Varina Anne was the second daughter and sixth child born to Jefferson and Varina Davis. “Little Pie Cake,” as she was called for the first year of her life, entered the world in June, 1864, as the Confederate States of America was beginning its demise. Her birth was only six weeks after a freakish accident: her five-year-old brother fell to his death from a third story balcony at their home in Richmond.
Winnie Davis’ First Years
Only months later and nursing, the still-unnamed baby made a long and often harrowing flight south as the Confederate capital was crumbling. By the time she was finally named, Varina Anne (for her mother), and forever nicknamed “Winnie” (again, her mother’s nickname), her older siblings had been sent to Canada, in the care of Grandma Howell, and her father was sent to Fortress Monroe, where he was chained and imprisoned.
Jefferson Davis, in his late fifties, was old enough to be her grandfather. Blind in one eye, and always frail in health, the strain of the past four years had aged him even more. Varina-the-mother, forty and formidable, embarked on a campaign of her own: to unchain the non-violent ex-Confederate President, and allow him more humane treatment. Eventually Varina and baby Winnie were permitted to join Davis in his casement prison. They stayed there for nearly two years.
Davis had been wealthy in antebellum days, but his Mississippi plantation had been ravaged beyond repair. His former occupations as soldier and statesmen were forever closed to him – and at sixty, he was a man without a country – and a man without an income. He was also a man with four children under fifteen.
For the next dozen years, Winnie and her family traipsed back and forth across the ocean, never really belonging anywhere. Wherever Davis could get a job (and he, at an age when most men think of retirement!), that would be home. Winnie was eventually placed in school in Germany when she was twelve. By the time she graduated, her parents were living at Beauvoir, a pleasant shore-house in Biloxi, Mississippi that was owned by a friend of the Davis family. Her sister Margaret, older by ten years, had married, and her two older brothers had died young of natural causes. It would be just Winnie and her parents. She would become her father’s constant companion.
Winnie Davis Finds Her Place
By the mid-1880s, elderly Jefferson Davis had become the symbol of the South’s “Lost Cause,” and was enjoying a late Indian summer of popularity and celebrity that he had never quite managed as CSA president. He was invited everywhere! Pretty and compliant, Winnie accompanied him on his travels. It was at one of these appearances that she was introduced to the crowd as “The Daughter of the Confederacy” – a soubriquet that stuck. Winnie became an instant icon: she was the daughter. She was their daughter. They loved her. She was immediately adopted by the thousands of Southern men and women who saw in her the “Melanie” they longed for.
But when some old friends invited Winnie to visit them in upstate New York her tragedy began to unfold.
Winnie Davis Falls in Love
Young attorney Alfred (Fred) Wilkinson was just a child during the early 1860s, but had the temerity to be born a Yankee, and even worse, with prominent abolitionists in his family tree. It would spell doom for the star-crossed lovers. But they fell deeply and sincerely in love, and Fred wanted to marry his Winnie. She wanted to marry Fred, too, but she knew of course, that the situation would not be acceptable to her parents – let alone the entire South.
The emotional stress took a physical toll. In her depression, Winnie fell ill. Finally she confessed her heartache, and as expected, the Davises were not pleased. But they also loved their daughter dearly, and wanted her to be happy.
Fred had been pleading with Winnie to allow him to meet her parents so they could see for themselves that he was not an ogre. They eventually consented to a visit, and as expected, realized that had Fred been born in the South, they would have welcomed the young man cordially. Davis finally was persuaded to give his consent to an engagement, perhaps believing that his own prestige might soften the reaction of the South, who would be loath to accept their Daughter married to a "damn-yankee." But before an engagement could be announced, Davis died.
Naturally everything was postponed indefinitely, and the strain of it all wreaked havoc on poor Winnie’s health. She had never inherited her father’s iron will or her mother’s intimidating personality. Close to a complete breakdown, she went back to Europe for a while, and began writing – an occupation for which she had a genuine flair. She eventually would write and publish several Victorian age romance novels.
But after five years, her own romance was faltering. Fred would always claim it was Varina who destroyed whatever slim chances the couple had for happiness. Varina said it was about money. Maybe. By the time she finally relented, it was too late. Winnie’s spirit was broken. Their engagement was broken. Winnie could not buck the public furor. Fred could not buck the indomitable Mrs. Davis.
The Sad, Sad Ending
Winnie continued to write, and became more and more dependent on her mother for everyday decisions. Poor Winnie died at only thirty-three. They said it was gastric malaria. Maybe it was also the Victorian broken heart.
At her funeral, Fred slipped into the church and sat alone in the back. He never married.
Sources:
- Cashin, Joan E. - First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, Bellknap Press, 2006
- Rowland, Eron - Varina Howell: Wife of Jefferson Davis: Volume II (reprinted) Pelican Pub Co Inc., 2002
- Ross, Ishbel – First Lady of the South: The Life of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, Greenwood Press, 1958
Feather Schwartz Foster - Feather Schwartz Foster, author-historian. Making the First Ladies come to life.
