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.Davis must have known itwas inappropriate to leave during the ceremony.Her behavior againreveals the depth of her fears and her inability to control them.At areception at the White House the next day, she greeted the guests inan affable manner, although one of them said that she was not a fitpartner for her husband.She remains one of the only Americanwomen who has ever left her husband s inaugural.Perhaps the onlyone.20As Mrs.Davis embarked on her second year as the ConfederateFirst Lady, she still would not relinquish her ties to her Northern117[To view this image, refer tothe print version of this title.]The Davis children, 1860s.The rambunctious offspring.(Beauvoir)no matter what danger there wasfriends, and early in 1862 she managed to slip more letters to a Mrs.Taylor, unidentified, who shared the contents with the Blairs in Wash-ington.Again, the means of delivery cannot be determined, but theBlairs quoted her missive in correspondence with each other, includ-ing her exclamation that her memory  overleapt the horrid Gulf nowbetween us to the happiest part of her life, her days in the nation scapital.In her heart, Davis said, she clung to Lizzie Blair Lee, MinnaBlair, and Matilda Emory with unchanged affection, and all threewomen, so different and so clever, would be dear to her all of her life.Later in 1862, Union forces intercepted more of her correspondencewith Northerners the recipients unnamed and a naval commandergave the letter to the Blairs.The Northern press also reported thatauthorities confiscated dresses sent to Varina Davis from unknownpersons in Washington and Baltimore.She obviously did not agreewith her husband s statement in his inaugural about the North s bar-barism or his other statements that Northerners were  evil or thatthey were  savages. 21Into 1862, the First Lady tried halfheartedly to conform to herrole, displaying in the executive mansion some knickknacks sent toher by Confederate soldiers, but the criticism of her appearance, herdemeanor, and her friends continued.In the spring Marion T.Myers,wife of Quartermaster Abraham Myers, took note of Mrs.Davis s very dark complexion and called her a  squaw, nineteenth-centuryslang that connoted an overt sensuality.When the report reachedVarina Davis, a  high scene took place with Mrs.Myers.Some of thecriticism became increasingly irrational.A Virginian objected be-cause Mrs.Davis called her husband by his first name and, evenworse, he thought, hired an Irish servant and went by carriage to thegirl s residence to pick her up.Confederate Congressman WilliamPorcher Miles mocked the First Lady s attire and rejoiced when someof her dresses were lost at sea.He believed that she disliked SouthCarolinians, overlooking Mary Chesnut, and added that she was notvery smart.The   best people  in Richmond did not like her, heaverred, only a few  fast women, including, possibly, the QuakerAnne Grant.22119no matter what danger there wasAttacks on presidents wives were nothing new; they predated theCivil War and would outlast it.Since the dawn of the Republic, thepress and the public have criticized these women, often as surrogatesfor their husbands, sometimes because they did not conform to con-ventional ideas of feminine behavior or physical beauty, or becausetheir conduct raised anxieties about other cultural issues.First Ladieswere tasked for their looks (Mrs.James Polk), their haughty manners(Mrs.James Monroe), their flirtatious manners (Mrs.James Madi-son), their fine educations (Mrs.John Quincy Adams), their pooreducations (Mrs.James Madison), their partisan views (Mrs.JohnAdams), their supposed domination of their husbands (Mrs.John Ad-ams, Mrs.James Madison, the second Mrs.John Tyler, Mrs.JamesPolk), their western ways (Mrs.Zachary Taylor), and for using snuff(Mrs.Madison).The wives of other Confederate politicians probablywould have been criticized had their spouses become the head ofstate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]