BEAUVOIR

Via SHNV

From: twbailey@live.com

Dear Compatriots and Friends,
  
I spent this past weekend [4-26-14] at Beauvoir.  We arrived on Thursday and set up our camps as well as a flag display for our weekend festivities.  On Friday we shared the Confederate Heritage with over three hundred local school children as well as other visitors at Beauvoir.
  
On Saturday morning we had a troop of Cub Scouts to come in and camp near us.  We entertained them as we shared our Heritage with them.  Our camp cook prepared Saturday supper and Sunday breakfast for them.  On Saturday night we took them to the cemetery and I shared Samuel Hankins' "Simple Story of a Soldier" with the scouts.  As we walked out of the cemetery some of our reenactors charged out of the dark firing their pistols.  The scouts got a real surprise from this.  When we got them back to camp we loaded our muskets and gave them a night fire demonstration.  The kids loved this.
  
Saturday was also Confederate Memorial Day at Beauvoir.  We participated in this ceremony as well.  It was good to see so many of our Mississippi SCV friends and compatriots.
 
I would also like to take this moment to commend Greg Stewart on what he has accomplished over the past seven weeks.  Through his leadership and with the devoted help of some volunteers the Presidential Library and the surrounding grounds are making some remarkable improvements.
  
While at Beauvoir this weekend I came across some information that proves without any doubt that Bertram Hayes-Davis and anyone who supports or associates with him should be exiled from Dixie!  At the very least Hayes-Davis and his cohorts should never ever be allowed to set foot on Beauvoir again.  Let me make myself perfectly clear.  It is wonderful that we have Beauvoir as the "Last Home of Jefferson Davis".  But, there are over 700 reasons asleep in the ground on the Beauvoir property that demands that scalawags, carpetbaggers, or anyone else who attempts to destroy the Confederate Heritage never be allowed to have anything to do with Beauvoir.
  
The following quotation comes from page 169, 170 and 171 of "Winnie Davis, Daughter of the Lost Cause" by Heath Hardage Lee.  The information in this quote was available when Hayes-Davis was appointed as a director at Beauvoir.
  
"Now the generations have come full circle, with Bertram and Carol returning willingly to the South to preserve--and perhaps to change--the perception of the Davis Legacy.  They are custodians with a western-Midwestern viewpoint and a commonsense approach to history.

  Bertram and Carol enthusiastically explain their new vision of the historic site.  Beauvoir will no longer be a monument to the Confederate soldier:   it will be revamped according to Varina's stated wish that the property become monument to Jefferson Davis.  Carol confesses that she struggled with this concept until she began to understand that Varina wanted the public to be educated about her husband and all his achievements, not just the legacy of the Confederacy.  Since moving to Mississippi, Carol reveals that she has been having dreams in which Varina visits her--perhaps the Davis matriarch is trying to give her advice on the direction Beauvoir needs to go post-Katrina.  

Perhaps the Davis family's southern mythology will be rejuvenated by the no-nonsense, can-do attitude of Beauvoir's newest director and his wife, who plan to cut through the crusty layers of the "Lost Cause" mythology and examine Jefferson's life and career in its entirety.  They feel the focus on his tenure as president of the Confederacy during the Civil War does not do justice to his other achievements.  Within this process Bertram and Carol will examine the Davis women as well:  Winnie, Varina, Margret, and Margret's descendants.  It is not just the physical structure of Beauvoir they are aiming to renovate.  Understanding the spiritual, social, and personal structure of this most southern of families is integral to their vision for Beauvoir.  Under their leadership the next chapter of the Davis and Hayes-Davis saga may prove to be its most revealing and its most exciting story yet."
 
We do not need a western-Midwestern viewpoint on our Heritage.  If it is not a Southern viewpoint we do not need it!  Beauvoir has always tried to present the ENTIRE story of Jefferson Davis.  "Will no longer be a monument to the Confederate soldier":   there are Confederate graves on the property, give me a break!  The property was always intended to be a monument to Jefferson Davis and the Confederate soldier.  It is amazing how the politically correct crowd will use only what they want and not the whole TRUTH!  A "common-sense approach to history" is a way to exclude our Confederate Heritage.  This "no-nonsense, can-do attitude" is a vehicle to destroy the Confederate Heritage at Beauvoir.  People like Hayes-Davis are incapable of "understanding the spiritual, social and personal structure" of Southern families.  It sounds to me like Carol has spent more time studying Mary Todd Lincoln than she has Varina or Winne Davis.

Best Regards,

Terry W. Bailey
Sons of Confederate Veterans
Mobile. Alabama