Jefferson Davis – a Mexican War veteran, Mississippi politician, and States-rights advocate – is best remembered as President of the Confederate States of America.  Davis was chosen provisional President of the Confederacy in February 1861; elected permanent President in November 1861.  Said President Davis in his February 22, 1862 Inaugural Address:

“On this the birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his compatriots, we have assembled to usher into existence the Permanent Government of the Confederate States.  Through this instrumentality, under the favor of Divine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles of our revolutionary fathers.

When a long course of class legislation, directed not to the general welfare, but to the aggrandizement of the Northern section of the Union, culminated in a warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States —when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States…confederated together. 

Our Confederacy has grown from six to thirteen States; and Maryland…will, I believe…connect her destiny with the South.”  Maryland remained a Union State.  Virginia was the eighth State to secede.  

The city of Alexandria is located 100 miles north of Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy’s 19^th century capital.  Alexandria, politically speaking, is a Southern remnant.  The Confederate flag flew proudly until 1969. 

 “Alexandria flies the [Confederate] flag [because] it has a special place in the hearts of those who honor their noble, albeit defeated, ancestors,” The Alexandria Gazette Packet wrote in 1970. “It represents honor, courage, devotion and it still lives in the hearts of all the underdogs who can’t win.”  Alexandria was the first Southern city taken by Federal soldiers. 

In the early years Virginia, like most Southern States, depended on slave labor to fuel its economy.  Who has not heard the ante-bellum stories of Alexandria’s thriving slave trade?  Slavery, Southerners believed, was an inherited right.

In 1847 Mississippi’s Governor appointed planter Jefferson Davis to the US Senate to fill an unexpired term.  Davis took to politics like cotton to the gin.  He became a sectional leader greatly involved in the slavery debate.

According to Davis the Missouri Compromise of 1850—a Compromise which delimited the slave states—“bore the impress of that sectional spirit so widely at variance with the general purposes of the Union.”  Passage, he warned, was “dangerous to the country’s peace.”  Davis retired from the US Senate in 1852 only to serve again five years later.

The slavery battle reached its zenith in October 1859.  Abolitionist John Brown staged a raid on Harper’s Ferry.  He seized a Federal armory in protest, and later was hanged for treason.  Brown’s body was buried but not the act.

Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential election was more than many Southerners could bear.  On December 20^th The Charleston Mercury declared: The Union is Dissolved.  South Carolina was the first State to secede.  Senator Davis and the State of Mississippi followed next.  

“[Davis] explained the State acted because ‘we are about to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us.’” 

The Confederacy’s Constitution began: “We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty…establish this Constitution.”  Article IV, Section 2(3), dealt with the delivery of runaway slaves.

The Civil War began with the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861.  On March 1 the Confederate government seized nearly all the forts and naval yards in the seceded States.  It failed however to secure Fort Sumter.  When Lincoln opted to re-supply Sumter’s Federal garrison, the Confederacy objected.

President Davis, upon taking office, sent commissioners to Washington to settle “all questions of disagreement between the two governments.”  To the Confederacy’s dismay, the US government declined to recognize its “official character.”  Davis demanded Federal evacuation of the South Carolina Fort.   

President Lincoln instead sent merchant steamers, under cover of warships, to deliver Sumter’s “subsistence and other supplies.”  The warships also carried troop reinforcements.  President Davis responded, ordering General Pierre G.T. Beauregard “to reduce it.”  Shelling began on April 12^th and ended 34 hours later.  The Union surrendered.    

By 1865 the Civil War still raged.  By April 1865 military events were mostly under Federal control.  The Union army occupied not only Alexandria but also Richmond.  Richmond, located on the James River, was a strategic manufacturing and transportation hub.  The Confederate government departed by train on April 2 unable to defend its capital. 

In Ulysses S. Grant Lincoln found a Union General with whom he could work.  Union troops entered Richmond on April 3, 1865.  The business district was already ablaze.  Peculiarly President Jefferson Davis first learned that Richmond was being vacated while listening to his minister, The Rev. Dr. Charles Minnigerode’s Sunday sermon.  Dr. Minnigerode retired to Alexandria after the Civil War. 

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.  President Jefferson Davis was taken prisoner on May 10; held first near Irwinsville, Georgia, and then Fort Monroe, Virginia.  He spent the remainder of his life stubbornly defending the Southern cause.  

In his 1881 memoir, his apologia—The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government—Davis claims: “The eternal truths which they [our Founding Fathers] announced, the rights which they declared ‘unalienable,’ are the foundation-stones on which rests the vindication of the Confederate cause.”   The Washington Post declared much of Davis’ prose ‘a travesty upon history.’” 

Slavery, not States-rights, caused the Civil War.  “When the independence of the Confederate States is recognized,” President Davis’ 1862 Inaugural Address concluded, “the Southern States will offer to manufacturing nations the most favorable markets which ever invited their commerce.  Cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, provisions, timber, and naval stores will furnish attractive exchanges.”

In 1877 Jefferson Davis retired to Sarah Dorsey’s estate in Biloxi, Mississippi.  He died in New Orleans December 6, 1889 and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.  Davis’ US citizenship was never restored.    

From Coastal Mississippi’s The Gulf Gourmet  

Crabmeat Imperial

Ingredients: 

1 green pepper, minced

1 T. dry mustard

1 T. prepared mustard

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 raw egg

1/8 tsp. black pepper

Dash of Tabasco

¾ c. mayonnaise

2 lbs. crabmeat

Mix all ingredients together, adding crabmeat last.  Place in buttered pastry shells.  Sprinkle with bread crumbs.  Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.  Serves 10-12.