Winnie Davis
Daughter of the Lost Cause
Potomac Books · Print & ebook · October 1, 2020
Winner of the Colonial Dames of America Book Award Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis was born into a war-torn South in June of 1864, the youngest daughter of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his second wife, Varina Howell Davis.
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- Who it’s for
- A biography shaped by the uneasy distance between public Southern icon and private choices.
- Themes
- Lost Cause and Confederate memory, Postwar identity and belonging, Tolerance amid social pressure
- Genres
- Lives in History, Women's Lives, Civil War Era
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Winner of the Colonial Dames of America Book Award Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis was born into a war-torn South in June of 1864, the youngest daughter of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his second wife, Varina Howell Davis. Occurring only a month after the death of beloved Confederate hero general J.E.B. Stuart during a string of Confederate victories, Winnie’s birth was hailed as an omen of victory by war-weary Southerners.
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But after the Confederacy’s ultimate defeat, Winnie would spend her early life as a genteel refugee and expatriate abroad. After returning to the South from German boarding school, Winnie was christened the “Daughter of the Confederacy” in 1886. For Confederate veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Winnie became an icon of the Lost Cause, eclipsing even her father. Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause is the first published biography of this little-known woman who unwittingly became the female symbol of the defeated South. Winnie’s controversial engagement in 1890 to a Northerner lawyer whose grandfather was a famous abolitionist and her later move to work as a writer in New York City shocked her friends, family, and the Southern groups who worshiped her. Faced with the pressures of a community that violently rejected the match, Winnie desperately attempted to reconcile her prominent Old South history with her personal desire for tolerance.
Icon and Individual
A biography shaped by the uneasy distance between public Southern icon and private choices.
Come here for
- A little-known woman at the center of Lost Cause memory
- The collision of Southern inheritance and a desire for tolerance
Expect
- A life caught between public reverence and personal wishes
- A portrait of postwar Southern identity
Where it sits
| Civil War Era | 68% |
|---|---|
| Women's Lives | 48% |
| Lives in History | 46% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Lives in History
- Women's Lives
- 19th-Century America
- Civil War Era
Show all 5 publisher categories
- Women's History
- Authors
- Heath Hardage Lee
- Publisher
- Potomac Books
- Published
- October 1, 2020
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Lost Cause and Confederate memory · Postwar identity and belonging · Tolerance amid social pressure
- Reading lane
- Lives in History