Letter to Sarah Knox Taylor

[dawna]

I have a book which contains love letters written by Jefferson Davis to his first finance, Sarah (Zachary Taylor's daughter), and letters that were written several years later when Davis was engaged to Varina Howell. Davis also wrote many letters to Varina during the early years of their marriage as they were frequently separated. The final letters that I'd like to post by Jefferson Davis were written to Varina from prison, in 1866.

Jefferson Davis and Sarah Taylor were married on June 17, 1835 and sadly Sarah died only three months later. Davis, of course, was grief stricken.


Fort Gibson

December 16, 1834
To: Sarah Knox Taylor

Tis strange how superstitious intense feeling renders us, but stranger still what aids chance sometimes brings to support our superstition. Dreams my dear Sarah we will agree are our weakest thoughts, and yet by dreams have I been lately almost crazed, for they were of you; and the sleeping imagination painted you not such as I left you, not such as I could like and see you, for you seemed a sacrifice to your parents desire the bride of a wretch that your pride and sense equally compelled you to despise; and a [illegible] creature here, telling the on dits of the day at St. Louis said you were "about to be married to a Dr. McLaraine", a poor devel who served with the Battalion of Rangers - possibly you may have seen him - but last night the vision was changed. You were at the house of an Uncle in Kentucky, Capt. McCree was walking with you when I met you he left you, and you told me of your Father and of yourself almost the same that I have read in your letter to night. Kind, dear letter, I have kissed it often and it has driven many mad notions from my brain. Sarah whatever I may be hereafter I will ascribe to you. Neglected by you I should be worse than nothing and if the few good qualities I posses shall under yours smiles yield a fruit it will be yours as the grain is the husband-man's.

It has been a source productive of regret with me that our union must separate you from your earliest and best friends, a test to which the firmness of very few are equal, though giddy with passion or bouant by the hope of reconciliation there be many who brave it. From you I am prepared to expect all that intellect and dignified pride brings, the question as it has occured to you is truly startling. Your own answer is the most gratifying to me, is that which I should expected from you, for as you are the first with whom I ever ought to have one fourtune, so you would be the last from whom I would expect desertion.

When I wrote to you I supposed you did not intend to return to Kentucky. I approve entirely of your preference to a meeting elsewhere than at Praire-du-Chien and your desire to avoid any embarrassment might widen the breach made already cannot be greater than my own. Did I know when you would be at St. Louis I could meet you there. At all event we meet in Kentucky. Shall we not soon meet Sarah to part no more? oh! how I long to lay my head upon that breast which beats in unison with my own, to turn form the sickening sights of worldly duplicity and look in those eyes so eloquent of purity and love. Do you remember the 'hearts ease' you gave me, it is bright as ever - how very gravely you ask leave to ask me a question.

My dear girl I have I no secrets from you, you have a right to ask me any question without an apology. Miss Bullitt did not give me a guard for a watch but is fine and do you suppose I would have given it to Capt. McCree? But I'll tell you what she did give me [torn] most beautiful and lengthy lecture on my and your charms, the which combined, once upon an evening at a "fair" in Louisvile, as she was one of the few subjects of conversation we had apart from ourselves. On that evening you can & I have left you to guess what beside a sensibility to your charms constituted my offence. The reporters were absent and the speech I made is lost.

Pray what manner of messages could la belle Elvin have sent you concerning me? I suppose no attempt to destroy harmony. I laughed at her demonstrations against the attachment existing between myself a subalern of Dragoons but that between you and I is not fair, gains it is robbing to make another poor, but No! She is too discerning to attempt a thing so difficult and in which success would be valueless. "Miss Elizabeth one very handsome; lady" Ah, Knox what did you put that semicolon between handsome and lady for? I hope you find in the society of the Prarie enough to amuse if not to please. The griefs over which we weep are not those to be dreaded. It is the little pains the constant falling of thy drops of care which wear away the heart, I join you in rejoicing that Mrs. McCree is added to your society. I admire her more than anyone else you could have had. Since I wrote to you we have abandoned the position in the Creek Nation and are constructing quarters at Ft. Gibson.

My lines like the beggars days are dwindling to the shortest span. Write to me immediately, my dear Sarah. My betrothed. No formality is proper between us. Adieu ma chere tres chere amie adieu au Recrire.


JEFFN

Jefferson Davis, The Essential Writings
by: William J. Cooper, Jr.

"I tell you a truth. Liberty is the best of all things my son, never live under any slavish bond." ~William Wallace~