Varina Howell: Wife of Jefferson Davis

"Varina Davis is a lady in any event," Southern women of the aristocratic circles of Washington told the war correspondent of the London Times who had been sent to the National Capital to report all the news he could gather concerning the secession of the Southern States from the great American Union. There was a finality in their tones and manner as if the fact settled the whole question and right of secession. And being such perfect ladies themselves, who could be a better judge of what it took to be one. . . . They further informed him that Varina was popular and had friends and social influence in Washington, adding with pursed lips that she belonged to the set they called ënice peopleí; not like ësuch peopleí as he had seen in the White House. Thus Mrs. Jefferson Davis was described to one who, with piqued curiosity, was soon to meet her as the First Lady of the Southern Confederacy. . . . But Varina Howell Davis came proudly to her high station. She was not without a due understanding of its significance, nor was she without the feeling that she, in some degree, deserved the distinction." --from Chapter I In this volume, Mrs. Rowland has written a charming and accurate historical narrative of the Southern Confederacy in which the wife of Jefferson Davis plays a part that holds and fascinates the reader. The narrative, written in an easy, yet frank and forceful style, denotes the work as an important contribution to American biography.