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.There the letter breaks off, the remainder lost or destroyed,but press reports indicate that the final version repeated one last timeher oft-stated reasons for moving to New York.6The national press made much of the post-mortem letter, as itcame to be called, with the Washington Post relating that Mrs.Davisused severe language to explain why she resided in the North.TheAtlanta Constitution called her criticisms tart and said Davis was try-ing to vindicate herself. Many white Southerners blamed Kimbroughfor making the letter public, as did Maggie Hayes.She claimed thatthe Kimbroughs had goaded her mother into writing the letter, andthat she had tried to persuade Mary to destroy it, but Maggie feltcompelled to explain again in the Confederate Veteran why her motherand sister moved to New York they were afraid to live at Beauvoir,they wanted literary careers, and Varina disliked the climate of theDeep South.Her mother loved and honored the South, Maggie in-sisted, but had the right to live where she wished.7After this last controversy, Varina Davis faded swiftly from the na-tion s memory.If Mary Todd Lincoln is remembered as the First Ladywho went to an insane asylum, Davis is scarcely remembered at all;the town of Varina, Virginia, commonly thought to be named for her,was founded in the 1600s.She was forgotten in large part because shedid not conform to the stereotypes of her time or our own.Her am-bivalence about the Confederacy troubled white Southerners, andher life in New York violated the norms of the Lost Cause culture,for she became friends with Mrs.Ulysses Grant, had a civil conversa-tion with Booker T.Washington, said in print that God had allowedthe Union to prevail, died in a hotel on Central Park, and reproached310 at peacethe white Southern public from the grave.And most Southerners didnot know that she had visited Union prisoners in Richmond, or theextent of her wartime correspondence with Northerners, or herthoughts on the war in her private letters during and after the con-flict.Since we know what she did and what she said in those letters,how do we assess her life? By almost every measure including hereducation in Philadelphia, her relatives in the North, and her years inWashington Davis was poorly prepared to be the Confederate FirstLady.Her physical appearance, her wide reading, and her wit did nothelp, and of course her doubts about the Confederate cause workedagainst her.Her anti-war comments are probably more authentic thanher pro-war comments, considering when she made those statementsand to whom, and keeping in view the lifelong pressures on her tosupport the Southern cause.Her years in Richmond were the worstof her life, and after the war, the Confederacy was a burden and ablight, but it also gave her the opportunity to start over in New Yorkas a widow.There she assumed a more congenial public role advocat-ing reconciliation, and she rejoined metropolitan culture.Because shewas famous, her long effort to come to terms with the war was apublic struggle.The criticism she received from white Southernersonly highlights how conformist the Lost Cause culture became, per-haps as conformist as the Confederacy itself.She followed a long trajectory from Natchez to New York, whichshe was able to survive because her personality was practical andadaptable, but these traits coexisted with a Hamlet-like indecision onthe political and cultural issues of her time.Her unwillingness to fol-low through on many of her own observations, her feints and re-treats, her silences artful and otherwise, are understandable for awoman of her generation.The unexamined life might not be worthliving, but her life might have been unbearable if she had examined ittoo closely, for she made many sacrifices for a cause she did not fullysupport and for a husband who did not fully return her love.In herold age she resolved some of the dilemmas dating from her childhoodabout region, riches, gender, and race.She left the South and sup-311 at peaceported herself, and in doing so she went far beyond conventionalideas on gender, although she did not endorse woman suffrage
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