"The Great Chieftain Passes Over The River..." - In Memory of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States

It was in the earliest hour of the morning, on the sixth day of December, in the eighteen hundred & eighty-ninth year of our Lord, at the city of New Orleans in the state of Louisiana, that Jefferson Finis Davis, the honorable President of the Confederate States of America, drew his last breath in this mortal plain and then passed over the river to rest in the shade of the trees in his eternal Heavenly home.

[Image Credit: William Washburn, photographer; taken in 1888; obtained from mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us]

The 81 year-old founding father of the Confederacy had been traveling on business, during the month of November, between his home (called "Beauvoir") in Biloxi, MS, to the Brierfield Plantation he'd acquired from his late brother near Vicksburg, MS. He started his journey around the end of the first week in the month.

The weather had just started turning really cold, and after being exposed to rain and sleet, Davis started feeling ill sometime between Nov. 6-11. It was on the 11th that one of his employees sent a telegram to Davis' wife, Varina, informing her that Davis was ill at Brierfield and would not see a doctor. The former First Lady of the Confederacy immediately started off to go be with her ailing husband; meanwhile, Davis had decided he wanted to go home to Beauvoir and began the journey back. Their respective boats met on the Mississippi River, and she joined him on board to travel to Bayou Sara, LA, where the President would receive medical attention for the first time since his illness set in. The doctor's diagnosis was acute bronchitis, complicated by what might have been malaria.

On a wet and miserable November 16th, they would arrive together in New Orleans. After the rain let up, an ambulance arrived to pick up Mr. & Mrs. Davis and take them to the home of a friend - Judge Charles E. Fenner. The press began to get word of the President's sickness, but his doctor reported to them that there was no cause for alarm; he was suffering from a bad cold, which might get worse, but was otherwise resting quietly.

Over the next two weeks President Davis' condition remained generally stable. He could sit up in bed by himself, and his temperature was not extremely abnormal. His throat became aggravated quickly when he tried to talk much, and so his doctors instructed him not to speak. The First Lady was very guarding of access to her beloved during this time, and even his doctors and closest friends had to wait for her to permit them to enter the room.

Despite Varina's best efforts to keep information on her husband's condition quiet, newspaper accounts had started pouring out that the southern leader's health was deteriorating. Davis did not want to trouble or worry his daughters with his health, and thus would not permit them to be informed of his sickness, but the reports in the newspapers reached their older daughter, Polly Hayes, in Colorado. Upon receiving the news she began the journey southeast, but she would not make it before the worst occurred. The President's youngest daughter, Winnie, was in Europe.

At the start of December, reports on the President's health were mixed. On the 1st it was reported that he was feeling slightly better but still had no appetite and then a change for the better seemed to take place on the 2nd & 3rd, leading his host, Judge Fenner, to declare his condition "decidedly improved." Varina agreed to talk to a news reporter on Dec. 4th, to whom she described his condition to be "frail as a lily and requir[ing] the most exquisite care." The signs of recovery, however, would turn out to be the "final rally" that is so often seen in dying patients near the end.

Suddenly and dramatically, the situation worsened on the evening of December 5th. Just before 6 p.m., a "severe congestive chill" struck the President. Varina would attempt to administer medicine, but Davis declined to take the whole dose. No longer physically able to willfully fight for life, he told his wife, "Pray, excuse me." These would be the final words of the great Southern commander & chief. At this point he lost consciousness, which would never be regained.

E.A. Pollard so eloquently described the scene at the end in his book, 'Southern History of the War'...

"The lamp of life waned low as the hour of midnight arrived; nor did it flicker into the brightness of consciousness at any time. Eagerly, yet tenderly, the watchers gazed at the face of the dying chieftain. His face, always calm and pale, gained additional pallor... There was nothing remarkable about the death-bed scene. The departure of the spirit was gentle and utterly painless. There were no dry eyes in the little assembly about the bed, and every heart bled with the anguish which found vent in Mrs. Davis’s sobs and cries."

In the room at that time were his grandniece, his doctors, his friend - Jacob Payne, his friend & host - Judge Fenner along with Fenner's wife & son, and his beloved wife Varina, who said she could feel him lightly squeezing her hand, and then there was no pressure.

The time of death on December 6, 1889, was approximately 12:45 a.m.

When news of this most enormous loss reached the people of the Southland, the outpouring of grief was as such as one would imagine for a man many considered their second George Washington. The day after his passing, a New Orleans newspaper would print the following in tribute:

"If there was ever the shadow of doubt in the minds of the people of the United States of the hold of Jefferson Davis upon the hearts of the Southern people that doubt has been removed. From city and country, from every nook and hamlet, have come expressions of profoundest sorrow over his death; of grief at the passing away of the great Confederate chieftain. ... There has never been any division of sentiment as to the greatness of Jefferson Davis. He has always been the hero of his people - their best beloved. From the day that Lee laid down his arms at Appomattox to the hour of Jefferson Davis’s death the Southern people look upon the ex-President of the Confederacy as the embodiment of all that was grand and glorious in the Lost Cause. Standing alone as a citizen without the power to exercise his citizenship, the last surviving victim of sectional hate and malevolence, he was an exile while on the soil of his native land and in the midst of his own people. Jefferson Davis will go to the grave bathed in a people’s tears."

President Davis' remains were laid out for public viewing at New Orleans' City Hall from the evening of December 6th through the 11th, when his body was taken in procession from City Hall to the Metairie Cemetery for burial. It is said that the number of mourners over the five day period totaled over 200,000, and that about 80,000 lined the streets of New Orleans for the final procession to the cemetery. The committal service at the cemetery concluded with a singing of the old hymn 'Rock of Ages," and it was to the ages Jefferson Davis now belonged.

Davis' widow would have his remains re-interred at the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond VA, the former Capital of the Confederacy, just a few years later; she would join him in eternal rest 17 years after his passing.

JEFFERSON FINIS DAVIS

PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

JUNE 3, 1808 - DECEMBER 6, 1889

REST IN PEACE

[SOURCES: 'Jefferson Davis, American' by William J. Cooper; 'Last Words of Jefferson Davis at his deathbed: Dec. 6, 1889 reported by newspapers' at AmericanCivilWarForum.com; 'The Death of Jefferson Davis - December 6 1889' by C.E. Johnson Jr. at SPOFGA.com; 'The Jefferson Davis Funeral Train Story' by C.E. Johnson Jr. at FreeRepublic.com; 'Jefferson Davis: Death of American Patriot and Southern Hero' by C.E. Johnson Jr. at CanadaFreePress.com; Wikipedia: Jefferson Davis; Wikipedia: Varina Davis]

DEO VINDICE!

- Jonathan McCleese

Sergeant-at-Arms, SCV Camp #1321