When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection. After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war. A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place. As historian Cashin remarks in the concluding chapter of this thorough biography of the wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, "If Mary Todd Lincoln is remembered as the First Lady who went to an insane asylum, [Mrs.] Davis is scarcely remembered at all." Sympathetic but not uncritical in her well--researched treatment, Cashin gives Varina Davis her due, drawing distinct images of her personality and clearly estimating her effect on her husband and country. Finding that Mrs. Davis "made many sacrifices for a cause she did not fully support and for a husband who did not fully return her love," Cashin views her within a framework of the traditional role expected of a Southern plantation wife and the role that was anticipated by the Confederate public for their first First Lady. Living in Washington, D.C., as the wife of a congressman, then senator, then secretary of war under President Pierce, was a happy time for her; conversely, times were unhappy when she resided in the Confederate White House in Richmond. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved This fascinating biography is the first full life of Varina Howell, the wife of Jefferson Davis. It is also the first detailed account of their turbulent marriage--between an adoring woman who could not always agree with her husband's ideas, and a stiff, much older man who cared nothing for his wife's opinions but demanded her total obedience. Joan Cashin has done an extraordinary amount of research--much of it in manuscripts and diaries hitherto unused by historians--and she writes with sensitivity, but without sentimentality. This is a major biography, essential for an understanding of the Confederacy and important for the history of women. --David Herbert Donald, author of Lincoln Cashin has done justice to this compelling figure. A respected and prolific scholar of southern women's history, Cashin spent over fourteen years researching Varina Davis, painstakingly examining print sources and combing the many archives that hold relevant manuscript material. This extraordinary effort and Cashin's skill as a historian and writer are apparent on every page of this thorough, objective, and engaging book. Cashin has been careful not to impose twenty-first-century feminist values on Varina Davis, instead establishing the historical context of social, political, and gender relations and letting the documentary evidence fill in the details of Davis's life. The result is a subtle examination of an actual person, warts and all. --Elizabeth Bramm Dunn ( North Carolina Historical Review 2007-01-01) Joan Cashin's superb new reading of the First Lady of the Confederacy offers a vivid yet balanced account of Varina Howell Davis. This is biography at its best: deep research, new material, a perceptive author, and an engrossing subject. In Cashin's hands Varina's story reaches beyond the First Lady's unique circumstances as wife, mother and widow to tell us about the old and new South. Both specialists and the general public will enjoy this exceptional portrait. --Jean Baker, Professor of History, Goucher College Fascinating in her own right, Varina Davis was in some ways a 20th century woman out of her time. Her force of personality, dedication, and independent spirit, make her in many ways more interesting than her husband. In Joan Cashin's First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War we have a biography worthy of the woman at last.