>> simply why was lincoln so pessimistic? >> i think he was pessimistic because of how badly the war was going. i mean, imagine 60,000 casualties in about a 30-day span. that's a lot of families who are going to be disheartened and that was the sentiment in the summer of 1864. people did not see the war going well and it's really not until the fall of atlanta and then mobile bay and the shen nan doe wa valley. it's after that point that lincoln became confident. in october of 1864 there were state elections in indiana and pennsylvania and ohio. and those elections all went republican. and those were sort of bell weather elections. everyone knew that however those three states went, that's how the election would go in november. the presidential election, so by october, lincoln was confident he would win. it was really only the summer that he thought he would lose. >> thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> thank you so much.

up next, author heath hardage lee discusses winnie davis. winnie's life in richmond. her post-war rise to popularity in both the north and the south and her writing career. the museum of the confederacy hosted this hour-long event. >> good afternoon. thank you for coming. thank you for coming. i'm so pleased to be here at the museum of the confederacy today and as kelly said, today is june 28th, the day after winnie's 150th birthday. and i have a big ole cake at a party yesterday with winnie's image at it here in richmond. and we ate most of it. it was very good. but i'm so thrilled to be here, the day after her birthday, to tell you her story really on site. before i begin, i would like to thank the staff here at the

museum of the confederacy. sam and kelly, all of the staff here at the museum. and at the american civil war center, penelope carington, krissy coleman for all their help and support of this program. i especially want to thank my two friends, penelope and sam for their wonderful work on publicity and my eternal gratitude and thanks go to staff historian at the museum of the confederacy, john kosky and former staffers theresa for their invaluable help and aid with my ar kooifl and photo research. this book literally would not have been possible without their expertise and assistance. so, since we're here on site, i want to kind of set the scene at the white house of the confederacy next door. want to make sure that you know the setting before we get

started. and can everyone hear me okay? is that good? okay. so i'm going to read from my book, "winnie davis, daughter of the lost cause" from the introduction. the girls who loved the boys in gray, the girls to country true, can nar in wedlock give their hands to those who wore the blue. this is a federal governmentment from a southern poem called true to the gray from the late 1860s to 1870s. it was april 1864 in richmond, virginia. the northern and southern united states were locked in an epic battle for dominance over state's rights and slavery. thousands were being slaughtered everyday and richmond was literally surrounded by rivers of blood. depressed and downtrodden confederate troops prayed for deliverance that something good would come out of all this bitter warfare.

jefferson davis was trying to beat the odds and win the war. a work aalcoholic who could not separate his home life from his political and work obligations. jefferson used the home's gorgeous dining room as a conference room. george washington's portrait watched over the president of the confederacy and his generals, such as robert e. lee, while they planned strategy and held their councils. the confederate first lady was heavily pregnant with their sixth child, this would be winnie, and worried about her husband whose delicate constitution was not baring up well under his enormous responsibilities. he noticed his angular sharp features becoming more prominent by the day. the stress had taken a toll on the president who recently begun to look much older than his 56 years. his wife watched carefully over their four young children, margaret, maggie and poly in the family, jefferson davis jr.,

jeff, william how well, billy, and the youngest joseph emory known as little joe. although she could hear gunfire in the distance, she fervently wished she could keep her children safe at the executive mansion which had been her one oasis of peace since they moved in in august of 1861. the mansion was a stately and gracious home originally built in 1818 for john broken bro an aristocratic virginiaen who was president of the bank of virginia and his wife. lewis krenshaw, a wealthy flower merchant just added a third floor to the mansion and redecorated it entirely. he sold the house to the city of richmond for $43,000 so it might serve as executive mansion for the confederate president. the city then rented the house to jefferson and his family. crenshaw outfitted the house with gaslighting and water closet, luxury items.

one of the richmond newspapers cleared the confederate first family was getting a home with all the modern conveniences. the home boasted the very latest fabrics and carpets from england to show the previous owners fine taste and sophistication. the grand front entrance hall boasted fake marble floors. comedy and tragedy flanked both sides of the entry hall and served as gas lands. by all reports, the davis family enjoyed living in the executive mansion, spending much of their time in a small library known within the household as the snuggery. which was the warmest room in the house. another popular gathering spot for the family was the imposing drawing room, featuring an italian career marble fireplace with two beautiful mythological women on either side. which the davis' two little boys often kissed good night. richmonders called the striking

home both the broken bro mansion and the gray house, due to the home's gray stucco facade. so i just wanted to give you that picture. many of you may have been on the tour which is fabulous of the white house of the confederacy but this gives you a visual of the place where winnie was born in 1864. and i'm just going to grab my clicker. and we're going to go through a presentation with some wonderful photos. these are called from collections at the museum of the confederacy, the valentine, the historical association in syracuse new york and icp which is the international center for photography in new york. so, the first thing i want to talk about is the cover of the book. if any of you have seen, here is the book, so you can see it like this. the cover itself is an 1897 portrait by virginia artist, john p. walker.

it's a posthumous portrait. as i said the other day at virginia historical, i hope that i look this good when i'm dead. she looks great. like, good job. so john p. walker did an excellent job. and she was very beautiful in real life, but this is somewhat of an idealized portrait and there's a lot of confederate symbolism which i bet some of you could figure some of this out but i'll give you a road map. so, the first thing is winnie -- and i'll talk about this in the presentation -- she becomes known as the daughter of the confederacy. she's the symbol later in life of the lost cause and all that that symbolizes. so she has a white dress. she is sort of a vestal virgin of the confederacy. almost looks like a wedding dress. she is married to the confederacy. she has a red confederate badge pinned to her bod das showing she is one of the confederate veterans, she is part of their family. there is in this corner right

here, you have the broken staff, meaning the confederacy is broken but not completely torn apart. you also have the forget me notes, don't forget the confederacy. so, victorians love their symbolism, so 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. so that's what i chose for the cover. and 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's so mellon collie, so sad, not just in this portrait but in so many others, i figured there must be a story. indeed, when i did more digging in college and in my museum work later, i found that there was a huge story and that nobody had ever really written about her in

full. so this is actually her first mainstream full biography, the first one winnie has had. so, to understand winnie and her place in the family, we must go back to the beginning, to the very beginning. and the marriage between jefferson davis and ver reena davis. we're even going to start a little bit before that and i want to tell you about jefferson davis' first marriage. jefferson davis was married to -- does anyone know who his first wife was? you get a gold star if you do. yes? close, not polk. it was a president's daughter. a later president's daughter. thank you. excellent. i wish i could throw candy into the audience. good job. that's right. it was zachary taylor's daughter, knoxsy, sara knox taylor. she was pretty and feisty and

jefferson davis was completely beed soed with her. and she with him and they exchanged wonderful love letters, only a few of which survive. but knoxy and jefferson davis, zachary taylor at the time did not like davis. he opposed the marriage. did not come to the wedding when they eventually married. later zachary davis and jefferson would become close friends but at this point it was not working out and it was really because zachary taylor did not want his daughter to have a military life like his wife had had. it was a very hard life and very dangerous. so, jefferson davis married knoxy taylor. they were married for three months and she died in his arms singing fairy bells, died of malaria. so very sad. and he also had malaria and almost died and he was distraught. he became a hermit. in my research, i think this was one of the things that just devastated him more than anything else up to this point.

he would have later tragedies that i'll talk about, many of them. but this sort of formed a shell around his heart. so, when he married varina, eight years later, we fast forward, jefferson davis' brother, joseph, is like it's time for you to get out. i'm setting you up. so he match makes in mississippi with another family that he knows well. i believe he was actually in varina's parents wedding if i'm recalling correctly, this is joseph davis, jefferson davis' older brother who was really his father figure and he sets him up with varina who he at the time likes very much and varina is instantly love struck and she thinks he's the best thing ever, the bee's knees. then jefferson davis likes her, is attracted to her and just decides it's time he needs to get married, needs to have some children. so they get married. and i love how demure varina

looks here. this is very deceptive. varina doesn't stay this way very long, even before the wedding they start having issues. they start fighting. the wedding does go off, though. they get married and they stay married, but they have a long marriage filled with different -- i would say almost epic battles for dominance and control. so jefferson davis is very much of his time. he's 19th century planner aristocrat and he expects his wife to subscribe to the virtues of the true woman, do what i tell you. and varina is not that way, very modern woman, feisty, opinionated and highly educated for her time. she would fit right in with us right now. but in the 19th century, this was not looked upon as an asset. so jefferson is always trying to control her. and this doesn't work out well for either of them.

but just to give you the setup, so this is early in their marriage and then they have a long time without children. finally, the children start to arrive. so, children start arriving. they spend the 1850s in d.c. as one of washington's power couples. this is when zachary taylor's -- the kinship with taylor through the marriage comes in handy. he's been through some military campaigns with taylor. he's risen in his esteem. they have a fateful meeting on a river boat where they reconcile and he helps jefferson and varina when they come to d.c. he's a senator from mississippi. he helps found the smithsonian. he helps with the trance continental railroad. all these things that jefferson davis does that most of us don't know about. most of us just think of him as the president of the confederacy, but he did much,

much more than that and he was a rising star in d.c. in the 18 50s and he and varina were among the most popular and powerful couples at the capital at the time. however, when the war comes -- at this point, we've gone through the 1850s. we're getting to the end of the decade. lincoln's inauguration comes in 1861 and all the southern senators have succeeded. they've all left the capital but that probably january, march, they all start leaving. so, davis is asked or rather told he will be president of the confederacy. he unwillingly accepts this post. and we will talk a little bit more about his time in richmond, of course, as the president of the confederacy. but i did want to kind of 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 when

davis is fleeing from the federal troops, he is captured in petticoats. how many of you have heard this story before? so it looks like a lot of people in the room have heard this and i know this is across the country people think that. this is actually northern political propaganda, just like we have today in d.c. it doesn't end. it starts with jefferson and before and just goes on. so, this is totally a false story. but i want to tell you the real story so that you can correct people when they tell you this. and it's such a great image. i can see why it caught on. but jefferson davis and varina were on separate tracks. varina fled richmond a few days before davis left. she and the children went one route and he went another. they were trying to keep separate so they wouldn't be captured together, but they make the mistake of meeting up in

erwinville, georgia. she has a dream about things and is almost always right. so they're captured. and what really happened is varina threw the rag land cloak over jefferson davis. this is a yun sex garment that was created by lord ragland. it's unisex. that morphed into the petticoats and hoop skirts, high button boats, like the whole getup. so it's funny to look at it now. i love different historians, all davis' biographers who said jefferson davis would rather have died than dressed up as a woman and fled as a woman. that i can guarantee from 20 years of researching this family. this was just not in his nature and he got very upset with varina who flung herself in between her husband and the federal troops pointing a gun at

him to save his life. and he was like, why did you do that? that's so embarrassing. so he did not appreciate varina is so many ways but really didn't appreciate that. that further fed this myth that his wife wore the pants in the family and that she was in control. that wasn't good for the marriage and definitely not good for publicity. and the reason i bring this up related to winnie, a big part of winnie's image as the daughter of the confederacy is about re-enforcing that her father was masculine, he was not in petticoats. so a big part of her job that she's assigned is to prove that davis is not a coward. he is a man. he's veerl and that these rumors are false. so this is why i show you this image, not just to talk to you about jefferson davis but also to talk to you about how winnie

relates to this. so we will go back to children in the davis family. i read to you a little bit about them in the excerpt of my book. right now we'll go to right before the petticoat episode to 1864. so, this is the spring in april and it's beautiful outside, dogwoods are blooming, it's a gorgeous day and varina and jefferson are together at the customs house. she has gone, left the children with the irish nanny katherine here at the white house of the confederacy to take lunch to her husband. he never eats. she worries about him all the time. she's left katherine in charge. so, at this point we have maggie, the older daughter, we have -- let's see, maggie and billy and jeff jr. that are all here at the house, about and around. no one really watching them. katherine is not the best nanny in the world. then we have little joe. now, the davis' also had a son samuel emory, their first child

who died of measles. we've already had that tragedy happen. so this particular day jeff jr. is out on the balcony of the white house of the confederacy. i'm going to show you a picture of that. so, he's out -- the older jeff jr. walking on top of the balcony, which at this point is up here. at some point -- and we're not really sure when, the balcony was moved and things -- also the brick pavement has been built up. there's kind of a subbasement now that goes down below maybe about five or six feet down. so, when jeff jr. is walking along the balcony, he's walking, balancing up here as you know boys will do when they're not really thinking, have not turned their brain on. and girls do this, too, not to be gender stereotyping, but but jeff jr. is walking along the rail here. they come out the window and little 5-year-old joe follows his brother, is balancing on that and then he falls, not just

down -- you know, where that balcony is now. but people think how can he die from there, well, he frell from there to the subbasement. and sam explained to me the other day that it was built up. he fell a long way, 20 or 25 feet. so a small 5-year-old boy is not going to survive and he does survive for about 45 minutes. maggie, his sister, has been running around screaming, trying to find help. katherine the irish nanny, is nowhere to be found. and there's no account anywhere of jefferson and varina later saying terrible things about katherine. she just sort of disappears from the narrative, but they are able -- varina and jefferson get a message. they're told by a young man they need to go back right away and they're with joe for about 45 minutes and there's a great quote they're with him and it's like the wick of the candle going out looking into his eyes

and he dies. so tragic, varina, who likes to label her children, calls him my best and brightest and he is gone. this is who they were going to depend on their old age and pinned a lot of hopes on this young child who really is their favorite and he's gone. the dynamic is these two boys and they adored samuel the first child, too. they've lost two sons. varina is six weeks out from giving birth to winnie, so winnie is in utero coming right into this sort of emotionally fraught scene. they have a huge funeral. and all the children of the neighborhood come and throw white flowers on joe's grave. i mean, it's just -- it's pretty devastating even to read about. so, that sets up things for winnie. and she enters into this very emotional period in her parent's lives, not to mention the civil war that's going on in their backyard essentially.

so, varin and winnie -- so you can see already and i love this again -- most of these are from the museum of the confederacy archives. you can see the bonding here. this is an unusual portrait for a 19th century portrait. lot of times we think of them, they're very stiff, they're very poised. and no one is touching each other. and look how maternal this is. and varina adored her children, as did jefferson davis. they were both very affectionate parents. and they actually spoiled those children rotten from mary chestnut's account. she calls the davis nursery bedlam broke loose, which i love. i can see it. they're blowing things up. joe had a cannon that actually fired and he was blowing things up. they were doing what boys do in any era or age. the davis' adored them. but winnie has this particularly tight bond because she's a replacement child for these two

dead sons and later will replace even more. i like to show you that. in today's horrible par launs for psychology, we might say co co-dependent. we'll talk about that. then we have winnie as a little girl. i love this picture. it sort of reminds me of these awful beauty pageants that we have today. like jean bonnet or something. she is dressed up like a prize pony. that's sort of what she was when she was a child to jefferson and particularly varina because this winnie was so bright. she was so smart, so precocious. she was reciting shakespeare when she was 6 or 7. memorizing long poems. and you can tell from the beginning she's basically treated like royalty, like a queen or a princess and made to perform. so i think of varina of somewhat of a stage mother and this is the dynamic that you'll see

throughout her life. first, with just her being like kind of a little actress for her parent's friends and later when she becomes a writer. her mother tries to stage manage some of that career as well. so, fun to just see the picture, i think. teenage winnie. well, i have an almost teenager in my house, i look at her and this looks just like her expression everyday, like whatever, mom. i'm not listening to you. you're an idiot. so that's kind of what we have on a daily basis in my house and i remember being this teenager, too, many years ago. so i love this image because she is kind of -- has a sullen look on her face. she has a good reason, though, not just because she's a teenager, but also in this picture she had just returned from five years in the convent in germany. and i think we all might be a little upset if we were sent away for five years. and at the time, this was customary for a lot of the 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 had spent some time at the convent in paris, but jefferson davis -- i love his quotes about it, he was kind of a prude. and he said, there were too many amorist toys in paris. interesting. he didn't think it was appropriate and they pull maggie out after not too long out of the convent in paris. but winnie goes to a rigorous boarding school in germany called the mrs. freedlander's school. this is somewhere that had probably been recommended by varina's sister's husband margaret's husband. she had a friend penny meredith who thank goodness went with her. she did have a companion, but they were sent away. you know, very young. she was 17 when she came back and she was just on the verge of

being 13 when she left. she didn't see her father for five years. which again sounds harsh but at the time this happened quite often. her mother did often stay nearby and spent some time in england, so she did see her mother more often, but winnie would later write about the harsh conditions that she would wake up and there would be a picture of water frozen with ice that you would have to stab things into to get it to shatter. it was freezing cold. they didn't feed them enough. all that. and so she would write very strongly against women's education abroad in her 20s and 30s, but she 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, beautiful painter, beautiful artist and musician. but she didn't know a thing about american history. and this was deliberate. her parents really -- part of

the reason they sent her away is they didn't want her to have to suffer the consequences of the fallout from jefferson davis' time as the president of the confederacy, his imprisonment at ft. monroe. she was the only child allowed to go see him at ft. monroe. but this she didn't remember because she was so little when that happened. so they wanted to remove her. and they thought they would be doing her a favor, but as it turned out, she didn't know her american history. the other reason they sent her -- and this also i like the picture when i talk about this because it does make me laugh, winnie started out very independent and very stubborn and they did not like that. jefferson davis did not like any women in his family to be anything but submissive. and varina, while she herself was not submissive at all, i think she saw the problems it caused in her own marriage and they jointly decided to crush this stubbornness and spirit out of winnie, which is very sad today but i think they thought it would -- she would never find

a husband, you know, the goal in life, of course, for women at the time was to find a good match. they were worried about that. and also they just thought she shouldn't be more deferential to them. so that was the other reason they sent her to boarding school and that's a reason that really i didn't know about until i started researching. i thought winnie was always kind of submissive and she wasn't. they kind of crushed it out of her. so, then she comes home from germany at age 17. she spends a couple of years at bovoir. her parent's home in mississippi. it was given to jefferson davis by sara dorsy. some of you may or may not have heard this tale. she was a admirer and supporter of jefferson davis. when he wanted to write his memoirs, she gave him a cottage where he could write. varina was in england and found out about this in the

newspapers. she was not pleased nor was dorsy's family. this looked very suspicious and did not look correct. it just looked very strange to people and there was a lot of gossip about that internationally. so, eventually varina comes home to bovoir, eventually. jefferson davis pays for bovoir in full and dorsy disinherits her family and gives him her estate. this gives people more gossip. it's convenient because sara dorsy dies of breast cancer after varina gets there, a year later. problem is solved. now they have a home to live in. it's not a very nice way of it happening but it kind of worked out. so he finally has a place to live, has a place to be at peace and write his memoirs. finish them up. winnie becomes his second

companion. they play all kinds of games together and kind of reaffirm the bond that they had when she was little. so this is a good time for them. in 1886, jefferson davis, his memoir has been published. it doesn't do that well at the press, but slowly over time it helps restore his reputation and he becomes a martyr of the lost cause. so it works slowly. but over time people really start to see him in this light as they hear more about ft. monroe and the terrible conditions he faced there and what he gave up for his family and for country or for the south. so his reputation is being rehabilitated. there's a bunch of mon mumts all across the south. the money is mostly raised by the woman to put these monuments up to the confederacy. and he and winnie go on the train trip to dedicate all these

monuments. and on this trip, there's a fateful day -- again, it's always in april. in april near west point, georgia, 1886, where jefferson davis is feeling ill that day. he's on the train. it's dusty and hot. he just doesn't feel like performing today. so general john b. gordon, is a southern confederate hero, he is also very -- a politician, a very good one, very flamboyant, a showman. so he sees winnie and he's like, a-ha, here is what we do. he yanks her out of the train. she's very shy and very, you know, sub misive to due to her forced education in germany. and he pulls her up on the back of the train and they come and -- he says, i give to you the daughter of the confederacy. and 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. and in the 19th century, of

course, it's not like the madmen in the '60s where they pay you something for their image. they just appropriate it and steal it from you. she's on liver pills. candy and ice cream. she's on postcards all throughout the south because she's young and beautiful and fresh and to these veterans -- also to the women of the confederacy, later the united daughters of the confederacy, the lady's me yor yals she gives an aristocratic ting and represents the future what we can do going forward with these young people to kind of memorialize the image of the south, whether it's true or not. to keep that image going. so, you can see how lovely she is and she really is kind of an ideal spokesperson because she doesn't speak. she's just an image. so, in 1886 all is well. she accepted this role. this is totally great, fine,

she's proud to represent the legacy of her family. however, things never go smoothly. there's always some obstacle or some twist that comes up. and the twist here could not be more ironic or interesting. so, she -- i mentioned to you that varina and jefferson in the 1850s were in d.c., they were very popular. they had a lot of friends both north and south. and so they keep up with all their northern friends. and they do go visit, not often, but they go spend time in new york and varina in particularly keeps up with her northern friends. her grandfather was governor of new jersey, by the way. in the south, they're very suspicious of varina because she's smart and have a lot of northern ties. they never accept her as the first lady of the confederacy. and she is torn, very torn about it. so they go to a party, just like in romeo and jewel yet. varina and winnie show up their

friend's emory's house in syracuse, new york. and alfred wilkinson walks in the door. he is 6'0", he went to harvard, class of '88 with roosevelt. all the friends think he is dreamy and he has not been interested in anybody. they dismissed him. he's 28 years old, so old, so of course he's not going to get married because that's really old at the time. so they've written him off. but he just hasn't met the right person. he sees winnie. they're instantly smitten. it's love at first sight,on both sides. they're both smart and articulate, he is a patent lawyer. he has one strike which he is a northerner. you can see, they're in the south. it's been about 20 years since the war. people are still resentment.

so that's one thing, but they -- we've all -- 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 fred's only -- the only skeleton in fred's closet. so, these two start dating. they are in love. the romeo of the north and the jul juliet of the south. then these things come out about fred's family. one thing is that fred's father, who was a big banker in town -- and fred's family, by the way, are very aristocratic, upper class but his father is a raging alcoholic. he has embezzled tons of money from the bank there. so, we start hearing some rumors about -- they call it the wilkinson scandal. the perfect guilded age scandal, money and drinking and stealing the family's silver to pay for the whiskey that kind of stuff.

so poor fred and his sisters, they feel like they have to restore the family fortune and family reputation. fred is very responsible. he was never implicated in this. he was too young. so he wants to do the right thing and he builds up this practice and does very well. and then winnie is beginning her writing career. she has already -- her parents have published a book. she's very literary, very into that. so they look like a great match, but the alcoholism comes out and that's another strike. here is the third strike that's probably the worst for southerners, and particularly for confederate veterans. winnie and fred when they court in syracuse, they do a lot of their courting at the home of samuel joseph may who is fred's famous abolitionist grandfather and it takes a while for people to figure this out, but samuel may is part of the alcot family.

samuel may is up there with garrison and all of the famous abolitionis abolitionists. he's one of the big names. it is amazing how long it takes before they realize who this truly is and then when they court up here in samuel may's house this porch below, this underporch was a big stop on the underground railroad. very ironic place for the daughter of the confederacy and this son of new york as he's often called to court. so, eventually people find out about this and they're really unhappy in the south. the north is much more accepting and there's a big movement towards reconciliation, which jefferson davis himself was very pro reconciliation but it's too soon for many in the south. confederate veterans start flipping out when the engagement is announced and they threaten to shoot fred through the heart. many lovely descriptions. what i love about these letters is they threaten to kill him and then they say, respectfully

yours, blah, blah, blah from the robert e. lee regiment. i'm not pinning it on that. i have to look and see who it was. there are many letters that are so beautifully written but they are threatening to kill him. just a little detail. but we're still courting. winnie and fred are still courting. they're still together and then they go on this very improbable trip to italy in 1890. they go -- you know, they're engaged but they're not married, and they go on a trip because winnie is basically having nervous -- not quite a nervous breakdown, but nervous sort of feelings about marrying fred. she's getting frail. she's not eating. doing all the victorian stuff when people are distress. she needs to go to the cure to go to europe to get bert. i hope i'll 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 didn't tell her.

they really covered it up. so this is in 1889, that winter into 1890. jefferson davis is very ill and he dies while she is abroad in italy. but jefferson and varina push them to go. they want to meet winnie and push his suit with her, even though all these things are coming out about him in new york in varina's friends are researching him and doing the background check. varina decides to push this. you have to get married. you have to get this done. fred goes over to italy. there's all these wonderful diary entries because we do have a diary. this was at the museum of the confederacy that surfaced at auction just a couple years ago from davis' family members, i believe. it was auctioned off. the museum bought it and it's winnie's entries about her trip

to fred with italy. me as a scholar, this was amazing to find this. then i also got a memoir from fred's family about the other side. so these are both very new primary source documents and very exciting for any writer or historian to find. so they explain different things. but it is still inexplicable to me that the daughter of the confederacy, the daughter of jefferson davis would be allowed to go unchaperoned to italy with her fiance. and many times they were alone. joseph and kate were the worst chaperons ever. really and truly i wish they could have been my chaperons -- i'm so old, that's just -- we still had chaperons when i was in college and high school. but joseph is the owner -- by the way, joseph pulitzer is the owner of the world newspaper and several others. he's a barren of yellow journalism. kate, his wife is a distant davis cousin. and she and her husband become

very good friends with the davis family. they became winnie's basically fairy god parents. they pay for a lot of winnie's trips and clothes and winnie becomes god mother to one of their children. but at this point, joseph pulitzer is a hypochondriac but he is actually truly going blind which is a great requirement in any good chaperon, so he can't see. so who knows what's going on. and kate, shortly is going to embark upon an affair with a colleague of his at the world newspaper. so, kate's kind of doing her thing. she's a big socialite. she loves her parties and feathers and diamonds. nobody is paying any attention. so i leave it to the readers you can read in the book and see what you think about that trip, but i do think they had a lot of freedom to do whatever they wanted to do because of these fabulous chaperons they had. so, sadly the engagement finally does break up, despite the

pulitzer's support. all of their -- they are urging winnie and fred to get married. in the north, everyone is very excited about this idea of them getting married. but it doesn't work out. fred finally is brokenhearted. he's turned away, not by winnie, but by varina. varina is the one that breaks up with him for winnie. winnie stays in her room. fred comes to see -- to have a last interview with varina and she accuses of him lying to her and not being true about his finances. the main thing with varina is the finances number one and he is very successful and makes plenty of money so this is not really true. there's 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'm just going to go back for one second and you'll see what i mean. i think this is why.

i think they are so -- and not winnie quite so much as varina but varina at this point to catch you up on the other children, billy has died of diphtheria, jeff jr. has died of yellow fever. all four of her boys are dead. maggie, the oldest daughter has made a good match to another southern man,ed ason hayes, but they moved out to colorado springs. and supposedly for his asthma. but i interviewed maggie's descendan descendants, spent a lot of time with he and his wife carol, and his quote was really striking, he said, she had seen so much she needed to get away. he said for years and years all the colorado family, which is where all the desen dentds were, they wanted nothing

i should tell you about new orleans, first we get a consolation prize. for breaking up with fred, the new orleans confederate veterans and other supporters award her queen of combis. they don't do this officially, but this is the prize for giving up the yankees. she gets to be queen of new orleans and this is one of the famous crews.

she is queen. the theme is the rise land of the rising sun. she has these beautiful embroidered kimonos and jewelry and the museum here and they go after one of the badges. they have these roads and her jewelry and crown. this is supposed to make up for that. this would be awesome. the top coolest thing ever with the beautiful parties and a whole new batch of boys to choose from. this is not for her. she is very serious and artistic. she is not interested in parties and clothes. she is not interested in other men particularly. she has her melancholy expression on her face. then we get to new york. her years in new york. she is here with her mother and they moved to new york in the

1890s and live in two different hotels and a lot of people lived in hotels. they moved to the hotel with 12344th street. it's right near the theaters and i have eaten there many times. she loved theater and the restaurant is in the lobby of the hotel or where it was. she and her mother had the literaries that they would entertain and the actresses and writers. she is a talented writer. she and her mother worked for the pulitzer at the world. he becomes the financial savior

at this point. they have been friends and they realize they need the money. he creates not a real position, but a columnist for pu let'ser. he never uses or rarely uses. it is not great, but to put it mildly and i can't read her handwriting and winny has beautiful handwriting and is a beautiful writer and writes for pulitzer at the world and has two nofyles 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 the proceeds from the second book. she is on the literary rise. she loves gray and white and she is low key. she is what her father and mother wanted to create.

she is very independent naturally. she is an artist and a writer. that's not the true woman like the cult of true woman hood, but she wants to be the new woman. the gibson girl. the career woman. it has been repressed for a long time with her parents's boarding school. she thought maybe she would go the domestic route like her sister and mother prevents that. i think i am not sure winnie wanted to get married. when she watches her parents's marriage and saw the struggles, she thought gosh, is that what i want to do? i want to be a writer. that's what i want to do. i am thankful that she did it. this is highly unusual in the 19th century, particularly among someone who is the 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 in what happens. bicycling did more to free up women and liberate them than anything else. as a writer and a new woman on the verge of becoming an independent woman. that's how i like to remember her. thank you so much. i would love to take questions in anyone has questions.

>> she is the south carolina diarrist. look her up. she is great. others? >> who were the titles of her books? >> they did this and would change their names and sometimes like vereena would be. winnie would be usually under vereena and davis. it was known who she was. she did not write anonymously. she wrote two books and there was a book called serpentent that was published by her parents and a ka yad nan publisher and the books that were published in new york and you can get them online.

i had no trouble getting them. it's the actor that is the first and the second is a romance of summer seas. you see her characters evolve in the first book. it's a traditional victorian romance where the woman is punished for trying to step out of her role, but by the second book, she issic maing comments like i don't approve of marriage and dueling. they were dangerous and that type of thing. she evolved in her thinking and characters i think get a lot more dimension by her second book. other questions? >> we always call them. you said not related. >> this is a good question. i have gotten that in the past three days and i will have to

defer how that got there. i remember it always rhymes with marina. i don't think they are related at all. i don't know about verina, virginia. that's a question i need to find out. i think we might have had another question in the way, way back maybe? yes. poor old fred. i knew somebody would ask. that's a good question. one, you can read the book and find out. this is a special crowd and we are on site the day after her birthday. i will tell you what happened. fred is just totally beside himself. they do break up and he never marries. she never marries. he goes on to have a patent law business in new york.

robert called winnie the last casualty of the lot of cause. fred is also one of the last casualties of the lot of cause with her. he has a nervous break down in atlantic city and later a heart attack. i can't help but think it came from the fallout from his relationship with winnie. all the death threats and people investigating him and doing the background check in an invasive way. i think he was extremely affected. he dies and he is in his mid 50s. there is another story that may not be true, but i did put it in the book and i had a number of sources tell me that fred shows up at winnie's funeral. i won't tell you when it is. winnie dies and shows up sobbing in the back of saint paul's church. maybe true and lots of sources say that, but we can't verify

it. yes? >> we enjoyed this. i have one more question. she was spending so much time with northerners, she must have been coming to terms with her father's life. was she reconciled to him at the end? >> good question. winnie and her mother preferred the north. jefferson dies and buried in new orleans and the reinternment and he and winnie were never estranged. that was in the 19th century to send the girls away and girls of a certain class. it was good she had that time with him. they were reconciled and in

terms of her role, she felt she had to carry on the legacy. i think she was at odds. her role in public and her private wish and be an author and a writer and maybe to marry a northerner as it happened. i don't think she was ever able to reconcile the two. that's how things unfold. there may have been resentment over the fred romance and break up between the women. >> now i am telling the whole story. gosh. i suppose i will tell you.

her cause of death. day they will say that about us. they really -- the whole way she dies, this is why they call her the last casualty and why they call her that. she and mrs. stonewall jackson are in a carriage at a veteran's reunion in atlanta. this is in 1898 and they are in this carriage and they're part of a veteran's reunion and there is a downpour and she is soaked to the skin. she stays this this outfit for hours. she finally goes back to the hotel to change and there is a big ball that evening. she catches a chill and fever and it takes several weeks. she gets on the train and gets on to go on vacation and lingers for a couple of weeks and dies

of malaria. i talked to every doctor i know and they said what in the heck is that. it's a stomach thing. there is a fever, but nobody dies in a rain storm. she had been to egypt a couple of months prior. it could have been some kind of stomach bug, but it took so long. that theory is out there. i'm not sure that makes sense. she was nervous like jefferson davis. they both never ate. they may have had an ulcer. there was probably an underlying stomach disorder. it pushed her over the edge. we still don't have a satisfactory answer for that. a good question though. i still wonder what it was. yes? >> you said the davis family had a lot of tragedy including an older brother that died.

i think about two months before she was born. i guess having children die in the 19th century was not that uncommon. we know it happened to mrs. lincoln when her son died and how did mrs. davis react to all this tragedy? >> that is an excellent question. i think really important to the story. when joe dies, when he falls off the balcony, at that point that's the one day that jefferson davis takes off from the confederacy. to be with his child. that impacts them greatly. then they have other children die and when winnie dies, her mother just goes to pieces. again, verena pulled it together and never gives up. she eventually is able to function and go on and stays on and lives in new york.

i think that the cumulative effect influences the four boys dying. it influences the the way they are together. they welcome codepartment on each other, but they cannot give her up to marriage. they have all the ailments. that's not a lot of fun for her either. jefferson davis adores his children. both did. it was devastating. even for the 19th century, that is a lot of death. that is unusual and all boys. so the name doesn't disappear.

>> if you go to hollywood cemetery in richmond, there is this gorgeous old cemetery overlooking the james river. they call it davis circle. that's where not every davis descendent, but jefferson is there. margaret or maggie who becomes margaret hayes davis is there. they hyphenate the name to keep the davis legacy. her husband and all the boys there. samuel joe, i believe joe was in one part of the cemetery and they reinterned him at a certain point. and addison. the whole family only in death. you have everyone together at hollywood cemetery. i visited many times. it's called the angel of grief.

they had this statue sculpt and tried to raise enough money to finance it. they got some, but it was the daughters of the confederacy of new york that finished up paying for it. it's between north and south and that's what i think winnie tried to do and he edged it closer to that happening. >> did maggie ever get involved? >> maggie and her mother had an interesting relationship.