Davis, Varina Howell

Life Span
to
Full name
Varina Howell Davis
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Female
Race
White
Sectional choice
South
Origins
Slave State
No. of Spouses
1
No. of Children
6
Family
William Howell (father), Margaret Kempe Howell (mother), Jefferson Davis (husband)
Occupation
Journalist
Relation to Slavery
Slaveholder
Marital status in 1860
Married

Varina Howell Davis (American National Biography)

Scholarship
The secession crisis of 1860-1861 alarmed Varina Davis, as she did not wish to leave Washington and return to the South, telling her mother that the Confederacy did not have the resources to defeat the North. She apparently also had private doubts about slavery, for years later she wrote that it was absurd to fight a war to preserve it. When her husband became Confederate president, she went reluctantly to Richmond, where she became a controversial figure. Her direct manner put off many people who expected her to play a more sedate, "ladylike" role. Her opposition to secession does not seem to have been widely known, but her shrewd political remarks disturbed some politicians, who began to accuse her of manipulating the Confederate president. In fact, she had little influence over her husband, who made his own political and military decisions. She was relieved when the war ended in 1865, telling a friend that the past four years had been the worst of her life.
Joan E. Cashin, "Davis, Varina Howell," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-00260.html.
Chicago Style Entry Link
Cashin, Joan E. First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. view record
Rowland, Eron. Varina Howell, Wife of Jefferson Davis. New York: MacMillan Company, 1927. view record
Van der Heuvel, Gerry. Crowns of Thorns and Glory: Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Howell Davis, the Two First Ladies of the Civil War. New York: Dutton, 1988. view record
How to Cite This Page: "Davis, Varina Howell," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5548.