A Few Of My "Favorite Things"

 The Second Parlor at the First White House of the Confederacy contains a few of my "favorite things". One is the round gray marble top center table that was used by the Davises at Beauvoir, their retirement home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Upon the table rests the Davis family Bible. "Liberated" during "the Wah" (as one of our favorite readers commented yesterday) by a Union soldier, it was returned to the First White House years later by his brother.

The chair to the right of the center table is the one which Mrs. Davis was finally permitted to send to her husband during the last weeks of his two year imprisonment at Fortress Monroe. Prior to that he had to use a hard, wooden bench.

The portraits in the Second Parlor are of particular interest. The one over the mantel is of Varina Howell Davis. The one on the right wall is of Winnie Davis, youngest child of the President and Mrs. Davis, known as the "Daughter of the Confederacy".

On the near left wall is a self-portrait of Nicola Marschall, designer of the Confederate flag (Stars and Bars) and the Confederate uniform. On the far left wall is one he painted of his wife.

There is much more in this room which I will tell about next time.