Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Secrets of the Civil War: From Camels to Confederacy

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

On today’s episode in our series, Secrets of the Civil War, we talk about Jefferson Davis, the man who became the president of the states that tried to secede. And it may come as a surprise to you that Jefferson Davis did have some successful ideas, particularly when it came to importing desert camels into the American West. His successes may have been more surprising to his second wife, the Northern-born Varina, than to anyone else. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fizz.ca. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack. Dyson OnTrack headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation and an enhanced sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and

podcasts get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled soft microfiber cushions engineered for comfort and a range of colors and finishes dyson on track headphones remastered buy from dyson canada.ca with anc on performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Hello friends, welcome to the second episode in our series, Secrets of the Civil War. Stuff you probably never learned in school. And we can't talk about the Civil War without talking about the Confederacy, right? Like, what exactly were their beliefs? Who was even in charge down there?

We hear about Abraham Lincoln. Who was in charge of the Confederacy? So today's episode starts with Jefferson Davis, the man who became the president of the states that tried to secede. And it may come as a surprise to you that Jefferson Davis had some successful ideas. Seceding from the Union, not one of them, but he did have success with camels. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. On February 10th, 1861, in southern Mississippi, a tall and slender man in his early 50s poked around in his garden, tending to his strawberry plants.

Jefferson Davis had recently left his United States Senate seat, not because he'd lost an election or been embroiled in a scandal, but because the state he represented, Mississippi, had just seceded from the Union of the United States. He referred to the day he left the Senate, January 21st, 1861, as the saddest day of my life, which were heavy words considering that he had already lost both a wife and a child. If you listened to our First Lady series and heard our episode about Margaret Taylor, you may remember that Jefferson Davis had married President Zachary Taylor's daughter, Sarah. Jefferson and Sarah, who were madly in love, married in the summer of 1835. But just three months later, while they were traveling, they both contracted either malaria or yellow fever, and Jefferson recovered. But Sarah did not. And so nearly 30 years after Sarah's death, Jefferson Davis looked up from his garden plants to see a messenger

standing before him. As he read the letter he received, his heart both rose and sank. He knew in that moment that his political retirement was over and his life was about to change. He'd been named President of the Confederate States of America. Davis's life began in the early 19th century in a Kentucky log cabin, nearly 100 miles away from another man who was also born in a Kentucky log cabin. I'll give you two guesses about who it is. And you probably won't even need the second one, because you already know it's Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, the President of the Union.

And here we are, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, born a year apart in the same state. Jefferson Davis's family, however, had a little more financial stability than Lincoln's, and his older brother secured Jefferson's military education. Jefferson Davis became a West Point graduate, an Army veteran, and a Mexican-American war hero. No doubt nearby when Jefferson received news of his Confederate presidential position was his young, pregnant second wife, Verena. Some Jefferson Davis biographers have painted Verena as the shrew of the Confederacy. She had been labeled as a stubborn, uncompromising woman. But when we stop

to think about it, those are words we ascribe to a woman who doesn't fit a certain mold, right? Those same traits in a man would be considered desirable leadership qualities. So shrew of the Confederacy might be an undeserved judgment. We do know for sure, though, that Verena and Jefferson's marriage was about as rocky and tenuous as the entire Civil War. Verena supported her husband, but she didn't always agree with him.

And she once confided in a friend saying, the South will secede if Lincoln is made president, and they will make Mr. Davis president of the Southern side. And the whole thing is bound to be a failure. And their marriage nearly failed as well. Verena spent most of her life straddling the political divide. She was born in the South, educated in the North, and married Jefferson Davis, a man 18 years her senior, whose politics were more radical than her own. After they first met, Verena wrote a letter to her mother describing Davis.

She said, He impresses me as a remarkable kind of man, but of uncertain temper and has a way of taking for granted that everybody agrees with him when he expresses an opinion, which offends me. Yet he is most agreeable and has a peculiarly sweet voice and a winning manner of asserting himself. On their honeymoon, Jefferson and Verena made two pit stops, one to Jefferson's elderly mother, who couldn't travel for their wedding, and another to the gravesite of Sarah Knox Taylor, Jefferson Davis's long-dead first wife. Very romantic. Somehow their marriage survived that unconventional honeymoon, but three years in, things were not looking good. Jefferson volunteered

to fight in the Mexican-American War, and their letters to each other are a series of complaints. She wrote that he degraded her and ignored her rights as a woman and a wife, and he responded that her, quote, constant harassment, occasional reproach, and subsequent misrepresentation were intolerable to him. Their marriage was falling apart, and Verena did not like his conventional views on gender or his conservative family, and Jefferson considered himself blameless and issued an ultimatum to Verena that if her conduct and attitude did not change, it would be impossible for them to ever live together again. I mean, there's a metaphor in here somewhere, right? Like Jefferson is the South, Verena is the North, Jefferson threatens to secede from the Union, if you will, and Verena has the task of working to maintain it. At just 22, she already knew that

responsibility for keeping her marriage together lay with her. As conventional thinking at that time, blame the woman when a marriage didn't work. She wrote to her mother and said, I feel that Jeff's love is only to be retained by the practice of self-control, and that it is the only mode of gaining his esteem and confidence. Her letters to Jefferson after that point are more humble and pleasant, and he began considering her advice on serious matters like refusing a place in President Pierce's cabinet, this is before the Civil War, which he ultimately changed his mind about and accepted the role without consulting her.

He was appointed Secretary of War for the United States. We now call this position the Secretary of Defense. And then he proved himself to be a camel enthusiast. Davis was a firm believer in exploring unconventional solutions to conventional problems. It's how he became responsible for one of the most unique experiments in US Army history. And let me tell you, my husband, Chris, grew up in Arizona. And when I was talking to him about the camels, he was like, clearly, Sharon, you did not go to high school in Arizona because we were required to learn about the camels. So y'all are going to have to email me and tell me where you grew up and if you ever learned about the camels because I certainly did not, nor did I ever teach anybody about the camels except for you. In 1853, as the Secretary of War, Davis convinced President Franklin Pierce and a skeptical Congress

that camels would benefit the military with their ability to carry heavy loads and endure the climate and terrain of the Western territories. Expansion was constantly being slowed down by rough geography and the Army's inability to get large quantities of supplies westward. Davis told Congress, I invite attention to the advantages to be anticipated from the use of camels for military and other purposes. I recommend that an appropriation be made to introduce a small number of the several varieties of this animal

to test their adaptation to our country. Surprisingly, Congress said okay and appropriated $30,000, which is just over a million dollars in today's money, for the purchase and importation of camels into the United States Army. It took a few years of planning to hammer out all of the logistics, but in 1856, again, pre-Civil War, 34 camels arrived in Central Texas. Davis appointed Major Henry Wayne, an officer in the Army's Quartermaster Department, to oversee the camel experiment. Major Wayne got to

work. He tested the camels by sending wagons, each with both a six-mule team and a six-camel team, on a supply run for oats. Have you ever seen a team of camels pulling a wagon? I have not. I have not. The mules took five days to make the trip, and the camels, who carried twice as many pounds of oats, made the trip in two days. So after a few more rounds of testing, Davis was pleased with their results. I mean, they're literally more than twice as fast and they can carry way more stuff. And he wrote in a report,

thus far, the result is as favorable as the most sanguine could have hoped. Over the next four years, the U.S. Army Camel Corps, that is a real thing, you can look it up, made countless successful missions carrying supplies in extreme conditions between the southwest and the Pacific coast. At one point, there were over 70 camels working in the United States Army Camel Corps. So what ended the successful Jefferson Davis camel experiment, you ask? Why aren't America's deserts still dotted with packs of camels? The Civil War. By February of 1861, Confederate troops occupied Texas's Camp Verde, the headquarters of the United States Army Camel Corps. And at first, they made use of the camels to transport food items and deliver mail around San Antonio. But without the trained caregivers from the United States Army holding the reins,

so to speak, the camels began to suffer greatly. In other words, the people who were in charge of the camels and knew how to care for them were part of the United States, not part of the Confederacy, and they left the camels there. Documents from the Army Historical Foundation share their fates. The camels ended up in circuses, giving rides to children, running in camel races, living on private ranches, or working as pack animals for miners and prospectors. They became a familiar sight in California, the Southwest, Northwest, and even as far as British Columbia, their strange appearances often drawing crowds of curious people. By 1934, the last of the camels, Topsy, who had toured with the Ringling Brothers Circus and been featured in films, died. Or at least,

Brothers Circus and been featured in films died. Or at least, Topsy was the last confirmed camel to pass on. For many years, periodic camel sightings were still reported all over the West. And my husband, Chris, even brought that up without me asking. He was like, oh yeah, there were definitely stories of people who would just see a camel out there or a couple of camels roaming around in the desert and they're super fast and you can't catch them. I mean, apparently I grew up in the North. I didn't know about the camels. Camels aside, the whole country was arguing about sovereignty and enslavement and states' rights. And it was becoming clear that something had to give. Dissolve the Union or go to war. Strangely, though, it may have been the war that helped to smooth some of the tempestuous parts of Jefferson and Verena's marriage.

of Jefferson and Verena's marriage. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me?

Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new

bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The Democratic National Convention of 1860 in Charleston, South Carolina, helped push Americans to choose a side, North or South. If you were exhausted by the recent 15 rounds of voting for the new Speaker of the House earlier this year, you would have been beyond fatigued at the 1860 convention. After 57 rounds of voting, 57, the Democrats still had no nominee for the presidential election of 1860. The solution was a three-way party split. That's right, the Democrats ran separate campaigns with three presidential candidates, one from each branch of their splintering party. The Southern Democrats were extremely pro-enslavement and nominated John Breckinridge.

The Northern Democrats were for enslavement only by Democratic vote and nominated Stephen Douglas. And the Constitutional Union group, made up of former Whigs who wanted to avoid secession, nominated John Bell. And there's some evidence from her letters to her mother about her personal beliefs on secession that if women had had the right to vote, Verena may have voted for John Bell. Instead, she did her best to make herself useful to her husband and even taught herself his handwriting so she could sign his name almost identically to the way that he did, although there really isn't solid evidence that she ended up forging his signature. Because the Democrats went into the 1860 election divided,

it allowed Lincoln to seize presidential victory by a small margin. Had the Democrats banded together as a certain Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis had advised them to do, it's very possible that Abraham Lincoln would never have been elected. As we know, Lincoln's victory was the straw that broke the camel's back. And I mean that literally for the United States Army Camel Corps, but also for the Southern states. In the South, farming was the primary industry, and their crops of cotton and tobacco were in demand all over the globe. of cotton and tobacco were in demand all over the globe. They believed the only way they could keep up and turn a profit was through enslavement. Knowing this, Lincoln campaigned on a promise to the South that he wouldn't outlaw enslavement in their territories. And as their president,

he'd present a plan to build up their economy to offset the losses they might incur through future abolition. But the South had no faith in him or his ideas. Before Lincoln's inauguration, the South created a provisional constitution, and it was unanimously ratified on February 8, ratified on February 8, 1861. Ten days later, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the Confederacy's first and only president for a six-year term. In his inaugural address, Davis said, We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued. and it must be inflexibly pursued. President Davis and his vice president, Alexander Stevens, were not elected directly by the voters who now made up the Confederacy.

Similar to the U.S. Constitution, the Confederate Constitution used an electoral college. People voted for representatives from each state to cast their votes for candidates. But technically, the election was mostly held as a precedent for any intended future election cycles because Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stevens ran unopposed. Jefferson was chosen to run and to win because he was popular, plain and simple. He was a war hero. He was dignified. He spoke passionately about the Confederate cause. He believed wholeheartedly that the Confederacy would succeed as its own independent country. He wrote a letter to President Lincoln just after his inauguration, asking him to receive envoys for what he said was the purpose of establishing friendly relations between the Confederate States and the United States. Lincoln was having none of it. He flat out refused to receive Davis's

envoys or even to acknowledge the letter to Lincoln, Jefferson Davis was nothing more than what he called a leader of insurgents. The Confederacy was illegitimate in his eyes because secession was unconstitutional. Davis's presidential term began in Montgomery, Alabama, which was the first capital city of the Confederacy until Virginia seceded and offered up the bustling Richmond as the capital. Richmond was four times bigger than Montgomery with a much bigger population and the services of five different railroads, which made travel much easier. So Richmond was perhaps a bit more exposed to the Union because it was further north than Montgomery, Alabama, but it was a con that didn't outweigh the pros. For their part, the secession acts of the Confederacy all use language about sovereignty,

and some even address the federal government's, quote, oppression of the southern slaveholding states in order to declare their break from the Union. Every Confederate state mentioned enslavement in their articles. Some states argued that enslavement should be expanded, while others just wanted its continuation in their region. So let me say that again. In the historical documents written at the time, every single Confederate state mentioned enslavement as a vital part of their economy and as a motivation for secession. But Civil War historian Stephanie McCurry explains the brass tacks of it. She says the founding of the Confederate States of America was a signal event in the history of the Western world. What secessionists set out to do was something entirely new in the history of nations.

They wanted to build an explicitly pro-slavery and anti-democratic nation-state dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal. The Davises may not have put it the same way, but they did enslave hundreds of people. Enslaved life on Jefferson and Verena's Briarfield Plantation in Mississippi was a bit unusual. Because Jefferson Davis was gone for extended periods of time, he named one of his enslaved men as the overseer of the plantation. He allowed enslaved people to grow their own gardens and to raise chickens, and he put together a jury of enslaved people, giving them sort of a judicial agency over punishable offenses. offenses. In early 1861, still hoping for diplomacy, Jefferson Davis repeatedly tried to persuade Lincoln to reconsider his position on the Confederate states and find a solution

to peace between what he viewed as two separate countries. But Lincoln rebuffed Davis's attempts. He knew that there was only one country and that the people of the South were rebelling against it. Much of the initial Confederate government mirrored the federal system. The Confederate Congress was made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives, and they developed a constitution which was quite close to the governance of the country they had just seceded from, with a few key differences. The Confederate Constitution made clear that each state had its ultimate autonomy, and there would be no federal judiciary that could overrule it. It also specifically declared that any state in the Confederacy had the right to enslave people.

Each Confederate state was given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. Two northern states that legalized enslavement, Delaware and Maryland, were invited to join the Confederacy. But a bit of political and military pressure kept them from accepting the invitation to leave the Union. Because of the geographical location of Washington, D.C., keeping nearby Delaware and Maryland in the Union was vital to upholding the power of the federal government. In fact, immediately after the battle at Fort Sumter, President Lincoln sent 75,000 troops into Washington, D.C. to protect the city and to squash any rebellion that might arise. Over 800,000 men enlisted in the Confederate Army, and of course they had many different reasons for doing so.

But undoubtedly what compelled many of them was Southern propaganda that the Union Army was made up of vandals who would invade their homes and terrorize their families. and terrorize their families. Corporal George Miller of the Alabama Cavalry said, when a Southerner's home is threatened, the spirit of resistance is irrepressible. We are fighting for our firesides and property to defend our homes from vandal enemies and drive them from the soil polluted by their footsteps. I'm determined to dispute every inch of soil if they shall invade the sunny South. Despite the fact that many Confederate soldiers were poor, working class, and did not enslave people themselves, they still saw white freedom and black enslavement as fundamental parts of the Southern way of life, and they were ready to fight to keep it. Others fought for honor because it felt like the right thing to do. And we can't forget the

power of following the crowd. Some men enlisted because to not would have been considered shameful and cowardly. David Bailey Freeman may have been the youngest Confederate soldier to serve in the Civil War. He was 11 years and two weeks old when he enlisted with the 6th Georgia Cavalry. Now listen, if you're able to count your age in years plus weeks, you are not old enough to fight in a war. That should have been the rule back then. Why didn't they write that down? No fully grown adult factors weeks into their age. There's no countdown like, oh, only I'm 49 and 50 weeks. I'm 30 years old in five weeks. Counting weeks, it's clearly a sign of a very, very young soul. And it's no wonder that the

Civil War is sometimes called the Boys' War. For even more perspective, that same young soldier, David Freeman, was only one week away from his 14th birthday when the war ended. See what I mean about the weeks? Even when the war ended, he shouldn't have been old enough to fight in it. David grew up to become the mayor of three different towns in Georgia and lived to see the age of 77. The Davis children were too young to fight, even by David Freeman's standards. When the Civil War began, their children were six, four, and two, plus baby William, who was merely an infant. Each of their four sons would die young, but not in battle. It's interesting to note, though, that if Jefferson's first wife, Sarah, had lived and they

had had sons early in their marriage, those young men would have been in their 20s at the time of the war and likely sent off to battle. And it makes you wonder if that would have changed Davis's approach at all. The North allowed young men to enlist at age 18, and the South did the same until 1864 when they dropped the age requirement to 17. And the South did the same until 1864 when they dropped the age requirement to 17. Those age minimums were for conscription, though. Officially, when it came to volunteer soldiers, the Confederacy had no minimum age requirement. The average Civil War soldier from both the North and South was white, about five feet, seven inches tall,

Protestant, single, and between the ages of 18 and 29. Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks were really very similar to each other. More than half of the Confederate soldiers were farmers from small communities. And those who weren't farmers held all sorts of jobs. They were carpenters, students, blacksmiths, and while there were certainly many educated men in the Confederate Army, a Confederate soldier in general was more likely to be illiterate than a Union soldier. It was just a few weeks before the end of the war when the South allowed Black men to serve as armed soldiers. Many Black men had been at war for years already, of course, serving in construction or as servants or laborers. Most of them served in these roles not by choice, but because they were enslaved. In a later episode in this series, we'll dive more deeply into what

life was like for a Confederate soldier, but for now, I will tell you this. It was not good. Not only were they in the hell of bloody war, but their food rations grew meager. Their uniforms were of subpar quality, and boots were in short supply. Many boys and men often went barefoot. A good majority of the fighting during the American Civil War took place on southern soil, and all of the battlefield action in their backyards created hardship for southerners. The production and transportation of goods became increasingly difficult, The production and transportation of goods became increasingly difficult. And by the midpoint of the war, widespread suffering was rippling through the Confederacy.

The Union's naval blockade on Confederate ports prevented food from being shipped in from other countries, and a large portion of domestically produced food was used to feed Confederate troops. As more men went off to war and more land was destroyed throughout the South, food for civilians and soldiers alike became scarce. And costs for what was available inflated to 10 times their pre-war prices. In a tone-deaf move to unite his people, Confederate President Davis called for a day of fasting and prayer on March 27, 1863. But no one needed to fast because they were already in danger of starving. on Virginia Governor John Letcher's office, armed with axes, knives, and other weapons, to demand that he do something about the food shortage. He listened, but his wishy-washy response failed to placate the fed-up women. Instead of returning to their homes, they marched toward government food storehouses, screaming, Bread or blood!

As the group marched, they were joined by additional people, and the rioting crowd swelled to thousands. The scared governor called out the public guard, but they could not stop the crowd, which by then had broken into government storehouses and nearby businesses, grabbing whatever food they could get their hands on. The Richmond women's bread riot was eventually settled when Jefferson Davis himself climbed up on a wagon and threatened to have the Confederate troops open fire on the crowd. He gave them five minutes to disperse, and at the last minute, the people obeyed. More than 60 people, including Mary Jackson, one of the leaders, were arrested for theft and rioting. The city leaders tried to keep the news of the riot

quiet, so as not to have the Confederacy appear weak. But news, as it often does, made its way to the front page of the New York Times with the headline, Bread Riot in Richmond. 3,000 hungry women raging in the streets, government and private stores broken open. The word was out. The Confederacy was crumbling. But it would take another two years, almost to the day after the Richmond Bread Riots, for the Confederacy to officially collapse. But the facade had already begun to collapse when the women rioted in 1863. Similar riots sprang up in other Confederate states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama. Even the Davis Plantation was in trouble, though the Davises hadn't actually lived there for years.

In 1863, Union soldiers helped 137 enslaved people at Briarfield Plantation escape to the north, which left the Confederate president's home available for use as a Union hospital and storage facility. On hand during the Richmond Bread Riot was Verena Davis. She gave a quote to the Richmond Examiner saying excitedly that riot leader Mary Jackson was a tall, daring, Amazonian-looking woman. This admiration for the rioters did not win Verena any favors with the other wives of the Confederate leaders. But at this point, she was probably used to it. Verena any favors with the other wives of the Confederate leaders. But at this point, she was probably used to it. Verena was called loud and opinionated by critics throughout her entire marriage to Jefferson. People even called her racial slurs because of her darker olive complexion. She didn't look or act like what they wanted in a first lady of the Confederacy.

She was too northern, too dark-skinned, too frank, too independent, too vocal, too much. But in fact, Verena was particularly vocal in her defenses of her husband. Jefferson and Verena were physically together more during the Civil War than in the previous years of their marriage, and in the hot seat with the eyes of the world upon them. They faced the criticism together, and they grew closer for it. But even so, by the end of the war, Verena, the unpopular First Lady of the Confederacy, wrote that the past four years had been the worst years of her life. Her heart had never been in the role, and she lost her five-year-old son after an accidental fall off their Richmond home porch in 1864. He was the second child that

Verena and Jefferson had lost, by the way. Sadly, it took her little boy's death for people to show some understanding of Verena. In a letter to her friend, Mary Boykin Chestnut, Verena wrote, people do not snub me any longer, for it was only while the lion was dying that he was kicked. Dead, he was beneath contempt. kicked. Dead, he was beneath contempt. While the Confederacy began with high hopes and a collective resolve to save their way of life, Confederate losses began to pile up. In late 1864, Jefferson Davis actually suggested emancipating any enslaved person who was willing to fight for the Confederacy. That did not go over well. By April of 1865, the southern coastal perimeters had been completely captured by the Union, and the Confederate capital city of Richmond was on its way to falling.

As the official Confederate surrender to the Union took place on April 9th, officials in the Confederate government, including President Jefferson Davis, fled. A month after General Lee surrendered, Union troops captured Jefferson Davis in Georgia on a soggy May morning. Jefferson Davis was wearing a loose overcoat and Verena's black shawl over his head to shield himself from the rain. The northern newspapers had a field day with this, claiming that he was found wearing women's clothing. One illustration even went so far as to depict Davis in a hoop skirt and bonnet. He was imprisoned for two years while he waited to be tried for treason. Verena sent her four surviving children to Canada with Robert Brown, who had been enslaved by the Davises for years, but he was now emancipated and being paid

for his work. Verena stayed in the South and campaigned for her husband's release by writing letters and speaking to anyone and everyone she could think of. One senator after he met with her in Washington, D.C., described Verena by saying, she is a terrible talker and presents everything in the worst light and will do much harm. I don't know, but the best thing would be to let him out and shut her up. But Verena's tenacity paid off, and Jefferson was released in the spring of 1868, President Andrew Johnson handed out thousands of pardons to former Confederates, including Jefferson Davis, who accepted amnesty, but not the president's pardon, because he maintained that he had done nothing wrong and had only been acting in accordance to the wishes of the founding fathers. Again, are we seeing the metaphor here? Remember the problems early in their marriage when Jefferson and Verena sent scathing letters to each other and their relationship was completely falling apart, but he claimed that absolutely none of it was his fault? I'm just saying, the parallels are there.

After his pardon, Davis became an outspoken member of the unofficial Lost Cause campaign, which denied that enslavement was a cause of the Civil War. Davis maintained that it played only a small role in the creation of the Confederacy until his death in 1889. After he died, Verena stewed over the fact that she never felt Jefferson loved her as much as he had loved his first wife, Sarah. She said, I gave the best and all my life to a girdled tree. It was live oak, and it was good for any purposes except for blossom and fruit. And no one should be content with anything less than the whole of a man's heart. To further fuel her lamenting, later in life Jefferson Davis was known to get very close to other women, specifically a Southern belle named Virginia Clay, who was married to Clement Clay, the third cousin of Henry Clay. They wrote over 60 letters to each other, and Jefferson said

she was the friend who gave him the most joy. Still, whatever his state of emotional intimacies with other women, Verena defended his reputation to the very end, and even helped write his memoir. Jefferson Davis had been a distant cousin to Joseph Pulitzer, and his wife Kate extended the opportunity for Verena to write articles for the New York World newspaper. Verena accepted and moved to New York City with her youngest daughter, Winnie. And, in a poetic twist of fate, the widowed Verena met and became fast friends with another notable widow, Julia Grant, former First Lady whose husband was the late General and 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. Verena Davis died in 1906

at 80 years old. Next time, we'll dig deeper into the group the Confederacy separated from. The Union. With the Army Camel Corps lost to them, they used innovation to develop a new kind of Corps. One that took to the skies, slowly, with espionage as their ultimate goal. I'll see you next time for episode three of Secrets of the Civil War. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback,

Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.