederate hero. he is also very -- a politician, a very good one. very flamboyant. a showman. winnie and is like, aha.

yanks her out of the train. she is very shy and submissive due to her forced education in germany. he hoists her up on the back of the train and he says, i give to you the daughter of the confederacy. this is when it all starts to happen. this is when she becomes the it girl of the confederacy and her image is all over the place. in the 19th century, it is not like "mad men" in the 1960's where they pay you something for your image. they just appropriate it and steal it from you. she is on liver pills, candy, ice cream, postcards all over the place because she is young and beautiful and fresh to the veterans and also to the women of the confederacy. later, the united daughters of the confederacy, at this point the ladies' memorial

association -- she gives an aristocratic tinge to their organization and represents a future, what we can do going forward with these young people to memorialize the image of the south, whether it is true or not. to keep that image going. you can see how lovely she is. she is kind of an ideal spokesperson because she is just an image. she does not speak. in 1886, all is well. she excepts this role. she is proud. she represents the family. however, things never go smoothly. there is some obstacle or twist that comes up. the twist here could not be more ironic or interesting. i mentioned that in the 1850's, they were in d.c. and popular. they had friends north and

they had friends north and south. they keep up with their northern friends and they go visit. not often, but they spend time in new york. varina particularly keeps up with them. her grandfather was governor of new jersey. in the south, they are suspicious of her because she is very smart and she has all these northern ties. they never accept her as the first lady of the confederacy. she is very torn about it. they go to a party, just like in "romeo and juliet." winnie go to a party at friends' house in syracuse, new york. fred wilkinson walks through the door. he is six foot tall. he went to harvard with teddy roosevelt, same class. class of 1888. all of the girls think he is just rainy. -- dreamy. he has not really been interested in anyone. they dismissed him.

he is 28 years old, so old. of course he will not get married because that is very old at the time. they have written him off. but he has just not met the right person. he sees winnie and they are instantly smitten. it is love at first site on both sides. they are both very attracted to each other. they're both smart and articulate. he is a patent lawyer and has a practice that is thriving will and continue to thrive. he has one strike, which is that he is a northerner. you can see that in the south, it has been about 20 years since the war. people are still resentful. at this point, people have known southern girls who have married northern boys and vice versa. things are just tenuously starting to heal up. but that is not the only skeleton in fred's closet. dating.o start they are in love. the romeo of the north and the juliet of the south. and then these things start coming out about his family.

one thing is that fred's father, who was a banker in town -- the family is very aristocratic, upper-class. but his father is a raging alcoholic. he has embezzled tons of money from the bank there. we start hearing some rumors about -- they call it " the wilkinson scandal." it is like the perfect gilded age scandal. money and drinking and he is stealing the family silver to pay for his whiskey. that kind of stuff. poor fred and his sisters, they feel they have to restore the family fortune and reputation. fred is very responsible. he was never implicated in this. he was too young. he wants to do the right thing, and he builds up his practice and does very well. winnie is beginning her writing career. she has already -- her parents have published a book that she did. it is about serpent myths. she is very literary. she is very into that. they look like a great match but the alcoholism comes out. that is the second strike and

this is the third strike. that is probably the worst for southerners, and particularly confederate veterans. winnie and fred, when they court in syracuse, they do a lot of courting at the home of fred's famous abolitionist grandfather. it takes a while for people to figure this out. samuel may is part of the alcott family. is fred's alcott mother's first cousin. samuel may is up there with garrison and all the famous abolitionists. he is one of the big names. it is amazing how long they take to realize who this truly is. when they court up here at samuel may's house, the porch below was a stop for the underground railroad. very ironic place for the daughter of the confederacy and the son of new york, as he is often called, to court. eventually, people find out

about this and they are really unhappy in the south. the north is more accepting and there is a movement towards reconciliation. which, jefferson davis himself was very pro-reconciliation. but it is too soon for many in the south. confederate veterans start flipping out when the engagement is announced and they threatened to shoot fred through the heart. many lovely descriptions. what i love about these letters is they threatened to kill him , and then they say, respectfully yours -- [laughter] from the robert e lee regiment. pinning kidding it -- it on that regiment. i have to see who it was. the letters are threatening to kill him. just a little detail. they are still courting. they are still together. then they go on this very improbable trip to italy in 1890. they are engaged but they are not married and they go on a trip because winnie is having nervous -- not quite a

nervous breakdown, but nervous feelings about marrying fred. she is getting frail. she is not eating. she is doing all the victorian 19th-century heroine things when they are distressed. her parents decide she needs to go on a cure to europe. i keep hoping i will go on the cure. it's never going to happen. winnie did get to go and her father, jefferson davis, was very ill at the time and they did not tell her. they covered it up. this is in 1889, the winter into 1890. jefferson davis is very ill and he dies while she is abroad in italy. reallyferson and varina pushed them to go, and really pushes fred to go and push his suit with her even though all , these things are coming out about him in new york and varina's friends are looking into him, doing the background check.

for some inexplicable reason, varina decides to push this. she is like, you have to get married and get this done. fred goes to italy. there are diary entries -- this diary is at the museum of the confederacy. it surfaced at auction just a couple of years ago from the davis family members, i believe. it was auctioned off and the museum bought it. it is winnie's entries about the trip with fred. for me as a scholar, this is amazing, to find this. i also got a memoir from fred's family. about the other side. these are new time resource documents and these are exciting for any writer or historian. they explain different things but it is inexplicable to me that the daughter of the confederacy, the daughter of jefferson davis, would be allowed to go on chaperoned to italy with her fiancé. many times they were alone. joseph and kate were the worst

chaperones ever. [laughter] really and truly, i wish they could have been my chaperones. i am so old. we still had chaperones when i was in college and high school. joseph is the owner, joseph pulitzer, who i did not make clear before, he is owner of the world newspaper and several others. he is a veteran of yellow journalism. kate, his wife, is a distant davis cousin. she and her husband become good friends with the davis family. they become winnie's fairy godparents. they pay for a lot of winnie's trips and clothes. winnie becomes godmother to one of their children. joseph pulitzer is a hypochondriac but he is truly going blind, which is a great requirement in any good chaperone. he cannot see. who knows what is going on. kate will embark upon an affair with a colleague of his at the world newspaper.

kate is doing her thing. she is a big socialite. she loves her parties and feathers and diamonds. no one is paying any attention. i leave it to readers in the book to see what you think about that trip. i think they had a lot of freedom to do what they want to do, because of these fabulous chaperones they had. sadly, the engagement finally does break up, despite the pulitzers' support. all of there -- they are urging winnie and fred to get married. in the north, everyone is excited about this idea of them getting married. but it does not work out. fred is broken hearted. he is turned away not by winnie, but by varina. varina breaks up with him for winnie. winnie stays in her room. fred goes to have a last interview with varina and she accuses him of lying to her, not being transparent about his finances.

i think a main thing with varina is the finances. he is very successful and makes plenty of money. this is not really true. there are some other reasons why she thinks his finances are shaky. that turns out not to be true. in my research, i think the real reason is back to this slide. i will go back for one second. you will see what i mean. i think this is it. i think they are -- not winnie quite so much as varina, but to catch you up on the other children, billy has died of diphtheria. jeff junior has died of yellow fever. all four of her boys are dead. maggie's oldest daughter has -- maggie, the oldest daughter, has made a good match to another southern man, addison hayes. but they have moved out to colorado springs. supposedly for his asthma, and it was partially for that, but i

have interviewed maggie's descendents and their quote was striking. bertram said, she had seen so much, she needed to get away. he said for years and years, all the colorado family, which is where the descendents were, they wanted nothing to do with the south. they said it was devastated. there is no work, there is no economy. it had such memories for them. bitter memories that they could not overcome. i think that is why maggie left. maggie is far away. varina is at beauvoir. but varina and winnie move to new york together. winnie and fred break up and go back to what happens next, which i think is the most fascinating part of winnie's life -- after that period there is new york.

before that i should tell you , about new orleans. first, we get a consolation prize. winnie, for breaking up with fred, the new orleans confederate veterans and other confederate supporters award her queen of comiss. they don't do this officially, but this is her unofficial prize for breaking with a yankee. of gets to be a queen of one the famous cruise, the clubs in new orleans. she is the queen. the theme is the rising sun. this is a time where asian trade is starting to open up. she has this beautiful embroidered kimonos. beautiful jewelry. at the museum after the lecture, , you should go. they have one of her badges. herew orleans, they have robes, her jewelry, and her crown and scepter. this is supposed to make up for that. for a lot of women, this would be awesome. this would be the coolest thing

ever, with the beautiful clothes, the parties, and a new batch of boys to choose from. this is not for her. she is very serious, very artistic. she is not interested in other men, particularly. she has her very melancholy expression on her face. we get to her years in new york. she and her mother moved to new york in the 1890's. they live in two different hotels. a of people lived in hotels. they were like upscale boarding houses. anyone who is familiar with the theater district, they moved to 44th street. the gerard hotel. theaterw a great ,atering kind of restaurant straight near all the good theaters. i have eaten there many times. a good french restaurant. winnie would have appreciated that because she loved theater and painting and all of that.

that now is -- the restaurant is in the lobby of the gerard hotel. or where it was. she and her mother had literary salons and would entertain artists and actresses. winnie is a talented writer. she and her mother worked for joseph pulitzer at "the world." they would get a stipend from him. he becomes their financial savior at this point. they have always been friends, but he recognizes the women need money. he creates -- not a real position. they are columnists for pulitzer. he never uses are very rarely uses varina's. i have read some of her work and it is not great. to put it mildly. and i cannot read her handwriting. but winnie is a beautiful writer and she writes for joseph pulitzer but also writes novels. she had two novels which are fairly successful.

she does well. she is making enough money to help her mother. they are talking about buying a new carriage with proceeds from the second book and she is kind of on the literary rise. she is still wearing her white. she loves gray and white and muted colors. she is very low-key. she's exactly i think what her father and mother wanted to create, even though that is not her real nature. i think she is independent naturally. she is an artist and a writer. i do think in new york she finally gets what she really wants, which is to not be the true woman, like the cult of true womanhood, but she wants to be the new woman, the career woman. the gibson girl. i think that is truly what she wants and it has been repressed for such a long time by her parents, boarding school, and she thought maybe she would go the domestic route like her sister. her mother prevents that. i think winnie -- i am not sure she wanted to get married.

i think when she watched her parents' marriage and saw the epic struggle, she probably thought, is that what i want? i really want to be a writer. that's what i want to do. i am so thankful that she did it. this is highly unusual in the 19th century, particularly among someone who is a daughter of the confederacy who is upper-class. they did need the money, but for winnie this was very fulfilling. i am not going to tell you the end and what happens. just to say there is more tragedies to come. but i like to think of her being in new york and narragansett, rhode island. this is right near newport where they stayed every summer at a fabulous hotel. winnie loves to bike. susan b anthony said bicycling did more to liberate women than anything else. that is how i like to think of her, as a writer, a new woman on the verge of becoming an

gibson girl and an independent woman. that is how i like to remember her. thank you so much. [applause] i would love to take questions if anyone has questions. >> [indiscernible] >> yes, mary chestnut. she is the south carolina diarist and is wonderful. they sell her book in the museum shop. look her up. she is great. others, yes. >> [indiscernible] >> she did. she did write -- and varina did this too. sometimes they would change their name.

varina would be varina jefferson davis and winnie would be under varina and davis. it was known who she was. she did not write anonymously. she wrote two books. there was a book called "serpent myths" that was published by her parents and a canadian publisher as a vanity project, but the books that were published by mainstream publishers in new york -- you can get them still online. i had no trouble getting them, which i thought was pretty cool. it is the "veiled doctor," is the first one. the second one is "a romance of summer seas." you see her characters evolve. in the first one, it is a victorian romance where the woman is punished for trying to step out of the role. by the second, she is making comments like, i don't approve of marriage or dueling.

they are both worthless and dangerous. she evolves in her thinking and her characters get a lot more dimension by her second book. other questions? >> we were always calling her varina. are they not related? >> i have gotten that question on the past three days. i am going to have to defer on va-rhine-uh. i rumored that varina rhymes with marina. i do not think they are related at all. i do not know about varina, virginia. i need to find out. i think we may have had another question in the way back, maybe? >> whatever happened to fred? >> poor old fred. i know. i knew someone would ask. that's a good question. one, you can read the book and find out.

[laughter] but i might -- because this is a special crowd. it is the day after her birthday. i will give you a gift and tell you what happened. fred, alfred wilkinson, he is broken up. withs totally besotted winnie. he never marries. she never marries. he goes on to have a successful patent law business in new york. robert penn warren called winnie the last casualty of the lost cause. but fred is also one of the last casualties of the lost cause along with her because he has a nervous breakdown in atlantic city and later has a heart attack. i can't help but think that some of this came from the fallout from his relationship with winnie. all these death threats. varina had people investigating him, doing the background checks in an invasive way. i think he was extremely affected by that. he dies in his mid-50's.

there is another story that may not be true, but i did put it in the book because i had a number of sources tell me that fred shows up that winnie's funeral. i won't tell you when it is, but and hedies at a point, shows up sobbing in the back of the church. may be true. could be true. lots of sources say that but we cannot verify it. >> i really enjoyed it. i just have one more question. she was spending so much time with northerners, she must have had a difficult time coming to terms with her father's life. she her father died, was reconciled with him, and he with her, at the end? >> yes. winnie and her mother really preferred the north, which rankled a lot of southerners. jefferson davis dies in 1889 near new orleans. he was buried in new orleans and there is a re-internment later.

at hollywood cemetery, where he is now. he and winnie were never really estranged, even though it that you would think with the five-year separation they would be. that was kind of common practice in the 19th century to send girls of a certain class away. the time they spent together, they bonded again. it was good she had that time with him. they were completely reconciled. in terms of her role as daughter of the confederacy, she felt she had to carry on the davis legacy. i think she was at odds, in her public and private life. her private wish was to live in new york and be a writer and maybe to marry a northerner, as it happens. i don't think she was able to reconcile the two. you will see in the book why i think that and how things unfold. but i do think -- she and her father really never had any kind of a rift, nor she and her mother.

i think there may have been resentment built up over the fred romance and break up between the women. but, yes, she and her father were very close before he died. >> [indiscernible] what was the cause of death? >> i'm already telling the whole story. gosh. i suppose i will tell you. her cause of death -- i love 19th-century medicine because it is so primitive and then i think, one day they will say that about our medicine. they really -- the way she dies -- this is why people call her the last casualty of the lost cause. one robert penn warren calls for that. great story. she and mrs. stonewall jackson are in a carriage at a confederate veterans reunion in atlanta in 1898. they are in this carriage. there is a downpour. they are part of a confederate veterans reunion.

a big party. there is a downpour. she is soaked to the skin. she stays in the outfit for hours. she finally goes back to the hotel to change and there is a big ball that evening and she catches a chill and a fever, and it takes several weeks. she gets on the train and goes to narragansett for vacation and she lingers for a couple of weeks and dies of malarial gastritis. i have talked to every doctor i know and they're like, what is that? there is a stomach ache, fever, but no one dies in a rainstorm. she had been to egypt months prior. it could have been some kind of stomach bug. but it had been so long. she had been to egypt like three months before. that theory is out there. i am not sure that makes sense. she was nervous, like jefferson davis.

they both never ate. they may have had something like an ulcer. there was probably an underlying stomach disorder. i don't think the rain did it. she may have had a weakened immune system that pushed her over the edge. but we really still don't have a satisfactory answer for that. very good question. i still wonder what it was. yes? >> you said the davis family had a lot of tragedy, including the older brother that died about two months before she was born. i guess having children die in the 19th century was not that uncommon, but we know what happened to mrs. lincoln when her son died. how did mrs. davis react to all this tragedy? >> that is such an excellent question. and i think really important to the story. when joe dies, when he falls off the balcony, that is when varina and jefferson fall apart.

that is the one day jefferson davis takes off from the confederacy, to be with his dead child. that impacts them greatly. then they have these other children die. when winnie dies, her mother goes to pieces. varina, i give her credit. she pulled it together. she never gives up. she eventually is able to function and to go on and she stays on and lives in new york. i think that the cumulative affect of all of these deaths influences -- the four boys dying, i think it influences the way varina and winnie are together. i think varina becomes totally codependent. they both become codependent, but varina cannot give winnie up to marriage. basically, winnie and sub being varina'sp being caretaker in new york with all of varina's ailments. that is not a lot of fun for

her, either. i think with varina, she is a very strong woman but these deaths affect her tremendously. with jefferson davis, he adored his children -- both of them did. it was devastating and even for the 19th century, that was a lot of death in one family. that is unusual. and all boys so the name doesn't disappear. there is another story with that. but it almost died out. yes? >> [indiscernible] >> the hollywood cemetery, it is in richmond, a gorgeous cemetery overlooking the james river. they call it the davis circle and that is where -- and not every davis descendent -- you have jefferson, varina. margaret, maggie. who becomes margaret hayes davis. they end up hyphenating the name to keep the davis legacy. addison, her husband, and then you have all the boys there. samuel and joe -- i believe joe was in one part of the cemetery

and they moved him over at a certain point. all the boys are there. winnie is there. maggie and the parents and addison. the whole family only in death is together at hollywood cemetery. i visited many times and i have a photo of the angel of grief. many -- winnie's statue. they tried to raise enough money in richmond to finance it and got some but it was the united daughters of the confederacy of new york that ended up finishing up paying for it will stop its kind of a symbol of reconciliation between north and south and that is what when he tried to do but edge did little closer to that happening.

>> did maggie ever get involved with [inaudible] they had an interesting relationship. maggie had gone to colorado and was so far away that she couldn't do so much all stop she would always a mother, please come stay with me but she lived in colorado springs. to have her mother come and stay with her and i think they were close but what the davis descendents have told me is margaret and marino were so much alike that they added heads. so they could not get along for too long. again, margaret had her own life and children and was used to being very independent and very no was used to when he taking care of her. i think this an different family dynamics prevented them from being very close later in life.

else?ng thank you so much. this was great. [applause] thank you. >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. tv,ext, on american history a small historian phil dixon talks about the kansas city monarchs, the longest-running franchise in the history of baseball's negro leagues. we will hear about the contributions the monarchs made to the baseball world, including teacher hall of fame players and several innovations like these of light for night games.