Inland Empire

Varina Davis: Confederate Enigma

Passive and deferential, stalwartly pro-South, a role model of traditional southern womanhood in dress, comportment, and companionship: These are the defining characteristics of the First Lady of the Confederacy…or so we might think, and so her peers may have expected.  But in truth, Varina Davis, the first and only First Lady of the fledgling southern nation, proved far more complicated to her peers and to modern audiences seeking to understand her precise role and standing amongst the ruling elite of the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia. Conforming in some aspects to societal expectations befitting her gender and class, while notably defying others, Varina was and remains an enigma.  This talk will explore some of the key ways in which she navigated the social and political responsibilities and expectations placed upon her, all while refusing to forsake her own notions of what it meant to be the wife of the Confederate president—notions that were often at odds with those held by others within her social circle.  Weaving social politics with national politics, regional culture with national culture, Varina created a unique role for herself as the female figurehead of a society and a nation at war for its survival---a role that proved as complex and controversial in the post-war years as it did between 1861-1865.  

Historian Ashley Whitehead Luskey is Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. She is an accomplished scholar with more than 23 years of experience in public history, Luskey came to Gettysburg College from Morgantown, West Virginia, where she served as owner of Past Presented Historical Consulting and an instructor in the Department of History at West Virginia University.

A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Luskey earned her M.A. in History, with a concentration in Public History, in 2010, and her Ph.D. in History in 2014 from West Virginia University. She has worked extensively as a ranger-historian for the National Park Service at Richmond National Battlefield Park

Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He is the author of, The Age of Acrimony and The Virgin Vote, frequently contributes to the New York Times, and has been featured in the New Yorker and the Washington Post and on CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in Washington D.C.

The Inland Empire Civil War Round Table was instrumental in forming the 

African Americans in the Civil War Era Round Table.  

Its website is https://www.aacwert.org