A [r]epublican in Exile

In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and the first man to hold that office). The two men were drawn to each other immediately and became fast friends for the rest of their lives. In her biography of her husband, Varina Davis wrote that Mann had “every Christian virtue” and that “Mr. Davis and he gravitated toward each other at once, and loved like David and Jonathan until extreme old age.” [1]

After the formation of the Confederate States of America, Davis appointed Mann, an experienced diplomat, as a commissioner to Europe. Mann left his country in March 1861, and would never return. After the war, fiercely unwilling to live under Yankee domination, he spent the rest of his life in France, hosting numerous Confederate expatriates at his home, and continuing to correspond with Jefferson Davis, who visited him in Paris in the winter of 1868-1869.

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