“PHYSICIANS OF THE PUBLIC WEAL”: JEFFERSON DAVIS, HIS CABINET, AND CONFEDERATE IDENTITY, NATIONALISM, AND MORALE ___________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Sam Houston State University ___________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts ___________ by Caleb Wesley Southern May 2021 “PHYSICIANS OF THE PUBLIC WEAL”: JEFFERSON DAVIS, HIS CABINET, AND CONFEDERATE IDENTITY, NATIONALISM, AND MORALE by Caleb Wesley Southern ___________ APPROVED: Brian Jordan, PhD Committee Director Nancy Baker, PhD Committee Member Thomas Cox, PhD Committee Member Chien-Pin Li, PhD Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences DEDICATION Soli Deo Gloria—Colossians 3:17 iii ABSTRACT Southern, Caleb Wesley, “Physicians of the public weal”: Jefferson Davis, his cabinet, and Confederate identity, nationalism, and morale. Master of Arts (History), May 2021, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. The Confederate States of America was dependent on the success of its military. Civilian leaders stood behind the military, creating and dictating policy at all levels of Confederate society. President Jefferson Davis assembled a Cabinet designed to unite separate States behind a single national government. Composed of state politicians of varying influence, the Cabinet of Jefferson Davis failed to engage in defining a national Confederate identity. Additionally, these men focused on the administrative work of the new government, leaving the creation of national identity and loyalty to President Davis who was consistently undermined by military failures. Examining the papers, diaries, speeches, and letters of Jefferson Davis and members of his Cabinet (and other observers of life in the Confederate capital) revealed that the Cabinet engaged in no public statements of national purpose. Additionally, Cabinet officers and key government leaders confided to private diaries and journals their belief as early as 1862 that the Confederate national experiment was doomed. Nationalism in the Confederacy was strong, relying on a pre-existing American nationalism, redirected to the new Confederate government. The Confederate nation was tied to the fight for self-government epitomized in the mind of Davis in the American Revolution. Firmly engaged in a struggle to preserve the past gains of the Revolution, Davis could never articulate a forward-looking national identity that inspired loyalty. As vast portions of the Confederacy fell to Union occupation, his words rang hollow. Efforts iv beginning in 1864 to redefine Confederate national identity based on independence removed the homogenizing effect of slavery and race. In Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, Varina Davis, the wives of Cabinet officers, and other elite women engaged in the extra-official politics of social functions. In the early years of American independence, similar social functions hosted by First Ladies helped to give the young nation a sense of legitimacy, especially on the world stage. In the Confederacy, a lukewarm First Lady and a sickly President limited social functions. When these functions did occur, they exacerbated class tensions. KEY WORDS: Jefferson Davis, Cabinet, Confederate States of America, Nationalism. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Of the many myths surrounding Lincoln, that he was a self-made man of the frontier seems to be the most pervasive and long-lasting. William W. Freehling has written of Lincoln: “Fellow frontiersmen, loving his company, hated to see him sink…prov[ing] that self-helpers’ skills must include aptitude for luring assistance.” Lincoln’s story demonstrates that “no one rises altogether unaided.”1 The work of historians, especially graduate students working on theses during a pandemic, teaches a similar lesson. First, glory goes only to God—Soli Deo Gloria. Next, many librarians and archivists assisted me in ways that they might never know or understand. Some of them, I regret, are unknown to me. Rickman Library on the campus of Southern Wesleyan University is small, but I have never known a more kind and helpful group of librarians. Joni Addis, Technical Services Librarian with Rickman Library, has been helping me gather books from across the state of South Carolina and the country since I first began my undergraduate experience in Fall 2014. Without her expertise and professional connections, many key sources would have been out of my reach. I’m thankful for Joni’s help to satisfy my seemingly insatiable thirst for more books. (I tell myself and library staff that there are worse addictions). Renna Redd, Interlibrary Loan Librarian at Clemson University, was essential in helping me get my hands on Dunbar Rowland’s Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist. It required some creativity given safety measures due to COVID that limited library access, but I’m thankful for the flexibility she showed on more than one occasion to get me 1 William W. Freehling, Becoming Lincoln (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018), first quote is on p. 82, the second is p. 135. vi resources I needed in a safe and timely manner. Jason Tomberlin and Matthew Turi, Librarians at Wilson Library (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), met with me over Zoom and were immeasurably helpful. They, too, showed kind flexibility to help me get digital access to essential manuscript collections. Mr. Turi especially directed me to valuable resources that were vital to the argument I make in this thesis. In the Summer of 2017, I traveled to Rice University to examine the Jefferson Davis papers in Woodson Research Center of Fondren Library. At the time, I was working on my undergraduate thesis. It was my first time exposed to primary source materials and the intricate world of archivists. I was incredibly thankful for their care and kindness to me then. Meeting Lynda Crist, editor of the Papers of Jefferson Davis (LSU Press) was a highlight of the trip. Her feedback, thoughts, and insight were invaluable. Though they did not help directly on this thesis, I am grateful for their help on the first which this one builds upon. My thesis advisor and committee members have been exceptional. Dr. Brian Jordan spoke to me early in my graduate school search. As a remote (non-traditional) student, he made me feel at ease and welcomed. His attention to me made me feel I was a valuable member of the Graduate School even though I was a time-zone and several states away. I am especially appreciative that he entrusted me with several opportunities to submit book reviews for The Civil War Monitor. His advice and professional connections were and are much appreciated. Dr. Thomas Cox was the first professor I had in my graduate program. Again, I was made to feel valued, and my nerves put to rest as he challenged me to think more expansively about the American founding and the Early Republic period. I took a women’s history course with Dr. Nancy Baker. In all vii honesty, I was not expecting to enjoy the course, but Dr. Baker made the subject interesting and was always supportive of my work in the class. She set up a phone call to help me better understand Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique; she tried admirably, but I might need more work yet! Her influence challenged me to reconceptualize Confederate politics and the Cabinet by incorporating the experiences and voices of elite women. Last, but assuredly not least, many thanks for my family. My in-laws, Ted and Lori, allowed me the space to read and write even as they were moving and beginning the process of building a house. My parents, as ever, were supportive. My mom returned to college herself as I embarked on graduate studies, and I am proud of her accomplishments. My brother, Josiah, finished high school as this thesis was being wrapped up. His intelligence surpasses mine, and I am especially thankful for our conversations about the nature and purpose of knowledge. My sister, Abbey, finished her RN degree and accepted her dream job as I was finishing this work. Her support came most unconventionally in the form of well-intentioned jokes about history and my fondness for dead people. My beautiful wife, Emily, does not like history. She much prefers the logic and orderliness of math. The events of 2020 turned our discussions more and more towards politics, and especially Confederate memorialization. Through these, I choose to believe, she recognized more the importance of the past (though the inevitable human irrationality still drives her crazy). I find myself living more in the abstract world of ideas while she daily goes out to live with the harsh realities and heartbreak she finds in her fourth-grade students. I will forever admire and respect her for that. She sacrificed the most during my viii time in graduate school and especially during my work on this thesis. Her sacrifices are not easily forgotten and so greatly appreciated. Caleb W. Southern Central, SC March 2021 ix PREFACE This thesis began with a curiosity and an undergraduate “answer” to that curiosity that I wanted to explore in more depth. My freshman year of high school, I carried around Doris Kearns Goodwin’s lengthy study of Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 2005). I was introduced, for the first time, to men such as Secretary of State William H. Seward; Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase; Attorney General Edward Bates; Postmaster General Montgomery Blair; and Secretaries of War Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton. These men were much more well-established than Lincoln. Their political careers had been full and controversial, explaining partly how Lincoln won the Republican nomination. Goodwin claims that Lincoln’s political genius is revealed in his gathering of these “superior” men around him in his Cabinet to advise and direct the Union war effort. The curiosity was simple: who made up the Cabinet of Lincoln’s southern “foil.” Jefferson Davis? The situation in the Confederacy seems to be the opposite faced by Lincoln.