battlefields spread across
America. It was a struggle in the midst of a national crisis.
Chapter 2
Birth of a Nation
M ONDAY , February 18, 1861, began with a bright, blazing sun rising into a clear, blue sky far above the rooftops and cupolas of
Montgomery, Alabama. A vibrant city of 8,843, Alabama’s capital was proudly transforming into the center of the whole South.
It would be a noble experiment in nation building.
Although its population was modest, Montgomery was accustomed to a flurry of activity from the earliest days on the Alabama
frontier. Located in the central part of the state, with Birmingham to the north and Mobile to the south, Montgomery hosted
steamboat traffic on the Alabama River and frequent trains on the Montgomery and West Point Railroad. The city’s jewel was
the neoclassical State House, finished like a great Southern marble cake, with six Corinthian columns and a rust-colored dome
that gave it a magnificence above any other buildings in the region.
On the cool morning of the Confederacy’s birth, all was bustling within the city. “Montgomery has become a focal point of
interest for the whole nation,” penned a visiting reporter for the
New York Herald.
1 It was something of an understatement. From the Capitol Building down to the river, along the city’s principal business streets,
gas lamps were extinguished one by one as dawn captured the sky above. The residents of fine homes in residential neighborhoods
awoke and prepared for the big day, dressing in their best finery to catch a glimpse of the South’s new leader.
They were not alone: throngs of visitors clogged the three principal hotels. Others stayed wherever they could, many boarding
in private houses, hoping to secure employment in some capacity in this new venture called the Southern Confederacy. Interspersed
among the whites in the fancy neighborhoods were African Americans, many acting as house servants. Of the 4,502 African Americans
in Montgomery, about 100 were free. They lived in basic cottages that lined the city’s outer limits.
The chief revolutionary, president-elect Jefferson Davis, had made an exhausting trip from his Brierfield plantation in Mississippi
to attend his inaugural ceremony. Already the Confederate leader felt the pressure of his post; his fatigued frame held a
plain, homespun suit, and his voice was so strained by making speeches along his journey that the words he uttered were too
soft and flayed for many to hear.
Long before the Confederacy was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, Jefferson Finis Davis had a celebrated, successful career as a
soldier and politician. Davis’s parents, Samuel and Jane, were farmers and innkeepers who had succeeded in Georgia after the
American Revolution but soon moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where they cleared a two-hundred-acre farm with the aid
of several children and two slaves. By the time Jefferson came along, on June 3, 1808, he was the tenth child, born in a cabin
on the farm when his mother was forty-eight. To signify the postscript to their family, Jane and Samuel added the middle name,
alerting those who didn’t suspect already that Jefferson would be the last Davis child. Eight months later, and fewer than
one hundred miles away, another baby would arrive on the Kentucky frontier and be named Abraham Lincoln.
After adding horses and slaves to the clan and in search of better land, Samuel Davis moved the family again in 1810, this
time to Louisiana, and a year later, to the southwestern corner of the Mississippi Territory, which would achieve statehood
in 1817. There, Jefferson Davis would grow through his adolescent years and become a man, following the course of many youths,
rebelling against school despite his bright mind and success. He entered college at Transylvania University, in Lexington,
Kentucky, in the heart of the bluegrass region, where he resolidified ties to his native state. His
America. It was a struggle in the midst of a national crisis.
Chapter 2
Birth of a Nation
M ONDAY , February 18, 1861, began with a bright, blazing sun rising into a clear, blue sky far above the rooftops and cupolas of
Montgomery, Alabama. A vibrant city of 8,843, Alabama’s capital was proudly transforming into the center of the whole South.
It would be a noble experiment in nation building.
Although its population was modest, Montgomery was accustomed to a flurry of activity from the earliest days on the Alabama
frontier. Located in the central part of the state, with Birmingham to the north and Mobile to the south, Montgomery hosted
steamboat traffic on the Alabama River and frequent trains on the Montgomery and West Point Railroad. The city’s jewel was
the neoclassical State House, finished like a great Southern marble cake, with six Corinthian columns and a rust-colored dome
that gave it a magnificence above any other buildings in the region.
On the cool morning of the Confederacy’s birth, all was bustling within the city. “Montgomery has become a focal point of
interest for the whole nation,” penned a visiting reporter for the
New York Herald.
1 It was something of an understatement. From the Capitol Building down to the river, along the city’s principal business streets,
gas lamps were extinguished one by one as dawn captured the sky above. The residents of fine homes in residential neighborhoods
awoke and prepared for the big day, dressing in their best finery to catch a glimpse of the South’s new leader.
They were not alone: throngs of visitors clogged the three principal hotels. Others stayed wherever they could, many boarding
in private houses, hoping to secure employment in some capacity in this new venture called the Southern Confederacy. Interspersed
among the whites in the fancy neighborhoods were African Americans, many acting as house servants. Of the 4,502 African Americans
in Montgomery, about 100 were free. They lived in basic cottages that lined the city’s outer limits.
The chief revolutionary, president-elect Jefferson Davis, had made an exhausting trip from his Brierfield plantation in Mississippi
to attend his inaugural ceremony. Already the Confederate leader felt the pressure of his post; his fatigued frame held a
plain, homespun suit, and his voice was so strained by making speeches along his journey that the words he uttered were too
soft and flayed for many to hear.
Long before the Confederacy was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, Jefferson Finis Davis had a celebrated, successful career as a
soldier and politician. Davis’s parents, Samuel and Jane, were farmers and innkeepers who had succeeded in Georgia after the
American Revolution but soon moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where they cleared a two-hundred-acre farm with the aid
of several children and two slaves. By the time Jefferson came along, on June 3, 1808, he was the tenth child, born in a cabin
on the farm when his mother was forty-eight. To signify the postscript to their family, Jane and Samuel added the middle name,
alerting those who didn’t suspect already that Jefferson would be the last Davis child. Eight months later, and fewer than
one hundred miles away, another baby would arrive on the Kentucky frontier and be named Abraham Lincoln.
After adding horses and slaves to the clan and in search of better land, Samuel Davis moved the family again in 1810, this
time to Louisiana, and a year later, to the southwestern corner of the Mississippi Territory, which would achieve statehood
in 1817. There, Jefferson Davis would grow through his adolescent years and become a man, following the course of many youths,
rebelling against school despite his bright mind and success. He entered college at Transylvania University, in Lexington,
Kentucky, in the heart of the bluegrass region, where he resolidified ties to his native state. His
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