First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War

When Jefferson Davis became the president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. According to Joan E. Cashin, PhD, author of First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, Mrs. Davis's loyalty to the South did not come easily and Varina spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs.

Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection. After the war, she endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant.

Cashin's free and public lecture is scheduled from 6-7 p.m., Dec. 8, at the University of Louisville's Chao Auditorium, located on the lower level of Ekstrom Library (directions). The event is part of the McConnell Center's year-long history project, "Remembering America: From Colonization to the Cold War."

About the Lecturer

Joan E. Cashin, PhD, is a U.S. historian who specializes in social, economic and cultural history, including the antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction eras. She is a history professor at Ohio State University. Her biography of Davis won the Fletcher Pratt Award from the Civil War Roundtable of New York and was a finalist for three other prizes. Cashin's other works include A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (Oxford University Press, 1991) and The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War (Princeton University Press, 2002) [editor]. Cashin currently serves on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. Cashin earned her doctorate from Harvard University in 1986.

About the McConnell Center

The McConnell Center offers this Civic Education Program to the public free of charge. The non-profit, non-partisan program was established to assist Kentucky citizens develop a better understanding of the American Constitution and American history and encourage open and free discussion of perennial concerns that inform contemporary politics.