Rare Antique Mrs. Jefferson Davis 6\" Political Pin Civil War Confederate States
![Rare Antique Mrs. Jefferson Davis 6\](img-large/g/4MgAAOSwyZ5Uqepe/s-l1600/Rare-Antique-Mrs-Jefferson-Davis-6-Political-Pin-C.jpg "Rare Antique Mrs. Jefferson Davis 6\")
When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Rare Antique Mrs. Jefferson Davis 6\" Political Pin Civil War Confederate States:
$29.99
A Very Rare Civil War Era 6 Inch celluloid hanging pin of Mrs Jefferson Davis. First lady to the President of the Confederate States. It has issues but you will never see another one. See item description above. Check Out Google to see some additional history on Mrs Davis. Priority shipping with tracking. Thank You
Confederate First Lady
Jefferson Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded. Varina Davis returned with their children to Brierfield, expecting him to be commissioned as a general in the Confederate army. He was elected asPresidentof theConfederate States of Americaby the new Confederate Congress. She did not accompany him when he traveled toMontgomery, Alabama(then capital of the new nation) to be inaugurated. A few weeks later, she followed and assumed official duties as the First Lady of the independent nation.
She had continued her independent observations and greeted the war with dread, while supporting slavery and the Union. She was known to have said that:
\"the South did not have the material resources to win the war and white Southerners did not have the qualities necessary to win it; that her husband was unsuited for political life; that maybe women were not the inferior sex; and that perhaps it was a mistake to deny women the suffrage before the war.\"[11]
In the summer of 1861, Howell Davis and her husband moved toRichmond, Virginia, the new capital of the Confederacy. They lived in thePresidential mansionduring the remainder of war (1861–1865). \"She tried intermittently to do what was expected of her, but she never convinced people that her heart was in it, and her tenure as First Lady was for the most part a disaster\", as they picked up on her ambivalence.[22]White residents of Richmond freely criticized Varina Davis; some described her appearance as \"amulattoor an Indian \'squaw\'.\"[6]
In December 1861 she gave birth to their fifth child, William. (Due to his son-in-law\'s influence, her father William Howell was given several low-level appointments in the Confederate bureaucracy which helped support him.) The social turbulence of the war years reached the Presidential mansion, as in 1864, several of the Davises\' domestic slaves escaped. James Dennison and his wife, Betsey, who served as Varina\'s maid, used saved back pay of 80 gold dollars to finance their escape. Henry, a butler, left one night after building a fire in the mansion\'s basement to divert attention.
In spring 1864, their son Joseph was killed by breaking his neck from a fall from a balcony in the Davis\'s house in Richmond. A few weeks later, Varina gave birth to their last child, a girl namedVarina Anne Davis, who was called Winnie. The girl became known to the public as \"the Daughter of the Confederacy;\" stories about her and likenesses of her were distributed throughout the Confederacy during the last year of the war. She retained the nickname for the rest of her life.
Rare Antique Mrs. Jefferson Davis 6\" Political Pin Civil War Confederate States:
$29.99