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Jefferson Davis

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Engaging Students From Skidmore College

March 12, 2010

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

You can imagine my surprise when I returned from my trip to Shepherd University to find an email from Prof. Gregory Pfitzer of Skidmore College.  Prof. Pfitzer is currently teaching an American Studies course that focuses on Civil War Memory and has been using this blog as a resource.  Students are focusing specifically on a series of posts that I did on the Gary Casteel statue of Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber that is currently located at Beauvoir. Prof. Pfitzer thought it might be a good idea for his students to engage me on one of the posts, which I was more than happy to do.  You can follow the discussion here.  I am quite impressed with their enthusiasm as well as their ideas.  Check it out.

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Jim Limber Kidnapped and Brought to Beauvoir

October 30, 2009

in Civil War Culture, Lost Cause, Memory, Slavery, Southern History

Statue026It looks like Gary 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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Update on Jefferson Davis’s Crown of Thorns

After last week’s post on the controversy surrounding whether the story of Jefferson Davis receiving a crown of thorns from Pope Pius IX was authentic, I received this additional information.
It looks like part of the problem has to do with commentary that is contained in Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823-1899, which was selected and [...]

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So It Was a Holy Cause After All

Update: I don’t mind having to admit a mistake every once in a while, but this time I really dropped the ball.  I thought I had confirmed this story with a sufficient number of SCV websites, but Karen Cox tells me that the entire story is apocryphal.  Ruth Ann Coski, who used to work at [...]

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What’s in a Name?

Make your way over to Vast Public Indifference for a fascinating series of posts on the naming of enslaved and free blacks after Confederate heroes.

Black Children, Confederate Heroes
Jeff Davis, General Lee, and Stonewall J.
Chronology of Confederate Naming
Unionist Naming in the Postwar South

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Abe and Me

I‘ve never quite understood the vehement anger expressed by some for Abraham Lincoln. Yes, I get the libertarian concern that Lincoln’s policies reflect a fundamental shift in the size and scope of the federal government. Funny that they rarely express the same concern for Jefferson Davis who went just as far in suspending [...]

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SCV May Offer Davis-Limber Statue to Themselves

It looks like the Davis-Limber statue may wind up in a place where very few people will get to see it.  The statue was origininally offered to the American Civil War Museum at Tredegar before the SCV pulled out of the deal.  They are now looking to see if the state of Mississippi is interested in it; this [...]

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Please Accept Our Statue

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is still trying to find a home for their statue of Jefferson Davis and Jim Limber.  The statue, which cost $100,000, was originally planned for the grounds at Tredegar in Richmond next to the statue of Lincoln and his son Tad.  The American Civil War Museum accepted the statue, but [...]

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