Brierfield Plantation

Last updated
Brierfield Plantation
Brierfield Plantation.jpg
1880s engraving of the main house.
Location Davis Bend, Mississippi
Coordinates 32°09′12″N91°07′15″W / 32.15320°N 91.12094°W / 32.15320; -91.12094
Built1847
Built forJefferson Davis
Demolished1931 (burned)
Architectural style(s) Greek Revival
Governing bodyPrivate
USA Mississippi location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location of Brierfield Plantation in Mississippi

Brierfield Plantation was a large forced-labor cotton farm built in 1847 in Davis Bend, Mississippi, south of Vicksburg, and the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Contents

History

The use of the plantation, with more than 1,000 acres, was given to Jefferson Davis by his much older brother, Joseph E. Davis (1784-1870); it had previously been a part of Joseph Davis's much larger Hurricane Plantation, which it adjoined on a bend of the Mississippi River twenty miles from Vicksburg. With his brother's financial assistance and the forced labor of enslaved people, Jefferson Davis became a successful planter on the acreage following his brief first marriage to Sarah Knox Taylor (who died of malaria a few months after their wedding); after his second marriage to Varina Banks Howell in 1845, Davis erected a large comfortable frame house on the property that was home to himself, his wife, their children, as well as Davis's widowed sister and other relatives.

Brierfield had very profitable years and years of disastrous flooding but generally provided a comfortable living to supplement Davis's modest earnings from public office. Davis left the plantation for long periods, including his term in the House of Representatives, his service in the Mexican–American War, his terms in the Senate, and his four years as Secretary of War in the Franklin Pierce Administration. He regarded Brierfield as his primary residence and returned to it when not in office and after he resigned from the United States Senate following the Secession of Mississippi in 1861. His return to Brierfield was brief, as he was soon notified while tending the flower gardens of the house with his wife (as he recalled), that he had been elected president of the newly formed Confederate States of America and was summoned to Montgomery, Alabama, the Confederacy's first capital.

Davis did not visit Brierfield during his tenure as Confederate president. In early 1862, a small group of enslaved people liberated themselves, took control of some of the property, and fled to the Union lines near Vicksburg. In the summer of 1863, the Davis plantation was attacked by Unionist forces. At least 137 of the more than 200 enslaved people who lived on the plantation broke free by crossing to the Union side. The rest soon followed. [1]

Unlike the far larger and finer mansion of Joseph Davis at the adjoining Hurricane Plantation, which was burned to the ground, the house at Brierfield was spared the torch and used as, consecutively, field headquarters, a hospital, and a supply house for Union troops during the Mississippi campaigns. A photograph of the occupied house bearing the banner "The House Jeff Built" was widely circulated in newspapers.

Joseph Davis, who had never given Jefferson Davis title to the property, negotiated its sale after the war on a mortgage to members of the Montgomery family, former Davis family slaves, bequeathing the income from the mortgage, but not the real estate, to Jefferson in his will. The Montgomery family defaulted on the mortgage after Joseph Davis's death and the property reverted to his estate. The heirs to Joseph Davis's Hurricane plantation (his grandchildren by an acknowledged illegitimate daughter) claimed ownership of the reverted Brierfield as well, a claim disputed by Jefferson Davis, resulting in a lengthy lawsuit that was ultimately decided in Jefferson Davis's favor in 1881, giving him undisputed title to the Brierfield property for the first time, more than forty years after he first settled on the plantation. [2]

Though his primary residence in the final decade of his life was at Beauvoir, the house and farm he had inherited near Biloxi, Jefferson Davis spent much of the remaining years of his life attempting to make Brierfield profitable again. Still, fluctuating cotton prices, floods, and the cost of free (no longer enslaved) labor now denied him the income the property had once provided. He was in residence at Brierfield in the autumn of 1889, seeing to harvest when a lingering cold developed into pneumonia, and he had to be carried onto a riverboat bound for New Orleans to receive medical attention; he died a few weeks later.

After Davis's death, his widow and surviving children left Mississippi, and none of his descendants ever resided at Brierfield. The house was destroyed by fire in 1931. A drainage canal converted what had been a peninsula jutting into the Mississippi River into an island.

Some of the family's belongings taken from the house by troops were returned to the Davis family over the following decades. They may now be found at various museums associated with the Davis family and the Civil War. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jefferson Davis</span> President of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865

Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vicksburg, Mississippi</span> City in Mississippi, United States

Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat. The population was 21,573 at the 2020 census. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vicksburg was built by French colonists in 1719. The outpost withstood an attack from the native Natchez people. It was incorporated as Vicksburg in 1825 after Methodist missionary Newitt Vick. The area that is now Vicksburg was long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans as part of their historical territory along the Mississippi. The first Europeans who settled the area were French colonists who built Fort Saint Pierre in 1719 on the high bluffs overlooking the Yazoo River at present-day Redwood. They conducted fur trading with the Natchez and others, and started plantations. During the American Civil War, it was a key Confederate river-port, and its July 1863 surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, along with the concurrent Battle of Gettysburg, marked the turning-point of the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beauvoir (Biloxi, Mississippi)</span> Home of Jefferson Davis

The Beauvoir estate, built in Biloxi, Mississippi, along the Gulf of Mexico, was the post-war home (1876–1889) of the former President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis. The National Park Service designated the house and plantation as a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Varina Davis</span> Second wife of President Jefferson Davis and First Lady of the Confederate States

Varina Anne Banks Davis was the only First Lady of the Confederate States of America, and the longtime second wife of President Jefferson Davis. She moved to the Presidential Mansion in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-1861, and lived there for the remainder of the Civil War. Born and raised in the South and educated in Philadelphia, she had family on both sides of the conflict and unconventional views for a woman in her public role. She did not support the Confederacy's position on slavery, and was ambivalent about the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Knox Taylor</span> Daughter of Zachary Taylor

Sarah Knox Davis was the daughter of the 12th U.S. president Zachary Taylor and part of the notable Lee family. She met future Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) when living with her father and family at Fort Crawford during the Black Hawk War in 1832. They married in 1835 and she died three months later of malaria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John H. Reagan</span> American politician (1818–1905)

John Henninger Reagan was an American politician from Texas. A Democrat, Reagan resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives when Texas declared secession from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. He served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis as Postmaster General.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Taylor (Confederate general)</span> American military figure politician

Richard "Dick" Taylor was an American planter, politician, military historian, and Confederate general. Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, Taylor joined the Confederate States Army, serving first as a brigade commander in Virginia and later as an army commander in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Taylor commanded the District of West Louisiana and opposed United States troops advancing through upper northwest Louisiana during the Red River Campaign of 1864. He was the only son of Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States. After the war and Reconstruction, Taylor published a memoir about his experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Mississippi</span> History of the US state of Mississippi

The history of the state of Mississippi extends back to thousands of years of indigenous peoples. Evidence of their cultures has been found largely through archeological excavations, as well as existing remains of earthwork mounds built thousands of years ago. Native American traditions were kept through oral histories; with Europeans recording the accounts of historic peoples they encountered. Since the late 20th century, there have been increased studies of the Native American tribes and reliance on their oral histories to document their cultures. Their accounts have been correlated with evidence of natural events.

Benjamin Thornton Montgomery (1819–1877) was an American inventor, landowner, and freedman in Mississippi. He was taught to read and write English, and became manager of supply and shipping for Joseph Emory Davis at Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippi in the American Civil War</span> Overview of the role of the U.S. state of Mississippi during the American Civil War

Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.

Davis Bend, Mississippi, was a peninsula named after planter Joseph Emory Davis, who owned most of the property. There he established the 5,000-acre Hurricane Plantation as a model slave community. Davis Bend was about 15 miles south of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was surrounded by the Mississippi River on three sides. He gave his much younger brother Jefferson Davis the adjoining Brierfield Plantation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anchuca</span> Historic house in Mississippi, United States

Anchuca, also known as the Victor Wilson House, is a historic Greek Revival house located in Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States. The name is purported to mean "happy home" in the Choctaw language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nottoway Plantation</span> Historic plantation in Louisiana, United States

Nottoway Plantation, also known as Nottoway Plantation House is located near White Castle, Louisiana, United States. The plantation house is a Greek Revival- and Italianate-styled mansion built by slaves and artisans for John Hampden Randolph in 1859, and is the largest extant antebellum plantation house in the South with 53,000 square feet (4,900 m2) of floor space.

Davis Island is a large island located in the Mississippi River. It lies mostly in Warren County in the state of Mississippi but is also partly in Madison Parish, in the state of Louisiana. It is located about 20 miles southwest of Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA. The island is approximately 30,000 acres (120 km2) in size depending on the level of the Mississippi River. It was formerly a peninsula known as Davis Bend, with an 11,000 acres (45 km2) area of rich bottomlands, bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hurricane Plantation</span> Historic site in Davis Bend, Mississippi

Hurricane Plantation located near Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the home of Joseph Emory Davis (1784–1870), the oldest brother of Jefferson Davis. Located on a peninsula of the Mississippi River in Warren County, Mississippi, called Davis Bend after its owner, Hurricane Plantation at its peak in the antebellum era comprised more than 5,000 acres (20 km2) with approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) of river frontage. Joseph Davis owned 346 enslaved people and had a personal worth of more than $600,000 in the 1860 U.S. Census, making him one of the wealthiest men in the state of Mississippi.

Joseph Emory Davis was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who owned more than 300 slaves. He was the elder brother of Jefferson Davis and acted as his surrogate father for several years. The younger Davis became a politician, U.S. Senator, and later President of the Confederacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woodland Plantation (Church Hill, Mississippi)</span> Historic house in Mississippi, United States

The Woodland Plantation is a historic Southern plantation near Church Hill, Jefferson County, Mississippi. It retains its original antebellum 230 acre size, and has the tradition of primarily supplying hay to the area cattle. It also has a pecan orchard.

The Florence Plantation was a former cotton plantation and is a historic site, located in the community of Harwood in Chicot County, Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Thornton Montgomery</span> American freedman (1843–1909)

William Thornton Montgomery was an American freedman, businessman, farmer, and community leader, best known for his contributions to agriculture and his advocacy for African American empowerment. Born into slavery on Joseph Davis' Hurricane plantation in Warren County, Mississippi, in February 1843, Montgomery was the eldest son of Benjamin Thornton Montgomery and Mary Montgomery. He grew up alongside his younger brother, Isaiah Montgomery, who later founded Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all-black community.

References

  1. "Cease Fire: How Jefferson Davis Lost His Slaves". 7 July 2017.
  2. See Davis v. Bowmar, 55 Miss. 671, adhered to on reargument, 55 Miss. 751 (1878).
  3. Lynda Lasswell Crist. "Jefferson Davis (1808-1889)". Mississippi History Now. Archived from the original on 2010-01-08.

Bibliography