Charity and Kindness

Charity and Kindness

Michael T. Griffith

2003

@All Rights Reserved

As Secretary of War in Franklin Pierce's administration, Jefferson Davis was known for being generous to those who were less fortunate or who were in need. A young man on his way to West Point became sick in Washington. He wrote a letter to Davis and asked for help. Davis came to see the young man, engaged a nurse for him, and gave him "the kindest and most tender attention for three or four weeks until I was well enough to go on to West Point."19

Davis regularly sent money to a woman who sat outside his office knitting stockings. Davis's messenger told him that he believed the woman was a fraud, but Davis kept sending the money anyway; Davis also sent her a cushion "to prevent her taking cold."20

Another recipient of Davis's charity was a "dwarfish insane man" who would frequently come to see Davis to ask for money. Varina Davis complained to her husband that she didn't know how he could stand the man. Davis, looking troubled, expressed sympathy for the man and said "it is a dreadful fate to be distraught and friendless."21 Mrs. Davis added that her husband made it a rule that "no one should be turned away hungry, however undeserving or unattractive."22

The chief clerk in the War Office, Colonel Archibald Campbell, attempted to restrain Davis's charity toward beggars. He explained that "in anyone else it would be a mere yielding to opportunity" but that Davis would worry about them after he helped them, "and it wears him very much."23 When Campbell complained that he feared Davis was letting phony beggars take advantage of him, Davis replied, "Brave and honest men are not suspicious."24

Davis continued this pattern of being charitable and kind as the Confederacy's president. He gave of his own money to help the poor. He sent hot drinks and food out to his guards. He repeatedly granted pardons to soldiers who appealed death sentences to him. He took in an abused mulatto child and raised him as one of his own children. William Cooper discusses Davis's generosity toward those who were in unfortunate circumstances:

Davis also demonstrated a genuine generosity to individuals serving the cause whom he discovered in unfortunate circumstances. One winter night he noticed that the sentinel at the front door of the Executive Mansion wore no overcoat. Informed that overcoats had not been issued, the president acted, and soon the garments were distributed. When he learned that a regiment camped in the city had received no breakfast, these soldiers had food delivered to them by noon. One morning an elderly woman came to him at the White House [the Confederate White House]. She identified herself as the oldest living relative to George Mason, a Revolutionary hero, and said that all her property was within Federal lines. To support herself, she needed a job. The president got her a position at the Treasury Department.25

Davis's feelings of charity and kindness even extended to enemy soldiers. He urged Confederate troops to treat Union prisoners of war with courtesy and kindness. One Confederate private in the Twelfth Mississippi recalled what Davis said in a brief speech to his unit:

I wish to impress this upon your minds: Always be kind to your prisoners. Fight the enemy with all the power that God has given you, and when he surrenders remember that you are Southern gentlemen and treat him with courtesy and kindness. Never be haughty to the humble. . . .26

When Davis became alarmed at reports of widespread death and disease among Union prisoners of war, he tried to purchase the needed medical supplies from the North and offered to pay for them in gold, cotton, or tobacco. Historian John Tilley continues,

The offer made plain that Union surgeons might bring the medicines down and use them solely to minister to Union prisoners. To this offer, there was no reply.27

One noteworthy account of the effect that Jefferson Davis’s kind and charitable nature often had on those who met him is the case of Mary Day from Ohio. She came to Fortress Monroe, the federal facility where Davis was being held after the war, in order to visit her brother. Out of curiosity, she decided to visit Davis as well. Back in Ohio, she had been singing a song that was quite popular in the North at the time, "Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree." After having heard so many horrible things about Davis, she expected "hoofs and horns" when she met him. When she finally did meet him, she was "speechless with amazement." She said his eyes were "lightened with a smile that was almost angelic."28 She added that "the most arresting of all was a quality in his voice that seemed to go directly to one's heart." In time she became good friends with Davis. When she came to say goodbye, she wanted to tell him how her feelings about him had changed, but she was afraid to do so because she feared she would start crying. After an exchange of kind words, Davis walked her to the stairs and gave her a parting blessing that moved her to tears. She described the event, saying "[He] gave me a parting blessing such as I never before heard in my life. Of course I ran down the steps sobbing aloud." Another former skeptic who came to deeply respect and admire Davis was Dr. John Craven, who was appointed to be Davis's physician when federal authorities imprisoned Davis at Fortress Monroe. Among other things, Craven said that Davis "impressed me more than any professor of Christianity I had even heard."29

Toward the end of his life, when he was living at the Beauvoir Mansion in Biloxi, Mississippi, Davis was visited by a former Union soldier. When the visit ended, the former Union trooper explained that he had no money with which to return home and asked Davis for assistance. Davis, though living on a very modest income himself, gave the man money for his trip home, and then told him, "If any more of the boys need help, tell them I'll do what I can to help."30