Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

ca. 1865, [carte de visite collage portrait of Jefferson Davis “in disguise, as he appeared at the time of his capture"]

via the International Center of Photography, “President in Petticoats! Civil War Propaganda in Photographs" Exhibit

Jim Limber (Jim Limber Davis), was a mulatto boy who was briefly a ward & possible adopted son of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. Who Knew?

Under the care of the Davis family from February 1864 to May 1865. His real name may have been James Henry Brooks.  Varina Howell Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, was returning home in Richmond, Virginia, when she saw a black boy being beaten by a guardian. Outraged, she immediately put an end to the beating and had the boy come with her in her carriage. He was cared for by Mrs. Davis and her staff. They gave him clothes belonging to the Davises’ son, Joe, since the boys were of similar age.

Davis arranged for Jim to be freed from slavery. It is unknown if Davis actually adopted him. There was no adoption law in Virginia at that time, so any adoption would be an “extralegal” affair. When the Davises were captured by Union forces in Georgia, Jim was separated from them. Some recounts of the story say this was due to a swift kidnapping of Limber by the Union Army, while other accounts say that the Davises recognized a Union general they knew well, Rufus Saxton. The Davis family never saw Jim again.

Photo Source: http://www.bardofthesouth.com/the-taking-of-jim-limber/

Fig. 3E- John Wilkes Booth (seated) poses for a portrait with Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, circa 1863.  It is the only known picture of Booth in his true vampire form.

Thru Sept 2: ”President in Petticoats!”  Civil War Propaganda in Photographs International Center of Photography (ICP) 1114 Ave of the Americas, NYC (@ 43rd St) As the American Civil War ground to a dispiriting and unheroic end after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s rebel forces and the shocking assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in mid-April 1865, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, became a political fugitive. At dawn on May 10, 1865, a contingent of Michigan cavalry captured Davis in a makeshift camp outside Irwinville, Georgia. In his haste to flee, Davis grabbed his wife’s overcoat rather than his own. News reports immediately circulated that Davis had been apprehended in women’s clothes and that he was attempting to disguise himself as a woman. Northern artists and caricaturists seized upon these rumors of cowardly escape and created wildly inventive images, some using photomontage, to sensationalize the political story. Photographers circulated and even pirated dozens of fanciful photographic cards; many used a photographic portrait of Davis on a hand-drawn body in a woman’s dress, hat, and crinoline, but wearing his own boots, the detail that supposedly betrayed him to his captors.