Jim Limber Kidnapped and Brought to Beauvoir

October 30, 2009

in Civil War Culture, Lost Cause, Memory, Memory and Public Spaces, Slavery, Southern History

Statue026It looks like Ron Casteel’s statue of Jefferson Davis holding hands with his biological son and “adopted” son, Jim Limber, has found a new home at Beauvoir.  You may remember that this statue was commissioned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in hopes that it would be placed next to the Lincoln statue at the Tredegar Iron Works.  That deal fell through and left the organization scrambling for alternative sites.  At one point they even asked the state of Mississippi to accept it.

Since the SCV meant to “educate” the public about Jefferson Davis and race relations during the Civil War with this statue, it is hard not to see this new home as reflecting nothing less than a complete and utter public relations failure.  The reason the statue ended up here has nothing to do with political correctness or any other catch-phrase that is currently en vogue.  It has to do with the fact that the statue has little to do with solid history and has everything to do with the current SCV propaganda machine which would have the general public see the Confederacy as part of some sort of civil rights movement.  I’ve written quite a bit about this particular story over the past year if interested.

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  • msimons
    Who at the National SCV could you ask Kevin?
  • To be honest, I have little interest in asking the SCV much of anything re: this statue. I followed this story closely over the past year and read their statements. Their message is crystal clear.
  • margaretdblough
    Because, as the comments to your earlier articles demonstrate, it wants to completely misrepresent the relationship and give the impression, for which I know of no historical evidence, that Jefferson Davis really adopted Limber and treated him as an equal to his other children. In the real antebellum South, it wasn't unusual for the matriarchs of white slaveowning families to take a fancy to an exceptional slave child and act as his/her protecter. It was also very common, in those slaveowning families who could manage it, to "give" a slave of equivalent age to a newborn or young child of the slave-owning family to act as a companion and future "body servant."-sort of a talking pet with benefits for the white child and a way of getting some value out of an asset who was too young to do more physical labor for the owner.
  • This story is just part of a larger push on the part of the SCV to distance slavery from the history of the Civil War and the Confederacy in particular. One blogger in particular continues to reference a recent essay by John Coski on Jim Limber and his relationship to the Davis family. John would be horrified to learn that his essay is being used for such purposes. Nothing in that piece is meant to justify the SCV's depiction of Davis and Limber in their statue.

    http://cwmemory.com/2008/06/20/john-coski-on-je...
  • margaretdblough
    Nothing John Coski has written or ever could write could reasonably serve as support for what the SCV is attempting. He's too good a historian for that. I have friends & acquaintances through the Longstreet Memorial Fund, who had been very active in the South Carolina chapter of the SCV at the time. Some even held office. However, the North Carolina SCV fiercely resisted the ultimately successful takeover of the SCV by the extreme Lost Causer faction led by Kirk Lyons (of the League of the South or whatever it's currently calling itself)/Brag Bowling/Wilson. As a result, pretty much anyone in NC who didn't support the current policy either resigned in disgust or, if they didn't, they were literally purged by the extremists. One of those purged was someone with whom I had some heated debate over the cause of the war in prior years. When I got that news, I remember thinking with horror that, if this man was too liberal for them, the thought of what was acceptable to them was terrifying.
  • jfe
    Is there any indication that the Davises looked for Jim or made inquiries into what happened to him? ISTM that the story the SCV is pushing requires this---not that lack of evidence has stopped them before ...
  • There is no evidence that much of anything was done to track Limber down after the war. I should point out that both William Cooper (author of the best biography of J.Davis) and Joan Cashin (author of the best recent study of V.Davis) have next to nothing to say about the Limber story. My guess is that the amount of attention is directly related to the amount of evidence available to interpret. The SCV's statue suggests a robust picture of Limber's place within the family. In the end, this statue has very little to do with Davis and Limber.
  • msimons
    While I agree it could be seen as a PR failure; to me it is where it belongs at the Davis home. That is where Davis spent his latter years. Plus Kevin in our PC world most would never want to have a Davis statue of any kind near the Perfect spotless Honest Abe.

    A good question for CW reseachers would be what ever happend to Jim Limber Davis after Union soldiers took him from his adopted family.
  • Given that the SCV is in charge of Beauvoir it is indeed in its rightful place. Richmond already has two Davis statues so there is clearly no shortage. The Lincoln statue commemorates a visit that Lincoln in fact made with his son.

    No one knows what happened to Limber after the war and that is part of the problem with this statue. The symbolism is based on how the SCV has chosen to portray the relationship even though we know very little about. Don't you think Limber's own view is relevant? It's a classic example of the butchering of the past to serve a modern-day agenda.
  • msimons
    Seeing that Mrs. Davis saved the boy from a abusive relationship He would have been greatful that the Davis's had taken him in and treated him like a son and not a house slave.
  • The available evidence does indeed support such a claim, but if that is the case why not acknowledge it in the statue? In other words, why is Jefferson Davis holding hands with Limber rather than Varina?
  • msimons
    We need to ask Ron that since he made the statue.
  • Casteel may have crafted the statue, but he was commissioned by the SCV. They decided the form it should take. As far as I know, Casteel is not a historian.
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