page_title: White House of the Confederacy
section_title: Davis family
hierarchical_section_title: White House of the Confederacy / History / Davis family
caption_attribution_description: White House of the Confederacy, 1201 East Clay Street, Richmond, Virginia, April 1865
context_page_description: The White House of the Confederacy is a historic house located in the Court End neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1818, it was the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. It was viewed as the Confederate States counterpart to the White House in Washington, D.C.
  The Jefferson Davis Executive Mansion was owned by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society from 1894 until 2014, when the Museum of the Confederacy merged with the American Civil War Center. The merged entity is now the American Civil War Museum. The house museum is known as the White House of the Confederacy. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
context_section_description: Jefferson Davis, his wife Varina, and their children moved into the house in August 1861, and lived there for the remainder of the war. Davis suffered from recurring bouts with malaria, facial neuralgia, cataracts (in his left eye), unhealed wounds from the Mexican War (bone spurs in his heel), and insomnia. Consequently, President Davis maintained an at-home office on the second floor of the White House. This was not an unusual practice at that time – the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, was not added until the Theodore Roosevelt administration. President Davis' personal secretary, Colonel Burton Harrison, also lived in the house.
  The Davis family was quite young during their stay at the White House of the Confederacy. When they moved in, the family consisted of the president and first lady, six-year-old Margaret, four-year-old Jefferson Davis, Jr., and two-year-old Joseph. The two youngest Davis children, William and Varina Anne ("Winnie"), were born in the White House, in 1861 and 1864, respectively. Among their neighborhood playmates was George Smith Patton, whose father commanded the 22nd Virginia Infantry, and whose son commanded the U.S. Third Army in World War Two. Joseph Davis died in the spring of 1864, after a 15-foot fall from the railing on the White House's east portico. Mrs. Davis' mother and sister were occasional visitors to the Confederate executive mansion.
  The house was abandoned during the evacuation of Richmond on April 2, 1865. Within twelve hours, soldiers from Major General Godfrey Weitzel's XVIII Corps seized the former Confederate White House, intact. President Abraham Lincoln, who was in nearby City Point (now Hopewell, Virginia), traveled up the James River to tour the captured city, and visited Davis' former residence for about three hours – although the President only toured the first floor, feeling it would be improper to visit the more private second floor of another man's home. Admiral David Dixon Porter accompanied Lincoln during the visit to the former Confederate executive mansion. They held a number of meetings with local officials in the White House. Among them was Confederate Brigadier General Joseph Reid Anderson, who owned the Tredegar Iron Works.
caption: White House of the Confederacy, 1865, Library of Congress
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