Interlude–the Philosophy of Joseph Emory Davis
As I indicated, I find Joseph Emory Davis the most fascinating biographically incomprehensible personage I have ever studied. I am presenting because I don’t know many who know too much about him. While Jefferson was the very typical pro-slavery secessionist, of course its president, but prior to that one of the most ardent senators defenders not only of slavery, but of the inferior qualities of slaves, who argued profusely that the black slaves had absolutely no qualities that could ever enable them to be anything more than slaves and maybe the author of Ron DeSantis’ delusion of the benefits of slavery, for Jefferson certainly seems to have argued in the halls of Congress when he still a senator that slavery was a benefit to the black slave because his race was so far subservient to the white that God himself created the black man only for the singular purpose of being held in kind bondage by the white man. I am not sure if Jefferson Davis was aware that god had somehow created the black man some hundreds of thousands of years before he became the white man’s slave, he seems to have believed (from some of his pronouncements that they had not existed whatsoever but had been dropped into Africa only days before they were brought here and placed in bondage.
I have no idea if Jefferson learned these ideas from the man who raised him, if Joseph Emory believed in socialist bondage because of any similar beliefs. It doesn’t appear that this would be the case, as he seems to have thought his slaves fully capable of a great deal of qualities including the full management of his own plantation to one of those slaves, Benjamin Montgomery.
Joseph Emory did not follow his younger brother into secession, but left the plantation to live in the north during the civil war, but he left the management to Montgomery and turned the lands over to the northern military to oversee. Joseph Emory nevertheless needed to be pardoned after the cessation of hostilities before being permitted to regain his lands. Two years later spring floods altered the course of the Mississippi and Davis Bend was reduced to Davis Island, parts of the former plantation now permanently beneath the river. Davis sold what was left to Montgomery and retired to Vicksburg.
By that time Joseph Emory was nearing ninety having been born near Augusta Georgia only three years after the end of the revolutionary war, in 1784. He was the oldest often children born to a subsistence farmer. When Joseph Emory was nine, his parents, three younger brothers and a newborn sister set out for the new state of Kentucky to eke out a slighter better support for the growing family. Four more sisters were born on a smallish Kentucky squattery before the last child, a fifth son was born in 1808, Jefferson.
Joseph Emory had by this time been apprenticed for some time in a mercantile house in Kentucky and had begun to also apprentice himself into the study of law. To complete his legal studies Joseph Emory transported himself to Wilkinson County and brought his father to accompany and aided his parent in finding a new homestead. Admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1812, Joseph Emory began his practice in Pinckneyville. He kept his earlier contacts in Kentucky and returned in 1817 as a delegate in formation of the new Kentucky constitution, apparently taking a prominent role in its drafting and writing. In 1820 Joseph Emory returned to Mississippi and settled in Natchez, being taken on as a law partner by Thomas B. Reed, at the time the most prominent member of the Mississippi bar. Joseph Emory fathered three daughters out of wedlock, but acknowledged them and paid for their support and their education. At the age of 43 he decided to abandon his caddish ways and married a sixteen year old whose mother had run a shoe and boot store in Natchez. He also decided upon his marriage to retire from the law and he invested the substantial wealth he had made from his law career into the purchase of a plot of land and a a few slaves. At first Joseph Emory, his young wife, lived in a modest home he had built. Within five years he had purchased most of the peninsula that would come to be known as Davis Bend that included five thousand acres and five miles of riverfront just south of Vicksburg. He built a new three story home with 12 rooms, each with its own library and began acquiring one of the finest libraries in the south.
While cotton was his cash crop, Davis Bend was nearly self-sufficient, raising their own herds for a variety of meats and a plethora of crops to support their food needs and established a rotating crop cycle to sustain the soil that cotton could rapidly deplete. By 1860 he owned 365 slaves. He had established a plantation court system and slaves would participate as members of the jury. He found Ben Montgomery to be exceptionally intelligent and installed him to be the chief of overseer. He had a system of plantation stores that sold both to the slaves on the plantation (which I suppose means at least some of the slaves must have had some kind of income.)and to those off the plantation and once again he placed Montgomery in charge of managing the stores and overseeing the books. Montgomery was also placed in charge of negotiating the sale of the cotton, not only highly unusual that a slave would be in charge os such a task, but apparently Montgomery was so successful and the crop was healthier than most of the other plantations that Montgomery was able to maintain a much higher rate for the plantation’s cotton. After the fall of Vicksburg, Grant confiscated Davis bend for the establishment of freed slaves from other plantation, allowing them to lease lands. The settlement was able to produce 2000 bales of cotton in 1865 and Montgomery was able to arrange for their sale for nearly $160,000. Even before the bend became an island in 1867 many of the freedman had left the plantation. Montgomery created a cooperative of freedman that did wish to remain and they survived until the1880’s when the island economy collapsed. Montgomery’s son moved the remaining members to any region where they founded Mount Bayou Mississippi.
Much earlier, when Joseph Emory’s younger brother Jefferson had reached his majority, Joseph Emory had purchased and given his brother a substantial plantation of his own of 1000 acres that Jefferson would develop into Brierfield.
Nevertheless I find Joseph Emory’s story remarkable. He appears from the pages of history as one of its most responsible personages. A man of substance who tried to provide for others as much as he could by sharing his own abundance. He is the kind of man that I would think I would be willing to entrust with authority because he seems unlikely to abuse it. He spent his last three years living with his granddaughter, daughter of one of his own illegitimate daughters that he had taken in. With the aid of his grandaughter they sought out worthy young people of little means, of both sexes and both races to sponsor with educational grants that they would have otherwise never been able to achieve.
And Joseph Emory Davis was a goddamned slave owner and that makes him nothing more than that; no matter how I wish to admire his benevolence and multitudinous admirable qualities. And I say to myself there is nothing to ever admire about a person who owns others, and I try to tempt myself into believing he was still a good slaveowner, a kind one, a socialist one, who really created more equality for his slaves that many non-slaves enjoyed in the antebellum days of Mississippi. And yet I fail to convince myself to forgive him for owning people. And I don’t know if that is my failure or if he deserves my non-forgiveness.
Davis believed Owens’s dictum: “There is but one mode by which man can possess all the happiness his nature is capable of enjoying—that is by the union and co-operation of all for the benefit of each.”
It never occurred to him that the very foundation of slavery—one person owning another—might be incompatible with an ideal society.
Prime sources: Benjamin T. Montgomery Family Papers A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress
Concerning Joseph Emory’s early life the papers of Jefferson Davis collected at Rice University seem to be the major source; and are used in Wikipedia which I also consulted and led to seeking information on Joseph Emory amongst Jefferson Davis’ papers in the Rice U. archives.