Varina Anne Banks Davis was the only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, and the longtime second wife of President Jefferson Davis. She moved to the Presidential Mansion in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-1861, and lived there for the remainder of the Civil War. Born and raised in the South and educated in Philadelphia, she had family on both sides of the conflict and unconventional views for a woman in her public role. She did not support the Confederacy's position on slavery, and was ambivalent about the war.
Varina Davis
The Briars in Natchez, Mississippi.
Wedding photograph of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell, 1845
Davis in 1849, by John Wood Dodge
Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.
Photograph by Mathew Brady, c. 1859
Daguerrotype wedding photograph of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell (1845)
Watercolor of The Defeat of the Mexican Lancers by the Mississippi Rifles by Samuel Chamberlain (c. 1860)
Daguerrotype of Representative Davis of the 29th U.S. Congress (c. 1846)
