President Davis Research Paper

The presence and role of President Davis is somewhat questionable. Two out the three accounts places President Davis in Capitol Square, however, in Sallie Putnam the President is not mentioned. The absence of President Davis in Sallie Putnam’s book is very noticeable. Putnam’s omission of President Davis raised numerous questions. One would think that the presence of the President would be worth noting. So why did she not write that Davis was there? Did she not personally like Davis? But, in reexamining both Varina Davis and John Jones’ retellings of the Richmond bread riot, I discovered that both authors may have written biased accounts. In Jones’ A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, he wrote that “I did not follow, to see what they did” but he learned about the incident an hour later. Since Jones was not
She might have written that President Davis came to stop the rioters to portray him as a courageous president who is well invested in the happiness and well-being of his people. Mrs. Davis willingness to illustrate Jefferson Davis as a heroic was revealed by the five minute warning given to the rioters to vacate Capitol Square. In the second volume of Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by His Wife, Mrs. Davis writes that President Davis stated, “We do not desire to injure anyone, but this lawlessness must stop. I will give you five minutes to disperse, otherwise you will be fired on.” In both Jones’ and Putnam’s retelling it is Governor Letcher, who gave the five minute warning to the mob, not President Davis as written in Varina Davis’s memoir. Reasons why Jones didn’t give the same retelling may be because President Davis was not present during the riot or Jones was given bad information. Even so, Mrs. Davis may have written that her husband threatened the public into submission in order to show Davis as a fearless leader who took charge of the situation instead of Governor Letcher. Finally, we have to question how did Mrs. Davis obtain the information about the bread