Varina Davis

Varina Banks Howell Davis (May 7, 1826 – October 16, 1906) was the second wife of the politician Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States of America in 1861. She served as the First Lady of the new nation at the capital in Richmond, Virginia, although she was ambivalent about the war. Well educated in Philadelphia, with family in both the North and South, she had unconventional views for her public role, she supported slavery and states' rights.Howell Davis became a writer after the American Civil War, completing her husband's memoir. She was recruited by Kate Davis Pulitzer to write articles and eventually a regular column for her husband Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World. In 1891 after her husband's death, Howell Davis moved to New York City to live full-time there with her daughter Winnie. She acted to reconcile prominent figures of the North and South in the late nineteenth century.