Letter: Jefferson Davis Day
June 03, 2012
Monday is an official Alabama holiday in honor of Confederate States President Jefferson Davis, the last real American president as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
Jim Limber became the first black American to be a member of a presidential family in February 1864, when the Davis family adopted him after rescuing the 8-year-old orphan from being mistreated at a foster home in Richmond.
President Davis registered free papers on Jim and later arranged for his formal education. Jim lived and played with the other Davis children in the Confederate White House during Lincoln’s Tax War.
It was not uncommon in the Old South for blacks to take in orphaned whites or whites to take in orphaned blacks.
In stark contrast to this relationship, on Aug. 14, 1862 Abraham Lincoln told a delegation of free black Americans, “There is an unwillingness on the part of our people (Northern whites) for you free colored people to remain with us. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
Lincoln had requested and Congress appropriated the money to colonize free black Americans in some foreign country; whereupon, Lincoln shipped hundreds of free Northern blacks down to poverty-stricken Haiti.
Roger K. Broxton, president
Confederate Heritage Fund
Andalusia
