Shrine to the Leader of the Confederacy

They call the stately 135-year-old home on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico the Mt. Vernon of the Confederate States.

It was at Beauvoir (French for beautiful view) that Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, spent the last 12 years of his life and wrote his two-volume work, “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.”

The 87-acre estate, owned by the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is a shrine to Davis and the Confederacy. On the grounds, in a cemetery containing the graves of 800 Confederates and their wives, is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Confederate States of America.

Davis died in 1889 at the age of 81. The Sons of Confederate Veterans purchased the property in 1903 to preserve the mansion as it was when Davis lived there. A section of the grounds was converted to house Confederate veterans, their wives and widows.

A veterans hospital also was built, and served as a home until 1956. It is now one of the foremost museums and libraries of the Confederacy. Exhibited in the mansion’s basement is one of the largest collections of Davis memorabilia.

Davis is revered in the South. His birthday, June 3, is a holiday in the Southern states, a day to commemorate the Confederacy and those who fought and died for it from 1861 to 1865.

Towns, counties, streets and boulevards throughout the South are named in Davis’ honor. A 351-foot obelisk, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, stands at his birthplace in Fairview, Ky. He is buried in Richmond, Va., the former Confederate capital.

Monuments, memorials and Confederate cemeteries are cared for by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. Members of both organizations must be direct or collateral descendants of Confederate soldiers, sailors or civil servants.

“We are a growing organization,” said William D. McCain, 81, of Hattiesburg, Miss., a retired Army general who spent 20 years as president of the University of Southern Mississippi. He has been national secretary-treasurer of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for 35 years.

“When I became secretary-treasurer in 1953, there were 1,500 members and $1,100 in the treasury. Today our membership is over 8,000 in more than 200 chapters in 20 states and we have nearly $1.5 million in the bank,” McCain said. Headquartered in Hattiesburg, the organization publishes the Confederate Veteran magazine.

The Richmond-based United Daughters of the Confederacy has nearly 30,000 members in 800 chapters in 37 states, noted Alice Whitley Jones, 78, a member for 59 years and former national president. The organization sponsors Children of the Confederacy, a youth group numbering 5,000 which meets regularly and studies the history of the Confederacy. United Daughters of the Confederacy also provides a number of annual university scholarships to descendants of Confederate servicemen.

Davis, son of a wealthy cotton planter, was born eight months before Abraham Lincoln. Davis was graduated from West Point in 1828, fought and was wounded in the Mexican War, served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and was secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce.

Inaugurated president of the Confederacy on Feb. 18, 1861, Davis was captured at Irwinville, Ga., on May 9, 1865, and spent two years in prison. He was indicted for treason May 10, 1866, but never brought to trial. On Dec. 15, 1868, a proclamation of amnesty was declared for all members of the Confederacy.

Davis’ first wife, Sarah, was the daughter of Zachary Taylor, an Army colonel who later became President. She died of malaria three months after their marriage. His second wife, Varina Anne Howell, was 18 when she married Davis, 36 at the time. They had six children.

Keith Hardison, 32, curator of the Jefferson Davis Shrine in Biloxi, noted that the Confederate seal has the figure of George Washington on horseback, not Davis or Robert E. Lee.

“The Confederates considered seceding from the Union a parallel action to the American Revolution,” he said. “Many of their ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, Jefferson Davis’ father among them.”