Tell: Photograph Of Jefferson Davis In Women’s Clothing Show &Amp – More From Mental_Floss
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While Davis sneaking through the Georgia swampland while holding a dagger, other photographs from the period depict Davis’s head superimposed on a body wearing full hoop skirts with large men’s boots also imposed over the body.
Whenever portraying the Southern leader as a coward willing to emasculate himself with an eye to escape, s flight played into that narrative.
Historians have noted that the North gendered its victory as masculine and heroic and, in contrast, portrayed the South as feminine and weak. Manly martyrs do not wear women’s clothes. Needless to say, the story of Davis in women’s clothing traveled quickly to the ears of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Stanton recognized the story as an opportunity to discredit Davis, who still had numerous sympathizers throughout the country. So shawl was also worn by many men in the mid19th century, including Abraham Lincoln.
There was a slight hitch in his plan namely, the look and style of VarinaDavis’s overcoat and shawl.
Stanton planned to exploit the account to the Union’s full advantage.
Mrs. Known davis’s overcoat was essentially unisex, and bore a striking resemblance to the raincoats of Union soldiers. Indeed, even Barnum couldn’t resist the spectacle. Oftentimes historian Gaines Foster writes, Northerners delighted in the accounts of how the Confederate chieftain had tried to escape in female disguise. So rumor proved incredibly popular. On May 10, 1865, Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederacy, was captured by Union troops near Irwinville. Photography was undoubtedly a powerful tool to disseminate the story of Davis’s and the South’s defeat. Of course, in 1869, he commissioned a photograph of himself wearing the actual clothes he had worn when captured. However, davis himself recognized the importance of the new medium. Ok, and now one of the most important parts. Numerous prints circulated of Davis in petticoats, and photography a relatively new medium at the time took up the theme as well. Here, Davis wears both bonnet, shawl, and petticoats, a fanciful elaboration on the story of his capture, and the skirts are lifted to reveal his spurred boots. Whenever having been imposed on another body, in this combination photograph produced by the Slee Brothers of Poughkeepsie, NY, now owned now by the International Center of Photography in Manhattan, Davis is depicted in the petticoats of a woman, his head, taken from a separate photographic portrait.
While as indicated by a handful of accounts from the period, davis was captured while wearing women’s clothes.
Union troops spotted the two women and, on closer look, realized that one was wearing spurred boots.
With the encouragement of his wife, as it’s generally told, the story depicts a man desperate to escape and so, Varina, he donned her overcoat and shawl and slipped into the Georgia swamp with a female servant. While believing that the South could still wage a guerilla war against the Union, a true believer in the cause of the Confederacy, refused to accept Lee’s surrender. Whenever hoping to make it to Texas, where he believed he could continue to fight, with that cause in mind, davis and his family fled Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital.
